COLUMNISTS Sir John Rose would have been forgiven for standing up at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce on Tuesday night and simply saying: “I told you so.”
Two years ago, the Rolls-Royce chief executive addressed an audience at London’s Imperial College about the value of manufacturing. As last night, he criticised those who backed the myth that Britain was a “post-industrial” economy. But he also attacked evangelists for the primacy of the financial services sector (still full of optimism, even after the run on Northern Rock), by pointing out that “the problem with being a one-trick pony is not only that you have to get it right every time, but you have to hope that tastes don’t change”.
