Credit: Getty
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In yesterday’s UnPacked, I wrote about LEVC, the London Electric Vehicle Company. In its previous incarnation as the London Taxi Company, it manufactured London’s black cabs – and is now making the next generation of all all-electric cabs. A subsidiary of Geely, the Chinese vehicle manufacturer, LEVC aims to sell into other markets as public transport systems around the world turn their backs on the diesel engine.
What I should have added, however, is that the company is based not in London, but Coventry in the West Midlands.
The Midlands are part of Britain’s ‘flyover country’ – the equivalent of rustbelt and red state America. Or at least that’s the way they’re seen by the metropolitan elites, for whom ‘the provinces’ are an economic and cultural drag on London’s global success story. To the extent that the ‘national’ media covers the rest of the county, it is to report on bad news.
Fortunately, there are some honourable exceptions and one of them is Tom King of Sky News, who writes about the good economic news coming from the Midlands:
“Just one national newspaper has bothered reporting plans from Meggitt, the defence and aerospace contractor, to build a £130m ‘super-site’ in Coventry that will support a similar number of jobs.
“Elsewhere in that city, Chinese company Geely recently opened a £325m facility to build electric taxis, employing 1,100 people.”
While the London establishment frets over Brexit, the Midlands have been getting on with business :
“During the three months to the end of February, the biggest drop in unemployment anywhere in the country was in the West Midlands.
“The East Midlands, meanwhile, has an unemployment rate lower than the national average.
“And both are seeing more job creation than anywhere in the country outside London. Between September 2016 and 2017, the most recent regional comparisons available, 74,000 jobs were created in the East Midlands and 95,000 in the West Midlands…
“Both regions remain strong in manufacturing with more people employed in ‘production’ in the East Midlands, as a proportion of the labour force, than anywhere else in Britain.”
As more and more people discover that the Midlands are capable of supporting human life, property prices there are heading upwards – though, happily, they remain far below the vitality-destroying levels of the capital:
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