Britain’s automotive supply chain doesn’t need to die. It needs a new mission. @dgbailey's new blog today: blogsfromtheblackstuff.com/b… "Capabilities embedded in the automotive supply chain have not suddenly become worthless. They are capabilities in advanced manufacturing, precision engineering, electronics, software, materials, batteries, autonomous systems and complex supply-chain management" "This is what we mean by reverse conversion: the deliberate mobilisation and reorientation of established civilian industrial capabilities towards defence and dual-use production." "Defence itself is changing. Modern military capability increasingly depends upon technologies and production systems that have strong civilian applications: electronics, communications, autonomous systems, drones, advanced materials, batteries, power electronics, software and sophisticated manufacturing."

Last Healey Chancellorship ended up at the IMF, of course!!🤣

I’m sure places from *the West Midlands* built the Labour movement &the Trades Union movement, too, @andyburnham Strange omission. Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull &The Black Country did have *a bit* to do with that there Industrial Revolution - &their working classes who forged it. Let us, indeed, never forget those, now done-down, places: WM's own former steelworks &mines, its metal industries; and, you know…its planes, trains &automobiles. @dgbailey can tell you all about it! These proud West Midlands folk made Labour, too. Perhaps there was a transcription or teleprompter error? Perhaps you could make it right for forgotten WM places in any speech you make on Monday!😉 blogsfromtheblackstuff.com/

Very sad to hear that @DermotMurnaghan has passed away. A brilliant journalist. And although he could be highly effective in challenging politicians, sometimes he gave time to politicians to explain in detail. I had 6 minutes with him almost 10 years ago. Here’s 90 secs of it.

**BREAKING**EXCLUSIVE** 97 UK Local Govt Pension Funds' 2026 Assets pass **£0.5 TRILLION**: £517B. Extracted &aggregated from just-published Councils’ Accounts. Mgt. Expenses deducted reach scandalous £2.7B! Including £2.3B its investment managers. Standardised Surplus £200B+ Find out your local fund's &your region's data - @dgbailey &my presentations &analyses of full asset data here: public.flourish.studio/visua… with bar chart version here:public.flourish.studio/visua… Returns on investment &management expenses here: public.flourish.studio/visua… Woeful net returns only 9.3%, whilst global markets surged massively higher, even with Iran war intervening. Managers panicked and sold at the bottom of the market? £2.7 Billion in management expenses is directly paid for, collected and deducted from the budgets of every council, every state school, every FE College, every police and fire station through inflated employer contributions. Now THAT is what you call an expenses scandal! Estimated £200 billion+ standardised taxpayer-owned surplus simply hoarded, unable to be used otherwise, by the councils &will never, ever, be used to pay a pension. it is simply fed upon by an investment banking sector which has policy-captured MHCLG. Employer contributions have been set massively and unnecessarily high by, at best, naïve and inexperienced council fund managers. They have been proven to have massively underestimated future and past long-term investment returns. The resulting hyper-inflation of Employer Contributions in councils, schools, colleges and in the police and fire services means that the pensions and lump sums paid out have been covered by all contributions for the last 10 years. So without radical action to massively return the surpluses to the taxpayer now, they will just simply grow and grow. We predicted at blogsfromtheblackstuff.com in October 2025 of the likelihood of a £200 billion surplus emerging and the need for action then and since by successive Local Government Secretaries of State @AngelaRayner and @SteveReedMP. But to no avail. Well, it happened. @andyburnham's new administration needs to get hold of this. And instead of cutting services to pay increased defence spending, half of that could be paid for by capping management expenses at 10BPs of scheme assets - providing an ongoing extra £2.5 billion every year. Watch out for full, further analysis over the weekend at blogsfromtheblackstuff.com