Be positive, be inventive

The week started badly. Some call it Blue Monday, others Miserable Monday, but all agreed that January 19 was the most depressing day of the year.
Christmas has slipped into memory, credit card bills are arriving and the weather has been miserable.
Certainly recent weeks have seen a flood of grim economic headlines in the national news and jobs have been lost in mid-Somerset.
I do not mean to underestimate the real hardships felt locally by people suffering from the effects of the economic downturn, but there are parts of Britain which are being hit much harder.
We don’t have a Honda factory like Swindon, a Wedgwood pottery like Stoke-on-Trent or head offices of big financial institutions like London.
Once we did have big manufacturing employers like Clarks shoes in Street and Shepton Mallet, Nutricia baby foods and Clares shopping trolleys in Wells.
These jobs have already gone. We have been through that pain and the mid-Somerset economy is now more reliant on service and high-tech industries.
Such firms are much smaller and employ fewer people, but they are often less vulnerable in a recession.
One weakness we must avoid is our tendency to make the situation worse by seeing doom and gloom everywhere.
Our economy is in trouble but to clamber out of the slump as soon as possible we need to be positive and inventive.
Philip Welch

Time to confess

Have you become dependent on technology you believed unnecessary when it was first launched?
CDs were soulless anathema to an avid collector of vinyl records like me, but I gave in after a few years and now own them by the hundred.When mobile phones appeared in the 1980s most of us felt they were much too big and expensive.
Personally, the idea of being on call day and night felt profoundly disturbing. Today I carry one everywhere and embarrass my children by not having one of the latest over-complicated models.
Then there was the home computer. Why have one in the house when your work PC is on 50 hours a week?
Who wants to spend precious relaxation time staring at another computer monitor?
Alas, I gave in a year ago and sit sadly in the dining room at night emailing relatives and Googling for answers to obscure questions.
But I remained resolute on two items of modern technology: sat-nav (who needs a computer when there is a map in the car?) and electronic books (they are no substitute for the feel and pleasure of the real thing).
But, time to confess, at the weekend I read one of the latter in an A5 stainless steel box with a natty little screen.I was tempted to buy, mainly because it contained Michael Parkinson’s autobiography, but declined firmly – for now.
Philip Welch

Don't look back

I should have known better. Deciding to revisit my hopes for 2008 proved a depressing experience.In this column 12 months ago I listed developments which would be welcome in the new year.
Top was the South West Regional Development Agency moving faster and finishing work on the Morlands site in 2008.Anyone who travels along the A39 between Wells and Street can see how far this wasted opportunity is from completion.
Would redevelopment have taken more than 20 years if the private sector had been in charge? I think not.
I also wished for more affordable homes for young people in Somerset, which would make staying here more attractive for them and reduce the greying of the county, but the problems in the property market are preventing that.
Other unrequited hopes included untalented “stars” no longer believing they deserve a glorious career because of their ritual humiliation on a reality television show, and fewer paparazzi photos in the national media.
Foolishly I also hoped for better quality television programmes at Christmas. Sadly it was worse with a desperate dearth of new material.For 2009 we need to beat the recession in Somerset. We can all help in two main ways: Firstly by supporting local shops, service providers and food producers.Secondly by being positive, avoiding convincing ourselves things are worse than they are and questioning the daft rumours spread by doom-mongers.
Philip Welch