Mrs S C Brown of Birtley, Bucknell, thinks there's no growth from just housebuilding (From Hereford Times)

Mrs S C Brown of Birtley, Bucknell, thinks there's no growth from just housebuilding

3:00pm Friday 10th February 2012 in Letters

CAN any of your readers explain the current view at county and national levels that economic growth arises from mass house building, projects such as HS2 and a new airport in the Thames estuary or, from all of us simply spending more?

Whilst infrastructure is important to facilitate growth it does not necessarily lead to growth and sometimes its value can be misjudged.

For example, many years ago we were told that the Channel Tunnel would transform all our lives but it turned out to be an extremely expensive white elephant.

On the other hand, nationwide fast broadband would definitely be a facilitator of growth but we are struggling to advance it – probably because it is not a highly visible, butch project and the male dominated government has not really supported it in the way it supported the tunnel.

By the way – if government can insist that electricity suppliers install smart meters why can’t it similarly insist that communication system suppliers install broadband?

And how do we get rich spending more? All we get from that is more “stuff”, most of which is not essential and likely to be imported, like a bigger and better car or the shoes that women seem to be addicted to or completely unnecessary air fresheners (you can always open a window for free).

If we all spend more all we do is transfer wealth from A to B. The ultimate beneficiary is the government which creams off taxes at every stage and then spends vast amounts on keeping millions unemployed, Trident, the EU, a bloated NHS and interest on its borrowings.

Consuming less and saving will make us much richer much more quickly.

So long as the permanent growth idea continues, growth for the UK will come from full employment and exporting the products of that labour, digging resources out of the ground, growing and exporting food – no chance of a surplus in that area, partly because we keep building on agricultural land including fertile flood plains – or from selling abroad services like education and finance.

As a nation we won’t get rich by building each other houses and engaging 80 per cent of our economy in service industries often staffed by a migrant workforce.

MR S C BROWN, Birtley, Bucknell.