China

I know shamefully little about China. This short slideshow/documentary shows just how irrelevant what goes on here in the UK actually is (see also these pictures from Wired).

The UK, along with most of the rest of Western Europe, has become a dormitory nation: a place for people to live their lives. I love life in the UK, and there are few other places I'd rather live.

That said: we in Western Europe do not build, we do not create. The great success story in Britain in recent years has been the finance industry, and even that seems to be largely foreign-owned.

I am not so parochial that I do not value the knowledge economy, but I believe in the dependency principle: don’t allow yourself to lose control of the fundamentals. We still have a decent handle on agriculture, but our energy-security is starting to look a bit wobbly. I still think we need to invest in nuclear power – like the Chinese.