Leading Article: Rum business
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Your support makes all the difference.IT WILL be the first time, we are told, that all three main party leaders have addressed the conference of the Confederation of British Industry, which opens today in Birmingham. No doubt the panjandrums of the boardrooms are pleased that their club bestrides the centre ground of British politics so self-importantly. For the rest of us, it is a move in the wrong direction. Ever since the Federation of British Industries, the British Employers' Confederation and the National Association of British Manufacturers merged in 1965, the CBI has been the most useless bit of the corporate state. It acts only as a platform for big suits who have been kicked upstairs by the entrepreneurs who are really doing the business.
The CBI has always been split down the middle on Europe, split on exchange rate policy and split between small businesses and multinationals, and as such rarely proposes anything worthwhile. It is a pity that our political leaders see the need to pander to it, instead of appealing directly to the real innovators and risk-takers in whom our economic future lies. Hasten the day when the CBI is treated with the same contempt that is now reserved for the Trades Union Congress.
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