Welcome to 2010. Some might preface that statement with the words You are, because welcoming gestures or signs from this New Year are not immediately apparent. The banking system is functioning again, or, at least, handsomely rewarding itself for nearly doing its regular job, and, judging from the hysterical tones of Angela Knight’s open letter to the world at the start of the year, banks feel we might still be angry with them – who would have thought it! At least one RDA has also thought fit at the start of this election year to issue a statement praising itself in terms so effusive that you might be forgiven for thinking that they smell the possibility of change in the air: while Universities have seen fit to offer their own vision of hell, or the possibility that they might have to shoulder a share of the public spending cuts which must follow the election – whoever wins.

These are not the best of times and yet, in the enterprising economy, people and businesses are finding and developing real opportunities; identifying latent value and setting about realising it. Life will go on even if some of the people, organisations and gravy trains with which we have become familiar may not. Britain is an entrepreneurial society and that spirit will need to take up the slack of supplying on market terms what the state may find it cannot afford to supply on its circumscribed terms. The economy will prosper but not in the ways we have come to expect. Private sector initiatives tend to minimise up front costs, use less people at any given stage of development and avoid grandiose publicity of barely formed programmes. So tomorrow’s world may appear a little less glamorous but these naturally grown enterprises will have strength and, in the argot of our times, will be sustainable.

And let’s try to be a little fair. The banking sector, love ‘em or hate ‘em, has directly or indirectly generated the lion’s share of the funds which, through the proportion paid in taxation, have paid for many of the schemes of the past decade or more. They may need reforming and they may need to recruit a few more humans and a few less goblins – read your Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter et al – but they are an asset to UK plc and, as such, should not be destroyed or so hampered in their operations as to make them uncompetitive or, worse still, drive them away.

Also, while RDAs can be infuriating when they trumpet ‘their’ investment, as if they were risking their own money and not that of the taxpayer, and while their accountability displays all the transparency of a hall of mirrors, they have served a valuable function defining and corralling the efforts of their regions. They have driven forward infrastructure programmes that might otherwise never have seen the light of day and they have enabled knowledge of our regional economies that hardly existed before. Reform them, yes; make them openly accountable, yes; but don’t throw them out on ideological grounds alone, it would be a waste.

As for the Universities; we are all going to have to make sacrifices and, I’m afraid that it may be more drastic than replacing the Harvey’s Bristol Cream with Tesco Finest Sherry. So, rather than threaten the descent of the sky, perhaps they could work with the rest of us over the next few years to get everyone back on their feet.

If the house has been demolished, at least we know we can rebuild it – we’ve done so before. And at least the basement has been exposed so that anyone investing in the UK today really will be getting in on the ground floor. How often does that opportunity arise with a major economy?

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