“March of the Makers”
06 April 2011
On March 23, the UK’s Chancelor of the Exchequer, George Osborne ended his 2011 budget speech with the following pull-out-quote-worthy words, which put makers right at the heart of this nation’s economic regeneration:
"We want the words: ‘Made in Britain’, ‘Created in Britain’, ‘Designed in Britain’, ‘Invented in Britain’ to drive our nation forward. A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers. That is how we will create jobs and support families. We have put fuel into the tanks of the British economy. And I commend this budget to the house."
Of course, the point the Chancelor intended to put across was that the new budget promises to focus on the encouragement of enterprise and manufacturing in an attempt to fuel job creation economic growth.
But what is of specific interest to us it that the Chancelor used the word ‘maker’ in place of the normally opted-for word ‘manufacturer’, possibly for the first time ever in a political speech and most definitely in a budget speech. We wonder what this tells us about the future of makers in the UK - not only about our place within the economic structure, but within the cultural, political and linguistic landscape of this nation?
To read a full text version of the 2011 Budget Speech, or to listen to an mp3 visit:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2011budget_speech.htm