There have been a number of good news stories in recent months concerning the state of manufacturing in the West Midlands.
The fact that manufacturing is beginning to recover is undoubtedly good.
When he spoke at the World Economic Forum recently Prime Minister David Cameron was keen to emphasise the 1,500 jobs created since 2011 as a result 'reshoring' as a result of businesses that located abroad returning to the UK.
However, in the last 30 years over three million jobs in the UK manufacturing sector have been shed and now accounts for 10% of UK economic output rather than 30% which was the case in the early 1970s.
This means that welcome though the additional 1,500 jobs reshoring jobs are, they represent a 'drop in the ocean'.
Given that the Midlands region has traditionally been the 'heartlands' of manufacturing, the loss of jobs over the last three decades has been acutely felt among the local population.
Commentators consistently contend that what is needed is more investment in manufacturing that will produce not only tangible items that will be bought by domestic consumers but can be exported.
Scientific development in manufacturing accounts for a significant proportion of research carried out in this country.
Even more crucially manufacturing provides the opportunity available to those who left school in the 1950s,60s and 70s but has declined in the last thirty years.
Many of the senior managers of today, including executives, commenced their careers as apprentices; some in major industrial companies that, all-too-sadly, no longer exist.
The imperative to support manufacturing has not been lost on this government and every minister is keen to throw their weight behind the sector; think of George Osborne's "march of the makers".
The trouble is, evidence suggests that the reality is not good.
The Markit/CIPS Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index for December showed, there has been a decline on November's three year high of 58.1 to 57.3. Though anything above 50 is good in that it shows improvement, this decline would indicate that the recent euphoria concerning the increase in GDP should be tempered with caution.
So, the news that a local manufacturer based in Coventry is about to close with the loss of 50 jobs is all the more disappointing.
Cash's which was set up in 1846 by Quaker brothers John and Joseph Cash is one of the country's oldest weavers making the nametapes that many of us would have had sown into our school uniforms.
Indeed, in 1964 Cash's was appointed as manufacturers of nametapes to no less than The Queen
Like many other Quakers, the Cash brothers wanted their employees to enjoy conditions significantly better than the alternative offered by simply being an "outworker".
And let's not forget that though it was announced a couple of weeks ago that there will be £75 million investment by Cadbury's parent company Mondelez, into its Bournville factory, there was an admission that job losses were "likely" to ensure the survival of the site by increasing efficiency.
Bothers George and Richard Cadbury were responsible for creating the Bournville factory after moving from central Birmingham in the late 1870s.
No doubt they would recognise that the contemporary world is vastly different from that some 135 years ago,
Nevertheless it is still sad that reasonably well-paid local jobs are being lost in pursuit of increased profit by the executives of Mondelez International led by Irene Rosenfield in Illinois.
And last week there was news of a possible relocation of the production by Dunlop Motorsport from its current Birmingham-based site with the potential loss of several hundred jobs.
As fellow columnist Professor David Bailey of Aston Business School commented in The Birmingham Post , Dunlop executives based in Ohio may make a strategic decision to shift motorsport production to either Spain or Germany:
"That would be a sad blow for a city region which has been busy repositioning itself on the cutting edge of automotive research and technology - in premium, low carbon and sports cars."
The decline of manufacturing in Birmingham has been an 'elephant in the room' in all of the brouhaha concerning the Channel Four television programme Benefit Street .
Benefit Street 'examines' life on James Turner Street in Winson Green. Its residents we are informed are the most benefit-dependent in the country.
In an article in last week's Guardian journalist Jon Henley explained that when it was built in the late 1800s, James Turner Street attracted "prosperous working classes from all over Britain," to work in the wide variety of local factories engaged in what is now referred to as "metal bashing".
Further Henley showed, the 1891 census informs us that though the majority of the residents of James Turner Street at the time were from the local area, some had come from as far as Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Devon, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, London, Norfolk, Staffordshire and Worcestershire to work in the in numerous local factories springing up as a result of the industrial revolution.
These factories were creating goods that would be sold around the world and establish Birmingham as 'The City of a Thousand Trades.
According to Henley, the 1891 census showed that "almost to a man" (this included women), the residents of James Turner Street were employed as "smiths, pressers, turners and stampers. Chain-makers, moulders, casters and brass workers. Solderers, burnishers, polishers, tank-makers, engine fitters, nut and bolt-makers, cycle-makers, core-makers, angle-iron smiths, axle turners, brass tap finishers, machine tool-makers, furnacemen, iron and steel wire drawers, rule-makers."
What has made James Turner Street currently so infamous should act as a warning from history and be taught to all future generations of schoolchildren.
Hopefully they will be more appreciative of the consequences of allowing a sudden decline in manufacturing capability than politicians from all parties with their 'half-baked' and often hopeless policies.
Some commentators go so far as suggest that some political leaders - we all know to whom they refer - possessed attitudes bordering on contempt for traditional industries such as manufacturing.
In the decades after the second-world war, those residents of James Turner Street who had became sufficiently wealthy moved out to the leafier suburbs and were replaced by the newly arrived immigrants from the Caribbean and Indian sub-continent who could secure employment in the local factories that still operated.
However, in the economic mayhem of the 1970s and 1980s these factories closed at an phenomenal rate.
It's worth noting that Birmingham lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the ten years from 1971 alone.
This resulted in unemployment rapidly increasing up to over 20%; especially in the likes of James Turner Street whose residents became used to a life of 'benefit dependency'.
In many areas of inner city Birmingham unemployment has never reduced since the 1980s with all the attendant social problems such as lack of attainment of educational and vocational qualifications, higher than average crime rates and poor health.
The sense of hopelessness and 'poverty of aspiration' is all too apparent in Channel Four's Benefit Street .
The following quotation from Henley's article poignantly demonstrates Birmingham's 'catastrophic' decline as a city steeped in the tradition of manufacturing:
"In 1976 [...] Birmingham's GDP per capita was still the highest of any British city outside the south-east; five years later, it was the lowest in England. Relative incomes, the highest in the country in 1970, were by 1983 the lowest."
I fully accept that the days of 'metal-bashing' in Birmingham and surrounding areas have disappeared forever.
However, if people living in areas of social deprivation such as James Turner Street can never expect to work then that is truly dreadful.
Surely there must be an alternative?
What is needed is the sort of investment in creating the inventiveness and ingenuity that has attracted migrants to Birmingham for centuries; most especially after the industrial revolution.
Not for the first, nor last time, I appeal to our political leaders, particularly in Westminster, to urgently consider implementing the industrial policy so passionately advocated by Lord Heseltine in his report No Stone Unturned .
And as I've argued previously, what we should aim to achieve in this area is a version of what the Germans refer to as the Mittelstand .
Birmingham has a reputation as a city with pre-eminence in all aspects of manufacturing excellence and innovation; Jaguar Land Rover being the best known example.
But we need thousands more small and medium-sized companies with the same obsession on producing excellent products through creative and dedicated people as JLR.
This is precisely what Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership is dedicated to achieving.
If GBSLEP's long-term strategy succeeds it will be good for the people of Birmingham in terms of creating jobs with opportunity and improving the local economy.
Equally important success in this strategy will ensure that we have a more balanced national economy that is less London-centric and based on the associated vastly over-inflated property prices in the capital as well as and the caprice and hubris of City traders and financiers.
Trouble is, I don't believe we will see this sort of radical change; certainly in the foreseeable future.
