Thanks to my job as a business journalist, I can reel off facts and figures on topics from projected GDP growth in the Russian Federation to the outlook for tanker chartering rates. But I couldn’t tell you much about what they do in Derby these days. There’s no reason why I should know that, of course. But I had rather assumed the Treasury would be on the case, and factor wider considerations into government policy decisions.

Not so, according to the railway industry trade press. Lack of regional microeconomic data meant that nobody thought twice about what awarding a £3bn contract for 1,200 Thameslink carriages to Germany’s Siemens would mean for the East Midlands town.

Translation: Whitehall is insufficiently interested in what happens out in the sticks even to keep tabs on faraway places of which it knows little. Continue reading →