150 Years Birthday

Last night I attended the 150 th Birthday of the Chamber of commerce at the Mount here in Wolverhampton. It was a very pleasing affair and both Mary and I enjoyed it very much.

I was asked to give a speech and I delivered it relating the way that the mayor at the time Edward Perry having taken the Mayoralty for the second time sorted a dispute out with Wolverhampton Water Company and then later in that year helped form the Wolverhampton Chamber!

He was obviously a very determined Mayor!

I also made a plea for the success of the city. I informed the guests that it was my firm belief that it was not governments that created strong economies, though they do help to shape the conditions, it was people that mattered.

People who live in city's like Wolverhampton, who take innovation and ideas and turn them into something productive.It was inspiration and education that provided the drive. It was people like those represented in the room that were the key to successful economies.

I marvelled at the way we had changed the face of an industrial city, the way that new industry like the service sector was growing like the way we had seen electronics and science start taking a foothold here, and the way that precision engineering was still to be found and prospering.

The Chamber presented me with a most marvellous cut glass and crystal vase appropriately inscribed, which we gratefully accepted.

150 years of real change all coinciding with my own 56th Birthday!