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  JAPAN SOCIETY/ JCCI LECTURE


13TH JULY 2006 JCCI, London
Lecture by DIGBY JONES LECTURE




Ladies and Gentlemen pray silence for Paul Diamond, Member of the Council of the Japan Society representing the Foreign Office and Infralink Witherton

(Applause)

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you very much for joining the Japan Society and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry joint lunch today and I'm particularly grateful to Mr. Abay, Mr. Takahatchi and all his colleagues from the JCC for their regular and stalwart support to these events. I have the privilege to introduce our speaker who of course needs no introduction whatever in an audience of Japanese British business but let me just very briefly remind our friends from Japan that Sir Digby took British industry into the new millennium on his appointment on the 1st January 2000 as Director General of the CBI to serve a five year non-renewable term of office which was then extended by popular acclaim at the CBI until just a couple of weeks ago. Sir David has been over that period of six and a half years not only the voice of British business taking the message of British business around the world to I believe as many as 70 countries but has been a critical part of the strategy of business as well. After service in the Royal Navy Sir Digby went into law practice making his name in corporate finance and client development and in 1998 became vice chairman for Corporate Finance at Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler which I think is better known as KPMG. Sir Digby is widely known also for his extraordinary range of activities. I tried to count the number of bodies he represents and got well past 50 and there was still quite a long list to come. He's an honorary Doctor of Law, holds Fellows at many universities across this country and of course has worked tirelessly for a range of charities, famously cycling from John O'Groats to Lands End for the Birmingham Hospice Appeal and running the Flora London Marathon for Cancer Research and UNICEF. Sir Digby was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen a knight's bachelor in 2005 and despite all those activities he makes time not only for his hobbies of theatre, a range of sports, military history and to join us today so please acclaim Sir Digby Jones

(Applause)

Chairman and ladies and gentlemen thank you very much indeed for giving me the opportunity to share some thoughts with you today especially as it is just a few days really since I left post as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. And it was important to me that I went at the top of my game. I didn't want to get to a point where power and complacency intellectually corrupted what I was doing and it hadn't happened but I didn't want it to happen and going out at the top of your game is very important and yet the silent voices are always there to tell you keep in post, you're loving it, you enjoy it and it was a very difficult thing to do but it is important because in public life I do believe actually that Enoch Powell, a former politician of many, many years ago, he always said all political careers end in failure and I can see what he means because it does get you t the end of the day. It's not just a political thing actually. It happens in all walks of life. I think it happens in sport and you could see Michael Schumacher, he actually knows that Alonso is now a better Formula One driver than he is but he just can't let go, he's got to stick it out and of course in Monte Carlo a month ago he parked up his Ferrari on the last bend and pretended that he'd broken down and Jackie Stewart said that night on television "Michael should retire you know because he's not even cheating as well as he used to".

And it was last November at the National Conference of the CBI and it was Tuesday morning and we had a very important guest to speak to us, the Prime Minister. And he and I were in the Green Room just before we went on the stage that morning. The security had gone, the special advisers had gone, we were completely on our own for about 30 seconds from going on stage and he said I hear you're going next year and I said yes I am and he said why, you love it. I said cos no one should outstay their welcome Prime Minister (laughter) which as I said it I thought what am I saying but it is a delight to be able to carry on sharing views and ideas and thoughts with friends. And in the time that I was Director General I came to consider Japan very much a friend. I'd never been before I did the job. I've now been many times and I've come to understand so much that we had in common. If you actually take all the exports and all the imports of Britain and you divide by 59 million so you get a per capita figure, we are the greatest trading nation on earth. We actually trade inward and outward per capita more than any other country. Japan is second. Holland is third. All maritime nations. By the way France is 7th (laughter), deeply protectionist and America is 11th cos they don't know where the rest of the world is, that's the problem and yet here we are two great maritime nations with such a lot in common when it comes to the fact that if we do not trade with the world, if we don't invest and allow investment around the world we will starve to death cos neither of our countries are flush with natural resource. And that's what makes us great maritime trading countries; it's because we had to and that is one thing that bonds us together and with our peoples it bonds us together in a way that is very subconscious and probably not even verbalised often but it is true.

I also made good friends during my time as Deputy General, through a sport that I thoroughly enjoy that Japan also thoroughly enjoys and that's rugby and as you can see I won the battle against anorexia years ago (laughter) and I used to play the game. The problem was when I played the game I was quite a big fella. I was 6 foot and I was about 16 stones and I was big to play rugby. Today I wouldn't even make hooker. I would be swatted away but I'm a Director of Leicester Tigers Rugby Club and Leicester Tigers as you know were the advisers to the Japanese World Cup bid and my I put firmly definitely on the record, I think the way that New Zealand won the bid for the next World Cup was a disgrace. I believe that Japan not only deserved it but Japan should have had it. I would like to see how many countries get a tour from the All Blacks in the next three or four years simply because they need to say thank you and what I sincerely hope and fingers crossed I think this might happen. I would like to see that Japan does not to bid for the World Cup after the one in New Zealand but actually will get appointed so we'll go France next year, we'll then go New Zealand in five year's time from now and then in nine years from now it will be Japan as of right without the need to bid and I can tell you now Leicester Tigers will be behind them, I, with all that I can say and do will be behind that because it is very, very important that we take all sorts of sport all around the world and if we constantly keep the prerogative in the, for this purpose, developed nations then we will never succeed in making sport such a fabulous agent for social inclusion, for getting the young to understand and also at the end of the day for better international relations.

Sport can be such a wonderful way of pulling that off but it's pointless if the Englands and the Frances in rugby and the South Africas and the Australias and the New Zealands think it's always going to be them and we really do badly want it to go to Japan. That is the same reason by the way as to why I was very keen that the World Cup football goes to South Africa, for the same reason, exactly the same reason. We have to use sport in that way and in me and in the rugby club I represent you have a very, very dear friend.

Also in the six and a half years I also found another common bond of friendship which I share with Japan's Prime Minister, Mr. Koizumi and that is that he and I both have the same alma mater. We both went to University College, London and one of us succeeded (laughter) and I was absolutely thrilled just two years ago that my own university gave me a fellowship which I didn't earn, I didn't deserve but they wanted to honour me and I the same ceremony they awarded one to the Japanese Prime Minister at the same time and hopefully he was given it, physically given it just a couple of weeks ago in the British Embassy in Tokyo where they launched a very important film and I do know that Prime Minister Koizumi was invited to go there to get his fellowship and that is that there were of course in about 1870, you're going to have to forgive a little bit of my ignorance here. I've sought help from experts and they've badly let me down but at the end of the day thee were five very famous, young Japanese students who actually stared the Japanese authorities in the eye and disregarded their rules on pain of capital punishment and actually came to London in the middle to late 19th century and studied at University College London and there is a collective name for this little group and if anybody can think of that I'd be really grateful cos I've forgotten it. I have to say so have Mr. Diamond and Mr. David Rice but there we go and they came to UCL and they took back to Japan the ideas of a university that wasn't the prerogative of religion or gender because at the time you had to be a member of the Church of England and you had to be male or you could not go to university and University College London changed all that and I'm very proud to belong to their fellows. Well Prime Minister Koizumi is the same and he came from the same but these five guys went back to Japan in the late 19th Century and did precisely the same thing and set up a higher education on the same basis. One of the five became Prime Minister, another of the five became Foreign Secretary, another one became the Chancellor of the University, they did quite well and it's the common bond that I have with the country.

I mentioned earlier on that we have this bond of needing to trade, needing internationally to engage as both countries or we will starve to death because neither of us have much else going for us. That by definition means that as the world changes, as we face globalisation, we have to move our economies to the value added, innovative quality branded end of the game. The days when a developed country can rely on things which sell only on price either making them or providing services, the day that we can actually demand top dollar for something which you can get down the road more cheaply because it is just the same are over my friends and are over for ever. China wants your lunch and India wants your dinner and Brazil will have your breakfast and we have to move our economies into value added and innovation.

Now the only way therefore two trading nations are going to make anything out of that is if we can sell that stuff to the people who can afford to buy it and there is a limit to how much you can sell to your own and therefore it is in our interests that the peoples of China and India and Brazil and South Africa, of Vietnam, of Nigeria get richer quickly cos the more quickly they get wealthy then the more quickly we can sell them lots of stuff we do. But we haven't a prayer of getting them to give us access into their markets if we do not stop this disgusting hypocrisy, this shameful protectionism in which America and the European Union and Japan indulge where we say the stuff that you dig out of the ground or the stuff that you grow on the ground, I'm sorry but you can't sell it into my markets and secondly, I want to sell mine that I do into your markets. Kamal Nath, the trade minister of India, Bo Xilai, the trade minister of China, both of them have said to my face, I've only got one card to play. If I'm going to let your guys in with value added, quality, innovation, brand, that's the only card I've got to play is to stop you until you, your political leaders are brave enough to look their farmers in the eye and say the game's up. And I do not blame Kamal Nath or Bo Xilai for playing a very hard game and I heard George W. Bush just this morning on that news conference with Angela Merkel who he fondly called Angela and he was there and he was actually saying oh no, no, no, we're not going to give up any of this agricultural stuff unless we get market access for non-agricultural products. He's wrong. He's just disgracefully wrong because we the rich have to give it up first and we have to set an example. Do you know what the rice tariff is in Japan? Japan, this amazing example of how just in 60 years you can become the second most powerful economy on earth and the global benchmark for innovation and it protects 3% of its GDP called rice farming with a tariff of 470%. It's a disgrace and in case you think this is an arrogant Englishman standing here and telling you off, the European Union is even more disgraceful. £840 million, 1200 million, 1.2 billion Euros is spent every year by the European Union, my taxes on subsidising the growth of tobacco in the European Union. Tobacco. This is the same European Union that passed a directive banning tobacco advertising. What sort of hypocrisy is that? And the stuff they grow on the banks of the Rhine in Germany and on the Alps Maritime in France they burn on the roadside because it's of insufficient quality with which to make a cigarette.

Agriculture in the European Union, 450 million people living in peace, fabulous achievement, agriculture is about 3% of GDP and it takes 47% of the budget and then you go over to Monterey just two and half years ago, George W. Bush stood up and said I care for the world's poor. I care for the world's poor so much I'm going to double America's aid project. Don't I feel good? He goes back, gets the world headlines saying America cares for the world's poor. The next day back at the White House he signed into law that year's American farm aid budget of $87 billion so that you can walk into a market square anywhere in Africa and someone who's just grown the maize on their own patch of land and are trying to sell it to their own people cannot compete on price with a sack saying US grain or a sack saying produit de France. That my friends is protectionism. That is a disgrace and we the rich have got to stop it. And if the Doha Development Ground fails and I have to say I think it probably will, I think you'll probably get a result but it will be a result which they'll all say is something but frankly it won't be worth a candle, if that happens, the average guy on the street in Japan or Britain, Paris, Berlin, Atlanta, I can tell you they'll get by. The people actually in India and China won't really suffer whereas the kid in Bangladesh will starve to death. There's a mum with AIDS in Africa who won't see next year. That's how serious this is because you can give as much aid as you like but all you'll be doing, if that's what you rely on, is giving aid next year and the year after but if you really want to give a kid clean water, better health care, better education and a road, let business do it.

Let business pay for it because we want a well educated work force which is healthy and can get to work. We will provide it but we need governments, we need democratically elected parliamentarians in all our countries to be courageous and brave and look selfish vested interests in the face and see it down and then create an environment in which business can do the business. That is what Doha is about and a shame on Jacques Chirac, a shame on George W. Bush that will not take on their farmers to allow Kamal Nath, Bo Xilai and the Africans and the Latin Americans and the other Asians to say to their peoples look we've got a fabulous deal on agriculture. Now let's drop those tariff barriers for the stuff that Japan do well, the stuff that Britons do well, the stuff that the Americans and the French do well. It's a win/win but if we carry on as we are those people who can't stand up in places like this and shout, those people who tonight do not have the chance of the security and the hope that we all have will fail. I just wish that NGOs opaquely funded, unaccountable, unelected, politically motivated, I just wish they told the truth for once because they will tell you that if you have free trade and the reduction of tariff barriers, the rich countries get richer. That is the truth. What they don't tell you is the poor countries get richer too. As John F. Kennedy said when the tide comes in you know all the boats go up.

What we have to do is make sure that the gap doesn't widen. We just have to make sure that the poor countries get richer more quickly than we get richer but we haven't a prayer of even starting that unless you get the poor countries getting richer. And then you look at the example we set to each other. There you have the most powerful economy the world has ever seen, the most powerful military force the world has ever seen and it sits there and says I'm so scared that I won't let you buy three of my ports. At a time when American destroyers were being (inaudible) in Dubai harbour. The French have just declared yoghurt as a matter of national security. What sort of protectionism is that? And I am proud that I am a subject of a nation actually that does not just talk about free trade but walks the walk. All of you will open your newspapers in Britain every day at the moment and read about how other companies from other countries are buying up our companies. You won't hear any complaints from me. I do wish by the way that if Spanish companies wish to indulge in that which is fine, I wish the Spanish government would allow us to do the same to them. I thought we belonged to a single market in Europe and so why is it I can't go and buy a gas or electricity company in France, a bank in Germany or an infrastructure company in Spain? So much for a single market. But the one thing that we can say in Britain is well you can come and do it here pal. We don't give a damn about the colour of your skin; we couldn't care about the dodgy worship, we don't care if we can't pronounce your name, come here, bring your family, speak English, bring a skill, get a National Insurance number, pay some tax, help make this great country even greater. And we could do immigration so much better than we do but we do it better than most and that is true of globalisation because it is about the movements of products and services, it is the movement of capital and it's the movement of labour and those three things together make it up and the Americans are having a real problem. They thought globalisation meant Americanisation. It does not. The French are having a problem that the world doesn't want to speak French. They're having a problem with it and yet Japan and Britain do get it. We understand global engagement. Always have done because there's no other option for us as two island nations.

I did an event just three or four weeks ago, John Humphrys chaired it and Stelios Haji-Ioannou the man who owns and runs Easyjet was on the platform with me and he said a marvellous thing. He said most people call it the immigrant story and they say oh they arrived with Britain with nothing and they're now millionaires. He said that's not my story really. He said I'm the son of a Greek shipping billionaire but he said I had an idea. A low cost airline so I looked around the world and I thought where could I go where no one will give a damn about I've got olive skin and I've got a funny name and I could set up my business and there's only 2. It's America and Britain. And then I looked and thought and which country would actually say would you like to come in here and kick the living daylights out of my national air carrier? There you are, there's British Airways, go and compete against it and what's more we'll help you.

Now I have to tell you my friends, Japan wouldn't let you do that. Very protectionist on their airline. America certainly wouldn't let you do that, probably have you in a Texas prison cell as soon as look at you. France wouldn't. I don't even think Germany would to be fair. Britain just said come in and do it. Be my guest. And today Easyjet employs 17,000 people in Britain. Last year they paid £14 million in corporation tax which built new schools and hospitals. And what other thing happened? British Airways got better. That's what you do when you've got competition. You have to raise your game or you die. And so we in the protectionism/globalisation debate do come to the issues with clean hands. We get it, we understand it, we accept the unpopularity that it brings in domestic audiences. We have politicians of both colours always who actually do not pander to the silent protectioner's voice and I just wish that those people who occupy the White House and (inaudible) and other places followed the same because we are not going to make a safe and better world unless we do.

Let me leave you with this. Kids who have their health, have an education and have a job, kids who feel a bit better equipped to deal with the very insecure and unfair and frightening world, kids who are equipped like that probably just won't pick up a Kalashnikov quite as quickly to solve their problems. They also probably won't do white powder quite so readily and if they don't do that then they won't need to fuel their habit by mugging you and nicking my car. It is in everybody's interests that we defeat the voices of protectionism and it's in everybody's interest. Our own selfish reasons but more importantly for reasons of those who don't have a voice and can never answer back, in countries that you and I have never been to and have probably never heard of and if Japan, the second greatest economy on earth and if Britain, the leading free trade nation in the world, if we too just set about trying to make that difference, my what a difference it would be. Thank you very much

(Applause)

Ladies and gentlemen may I thank Sir Digby for a quite extraordinarily focused, clear and trenchant message and one highly relevant to the interests of the Japan Society and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador was not able to stay for the lunch although he was here earlier. He had to go off to give a speech to another event in town, the subject of which was transnational terror. Sir Digby, I think you have introduced us in your remarks today the subject of transnational error and thank you for that. Sir Digby has very kindly agreed to take a few questions so we have a roving microphone, could I ask anyone with a question please to identify him or herself by name and organisation. Thank you.

Hello my name is Jane Ryan at (inaudible). I just wondered if you could give us your view on the expedition process today of the individuals in the Nat West Three?

How long have you got? I think this is one of the saddest days for the subjects of Her Majesty in Britain there has ever been because this is not about business at all. This isn't about middle class averagely well off people who may or may not have committed a white collar crime. This is about the word called freedom and it's about people who should be innocent until they're proven guilty and treated as such and it's about the sovereign nature of justice. If these people committed a crime and by the way I think there's a fair chance they might have done. I don't know but I really would like to have a justice system that gives them a fair trial so we can all find out. If they have, they were three British citizens, they committed it in Britain and the victim was a British bank and the British bank have actually said we don't think that this was committed.

In 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom entered into an expedition treaty where both sides said tell you what we'll do reciprocally, we will reduce the burden of evidence you have to give to a presiding judicial officer usually a magistrate, maybe a judge, on which you can insist on extradition and it goes from what is called prima facie evidence which is actually that which you need to make a charge, charge somebody to that which is informational evidence which is that which you need to make an arrest. Now a good example of the difference, yesterday Lord Levy was arrested. He himself said, his lawyers said and indeed I think most commentators there, I think I think the chances of that progressing to a charge are minimal, probably 1% so there's a big difference between the evidence you need to say I'd like to arrest this person so that I have certain rights where I can ask him questions and what he has to say in reply to I'm going to charge this person which actually means I'm going to basically work to put him on trial. So they reduced the level to that of an arrestable offence. The reason being so it makes it more easy to get terrorists extradited and drug dealers. Excellent idea. Very good idea. And in the debate in the Houses of Parliament at the time the Prime Minister said and you can look it up in Hansard no one's human rights will be infringed, this is about terrorism. And Caroline Flint who at the time was Home Office Minister said no financial crime will be covered by this, this is about terrorism and drugs. So we put it into our national law and it means now that as people have said I don't want to be extradited under this, the judges, both the Court of Appeal and House of Lords and in the European Court have all said I have no choice here because my job is to interpret the act against a set of facts and if you interpret the act against a set of facts you've got to go so any politician who says well if it's been through the courts it's all right is rubbish cos all they can do is say I'm applying the statute from parliament for that set of facts.

The Americans went back to Congress and said now you put it into your law and the Congress said get stuffed. And they said, the Senate it is actually who said we're not doing this nor will they ever do it and the reason is cos they believe especially in Chicago and Boston but other places as well that we would use it to extradite Irish Republican sympathisers. I mean haven't they heard of the Good Friday Agreement? But in any event they're not going to do it so we have a reciprocal treaty that is America have said no but we're carrying on and that means that what America's been able to do is go to these bankers and say I actually want to provide evidence just of an arrest and I'm going to say that although it all happened in Britain you used an American company to transmit your communications. Wire fraud. In other words I have no other jurisdiction cos it all happened in Britain but there was an American company that actually you used. I don't know what it was, it will be Cisco or Microsoft or somebody so therefore this gives me legitimacy to do this and so I'm having you. Britain could not do that to an American citizen today but for some reason this government says that fine. Move on because if all that America did was bring it into their law that would not actually have stopped this happening so anybody who says oh well that would have stopped it, no it wouldn't except of course it would have created fairness and it would have made sure America understood that they are going to suffer, is that the right word, be subject to the same as they inflict on other people. Now let us say they both have done it the difference then is that this is an alleged crime that puts the perpetrator as no threat to society. They're not a suspected terrorist or drug dealer, they are bankers and rightly therefore if they were charged in Houston as American citizens they would be released on bail and they would live with their families, they'd have time to work with their defence lawyers, they would just be normal parts of society. They would then be charged. They would then, in the time up to their trial, live at home and during their trial, just like Kenny Lay and Jeffrey Skilling did in the Enron trial, they could walk into Court every day from home and that is precisely what would happen if these bankers were tried in Britain today.

But America believes that if you're not an American citizen then you are a flight risk. How on earth they can think that these three people are a flight risk when for the last six months they've been sitting in England with their passports and they could have gone to anywhere in the world and said you can't get me from here but for some reason they think they're a flight risk. And so because they are what they call aliens, this is what Americans call people who send their young men to die alongside them in Iraq by the way, aliens and because they're aliens they will be put in prison. They will have bail offered to them, bail being you can stay in Houston which is really helpful when your family and your defence team are sitting in London but you can sit in Houston but the bail provision will be your entire worth. In America you have to have a lawyer and you get no costs, no legal aid, no nothing and even if you're found not guilty the State do not have to reimburse any form of costs whatsoever so if they sell everything they've got to post the bail to live in Houston, they can't afford a lawyer. And if they sell everything they've got to pay for their lawyer, they stay in jail. So this government in the United Kingdom, I don't blame the Americans for this by the way. If you've got your opposite number giving in like this, make the most of it pal.

I blame the UK government fairly and squarely. So they watched them fly off this morning, they will be taken to a state penitentiary, they will be offered bail on the basis we've just said and they can't do it, they will then because they are, if they are found guilty going down for more than ten years, the rule is you go into a federal penitentiary so without so much as a charge let alone a trial, three people who are British subjects who committed, if at all, their crime in Britain against a British bank will spend the next 18 months in a federal penitentiary in America while their accusers amass the evidence against them and they have been told you're looking at 35 years. If you would like to actually rat on everybody else and everything you know about anything in America, we could make that five years and this could all go away in the morning and if not you go back to your cell for a few more months and think about it. That is not justice. That's not what my father's generation walked to the beach to stop and as far as I'm concerned it is one of the worst days this country has ever had. And when people say this is about business and bankers and fat cats, it's got nothing to do with that at all. It could be you. It could be me. If I go on like this it will be me (laughter). And it really deeply worries me because it could be stopped in the morning. The practical way of stopping this is for Blair to put down and say I am going to suspend this treaty until the Americans sign it. That's all he's got to do and if he'd done it yesterday they would still be in Britain as free men. It wouldn't have stopped it by the way because if the Americans signed it they would still have been extradited but then you move onto stage 2 which is do you send people to a vengeful, hungry Houston where all of Houston lost money on Enron so they are after vengeance big time. They've just lost the chance to put Kenny Lay away for 25 years and make him bankrupt cos death has cheated the hangman so to speak and so are they going to get a fair trial? And should they be in prison for 2 years in a federal penitentiary banged up with rapists and drug dealers when these people are no threat to society? Now that is stage 2 of this complaint but the way to stop it is just say America til you sign it we're not playing and America will never sign this. Whatever happens. And by the way if they sign it and the Senate give in the first person they try to extradite will go straight to the Constitution where it says no one will be extradited from America without due cause. The (inaudible) will say well there's no due cause and that it will wrap it up for ten years. So it is just deeply against every value that this fabulous free nation holds dear and, as you can probably tell, I feel very, very strongly about this and by the way I think they probably did do something wrong. I don't know. I'm certainly not campaigning for them because they're innocent. I haven't got a clue and I don't believe that because it's white collar crime they should be let off or treated lightly. Stealing from white collar crime victims is just as serious as anything else and should be treated accordingly. This is not a plea for their innocence. This is a plea for fairness and justice and I'm worried that the most powerful nation on earth is getting quite a few of their values seriously wrong. Case proved.

(Applause)

Thank you very much. A good question. Any other questions. Ladies and gentlemen we have time for one or two questions more

(Inaudible) I'm Treasurer of the Japan Society. Just to take up one of the main things in your talk about agriculture and protection. I don't think any of us really want to live in a country either in Japan or in the UK where agriculture is reduced to zero because we all enjoy the environment that agriculture presents to the country. The logic of opening up our markets without care to overseas providers, the logic is (inaudible) for agriculture whatsoever. Now I'd just like to take up just quickly a statistic you used which is very much a headline rate which you said agriculture is 3% of the European economy yet it takes 47% of the budget but actually it's 47% of the Commission's budget and the Commission's budget is a tiny percentage of the overall budget of all our 20 countries or whatever. So subsidy isn't as emotive as you say. I'm all in favour of doing what we can to help developing countries to trade. Absolutely right. But I think it has to be treated with care because either in Japan or in the UK I think do we want to see our agricultural reduced to nothing which actually in the UK not in Japan is happening to many factions. Thank you very much

I'd agree totally with the relevance and the juxtaposition of figures that I quoted and you quoted back at me. You're absolutely right. As far as the logical conclusion of where would agriculture be if we opened the gates, there are two answers aren't there? I mean one is unless farmers move to value added, unless farmers stop depending on subsidy, I mean a very good example of depending on subsidy is the current state of the French wine industry. For years the Brits and the Northern Europeans have been buying Australian and New Zealand and Chilean and American

(Tape ends)




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