Yes, but...
Last night EEF held a public debate on the future of manufacturing. Great turnout, great speakers and great debate.
Before the debate kicked off, we asked the audience a simple question: Can manufacturing save the UK economy?
As you can see, most took the easy option of 'Depends'.
We asked the question again after the debate and the Chair - Stephanie Flanders of the BBC - cheekily asked the audience to pick an answer that wasn't depends.
And what you see is a huge shift, with 75% of the audience saying, YES, manufacturing can save the economy. But for most, that yes was tempered with a concern that we're not doing enough to put manufacturing at the heart of a better balanced economy.
But the most telling story of the night wasn't the poll questions or the debate. It was that representatives of the media (John Willman, Stephanie Flanders) and politicians from across the spectrum (John Hutton and John Redwood) agreed with the manufacturer (Juergen Maier of Siemens) and the designer (Stephen Bayley) about the importanc of manufactuirng to our society and our economy and about the need to do more for manufacturing.
That's a level of agreement that simply didn't exist before the recession and the credit crisis.
Now we just need to turn that desire to grow manufacturing into something more tangible...