Dividends end at Dover and Osaka for UK and G20?

A rigorous Sunday Times article "Go East income seeker" details the potential for UK growth alongside the stock markets of Australia, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Indeed Chancellor Phillip Hammond inking a deal with the Shanghai and London Bourses for such growth ahead of this week's G20 meet in Osaka.

And the Thai-Cambodia new railway not just creating the strategic linkage of Bangkok and Phnom Penh and no doubt HCMC but already delivering value for UK/European and Asian investors in the £500M redeveloment of Phnom Penh railway station with new retail concourses etc. The St Pancras of South East Asia?

With the Sunday Times detailing the Asian funds of Henderson and Schroders for continued growth, brands such as South Korea's (and North soon?) Samsung, Taiwan's Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Aussie Vintner Treasury Wine estates likely to deliver on that growth.

While Aussie wine brand 19 Crimes and UK's Brewdog beer new crowdfunding float likely to give Treasury Wine a run for its money.
The Sunday Times Business profile of Philip Aiken Chair of Balfour Beatty alongside The Mighty Quinn, ahead of the LSE100 promotion this week of Aveva industrial software with its merger with France's Schneider Electrics. And Aiken as a board member of the UK-Australian Chamber of Commerce alongside Boris Johnson's mentor Lynton Crosby suggests richer depths of growth beyond warm beer is untapped between UK and Australia and Asia.

Although with the G20 Summit in Osaka lost in translation and the noise of the Brexit mess and Tory PM leadership run off between Boris and Big Rice Jezza H suggests UK failing to maximise such growth.

Brexit dampening Japanese expansion in UK: Nissan Sunderland Qashqai and Honda Swindon marking a Japanese retrenchment from the Thatcher years of attracting Asian FDI.

With my Sincerity Advertiisng hat on, perhaps Big Rice needs to refloat his Hotcourses Japanese lessons quickly after Osaka so the Brexit blip is not lost in translation along with hundreds of skilled jobs in the previously moribund UK car industry.
Perhaps Mrs H is indeed a secret weapon to deploy beyond the fripperies of Huawei and beyond the Who Lost China Debate: Germany not hampered or hamstrung by the EU in turbocharging its exports to China.

Both the Iran conflict being stirred up and Huawei perfidious China debates perhaps more in line with USA trade dominance in Big Oil and Big Tech - and not necessarily in UK interests.

Much as The 3T's of Tibet and Tiananmen Square and Taiwan need not restrict both China-UK political and trade relations. As with the Extra Special Relationship highlighted by POTUS Trump for The Treble Club of tripling UK-USA trade there is no reason why UK - and USA - shouldn't have similar plans in place with China and the rest of Asia.

And wise heads such as President Xi no doubt pondering a future when mainland China is more like Taiwan or Hong Kong. Perhaps the David Cameron China Fund a way to maintain strong Chinese trade growth without unrest. Not every Tibetan or Uighur can be jailed or Hong Kong protests halted.

UK was hardly a harbinger of democracy in Hong Kong under colonial rule nor in stoking the forest fires of the Opium Wars that continue to blaze to this day out of control in the Shan and Chinese border heroin regions of Myanmar.

Both the largest meth seizure in Australian history and the largest $1BN cocaine seizure in USA history in Philadelphia in the last month are no surprise with UK and USA disengagement from Asia.

And UK's rather soggy growth not just in China but Taiwan and the Koreas rather dismal given the Pacific strengths of the Commonwealth. And the blood and treasure invested, if not the Kokoda Trail, then from Kohima to Kwai to Korea by UK in previous years.

While Toshiba and Hitachi rightly disinvesting from the UK nuclear indsuty with the faltering Sizewell project - and Toshiba previously from the USA nuclear industry - suggests those companies in need of better paths within UK and USA.


### Big Rice from China and Osaka ###


Osaka the ideal place to begin that Strategic Dialogue - especially against the latest POTUS Trump personal letter intervention with Kim's North Korea, a contrast to Hormuz sabrerattling and spy planes. POTUS Trump's billet-doux no doubt urging nuclear disarmament with a loosening of trade sanctions and FDI and trade growth.

In my politics work I urge Meiji Kent in terms of regearing Kent's stagnant and old-fashioned and elderly economy: Locate in Kent the regeneration organisation of The County Barn local government - in contrast to Japanese Local Government - seems a dusty if not closed shop.

An estate agent on the rates highlighting the empty warehouses of the Garden of England's economy does nothing for Kent growth or FDI inward investment.

Perhaps USA Ambassador Woody's Museum of Agriculture is in olde worlde Kentshire rather than Europe. And next door to the UK Museum of Technology with Sinclair C5's and BBC Acorn computers dusty exhibits in the failure of Big Tech compared to Tim Apples or Bill Microsoft.

While the Hay Festival citing Japanese innovations in a Future Ministry for citizens in 2060 surely the type of project that Big Rice could deliver on as PM rather than Brexit or budget bloat and UK militarism for more than 2% the NATO target. That a rather silly pledge given UK is spending 2.3% already, no NATO criteria except more tax, and EU allies spending around 1.5% with few worries of a Russian invasion beyond Donetsk and Venezuelan posturing as Syria becomes Putin' quagmire.

Big Rice might well ponder on Govey's pledges on the repeal of the now 20% regressive VAT tax to sit alongside his Eireish 12% corporation tax economic pledge. Both useful but far less so to economic markets than a clear rejection of Brexit as already begun by Tom Watson deputy Labour leader.

Govey's excellent initiative on computer programming in schools might well be matched only by DNA Studies in schools and universities. Just 100k Chinese studients in UK and only 8k Thai suggests those Big Rice foreign language Hotcourses are growing cold in in UK's 130 universities and the international student market - certainly in comparison to Jane Duke Oz Minister efforts in ASEAN.

While student tuition fees abolition and investment in school 3D printers and Kindles and AR/VR far more socially useful than tanks either rusting in warehouses on the rates (200 of UK's 400 tanks now rightly wareoused/junked for spare parts) or actively being used.

The 769 old Warrior armoured cars/troop carriers surely right for the bin with £400M spent over since 2011 to upgrade half of them, and nothing delivered by Lockheed Martin. The Cold War days of tank battles across the German and Russian prairies long gone for such kit.

And such tax fund use and waste in stark contrast to the aerospace giants also detailed in the Sunday Times of Airbus, Boeing, Rolls Royce and GE (no doubt Lockheed too) new pledge on zero carbn emissions and electric planes and kit as Airbus Vahana flying taxi and Rolls Royce and Airbus 100 seat plane EFanX.

The Serious Fraud office beginning fraud prosecutions at Patisserie Valerie in the Finance Dept suggests as with the Glick QC and One Essex Court frauds or the Lord Grabiner and Philip Green BHS scandal an idleness in the CPS in maintaining UK's reputation for fair trade and excellence in business.

A damage done by the High Courtski antics even beyond Judge Mann of dodgy UK lawyers and Russian oligarchs. Kent's bumbling County Barn frittering away another £280M tax pensions in the Woodford Fund scandal, after their £500M tax waste in Icelandic banks.

Perhaps 1MDB investments are next for Kent's pensioners? Perhaps no more ludicrous than tobacco investments alongside the Kent Public Health remit to stop smoking, or failing to remove asbestos in schools beyond legal payoffs to dead teachers.


### New Space Race launches ###


And separately Airbus of Bristol and Toulouse, and Boeing of Sheffield and California schooling NATO on the benefits of supply chain integration in tooling each other's spare parts to reduce cost and waste, and improve supply lead times and factory capacity.

No doubt effective too for The New Space Race kicked off by POTUS Trump to Mars and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter and Boeing etc rockets.

Perhaps Osaka and the G20 will begin the delivery of that space mission by the top 20 economies alongside simpler projects such as ocean plastic cleanup and SuperSewers.

Toshiba rice cookers for example might well outpace UK nuclear reactors and sit alongside a UK-Japan Space Junk cleanup.

Hitachi no doubt revving its engine for UK's HS2 and other rail projects such as Kwai Rail. Big Rice urging on HS2 in his PM bid and reflecting on the prioritisation of HS3 and Northern Powerhouse projects.

While Panasonic, with or without Dutch medical giant Philips and Mitsubishi, no doubt pondering on the potential for any vacant Honda Swindon factory and say a DNA Bathroom Mirror as part of the Social Care project that both Big Rice and Rory Stewart PM hustings cited as unfinished UK NHS revolutions.

Go East a viable investment strategy and perhaps more Japanese companies would be wise to reflect on Going West again after Osaka too.

@timg33