America must be an amazing place. At the weekend the seriously good news of the rescue of the trapped miners was announced. Bringing all nine of them to the surface and safety was a superb achievement.

The fact that three of them had to be kept in hospital overnight to help their recovery was no more than might have been expected.

What took me aback was the fact that when the first one arrived at the surface, his first words were: "God bless America".

Each of us can reflect on what we would have said in similar circumstances.

It is a bit like speculating on what we would do if we won the lottery and not much less likely to arise.

I buy tickets increasingly infrequently, so winning is highly unlikely. The chances of getting me down a mine are so close to zero they are not worth considering.

Having said that I did once go down a huge tin mine in Canada, and felt perfectly safe.

When the British mining industry was at its zenith, villages were clustered round the mines.

Most of the people in the village were employed by the mine owners and the techniques for rescuing trapped miners were not as advanced as now they are.

Disasters affected everyone in the village, to a greater or lesser extent, and miners sometimes paid with their lives.

It is a sign of the industrial decline of the UK that the huge industries which once employed so many are almost all gone. Both steel and coal are now shadows of their former selves, with imports taking up the slack.

The analogy with agriculture is difficult to ignore.

Employment in agriculture has fallen by about 30,000 people a year during the past couple of years.

There will be no one left in a few years at this rate. It is the equivalent of two very major factories each year, but, because the decline is made up of small numbers from countless employers, it is not noticed by the media.

Again the slack in production is taken up by imports.

UK-based industry struggles to compete with the imports because of the relative strength of the pound against our competitors and because of the extra costs of operating in this country.

Heavy industry has also historically failed to invest in the new plant and machinery that it needs to compete and, therefore, productivity is lower here than abroad.

Despite the best efforts of successive governments down the years, this pattern is continuing.

Economic growth is presently fuelled by consumer spending. Money is not being invested in capital goods for future use.

We are back to the short term view, the living for today and never mind the future, which afflicts most of UK government and industrial thinking.

It would not be so annoying if everyone involved did not think they were being so clever.

When the management of GEC decided that the firm was Marconi and about trendy telecoms and electronics, they discarded the older, duller heavy industry products like defence systems.

Being trendy, by definition, is a short term thing.

Sometimes the trend lasts for a longer time, but they all come to an end. The trick is to spot the ones with some life in them, and then not put all your resources into them.

Otherwise we all end up fire fighting, and solving problems after they arise, rather than preventing them from arising.

We end up rescuing trapped miners, rather than the better arrangement of not letting them get trapped in the first place.

Updated: 10:59 Tuesday, July 30, 2002