### Reader’s Letter to The Financial Times, 2nd May 2025 ###
Dear Editor,
I was most sad to read Patricia Nilsson’s report on the 176-year-old train factory in Görlitz switching to the production of components for tanks (Financial Times, 23rd April 2025, link below). For me this is a sign-of-the-times in two very shocking ways …
First, we need to bear in mind that public transport has a central role to play in the battle against climate change and certainly provides far better “leverage” in this area than even electric cars (and trucks) do. In contrast to this, tanks (and other weapons) are, alongside the death and destruction that they cause, also enormous “climate killers”. So, for me, this is a massively negative “litmus test” telling us that we have decided to go in exactly the wrong direction.
Second, we have the fact that Alstom plans to move its production to a “low-wage country” which is another negative litmus test, telling us that governments no longer possess the power (or the will?) to retain critical infrastructure-industries “in country” and that corporations are free offshore whatever they like. The folly of this was starkly highlighted during the pandemic when critical supplies evaporated because production had been moved elsewhere.
So where are we heading? When I consider the madness of this, I truly despair.
Yours,
Alan Mitcham
Link to original article: https://www.ft.com/content/0f3ba2cc-110b-4ca6-b5de-77288e84541f
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