Some of the West Midlands' wealthiest homeowners are again at loggerheads with determined travellers who have negotiated a council dug trench to reclaim a field outside their mansions.

LONDON At the start of the Industrial Revolution, textile workers in the Midlands and the North of England, mainly weavers, staged a spontaneous revolt, smashing machinery and burning factories. Their complaint was that the newfangled machines were robbing them of their wages and jobs.

Second, depending on the institution s mandate, a state led investment program offers a way to rebalance the British economy away from private speculative activity to long term investment in sustainable growth, and away from the south east to the midlands and the north of England. In short, it offers a way to address the problem of private affluence and public squalor that John Kenneth Galbraith identified in the 1950s.