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Wages and house prices are rising, and not just in the South-east. The failure to raise interest rates by a quarter-point yesterday is all too likely to mean that rates will have to stay higher for longer than they otherwise would.Just because the CBI and trade unions agree on something does not make it so; both have memberships skewed towards manufacturing. And what is it that Mr Jones and Mr Edmonds agree on? A return to the good old days of tolerating a little inflation as a price worth paying for keeping people in work in the short term? “It matters whether we have a steel industry and whether we can make cars,” Mr Edmonds declared No. What matters is whether we have companies that make profits, whatever their business – interest rates cannot be set for specific sectors.It is simply no use, either, the manufacturing unions or bosses complaining that the pound is too high. Becoming competitive in the world economy is not a one-off change; it is a constant struggle. What was manufacturing industry doing when the pound was low from 1992 to 1996? Not investing enough, not preparing itself enough for the next challenge.Even if Gordon Brown announced his intention to join the euro as soon as possible, which might bring the pound down, that would not remove the pressure on British manufacturing to invest and innovate. On the contrary, it would lock Britain into the rest of the European economy without any prospect of the easy way out through devaluation, which is what both sides of industry seem to be calling for today.

The clamour for lower interest rates must be resisted and reversed.. Should the United Nations have an army? The 8,000-strong peace-keeping force in blue berets in Sierra Leone is not powerful enough to take on and defeat the rebel forces should they decide to resume full-scale civil war. Its role is to police last year’s peace agreement between the democratically elected government and the rebels. Seven peace-keepers have been killed, however, and now 50 have been taken prisoner, as they are dragged into increasingly direct military confrontation with the bandit army of Foday Sankoh. Should the United Nations have an army? The 8,000-strong peace-keeping force in blue berets in Sierra Leone is not powerful enough to take on and defeat the rebel forces should they decide to resume full-scale civil war.

Its role is to police last year’s peace agreement between the democratically elected government and the rebels. Seven peace-keepers have been killed, however, and now 50 have been taken prisoner, as they are dragged into increasingly direct military confrontation with the bandit army of Foday Sankoh.
The danger is that the UN will find itself in a Bosnian situation – at best observing; at worst caught up in a civil war.So, should the UN engage more forcefully in this desperately poor African country to protect its people from the rebels who are living off the diamonds that are Sierra Leone’s main natural resource? Of course it should, if it can, but the issue is hardly straightforward. The usual model would be for the UN to approve intervention by a concerned regional power. That is, indeed, how the rebels were ousted and the legitimate government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah restored two years ago – by Nigerian forces assisted by British mercenaries. Not only did that cause a little domestic difficulty for the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who said he did not know what his subordinates were up to, but it meant relying on the Nigerian military dictatorship, which has many previous convictions for human-rights abuses.But if the Nigerians cannot do it, who can? After the United States’s ill-fated attempt to intervene in Somalia in the early 1990s, direct involvement by Western forces under a UN mandate seems unwise.