The Midlands Action on Learning Centre: An initiative to develop a learning community to tackle local problems

Who's going to own our problems? The pace and complexity of problems we are having to face are increasing. They are not only bewildering but they seem to defy all our conventional wisdoms. As just one example, high unemployment and stubbornly high inflation just did not exist side by side a few years ago. We can add to this such apparently intractable problems as: • Serious structural unemployment resulting from a combination of new technology and developing countries who can now make our traditional products cheaper and better than us. • A long standing resistance to improving productivity. • A declining commitment to work both in quantity and quality. • A reluctance for anyone to own our problems let alone their solutions. • The Black Economy (ie moonlighting) is highly productive and is expanding.