Cut out the moaning

WE NOW have a new happening. The pre-emptive strike, against a pre-emptive rise in interest rates. Unions and business may be at loggerheads over wildcat strikes and public sector reform, but they beat as one on borrowing costs.

The TUC urges the monetary policy committee to resist 'the bullying voices coming from the City' when it votes on rates today. Higher rates, it warns, risk pushing the pound up to uncompetitive levels.

Business is in the same camp. A well-timed report on smaller manufacturers from the CBI says that orders fell at the fastest rate for two years in September. Director-general Digby Jones agrees, arguing that smaller firms continue to feel the squeeze.

The British Chambers of Commerce says the 'clamour for early interest rate increases is clearly unjustified'. As for the housing market, consultant Hometrack argues that a rate rise of 0.25% or even 0.5% will make no difference. All this is fascinating stuff, but a trifle late in the day. By all accounts the MPC has heard most of the arguments and has seen the up-to-date data on day one of its session, and day two is spent finalising the minutes and taking the vote.

As one of those who has been advocating an interest rate rise, as a means of curbing an unsustainable credit boom, I obviously recognise the dangers to industry of higher borrowing costs.

The latest manufacturing output is far from awe inspiring, with the technology sector still in the doldrums. Indeed, weaker industrial data has led the Office of National Statistics to clawback a small amount of its 0.6% jump in gross domestic product, the wealth of the economy, in the second quarter. But it is only fair that the industrial lobby also recognises that there is a great deal of conflict in the data, with the forward-looking surveys, like those from the purchasing managers, telling a very different story.

It also should be recognised that, at 3.5%, base rates are at a 48-year low - the most favourable level experienced by most of the industrialists concerned - so starting to groan now at the prospect of a hike does look like a whinge.

Indeed, in some ways industry should be grateful. Should the Bank of England be successful in holding back the tide of personal credit demand only a little, it will leave greater lending capacity for manufacturing and may also encourage cheaper borrowing over the medium to long term - a flattening of the yield curve.

If there is still a problem in Britain it is that despite the advent of short to medium-term fixes in the home loan market and the rediscovery by industry of corporate bonds and other debt-related borrowing, too much of the economy is still hitched to short-term rates. This is the enemy of the stability that Gordon Brown says he wants to 'lock in'.

That is why the reports on housing supply and housing finance, to be unveiled with the Pre-Budget Report next month, could be so important. They could mark a watershed in the effort to develop a housing market more geared to longer-term borrowing costs rather than short-run fluctuations in base rates.

TV drama

EPISODE 25 of the mini- series that is ITV has some predictable plot lines. Face is saved at Carlton by allowing its senior independent director Sir Brian Pitman to become the interim chairman of the unified broadcaster with the former regulator Sir George Russell, of Granada, bringing up the rear.

An expedited recruitment is being put in place for a new chairman. But it is unlikely to be dispatched with the same efficiency as at rival BSkyB, where they don't worry so much about outside shareholders.

Even as these changes emerge, old abandoned plot lines are coming to the fore. The efficiently implemented coup against Michael Green was, according to some City sources, designed to thwart his own blueprint for the new ITV. Under this plan it was Allen heading for the exit, to be replaced by Greg Dyke, persuaded away from the bed of nails that has been the BBC in recent months.

Unfortunately, when Green needed his friends to head off the boarding party, led by Anthony Bolton of Fidelity, they were nowhere to be seen. A representative of house broker Cazenove was unexpectedly delayed and out of touch on a weekend's shooting.

And what are the plot lines for the next episode? Like Dirty Den on EastEnders (I know, it's BBC!), Green is playing possum at present.

But he has been hurt by the experiences of recent times and is developing a return strategy. It is thought to involve venture capital group Apax and the Israeli-American TV impresario Haim Saban.

This soap could run and run.