While I worked in Liverpool I went to a particle physics conference in Manchester (or was it Salford). The conference was at time before the B factories had started and LEP facilty was producing interesting science, but was not finding any BSM physics. So the conference was a bit boring. What made it even worse was that the best plenary talk was by the science minster David Sainsbury. (He didn't give a science talk, but it was very polished)
This week I read the book: Progressive Capitalism: How to achieve economic growth, liberty and social justice by David Sainsbury. After the banking crisis of 2008 and the resulting massive and final failure of the neoliberal ideas, everyone (except the Tories of course) have been searching for a better way to build a sustainable and fair economy. Sainsbury notes that some aspects of the German system would not work, because we don't have strong trade associations.
All good pragmatic stuff.