I’m not sure, but I think that my grandad worked in the original Leyland Truck factory in the town of Leyland, Lancashire. [My dad will correct me soon if I’ve got that wrong.] Today, Tim Worstall links to a study of the long slow decline of the endlessly government-subsidised Rover/British Leyland/BMC vehicle manufacturing group. The report [PDF] was written by Matthias Holweg and Nick Oliver of the CMI Centre for Competitiveness and Innovation at The Judge Institute of Management.

The Judge is the home of the Cambridge University Master’s in Business Administration, which has declined from 22nd in the Financial Times MBA World rankings when it started in 2002, to 30th in 2003, to 34th in 2004, to 42nd in 2005.

In 1999, the UK government—specifically the Treasury—promised to fund the Cambridge-MIT Institute (the CMI) directly with £65.1 million of your money over five years. I hope all my British tax-paying readers enjoyed their share of the fruits of Gordon’s generosity (total: £68m).