WHEN my mother retired from 40 years as a teacher, the LEA sent her a cheque to buy a retirement present. She chose to spend what was a few hundred pounds on a 60-piece Wedgwood china set.

Many a happy retirement summer's day was spent in the garden sipping tea from fine bone china.

She also had some Waterford crystal whisky tumblers, so many a happy winter's night was spent sipping Bells from cut glass.

I wouldn't buy the stuff myself for one good reason, it breaks very easily. My advice is buy cheap china and glassware so you don't have to wave goodbye to £50 every time something smashes. It may be an inelegant strategy, but it brings peace of mind.

Both Wedgwood and Waterford are excellent brands, but the company that now owns them has struggled to stay up with the pace of globalisation.

Josiah Wedgwood was one of the earliest entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution. He was an innovator who took advantage of new methods of production, not to mention cost accounting, to make his fortune.

However it appears Waterford Wedgwood, which was listed on the Dublin stock market, was caught up in Ireland's grant culture, a fact that has led to it losing its competitive position in its international market place.

The Potteries has been losing jobs to the Far East for many years, as china manufacturers relocate to . . . erm, well . . . China, to take advantage of massively cheaper production costs. The idea that Irish government grants could protect Waterford's glass factory from the same global forces has proved ill-judged.

Waterford Wedgwood kept glass manufacture at its south-east Ireland home to take advantage of grants, but, in doing so, failed to make enough money to pay its debts.

The question now is how many other Irish government backed firms will go the way of Waterford Wedgwood?

Both brands will survive, but don't expect glass or china making to continue in either Ireland or Stoke for very much longer.

I COULDN'T help feeling a bit sorry for The Mersey Partnership this week as it staged a briefing for journalists on the subject of inward investment.

Last year, the sub-region's six local authorities gave TMP an extra £1m over three years to fund an inward investment sales push. New staff were hired and related marketing budgets primed with the extra dosh. Eight months on, you might reasonably wonder what return the region has seen for the extra investment. From the briefing, it would appear the answer is very little. TMP could only point to Dutch airline KLM starting flights to Amsterdam as an example of an inward investment deal clinched for the region in recent months.

Yet, despite the extra funding, it would be very harsh to judge anybody on results achieved in the past eight months. It has been one of the toughest periods to generate investment of any kind.

Nor does it help that, despite the extra funding. the sub-region's team of inward investment sales staff still has only about one-third of the manning levels enjoyed in Manchester and Birmingham.

Perhaps when international economies and business investment begin to pick up again, we can beef up the sales team even further to take advantage of the upturn, whenever it comes.