It is a great pleasure to join the Great Exhibition of the North and to be a small part of your proud tradition of innovation and openness. This gathering rightly echoes the Great Exhibition of 1851. The event at Crystal Palace took place in the middle of the 1 st Industrial Revolution, around the start of the first wave of globalisation. In the Newcastle of the 1850s, innovation meant the most advanced steam locomotive of the day, the Rocket, and the world’s first passenger railway, the Stockton to Darlington Railway. Today, on the cusp of the 4 th Industrial Revolution, the businesses of the Northern Powerhouse are ... (full story)