This could be renamed the intelligent person's thread! Although there is plenty of disagreement it seems to be occurring on a more constructive level than usual. That is my arrogant/humorous comment. Also off-topic could I suggest to Jeremy B to never use propriety printer cartridges. I have for over 8 years use the infinitely cheaper independent suppliers (in my case mostly Choice but recently Cartridge People). I haven’t checked for a while but I think they are about a third of the price,

Jeremy
You might even start arguing with yourself!
Motley Fool I know and value, although quite often I struggle to understand the professionals. Advfn I will investigate

I think this thread needs to get back to its origins - whether Britain needs to resume making things rather than relying on a service economy. The problem is understanding whether this would lead to a competitive economy or not.

Two treatises were published in the mid 1980's by Macmillan ISBN 0-02-925090-0 and ISBN 0-333-51804-7.
They were books by Michael Porter of Harvard University and were called "Competitive Advantage" and "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" respectively. The first reviews the Value Chain - the subject introduced by Evan Davies in his second programme - and how this creates competitive advantage for specific companies. The second deals with the determinants of National Competitive Advantage.

Porter looked at how companies could compete globally based on local and structural advantage created by innovation and National politics. He also recognised the importance of clustering (Evan Davies programme looked at the Cambridge cluster). By studying over a hundred different industries his researchers found that competitive advantage grows fundamentally out of improvement, innovation and change, It involves the entire value system, requires a global approach to strategy but above all it demands relentlessly sustained improvement.

Except for a few sectors such as pharmaceuticals, defence equipment and financial services, the UK economy does not exhibit these characteristics. The problem we face is that the economy cannot rely on such a limited competitive sectorial base. It is not even clear that financial services will remain globally competitive because the banking sector has over-exposed itself to uncompetitive nations such as Greece. Greece is very uncompetitive, so is Portugal and Eire - and so are many Euro based economies.

The reason the UK needs to look towards manufacturing again is that this provides a basis for relentless innovation in multiple spheres - provided the political will is there to enable it through creating a competitive economic infrastructure. This means educating the workforce; using local national resources more effectively and building clusters of activity which engender the type of behaviour that is globally compeitive. It does not mean importing cheap labour, absorbing the indigenous labour force in public services or stifling innovation with politically correct European laws.

Engineering is the application of scientific knowledge. It can be applied to molecules as well as missiles, living matter and nature. Financial services should serve this activity rather than displace it. That is why I believe we must return to engineering in all its guises as a national priority. We will otherwise eventually follow Greece into oblivion as another lost empire.

easy life

Welcome, where have you been since 8th June when this started? Just joking.
I started in the 1960s but I had a Dad who was a sheet metal worker and very practical so perhaps the 1950s,
I was stick welding when I was 10, had my sturmey archer hub gearbox on my bike in bits at the same age, and with a schoolmate was making valve radio receivers and transmitters a few years after.

Before MOT for cars there were all kinds of vehicles on the roads, my dad would tackle anything, brakes, clutch, back axle, gearbox, big ends, happy times with bits and pieces on the kitchen table. So I have always had a very practical approach engineering problems, a big asset years later on construction sites. There is no substitute for experience, no special committee or consultant or government enquiry can see a problem the way of practical experience, it's the difference between reading about a taste and actually knowing how it tastes.

My contribution to this thread has been to try to point out the way it's all died over some 50 years, many people think we can just switch it all on again but they are dreaming. I have worked in most of the middle east and the far east, Indonesia with Total Oil and in Malaysia with Cegelec, both French firms because I found I was a real engineer in France, and I totally agree with all the points in your posting.

My other contribution has been to look at the economics of a small community, my wild west town, and see how an army of bankers and paper shufflers would survive while 25% of the community made things. I have a theory that if we ditched all the parasites and racketeers we would live at twice the standard of living that we have now, with no debts, personal or national.
Example the insurance racket, the motorist is getting 24% of his premiums in repairs, the rest is going into the pockets of crooks, bent lawyers, and scammers of various kinds. I have another theory that the whole business of paper money without a back-up, just pieces of paper with no intrinsic value, is a big confidence trick, used to syphon off real wealth into the pockets of legalised gangsters and criminals.

I think that it is a pipe dream that we will ever be able to compete with China, Korea, India etc in making things. They have high standards of education for some if not all, no welfare state to support, little in the way of bureaucracy compared with our green taxes, human rights act, equality legislation, employment(unemployment?) legislation and the continuing increase in EU legislation.

While we can for the moment produce high quality goods which attract a premium price worldwide I cannot see that continuing forever. We are told we are the ideas factory and R&D will be our main activity but our education system is dumming down the majority of our school children and as a country we are moving steadily down the world’s education league. While we have some world class universities and graduates so do most of our competitors. The "third world" is catching up fast and will soon be overtaking us. Our good engineering graduates will be looking to go overseas where they are valued and may well live in a lower tax economy. India has a space programme we don't. Our failed attempt to get a landing on Mars was a technical triumph but rubbished by the official report that was written afterwards, probably scuppering any such attempt in the future.

Our Financial services sector will face the same threat in the future especially now the London Stock Exchange is a takeover target from a foreign owner.

I read that while we are paying taxes to fund the reduction of our 2% contribution to the worlds CO2 emissions we are using foreign aid payments to finance building mega coal powered power stations overseas to produce cheap energy our manufacturers will have to compete against.

To coin a phrase from Dads Army "we're doomed" and I think that applies to most Western countries with a high cost base as well.

Is the west like the old empires of history: Greek, Roman, etc, bound to fail eventually? I would be interested if any of the more financially astute amongst us can explain how America can continue to run such a massive deficit apparently funded by China. Are they more bust than Greece?

Unless that is we can do something positive about all the topics that have previously been raised and previously summarised.

An aside: this morning I thought about the over 40% total taxation level in the UK and the fact I have been working and paying taxes for 40 years so I have effectively spent 16 years of my working life with no income and little benefit and had any chance of retirement ruined by Gordon and the rapacious Financial Sector and that was before the bust.