Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Just thought I would bring to your attention the fact that there is a new ONS report which looks at a range of data relating to unemployment, income, housing, and social wellbeing.
For example, on Unemployment and jobs-
Every region has suffered losses in full-time jobs throughout the recession. however the West Midlands was hit hardest, losing over 100,000 full time jobs between April 2008 and April2010.
The lowest rises over the same period were seen in the South West and in London.
Source Yahoo News UK.
Prof Eman

The problem is not banking/financial people in the simple terms.
to slightly change your 'small town' if a farmer arrives whi knows agriculture but has no money to buy seeds or land a banker can purchase land for him and arrange a morgage and give him a loan to buy seeds, then as the farm prospers the banker is paid back with interest, the farmer does well and there s more food for all.
This is an example of financial services actualy being used to increase output and overall prosperity, it is what bankers used to do.

Unfortionatly as the number of bankers rose and the number of industries fell the oppertunities for simple investment like this were not enough to employ all the bankers.

The bankers "diversified" inventing new secondary financial products, each trying to be more inovative than the others to get the share of the marketplace, and in exactly the same way as for any industry some of the products were badly designed and poorly executed.

This problem is not unique to banking, we have had badly designed cars, bridges, and in fact just about everything. It seems to be an inherent problem with growth and competativeness.

There will always be in any field people working at innovative edge of the field, by definition those people will be "ahead" of anyone else in there field and hence well ahead of anyone else in any other field.

How do we judge if there ideas are "stable and sustinaable good things" or "dangerous and unstable bad things" when the people proposing them are more knowlageable about them than anyone else.

Least anyone think I am a banker trying to put forward excuses, I am an engineer, I like to think one of the "old school" ones, my father was an engineer and so was my grandfather!.

I have also founded and run a number of sucessfull companies so have some idea of "both sides" and have concluded that in most things it really comes down to people, there are good competant ones in every field, and idiots in every field, the hard part is somehow telling them apart soon enough to make a difference, especially if you are not a master in there field and can not judge there ideas on the merits.

Anonymous 2 needed this 'Off the Record'

Dear all
Just bringing to your attention a very interesting article, appearing to-day on BBC News.
BBC News Magazine, dated 20/07/2011.
Go Figure: What can 72 tell us about life?
Within it
"By the way, there's another useful animated graphic and map from the -ONS You Tube- this week. It shows how ljobs in the West Midlands were most clobbered by recession, tallying with the damage to manufacturing."

Makes interesting reading/watching.

Prof Eman

It's not surprising that this thread quickly homed in on the subject of education. The UK school system provides little in the way of education and a lot in the way of schooling (aka child care, socialization and indoctrination/conditioning). It's a relic of the 19th century industrial dream. The education business has become a significant proportion of the national economic machinery because its principle purpose is the creation of good consumers. The goal is simply that of carrot and stick and the childish notion of republican meritocracy reinforced by continuous petty and pointless competitions. In reality the education system produces broken and incomplete young adults with low self-esteem that don't know how to do anything practical or what they want to do with their lives (ie no notion of personal responsibility).

The equation is simple.

Less school + more apprenticeships + less debt + lower taxes + greater personal responsibility = more freedom

Lower taxes and less debt would make the UK more competitive.

But of course this will never happen. It's a nanny state.

Anonymous 2 needed this 'Off the Record'

Mr Fiat
On education.
There is an interesting article in BBC News Education & Family.
'Two Britains' qualifications gap emerges in study.
Huge variations in levels of education within Britain's adult population. Social Divide.
A study reveals concentrations of low educational achievement-including parts of Glasgow, Birmingham, Derby, and Bradford, where more than a quarter of the adult population is without a single qualification.
National Differences within Britain-
England has the best record, followed by Scotland, then Wales.

Makes interesting reading.

Prof Eman