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Money v Making Stuff-Should Britain bid farewell to the golden egg of banking.
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 12 July 2011 14:22:55(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

This government has cut the budget of UK Trade and Investment by nearly twenty percent over four years yet expects it to help SMEs export.

This government has cut the central funding for the City of London Police so that it has gone begging to the banks and insurance companies. As a result police officers are paid by the banks to investigate suspected credit card fraud and by the insurance companies to investigate suspected insurance scams. So if you have a dispute with a bank or an insurance company whose side will the police be on? Incidentally are these police officers still public sector workers or do we have a private police force? Who will investigate suspected fraud by banks and insurance companies?

Public sector bad / private sector good? You must be joking.

Local councils used to run care homes in the interests of local residents. Have you heard about Southern Cross being looted by private equity and the residents who have paid for their greedthrough lower standards of care?

Public sector bad / private sector good? You must be joking.

"To minimise dangers of a setback, the Govt must implement more growth-enhancing policies that will enable private sector firms to increase productivity and drive the recovery forward."

Does increased productivity ever mean anything but "downsizing", outsourcing, longer hours - but worse pay and benefits? Except of course for the fat cats whose bonuses are geared to the share price - which goes up every time some poor sod on the bottom of the pile is discarded.

What self-serving twaddle some employers talk.



Still on life support
Posted: 13 July 2011 11:35:40(UTC)

Joined: 27/09/2010(UTC)
Posts: 52

Interesting piece by Anthony Hilton, says more eloquently what i have been trying to convey all along


http://www.thisislondon....-about-manufacturing.do

Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 13 July 2011 16:31:35(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

Still on life support

Nothing there I disagree with.

The Evening Standard has come on quite a bit since last time I regularly read it back in the 1960s. Foreign ownership of British newspapers is not necessarily a bad thing. Come to think of it, the world's greatest newspaper has an American boss, Dame Marjorie Scardino.
Anonymous Post
Posted: 13 July 2011 18:27:13(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Still on Life Support
The more the UK recovery falters, the more obvious it is that, however heroic the efforts of the manufacturing sector, it alone is not going to be able to provide the growth needed to power the UK economy. If this is rebalancing, then we are about to fall of the rope."
Well what do they suggest as a solution.
More services, which can be set up at a moments notice, a desk plus computer, with virtual telephone numbers e.g using VOIP and similar, in imaginary cities, virtual addresses, selling foreign e.g Chinese goods in the UK?
Will that sort of solution address our real problems, such as the underclass and structural unemployment, please see my posts at 189 and 190.
You once stated "industry/manufacturing once gone forever gone" which is more often than not, quite right, when one considers barriers to entry. Plant , equipment, premises, trained personnel, expertise etc. It is very easy to close a manufacturing operation but considerably harder to start one up.
Services developed to help industry and manufacturing should be a priority, not some of the other rubbish we keep reading about.
Some relevant considerations-
Sky News -UK must spend £110bn to Keep Lights On. "Britain needs to spend more than £110bn on new electricity supplies to keep the nation's lights on, the Govt claims. The magic of Services required?
Have a look at the key findings of the Report - Structural Jobs deficit must be tackled. The CBI today calls on the Govt to tackle deep-seated structural unemployment which threatens to leave millions on the scrapheap without jobs.
e.g. of one key finding-Urban areas that suffer high rates of unemployment are generally post-industrial economies but they are widely spread and include Liverpool, Leeds, the north East, the West Midlands and south Wales. What can services do for them?
Youth unemployment identified as the biggest crisis facing the post-recession labour market.
Against this background -University Fees-38% Can charge Full £9000. Fewer graduates. less technology, less innovation.
We got problems indeed.
Cannot help but wonder, whether some of these people who want to praise services, particularly financial services would not be better living in Ostrichland rather than England.

Prof Eman
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 13 July 2011 21:23:02(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

Prof and others

A large part of the industrial heartland is now wasteland. There will be no recovery in manufacturing employment, sufficient to soak up the currently unemployed living in these regions, let alone their children or their children's children. I doubt that the service industries will do the job either. The best we can hope for is that sufficient people remain employed in whatever sector to pay the dole money and the pensions for the rest.

There are plenty of worthwhile activities in services, even in financial services. You need to keep your cash somewhere safer than under the mattress, you need payment transmission methods that do not involve van loads of cash turning up at the factory gate as an invitation to armed robbery - the banks do a necessary and fairly efficient job here. Lloyds of London insures and re-insures against catastrophe anywhere on Earth alongside more mundane activities. Do you want a collision with an uninsured driver? The UK film and television industry exports hundreds of millions every year and provides many thousands of jobs. Do you want to switch on your screen and watch only Fox News and re-runs of Friends?

You can argue that some services are frivolous or harmful (nail bars, selling tobacco etcetera). But knocking the potential of services to provide jobs is just silly.

I do not say we should abandon manufacturing, nor that we should neglect it. I simply plead for realistic expectations.

We need jobs from anywhere and a recognition that most non-working people are not so from choice. So redistributive taxation is needed rather than punitive measures. This country is in the kind of decline faced by Ireland in the 19th century - too many people, not enough land to feed the people and too few jobs. The young will have to emigrate. The old should consider moving to kinder climes with a lower cost of living. Many do move to the Costa del Geriatrics.
mo khan
Posted: 13 July 2011 23:56:15(UTC)

Joined: 17/11/2010(UTC)
Posts: 10

Dear engineertony,

Isn't that the trick, imagine how a bunch who couldn't change a light bulb? Yet so arrogant , loud be so assertive, get us the Scientists and Engineers to do it for them, not only that Scientists and Engineers jump to carry it out.

Engineers and Scientists not only do it. Regard the task as a positive privilege, but an honour as well.!

So we manufacture and make what others want, not what we are highly capable of, or want. Just as an example, demise of Concord's research and development!

So back to changing the light bulb!

So a bunch who couldn't change a light bulb? Know something we don’t. They have managed us and turned de-skilling, ignorance and duming down, as the new vogue, into a desirable “coolness”, and an art form.

Solving this little matter might, get us closer to the prosperity that scientists and engineers merit.
normski
Posted: 14 July 2011 09:22:17(UTC)

Joined: 29/03/2010(UTC)
Posts: 42

Am I right in thinking that we need ahoover dam project. ??


normski
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 14 July 2011 11:12:33(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

normski

You are right.

Unfortunately such public works in today's economy require deficit financing - more borrowing. The reactionary half-wits in charge say that this country already owes too much and public expenditure must be cut. Their brainwashing propaganda has convinced the economically illiterate mass of the electorate. Such is the level of misinformation that, even after this gang is thrown out for their economic ineptitude, it will take years of counter propaganda to establish the grounds for a sane economic policy.

So we are screwed.

Anonymous Post
Posted: 14 July 2011 15:49:31(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Jeremy
your post at #195
Not clear what you are suggesting.
Financial incentives for young to emigrate like buying them a ticket plus £100 for a starter on the other side?
Night classes in - How to emigrate for the young?
I think a more realistic scenario is likely to be -
Burglaries up 14% last year, as reported.
Against a background of serious systems problems like-
Per Yahoo News, quoting Andy under SKy,
"What's the difference between Sewer Rats, The Newspapers, Politicians, and some Police Officers?
Sewer rats seem to provide a function in life, only feeding on crap-not revelling in it."
Makes you think?

Prof Eman
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 14 July 2011 17:02:52(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

Prof

I was merely taking my turn at venting.

Who would have a bunch of under-educated monoglots? Many would end up in foreign gaols or (the lucky ones) on the dole far away from friends and family.

The idea of pensioners migrating is less far fetched, many do so already.

I like the quote on sewer rats.
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