Prof & Jeremy
I don't think we need concern ourselves with MPs representing the various sexes or employment occupations, but 10% engineers & scientists would make me happy. The fact is there is a problem with UK manufacturing, with technical skills, with levels of maths and computer science. There's no one to make cars & buses, or light bulbs & cameras, there's no one to mend our washing machines or fix our televisions, there's no one to repair our houses. It is being realised that unless you generate wealth, then you can't have services such as police, rubbish emptied, libraries, schools, parks and gardens.
My grasp of economics takes me back to analogies, with the wild west or a medieval village. We establish our town, the carpenter, the horse breeder, the chicken farmer, the butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker. When we have a surplus of goods we can barter to get the things we want. We cannot immediately have a sherif, gardens, or open a school, these are services.
Now comes the complexity, the money lender, the coin clipper, the middleman, the trader, the opportunist who wants a good living without the hard work. He might be bringing spices, metals or fine cloth from another area, at an inflated price, and get rich by doing this, and richer still when he lends his wealth at interest. He's not growing or making anything, he creates nothing and in fact he is indirectly taking money from other people, but he has the upper hand. He wants a horse, beef and bread and candles but he's not making anything, he contributes nothing to the national pie, but he takes a big slice.
Of course the real world has become far more complex, but we have to realise that even if the third world will make the things we need, we have to pay with something, and so far it's not worked too badly because we have all the money to shuffle around, call it banking, investments, speculation, gambling, it works because we had a start with the empire. But that was 50 years ago, our old colonies are now raising their own capital, banks & insurance, and ... manufacturing as well.
So the point of my input to our discussion is.......who is in charge, who is capable of seeing what is needed to maintain our position in both manufacturing and financial and other services? This needs a high level of competency, experience and knowledge which few MPs appear to have, hence disaster is looming.