We need more industry

[DonkeyApple]

tinman0 said:

Dr Jekyll said:

DonkeyApple said:

The reality is that we require mechanisms that will create employment for large numbers of manual labourers, with an employment spectrum that allows the harder working and the brighter to rise through the ranks.

Surely what we need is for those only qualified for manual labour to get some useful skills. There is no mechanism to create demand for workers with nothing to offer.

We have a system! It's called "a free education".

If people want to screw around at school, then they only have themselves to blame when their potential employers range from MacDonald's to Burger King, maybe with a high point in a career of customer service at Subway.

There is a side of me which agrees 100% with this view.

But when you step foot in some of these schools and meet the teachers, see the kids and begin to understand some of the backgrounds of the kds then I think you begin to appreciate that many of them cannot fill in the gaps themselves. There is just so little motivation and examples from suitable adults that it is easy to see how a middling to weak child can just get lost very early on and never stand a chance to get it back and make something of their lives.

I sometimes wonder whether life lessons, or something similar could be taught in schools where local people who have made it out and up can sit down with a class and talk over with them their asperations and how they might go about setting out to achieve them.

Just so many kids seem to have no suitable role models and I think if we all look back many of us can cite clear examples in our lives where key adults have had a profound, if subtle, positive impact on us.

[Digga]

DonkeyApple said:

Just so many kids seem to have no suitable role models and I think if we all look back many of us can cite clear examples in our lives where key adults have had a profound, if subtle, positive impact on us.

+1

With the best will in the world, it must be exceedingly daunting and require exceptional motiviation to break out from a home, or family where 'no one' works.

Homes where three generations live together, none of which have known full-time employment is not unusual in many deprived areas. This is what needs to be cracked and education alone - especially given the paucity of the current system in many regions - will not achieve this.

[DonkeyApple]

69 coupe said:

I was watching a youtube style video from a 'High Tech' frying pan manufacturer in China.
The coating was the high tech part, the video showed off the new gleaming Chinese factory inside all the pots and pans were been pressed and stamped out using what looked like 1940's~60's presses, just like the presses that used to fill the workshops of the UK and were shipped out over the last 30 years.

A manufacturing power press no matter when it was made does a basic function and will work for the next 100+ years but instead of knocking them out in the UK they are now been stamped out in China, these pots and pans are then sold back to the UK/World as high tech.

The UK is so short-sighted in this respect and killed off it's own industry for a quick buck for the guys up top. We really do like to fcku ourselves over!

(Oh and the high tech non-stick coating doesn't work )

This is where some of the green taxes may actually be of benefit. If products were taxed based on fuel miles etc then simple manufacturing like this could return to the UK. We have the ports and the infrastructure to bring in raw materials cheaper than most European countries and an excellent network to get the end product back out into Europe.

As has been pointed out we are still at the top for specialist manufacturing, it is something we do very well. But even if we bring in low end manufacturing while it will assist in the balance of payments it won't resolve the desperate need for basic employment rolls. That requires a different solution. One which Labour attempted to solve with council non jobs and over-staffing. But that is just charity and is not a sustainable solution.

Maybe we could actually re-introduce Asian style sweat shops here and maybe, if they were backed by a campaign to establish British manufactured clothing etc as eco and Amnesty International friendly then it could become a global brand that can carry the cost premium that it would entail. The problem is that it needs a big effort and a bit of a gamble. We are not good at gambling on a business idea like the Americans are. But maybe massive tax breaks for speculative entrepreneurship could help change that and introduce the capital required.

[AJS-]

There is absolutely no prospect of heavy, labour intensive industry returning to the UK. None. Forget it.

Here in Thailand you can hire a hardworking, skilled tradesman for about 10 GBP a day. Not an hour. A day.

Unskilled labourers will work for half that, and even bright young graduates who speak decent English will get a starting salary of little more than 200 GBP a month.

Imagine those wages in England?

That's before you even look at the tax breaks and the flexible nature of planning and environmental laws.

And Thailand is relatively advanced. Indonesia has 200 million people on similar wages. Vietnam is opening up fast, as Burma will do at some point, Cambodia and even Laos are growing manufacturing industries. And that's before you start on China and India.

Once these countries are all as rich as western Europe then the whole of South America and Africa will want a piece of the action.

In the west we are in a tiny, tiny exception to the global rule. We're incredibly wealthy by comparison to most nations, and incredibly expensive.

What we need more of is businesses that make money. There's nothing inherently more or less valuable about churning out sprockets and widgets or offering financial services. It's making a profit that counts.

Experience, history, and if you give it enough thought, even logic, tell us that anyone trying to plan that on a national scale will not only fail but cause massive harm in doing so.

[Twincam16]

DonkeyApple said:

There is a side of me which agrees 100% with this view.

But when you step foot in some of these schools and meet the teachers, see the kids and begin to understand some of the backgrounds of the kds then I think you begin to appreciate that many of them cannot fill in the gaps themselves. There is just so little motivation and examples from suitable adults that it is easy to see how a middling to weak child can just get lost very early on and never stand a chance to get it back and make something of their lives.

I sometimes wonder whether life lessons, or something similar could be taught in schools where local people who have made it out and up can sit down with a class and talk over with them their asperations and how they might go about setting out to achieve them.

Just so many kids seem to have no suitable role models and I think if we all look back many of us can cite clear examples in our lives where key adults have had a profound, if subtle, positive impact on us.

And I feel a greater interaction between education and the world of work is absolutely vital. If kids can see that the skills they're learning are relevant in the real world (trigonometry bored me senseless, for example, so I can't remember anything about it, but now I understand it's vital to aeronautical navigation), and if people came into schools to demonstrate that work is all worthwhile and isn't necessarily 'boring', I think some of those kids might feel a little more motivated, especially if lessons for some of them segued into apprenticeship schemes with the businesses that came in to demonstrate the relevance of the skills.

At the moment, the school system is patronising kids. Older teachers are bitter and cynical at the way their role has gone from 'teacher' to 'facilitator', and a younger generation of teachers who did their PGCEs under Labour have effectively been whittled down and weeded out until the only ones deemed 'successful' are those who lap up every top-down initiative and toe the line at all times.

There is also a serious discipline problem, but I think that's a wider societal thing. When I was teaching it seemed to me that far too many parents are still of a child's mindset of 'me versus the world', and seek to be their kid's best mate, 'stick by them' and see being 'naughty' as fun and endearing rather than taking a step back, realising their responsibility and giving them a good ticking off. This, and the way teachers' powers have been severely curtailed by Labour (if you want to put a kid in detention these days you have to send a note home to approve it first. See how many actually turn up...), has effectively bound the hands of good teachers whilst raising the red-tape-loving, line-toing drones up on pedestals as examples of 'good practice'.

According to several doctors among my friends and family I understand similar silly things have been done with the NHS.

[tinman0]

DonkeyApple said:

But when you step foot in some of these schools and meet the teachers, see the kids and begin to understand some of the backgrounds of the kds then I think you begin to appreciate that many of them cannot fill in the gaps themselves.

We all have our experiences of school. My experience was very simple (and I went to more than a few schools).

The thick kids got given the crap teachers and playschool teachers.

The bright kids got given the good teachers.

And the thugs got given bouncers and were more or less being profiled in advance for the local Police.

Strangely enough, when it came time for exams, the thick kids bunked off, the thugs got arrested, and the bright ones got what they needed to escape.

[DonkeyApple]

Twincam16 said:

And I feel a greater interaction between education and the world of work is absolutely vital. If kids can see that the skills they're learning are relevant in the real world (trigonometry bored me senseless, for example, so I can't remember anything about it, but now I understand it's vital to aeronautical navigation), and if people came into schools to demonstrate that work is all worthwhile and isn't necessarily 'boring', I think some of those kids might feel a little more motivated, especially if lessons for some of them segued into apprenticeship schemes with the businesses that came in to demonstrate the relevance of the skills.

At the moment, the school system is patronising kids. Older teachers are bitter and cynical at the way their role has gone from 'teacher' to 'facilitator', and a younger generation of teachers who did their PGCEs under Labour have effectively been whittled down and weeded out until the only ones deemed 'successful' are those who lap up every top-down initiative and toe the line at all times.

There is also a serious discipline problem, but I think that's a wider societal thing. When I was teaching it seemed to me that far too many parents are still of a child's mindset of 'me versus the world', and seek to be their kid's best mate, 'stick by them' and see being 'naughty' as fun and endearing rather than taking a step back, realising their responsibility and giving them a good ticking off. This, and the way teachers' powers have been severely curtailed by Labour (if you want to put a kid in detention these days you have to send a note home to approve it first. See how many actually turn up...), has effectively bound the hands of good teachers whilst raising the red-tape-loving, line-toing drones up on pedestals as examples of 'good practice'.

According to several doctors among my friends and family I understand similar silly things have been done with the NHS.

Trigonometry is a very good example for me. When I was about 6 my father was having a house built for my grand parents. I remember having '3,4,5' explained to me by one of the chippies as a rule he used to work out the length of pieces of wood etc. When I started learning trig at school I suddenly realised this was pythagorean theorem and as a result I found it easy to learn and understand. I've always needed practical examples in order to get something into my head.

I'm nearly 40 and I still find that I'll learn something new and all of a sudden I'll make that connection with something I learnt at school but never realised its relevance.

History has become a great pastime of mine, and while I did well at history at school, it was because I learnt the salient facts, it's only in the last 5 years I've actually pieced any of it together and realised what the teachers were actually going on about.

I can't help thinking that the modern paranoa of Paedofiles also prevents adults from spending time with children that are not theirs and teaching them things.

My school had plenty of crap teachers, I'm sure they all do, but 95% of the kids were supported by their parents and grandparents and so the crap teachers did not have as much negative impact that they could have done.

I also suspect that the teachers we look back upon as the 'greats', those who really inspired us have been pushed out of the industry by regulation. I can't imagine a modern science teacher teaching how to make wine or make things go bang any longer and yet my original science teacher was the one responsible for me going on to study these subjects at Uni.

I think this is the real secret of most public schools, they can still employ the mad teachers, benefit from parental input and have the money and the desire to go on field trips etc. They still have plenty of crap teachers and badly taught subjects but it's the overall package and experience that makes the difference and can get the most out of an average child.

I'm still shocked when I see classrooms in State schools where none of the desks are facing the front and teachers are being all wishy washy with the students.

Someone also suggested the idea of ending the 11+ and keeping kids at the junior school until they were 13 so that they weren't so vulnerable at the main school and so that they had the chance to move through puberty in a more gentle environment etc. That seemed to make sense to me.

[Twincam16]

DonkeyApple said:

Someone also suggested the idea of ending the 11+ and keeping kids at the junior school until they were 13 so that they weren't so vulnerable at the main school and so that they had the chance to move through puberty in a more gentle environment etc. That seemed to make sense to me.

That was me.

When I was training to be a teacher (and you're spot-on with your analysis - when I was making the decision to leave the course my tutor told me that I would've been an excellent teacher were this twenty years previous), I came across reams of research that pointed to a significant 'fall-off' in terms of enthusiasm for education when kids got into secondary school, but this picked up again when off-timetable experiments were held with primary-style 'topics'.

Thing with 'topics' is that they manage to cover all sorts of subjects at the same time whilst uniting kids with all sorts of different abilities. If you're doing a topic on, say, the Victorians, then it can serve as a straightforward history lesson with all that brings, a geography lesson when it's applied to the area you live in with old maps etc, a science, technology and maths lesson when the machinery of the industrial revolution is studied, an art lesson when the visual arts of the time are explored and replicated, a music lesson when the music is looked at, English with regards to literature - and so on.

This kind of engrossing, overarching project is vital for several reasons:
-Everyone will have at least one skill they can bring to the table.
-This is the way the world of work is. You don't just sit around doing mental arithmetic sums, you use it to solve problems while someone from the design department comes up with something else.
-This is how teamwork is learnt, and with it, respect for others' abilities.
-Everyone eventually understands that they have to focus on a topic and give their 'bit' their all rather than going 'don't like it' and opting out.

Add into that the fact that if the oldest kids in the school are 13/14, and they're sharing school space with kids as young as 5, they're going to be a lot more responsible, caring and respectful of the notion of childhood than the 'slack' in the middle of a secondary school, desperate to distance themselves from the 11-year-olds and trying to act up to the 16-year olds while not really having any sense of being a role model to anyone either.

After that, at the age of 14, I'd have a teacher-led assessment. Not an eleven-plus, but a kind of 'evaluation' in which the teacher looks at the child's grades and general academic strengths. Generally speaking, everyone falls into one general category, unless they're Stephen Fry: academic, scientific/technical, and physical.

There are even kinds of learning trait that give this away. 'audio' learners tend to be academic, identifying with the written and spoken word and music and excelling in the arts and humanities. 'visual' learners tend to identify with graphs, diagrams, lists and sums and are best at science and maths, and 'kinaesthetic' learners learn by physically manipulating things, be it through sport, or technical hands-on things like electronics and engineering.

After this assessment, I'd suggest dividing the kids three ways depending on ability from 14-18 into a college specialising in one of these three areas, where they could select subjects best suited to their skillset. Some things, like English, maths and modern languages would be studied by all and there would be a minimum PE hours requirement too.

Within these colleges, I'd scrap GCSEs and replace them with a kind-of extended A-level that students started studying at 14. By 16, they'd be taking AS-style exams, after which they could either choose to do a modern apprenticeship with a firm with connections to (or possibly even investing in) the college in question. If they chose to stay on to 18, they'd end up taking A2-style exams and going on either to university, or more senior vocational training schemes.

This kind of move is necessary for both society and the economy, to ensure that there aren't as many economically inactive kids leaving school, and that they all leave with some kind of a goal in life. The worst thing we have at the moment is directionless kids leaving school poorly-qualified and of genuinely little use to society and with few prospects.

This restructuring is possible without that much outlay. Obviously the exam structure would be different (at the moment it's a hideously complex system with an 'everyone's a winner' ethos, and many of the qualifications on offer below GCSEs have no real-world value, plus giving technical qualifications different names subconsciously gives them lower status when they should be equal to academic ones), in that it'd be simpler ('direction' tests at 14, ASs at 16, A2s at 18). On top of that, the primary schools would have to expand (but only by three year groups, which is 3-6 more classrooms for the average primary), and the secondary schools would have to specialise (swapping existing equipment and staff between schools would sort it out).

However, the biggest problems faced by a radical shakeup like this are from politicians (who only think in terms of how long it'll be before they get elected again, ie 4/5 years. This would take perhaps 10/15 years to fully implement), and teaching unions, who are militantly left-wing (part of the PGCE involved a lecture in which it was explained why all teachers should vote Labour), and opposed to any kind of change that goes against any 'everyone's a winner' notion, any suggestion that any child is different to any other, and anything that looks even vaguely like 'selection' for fear of being called 'elitist' (and you'll note in my model it isn't selection in the old sense of passing or failing the eleven-plus, but simply determining what a 14-year-old is best at, and all colleges would be of equal status academically too).

Apologies for long post but it couldn't be explained in a short one!

[69 coupe]

AJS- said:

There is absolutely no prospect of heavy, labour intensive industry returning to the UK. None. Forget it.

Here in Thailand you can hire a hardworking, skilled tradesman for about 10 GBP a day. Not an hour. A day.

Unskilled labourers will work for half that, and even bright young graduates who speak decent English will get a starting salary of little more than 200 GBP a month.

Imagine those wages in England?

That's before you even look at the tax breaks and the flexible nature of planning and environmental laws.

And Thailand is relatively advanced. Indonesia has 200 million people on similar wages. Vietnam is opening up fast, as Burma will do at some point, Cambodia and even Laos are growing manufacturing industries. And that's before you start on China and India.

Once these countries are all as rich as western Europe then the whole of South America and Africa will want a piece of the action.

In the west we are in a tiny, tiny exception to the global rule. We're incredibly wealthy by comparison to most nations, and incredibly expensive.

What we need more of is businesses that make money. There's nothing inherently more or less valuable about churning out sprockets and widgets or offering financial services. It's making a profit that counts.

Experience, history, and if you give it enough thought, even logic, tell us that anyone trying to plan that on a national scale will not only fail but cause massive harm in doing so.

But as a country you can't have the vast majority of the working population making new business/new money. Not everyone can be a financial or business whizz. We still need manufacturing why import when that need can be fulfilled by our own labour roads rail shipping and more.

Okay it's all down to price but eventually if we make nothing then our net
worth will fall and we will be competing with the likes of China Brasil Africa for bottom dollar. I guess this is where protectionism lies and the inherent faults that go with that, I'm pretty sure China has very protectionist policies, there seems no easy route for this tiny island economy there's no ruling the waves any more.

Edited by 69 coupe on Monday 21st February 16:45

[Twincam16]

69 coupe said:

But as a country you can't have the vast majority of the working population making new business/new money. Not everyone can be a financial or business whizz. We still need manufacturing why import when that need can be fulfilled by our own labour roads rail shipping and more.

It's also the main reason why our welfare expenditure is so high. You're quite right - not everyone can be a financial or business whizz, but more to the point, those aren't mass-employing businesses and there aren't enough people in the country anyway with that kind of brain.

We need mass-employing industries and schools working with them to ensure the level of education and knowledge to produce a hi-tech manufacturing industry to lead the world, otherwise PH will continue to moan about 'scroungers' and wonder 'why don't they just get a job' in a time of rampant unemployment.

[ewenm]

Twincam16 said:

69 coupe said:

But as a country you can't have the vast majority of the working population making new business/new money. Not everyone can be a financial or business whizz. We still need manufacturing why import when that need can be fulfilled by our own labour roads rail shipping and more.

It's also the main reason why our welfare expenditure is so high. You're quite right - not everyone can be a financial or business whizz, but more to the point, those aren't mass-employing businesses and there aren't enough people in the country anyway with that kind of brain.

We need mass-employing industries and schools working with them to ensure the level of education and knowledge to produce a hi-tech manufacturing industry to lead the world, otherwise PH will continue to moan about 'scroungers' and wonder 'why don't they just get a job' in a time of rampant unemployment.

Such as what? Bear in mind to be successful this mass-employment industry either needs to be cheaper than the imports or better quality. When it's cheaper to ship products halfway around the world than it is to make them here, many heavy industries are going to struggle to be profitable based here.

It's all very well saying we need such employers and I doubt anyone would disagree very much, but what industries are you thinking of when you say it?

[DonkeyApple]

Twincam16 said:

DonkeyApple said:

Someone also suggested the idea of ending the 11+ and keeping kids at the junior school until they were 13 so that they weren't so vulnerable at the main school and so that they had the chance to move through puberty in a more gentle environment etc. That seemed to make sense to me.

That was me.

When I was training to be a teacher (and you're spot-on with your analysis - when I was making the decision to leave the course my tutor told me that I would've been an excellent teacher were this twenty years previous), I came across reams of research that pointed to a significant 'fall-off' in terms of enthusiasm for education when kids got into secondary school, but this picked up again when off-timetable experiments were held with primary-style 'topics'.

Thing with 'topics' is that they manage to cover all sorts of subjects at the same time whilst uniting kids with all sorts of different abilities. If you're doing a topic on, say, the Victorians, then it can serve as a straightforward history lesson with all that brings, a geography lesson when it's applied to the area you live in with old maps etc, a science, technology and maths lesson when the machinery of the industrial revolution is studied, an art lesson when the visual arts of the time are explored and replicated, a music lesson when the music is looked at, English with regards to literature - and so on.

This kind of engrossing, overarching project is vital for several reasons:
-Everyone will have at least one skill they can bring to the table.
-This is the way the world of work is. You don't just sit around doing mental arithmetic sums, you use it to solve problems while someone from the design department comes up with something else.
-This is how teamwork is learnt, and with it, respect for others' abilities.
-Everyone eventually understands that they have to focus on a topic and give their 'bit' their all rather than going 'don't like it' and opting out.

Add into that the fact that if the oldest kids in the school are 13/14, and they're sharing school space with kids as young as 5, they're going to be a lot more responsible, caring and respectful of the notion of childhood than the 'slack' in the middle of a secondary school, desperate to distance themselves from the 11-year-olds and trying to act up to the 16-year olds while not really having any sense of being a role model to anyone either.

After that, at the age of 14, I'd have a teacher-led assessment. Not an eleven-plus, but a kind of 'evaluation' in which the teacher looks at the child's grades and general academic strengths. Generally speaking, everyone falls into one general category, unless they're Stephen Fry: academic, scientific/technical, and physical.

There are even kinds of learning trait that give this away. 'audio' learners tend to be academic, identifying with the written and spoken word and music and excelling in the arts and humanities. 'visual' learners tend to identify with graphs, diagrams, lists and sums and are best at science and maths, and 'kinaesthetic' learners learn by physically manipulating things, be it through sport, or technical hands-on things like electronics and engineering.

After this assessment, I'd suggest dividing the kids three ways depending on ability from 14-18 into a college specialising in one of these three areas, where they could select subjects best suited to their skillset. Some things, like English, maths and modern languages would be studied by all and there would be a minimum PE hours requirement too.

Within these colleges, I'd scrap GCSEs and replace them with a kind-of extended A-level that students started studying at 14. By 16, they'd be taking AS-style exams, after which they could either choose to do a modern apprenticeship with a firm with connections to (or possibly even investing in) the college in question. If they chose to stay on to 18, they'd end up taking A2-style exams and going on either to university, or more senior vocational training schemes.

This kind of move is necessary for both society and the economy, to ensure that there aren't as many economically inactive kids leaving school, and that they all leave with some kind of a goal in life. The worst thing we have at the moment is directionless kids leaving school poorly-qualified and of genuinely little use to society and with few prospects.

This restructuring is possible without that much outlay. Obviously the exam structure would be different (at the moment it's a hideously complex system with an 'everyone's a winner' ethos, and many of the qualifications on offer below GCSEs have no real-world value, plus giving technical qualifications different names subconsciously gives them lower status when they should be equal to academic ones), in that it'd be simpler ('direction' tests at 14, ASs at 16, A2s at 18). On top of that, the primary schools would have to expand (but only by three year groups, which is 3-6 more classrooms for the average primary), and the secondary schools would have to specialise (swapping existing equipment and staff between schools would sort it out).

However, the biggest problems faced by a radical shakeup like this are from politicians (who only think in terms of how long it'll be before they get elected again, ie 4/5 years. This would take perhaps 10/15 years to fully implement), and teaching unions, who are militantly left-wing (part of the PGCE involved a lecture in which it was explained why all teachers should vote Labour), and opposed to any kind of change that goes against any 'everyone's a winner' notion, any suggestion that any child is different to any other, and anything that looks even vaguely like 'selection' for fear of being called 'elitist' (and you'll note in my model it isn't selection in the old sense of passing or failing the eleven-plus, but simply determining what a 14-year-old is best at, and all colleges would be of equal status academically too).

Apologies for long post but it couldn't be explained in a short one!

All sounds very logical.

One wonders if re structuring of schools would best be done under the 'Big Society' umbrella?

[AJS-]

69 coupe said:

But as a country you can't have the vast majority of the working population making new business/new money. Not everyone can be a financial or business whizz. We still need manufacturing why import when that need can be fulfilled by our own labour roads rail shipping and more.

Okay it's all down to price but eventually if we make nothing then our net
worth will fall and we will be competing with the likes of China Brasil Africa for bottom dollar. I guess this is where protectionism lies and the inherent faults that go with that, I'm pretty sure China has very protectionist policies, there seems no easy route for this tiny island economy there's no ruling the waves any more.

Edited by 69 coupe on Monday 21st February 16:45

The sense in imporing stuff is that it is something of the order of 1/10th of the price. Whether you raise import tarrifs, subsidise manufacturing or simply sell 5,000GBP washing machines it's got to come from somewhere unless we abolish social protection, environmental and safety standards to the point that we can compete.

The other alternative is to find the right mix of high value added industries that can sustain 60 million people on high wages, but again I don't really see any short cut to that whilst avoiding seriously reducing the overheads on people wishing to do business here.

It's something we will have to face sooner or later because China, India et al are not going to be knocking out 50p T shirts forever. I would predict that within a generation they'll be doing the bulk of research and innovation themselves as well.

[Twincam16]

ewenm said:

Twincam16 said:

69 coupe said:

But as a country you can't have the vast majority of the working population making new business/new money. Not everyone can be a financial or business whizz. We still need manufacturing why import when that need can be fulfilled by our own labour roads rail shipping and more.

It's also the main reason why our welfare expenditure is so high. You're quite right - not everyone can be a financial or business whizz, but more to the point, those aren't mass-employing businesses and there aren't enough people in the country anyway with that kind of brain.

We need mass-employing industries and schools working with them to ensure the level of education and knowledge to produce a hi-tech manufacturing industry to lead the world, otherwise PH will continue to moan about 'scroungers' and wonder 'why don't they just get a job' in a time of rampant unemployment.

Such as what? Bear in mind to be successful this mass-employment industry either needs to be cheaper than the imports or better quality. When it's cheaper to ship products halfway around the world than it is to make them here, many heavy industries are going to struggle to be profitable based here.

It's all very well saying we need such employers and I doubt anyone would disagree very much, but what industries are you thinking of when you say it?

Hi-tech manufacturing. Stuff that needs a level of education to build upon to screw together, not just the CKD/old stock knock-offs/industrial espionage results knocked together en masse in China for a pile 'me high, sell 'em cheap mass-market.

We could build wind turbines and tidal barrages, for example, or solar panels. PH may not like them but there's masses of demand, only limited supply and someone hammering together a Lifan moped in Shanghai out of old Honda castoffs in crates won't be trusted to build one that works for 10+ years.

Edited by Twincam16 on Monday 21st February 18:26

[Twincam16]

DonkeyApple said:

All sounds very logical.

One wonders if re structuring of schools would best be done under the 'Big Society' umbrella?

I doubt any meaningful restructuring will occur as long as Dave comes up with hairbrained ideas like 'free schools' at the expense of simple, cohesive, big ideas that everyone can understand and work with.

The coalition (or at least the Tory bit of it) seem to have applied a heavy PR spin to Thatcherism. This 'big society' and 'volunteer nation' thing is just a fig leaf for privatisation, so expect to see low-quality public services as they're sold off to the highest bidder, run for the biggest profit, and generally become the laughing stock of Europe, like our buses, trains and levels of hospital hygiene.

Unfortunately there's no way of avoiding the 'big government' aspect of the state school sector. However, encouraging private companies to invest in schools and take on apprentices would be part of that idea.

[69 coupe]

Twincam16 said:

Hi-tech manufacturing. Stuff that needs a level of education to build upon to screw together, not just the CKD/old stock knock-offs/industrial espionage results knocked together en masse in China for a pile 'me high, sell 'em cheap mass-market.

We could build wind turbines and tidal barrages, for example, or solar panels. PH may not like them but there's masses of demand, only limited supply and someone hammering together a Lifan moped in Shanghai out of old Honda castoffs in crates won't be trusted to build one that works for 10+ years.

Edited by Twincam16 on Monday 21st February 18:26

Okay we may be great at design and innovation but all these other countries have pretty much caught up.
Trouble is, China or whoever the next low cost economy who's in line will be banging out these high tech turbines/solar panels en-mass. They have all the tooling and manufacturing know-how now including design and labour.

Wondering could the UK manufacture an IPhone/HTC now and supply on a worldwide scale?

[DJC]

69 coupe said:

Okay we may be great at design and innovation but all these other countries have pretty much caught up.
Trouble is, China or whoever the next low cost economy who's in line will be banging out these high tech turbines/solar panels en-mass. They have all the tooling and manufacturing know-how now including design and labour.

Wondering could the UK manufacture an IPhone/HTC now and supply on a worldwide scale?

No they havent caught up.
They can bang them out as much as they want, we should already be on the next generation or 2 ahead.
Could do it easily, we already do similar things and at a far more bleeding edge level.

Anything else?

[69 coupe]

DJC said:

No they havent caught up.
They can bang them out as much as they want, we should already be on the next generation or 2 ahead.
Could do it easily, we already do similar things and at a far more bleeding edge level.

Anything else?

But the world doesn't run on bleeding edge tech, a cooking pot made in the 60's isn't going to be much different in 2050, most day to day stuff is pretty basic.
Again is there any company that could make the iphone type tech and supply the world in the UK, I wish there was but i can't think who.
Most high tech seems to comes from the far east, maybe designed in the West but for how long, can designed in the UK support our working population in the long run. If so I'd be very glad.

[Twincam16]

69 coupe said:

DJC said:

No they havent caught up.
They can bang them out as much as they want, we should already be on the next generation or 2 ahead.
Could do it easily, we already do similar things and at a far more bleeding edge level.

Anything else?

But the world doesn't run on bleeding edge tech, a cooking pot made in the 60's isn't going to be much different in 2050, most day to day stuff is pretty basic.
Again is there any company that could make the iphone type tech and supply the world in the UK, I wish there was but i can't think who.
Most high tech seems to comes from the far east, maybe designed in the West but for how long, can designed in the UK support our working population in the long run. If so I'd be very glad.

Goes back to the old green technology.

Like I said, PH may not be 'interested', but the truth is, they are an efficient way of generating energy that saves the country money in the long term. Every country that has signed up to the Kyoto protocols will be after this stuff.

China hasn't. China is still building coal-fired power stations and rebodied Honda C90s. It might work for them in the short term, but there is steadily rising demand for green energy products, and the longer China ignores them, the more of a lead we can pull out on them. By the time they cotton on, we can be producing the next generation of them. These things are massive and require large factories to assemble them in, and as Nissan's Sunderland plant proves, we Brits are rather good at that. Most efficient car plant in the world.

As James May once said, 'there's no such thing as 'alternative energy', there's just 'energy'.' We'd be mad not to look at some of the most powerful and inextinguishable sources of energy the world has to offer - in particular tidal bores and solar radiation - and not harness it en masse while saving us all some money in the process.

A solar array in the Sahara would provide most of Europe's electricity for starters. And then there's tidal power - regular, unending source of predictable energy not beholden to Middle Eastern politics or a lack of wind over the moors.

Also, once genetically-modified algae can be engineered to create carbon-neutral petrol, we'll need large areas to 'grow' it - and that'll need special facilities and lots of jobs. Producing it for the UK (as it would be produced anywhere) should keep shipping costs down and it'll make more sense to hire local workers.

But if we continue to let a relatively small number of sceptics in the banking sector stick their heads in the sand and refuse to invest, we'll get left behind, and all we'll have left is, well, the banks. And then we'll end up like Switzerland.

[ewenm]

Twincam16 said:

As James May once said, 'there's no such thing as 'alternative energy', there's just 'energy'.' We'd be mad not to look at some of the most powerful and inextinguishable sources of energy the world has to offer - in particular tidal bores and solar radiation - and not harness it en masse while saving us all some money in the process.

A solar array in the Sahara would provide most of Europe's electricity for starters. And then there's tidal power - regular, unending source of predictable energy not beholden to Middle Eastern politics or a lack of wind over the moors.

Also, once genetically-modified algae can be engineered to create carbon-neutral petrol, we'll need large areas to 'grow' it - and that'll need special facilities and lots of jobs. Producing it for the UK (as it would be produced anywhere) should keep shipping costs down and it'll make more sense to hire local workers.

But if we continue to let a relatively small number of sceptics in the banking sector stick their heads in the sand and refuse to invest, we'll get left behind, and all we'll have left is, well, the banks. And then we'll end up like Switzerland.

The issue with most of those is that they are only "green" in terms of carbon dioxide (and then only once you've constructed them). In terms of impact on their local environment they aren't very "green" at all. The Severn Estuary tidal range/bore for example - most of that is an area of scientific interest and sticking a tidal power generator across it might not be the best for the local flora & fauna. Large areas for algae farms - at the expense of what habitat?

I'm not against these ideas per se, but claiming they are "environmental" can be somewhat overstated. "Green" has become synonymous with "CO2" and other significant environmental issues get brushed aside. Of course, as a businessman, I'd be looking for the "green" opportunities and selling to those for whom CO2 is the be all and end all.

Edit: Obviously I'm wandering off topic as the true "greenness" of a proposal has little relevance to whether someone can employ lots of people to do it or not. I'm not entirely sure that the CO2 bandwagon isn't one the wheels will fall off in the continued stagnation/recession/depression. When times are good it's easy to buy into ideological causes, when times are bad people tend to focus on their core needs.

Edited by ewenm on Monday 21st February 23:07