Estate where only one person has a job. Enjoy

Estate where only one person has a job. Enjoy

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Bing o

15,184 posts

221 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
grantone said:
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
And how do we do this with soaring inflation and a weak pound?

Digga

40,485 posts

285 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Bing o said:
grantone said:
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
And how do we do this with soaring inflation and a weak pound?
With the way commodities are going, we haven't even seen inflation yet.

Expect some massive, secondary and tertiary inflation to hit by q3.

Bing o

15,184 posts

221 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Wonder why that was.....


wink

Kermit power

28,849 posts

215 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Fittster said:
grantone said:
Kermit power said:
...
So, answer the question... How do you pay your Yorkshire foundry worker the £15 an hour he wants, when nobody is prepared to pay the necessary premium for the goods he produces.
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
How are worker in Germany and Japan competitive then? Higher wages than the UK and large welfare states in both countries. Simply expecting the people of Yorkshire to work for a bowl of gruel a day seems like a good way to even wider social division.
Being gifted a nice, sparkly new industrial infrastructure as a prize for losing WW2 certainly didn't hurt our German friends, but they appear to have made use of it rather differently since.

If you look up data on time lost to industrial action in the 60s and 70s (which I'm not about to do on a Blackberry, but have posted on previous threads), Germany lost something like a tenth of the time that the UK did to strike action.

As for the Japanese, can you really imagine BL workers turning up early at Longbridge for mass Tai Chi sessions? The Japanese have an insane work ethic, but even there they're not immune, are they? The Japanese economy has been in the doldrums for years.

What the Japanese did manage to do, however, was to adapt. As China grew up and took over their reputation for cheap manufacturing, they moved pretty slickly into a reputation for quality manufacturing. People pay for Japanese cars, cameras and the like because they expect them to be reliable. When has it ever been possible to say that about British mass produced goods?

Lastly, how many companies do you know that can survive without a strong home market? Unlike the British, many Europeans do buy goods because they are from their country. I don't know Germany particularly, but look at places like France and Italy. Through thick or thin, they have bought Pugs, Citroens, Renaults, Fiats and Lancias. In many cases they were just as st as anything BL turned out (yes, Lancia Beta, I'm looking at you amongst others), but unlike the ordinary British worker they didn't cut and run for a Datsun at the first opportunity.

If the British won't buy British, how on earth can you expect anyone else to?

grantone

640 posts

175 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Fittster said:
grantone said:
Kermit power said:
...
So, answer the question... How do you pay your Yorkshire foundry worker the £15 an hour he wants, when nobody is prepared to pay the necessary premium for the goods he produces.
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
How are workers in Germany and Japan competitive then? Higher wages than the UK and large welfare states in both countries. Simply expecting the people of Yorkshire to work for a bowl of gruel a day seems like a good way to even wider social division.

Edited by Fittster on Tuesday 11th January 08:29
I don't suggest the quality of life should drop until people can only eat gruel, only the cost. We fight deflation like it's a terrible thing, but it's not bad for everyone.

Bing o

15,184 posts

221 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
grantone said:
I don't suggest the quality of life should drop until people can only eat gruel, only the cost. We fight deflation like it's a terrible thing, but it's not bad for everyone.
How do you deflate an economy when the pound is devaluing and commodity prices are increasing?

ETA

Kermit power said:
I don't know Germany particularly, but look at places like France and Italy.
You can't move in Frankfurt for tripping over a VAG, Merc, Beemer or Pork.

Edited by Bing o on Tuesday 11th January 09:08

Kermit power

28,849 posts

215 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
cazzer said:
Kermit power said:
Pesty said:
yeah we know that buts its a slightly different argument to what Cazzer is talking about I belive. You won't hear me dissagreeing about how the state perpetuates this problem with benefits.

What if the man in your example could do a tough job like work in a foundry that maybe does not need a huge amount of quals? he could maybe earn £15 an hour but the foundries are not there any more they are in India and China.

These jobs down the pit or in the steel mill have all but gone for various reasons.
Those jobs have by and large gone for one single reason. Your man in Yorkshire expects to earn £15 an hour in his foundry, whereas his counterpart in India or China expects to earn £15 a day if he's very lucky.

Why do you suppose your man in Yorkshire doesn't have a foundry to work in?

Don't blame the government. Blame previous generations of workers and unions who demanded princely wages for peasant jobs.
Yes because the amount the bloke in india or china pays 1.30 for a litre of petrol and £1000s in council tax and 40p for a bottle of milk.
Seriously, peasents? fk off.
Exactly! The bloke in China doesn't pay £1.30 a litre for petrol. He probably doesn't pay anything for petrol because he is a factory worker who can't even dream of running a car on his salary. Why would you automatically assume an unskilled factory worker here should be able to afford to run a car?

He probably doesn't pay 40p for his loaf of bread either, but then the people harvesting the wheat, driving it to the bakery, making the bread, driving it to the shop, putting it on the shelf and taking the money for it at the till in China aren't all expecting to be paid £6 an hour either.

The Chinese worker isn't paying thousands in council tax either, but then he isn't expecting his roads to be maintained and his bins to be emptied by people earning £6 an hour, to say nothing of services he doesn't expect to receive at all.

Johnnytheboy

24,498 posts

188 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
A lot of people have suggested that unemployment is a result of us not making stuff any more.

I can't quite figure out who would buy the stuff that a resurgent British manufacturing base would produce, if it couldn't sell it at a competitive price.

Other than that, I think it's a splendid idea.

otolith

56,731 posts

206 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
cazzer said:
Yes ok. So we'll all move to london then the world will be perfect.
Because heaven forbid anywhere else needs to exist.

I give up.
They don't need to move that far - we're talking about relatively small areas that are seriously depressed because the local community existed to serve a now extinct industry, not the whole of the UK outside the South East.




Kermit power

28,849 posts

215 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
grantone said:
Kermit power said:
...
So, answer the question... How do you pay your Yorkshire foundry worker the £15 an hour he wants, when nobody is prepared to pay the necessary premium for the goods he produces.
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
How are you proposing to do that, bearing in mind the difference in expectations on standards of living?

People on here are asking if they should be expected to live in shared accommodation if they are unskilled workers. They might not like the idea, but the fact is that for the overwhelming majority of people on this planet, that is the lot of unskilled workers.

What exactly makes British unskilled workers different to the unskilled workers in other countries with whom they are competing?

Bing o

15,184 posts

221 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
What exactly makes British unskilled workers different to the unskilled workers in other countries with whom they are competing?
Skilled Workers (AKA Mugs, or Tax Payers) get robbed to pay for them in this country.

Engineer1

10,486 posts

211 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
Exactly! The bloke in China doesn't pay £1.30 a litre for petrol. He probably doesn't pay anything for petrol because he is a factory worker who can't even dream of running a car on his salary. Why would you automatically assume an unskilled factory worker here should be able to afford to run a car?
Because thanks to our high quality public transport system you need personal transport to get to work. If you need to be in work for 7am and the first bus from your home to work would get you there at 8 having left at 5 and travelled halfway round the county then you can't use that.

As an example was years back I was doing a summer job in Fradley and living in Shenstone, without a car my trip to or from work was walk to station catch the train to Lichfield change train and go to Lichfield Trent valley then walk 2 miles, so a 9 mile journey to work meant 2 trains to cover 3 stops and a walk. Then a similar summer job in Aldridge that was unreachable by public transport. Poorly paid low skilled jobs tend to be on trading estates which tend to be on the outskirts of towns close to main roads but not always convenient for public transport.

Kermit power

28,849 posts

215 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Engineer1 said:
Kermit power said:
Exactly! The bloke in China doesn't pay £1.30 a litre for petrol. He probably doesn't pay anything for petrol because he is a factory worker who can't even dream of running a car on his salary. Why would you automatically assume an unskilled factory worker here should be able to afford to run a car?
Because thanks to our high quality public transport system you need personal transport to get to work. If you need to be in work for 7am and the first bus from your home to work would get you there at 8 having left at 5 and travelled halfway round the county then you can't use that.

As an example was years back I was doing a summer job in Fradley and living in Shenstone, without a car my trip to or from work was walk to station catch the train to Lichfield change train and go to Lichfield Trent valley then walk 2 miles, so a 9 mile journey to work meant 2 trains to cover 3 stops and a walk. Then a similar summer job in Aldridge that was unreachable by public transport. Poorly paid low skilled jobs tend to be on trading estates which tend to be on the outskirts of towns close to main roads but not always convenient for public transport.
Meanwhile, your competitor in China has cycled the 9 miles to the factory in 45 minutes. Is there any reason why a Chinese unskilled worker can cycle to work but a British one can't?

There are plenty of people in this country, skilled or otherwise, who choose to cycle those sorts of distances because they want to get fit, save money or whatever.

Engineer1

10,486 posts

211 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
The 9 miles could be motorway, or fast dual carriageway which in this case it was I really wouldn't have fancied cycling the route at 7am on a winter morning atleast with the walk I could keep well out of the way of the cars.

Kermit power

28,849 posts

215 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Engineer1 said:
The 9 miles could be motorway, or fast dual carriageway which in this case it was I really wouldn't have fancied cycling the route at 7am on a winter morning atleast with the walk I could keep well out of the way of the cars.
So there were no other possible routes, even if they were a mile or two longer?

Digga

40,485 posts

285 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Engineer1 said:
The 9 miles could be motorway, or fast dual carriageway which in this case it was I really wouldn't have fancied cycling the route at 7am on a winter morning atleast with the walk I could keep well out of the way of the cars.
Quite right.

It's one thing cycling to work when several million other people do likewise, but another thing when the roads are already operating beyond capacity with other vehicles. The UK's provision for cycling is laughable compared to many of our European neighbours especailly.

To add to E1's opint, we've been 'targeted' by some seat-shiner in the LA to fill in a "Transport Plan". We are on an industrial estate, the nearest bus stop is miles away and the provision for cycling - other than some recently added (and admittedly pretty good) cycle paths is non-existant. (I see pople commuting on bikes, but shudder at the risk they take on narrow, congested roads, populated by numpties.)

Most employees have no option but to drive.

<Subtitles for Southerners and Government 'Transport' Ministers; we are nowhere near a tube station.>

Morningside

24,111 posts

231 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
Fittster said:
grantone said:
Kermit power said:
...
So, answer the question... How do you pay your Yorkshire foundry worker the £15 an hour he wants, when nobody is prepared to pay the necessary premium for the goods he produces.
By allowing the cost of living to go down until the Yorkshire foundry worker no longer wants £15 an hour and we become competitive again.
....

As for the Japanese, can you really imagine BL workers turning up early at Longbridge for mass Tai Chi sessions? The Japanese have an insane work ethic, but even there they're not immune, are they? The Japanese economy has been in the doldrums for years.
....
Err Rover / Honda ?



There has been a massive death of industries over the last 20 year. Even round these parts (Lowestoft area) a lot of the large companies have gone.
Electronics, fishing, canning, woodyards, boatbuilding and the meat processing plant has also gone (due to fire) but they will not be bringing it back and are moving production. Even Bernard Matthews have scaled back as well.

So, if the big companies have gone why doesn't the Government help small businesses more?

I still think the future of this country is the one man and his van - Now even that is being killed due to fuel prices.

As for not working, I really think it is installed into a lot of inactive families. Father has not worked for years (bad back)! Children just dont care anymore or (and I have found this) they want £500 a week at 17 but not willing to start at the bottom like making teas etc.
A 17 year old I know wants a moped. Is he willing to get a paperround or weekend job. Nah! He has gone to Collage to do a really pointless course.

But there is no get up and go. I know a chap who owns his carpentry business and tends to employ the troublesome ones to give them a break (like he had) but he found that if you ask them to sweep up they will, and then stop for more instructions even if there is a pile right in front of them.


Edited by Morningside on Tuesday 11th January 10:20

Engineer1

10,486 posts

211 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Yes but it would be nearly doubling the length of the journey. The whole point is people don't expect to have to cycle to work motoring has been cheap enough that a low paid worker could own and run a car, now it is getting too expensive. The issue really comes down to pre-car the factory was across the road from the houses, now the factory is out on the outskirts. I suspect the Chinese worker's house is close to the factory and also that they are starting to expect improved living conditions.

fido

16,884 posts

257 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Johnnytheboy said:
A lot of people have suggested that unemployment is a result of us not making stuff any more.
We make high tech stuff that requires people who are technical, create, innovative and a good grasp of science. Most of the skiprats on this estate can't even read or write properly let alone apply for these 21st century jobs.

Johnnytheboy

24,498 posts

188 months

Tuesday 11th January 2011
quotequote all
Engineer1 said:
Yes but it would be nearly doubling the length of the journey. The whole point is people don't expect to have to cycle to work motoring has been cheap enough that a low paid worker could own and run a car, now it is getting too expensive. The issue really comes down to pre-car the factory was across the road from the houses, now the factory is out on the outskirts. I suspect the Chinese worker's house is close to the factory and also that they are starting to expect improved living conditions.
So what's the solution?