Estate where only one person has a job. Enjoy
Discussion
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
Puggit said:
Would be interesting (but nigh on impossible) to compare that data with Sky usage and 50+ inch tv screens...
I was just thinking that! Also, the number of private cars (insured and taxed or not) owned by residents.In fact it would be interesting to see just how many private vehicles the state (the tax payer) 'owns' - well, has paid for.
Edited by Lost_BMW on Monday 10th January 13:28
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
Kermit power said:
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
I can remember "Red Robbo" 1n 1979 exhorting his co-workers to strike. As far as I can remember this was over an unrealistic wage demand.
We badly need a "work ethic" in this country or we are screwed essentially!
Kermit power said:
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
I can remember "Red Robbo" 1n 1979 exhorting his co-workers to strike. As far as I can remember this was over an unrealistic wage demand.
We badly need a "work ethic" in this country or we are screwed essentially!
There are lots of jobs in such areas. Okay sure they are not well paid and are un-skilled but they do exist.
However business owners prefer to employ non-natives for such posts.
Take the food industry for example. All my local subway shops are filled with eastern europeans. The pizza huts/kfcs/McDs are staffed by Indian and Pakistani 'students'. Even local cafes use spanish and Portuguese workers.
These guys all work LEGALLY so the minimum wage still applies so why are employers disproportionately hiring foreign born workers? Either their work ethic stands head and shoulders above local men and woman or the locals just don't apply for such 'low' jobs. Probably a combination of both.
However business owners prefer to employ non-natives for such posts.
Take the food industry for example. All my local subway shops are filled with eastern europeans. The pizza huts/kfcs/McDs are staffed by Indian and Pakistani 'students'. Even local cafes use spanish and Portuguese workers.
These guys all work LEGALLY so the minimum wage still applies so why are employers disproportionately hiring foreign born workers? Either their work ethic stands head and shoulders above local men and woman or the locals just don't apply for such 'low' jobs. Probably a combination of both.
theboyfold said:
I'm sure the fact that the number of pensioners and (actually) disabled people on the estate help twist the numbers in the favour of the headline.
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story...
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story...
The article said:
Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that none of the other 105 people of working age on this estate held down a full-time job at the last count.
Fifty are listed as on the dole, 30 are signed off sick and get incapacity benefits, 20 pocket lone-parent payments and five claim other handouts.
So pensioners are excluded, and even if 50% of those incapacity benefit claimants really are incapable of doing work of any sort, that still leaves 86% of people who could work and aren't.Fifty are listed as on the dole, 30 are signed off sick and get incapacity benefits, 20 pocket lone-parent payments and five claim other handouts.
Kermit power said:
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
I'd rather see trade barriers tbh. I don't want to live in a country with Victorian levels of inequality.
Kermit power said:
theboyfold said:
I'm sure the fact that the number of pensioners and (actually) disabled people on the estate help twist the numbers in the favour of the headline.
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story...
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story...
The article said:
Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that none of the other 105 people of working age on this estate held down a full-time job at the last count.
Fifty are listed as on the dole, 30 are signed off sick and get incapacity benefits, 20 pocket lone-parent payments and five claim other handouts.
So pensioners are excluded, and even if 50% of those incapacity benefit claimants really are incapable of doing work of any sort, that still leaves 86% of people who could work and aren't.Fifty are listed as on the dole, 30 are signed off sick and get incapacity benefits, 20 pocket lone-parent payments and five claim other handouts.
"Why let the fact I've not fully read the story get in the way of a good moan!"
I hate newspapers, having been involved in stories that they have written and knowing they have the fact 100% wrong gives me a deep mistrust of any news outlets.
supersingle said:
Kermit power said:
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
I'd rather see trade barriers tbh. I don't want to live in a country with Victorian levels of inequality.
That doesn't, however, mean that they need to compete purely on wages. Goods manufactured here wouldn't have the transportation costs of those made in China, product quality is often much better, and we have the technology in many instances to be more efficient, but the wage expectations of unskilled workers in this country are clearly unrealistic.
Trade barriers wouldn't work, as that would just put prices up, so the already over-paid (or over-benefited) would bleat that they need more money because prices are so high, and the vicious circle takes another turn.
When you say that you don't want to live in a country with Victorian levels of inequality, do you actually mean that, or do you mean you don't want to live in a country with the absolute poverty levels of Victorian Britain?
Personally I wouldn't want to live in a country where people regularly starve to death or have no access to healthcare, but we don't and won't have that here. When you get beyond that, why on earth should I be so highly taxed just to make sure that people who can't be arsed to work have a plasma TV?
Having a system where even one individual can't afford to work because they're better off on benefits is complete and utter lunacy. If that's the only way to ensure that you don't have your big levels of inequality, then it's too high a price to pay.
supersingle said:
Kermit power said:
cazzer said:
Unfortunately this is capitalism at work.
I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a st basically.
So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
To be more specific, it's capitalism being interfered with by trades unions.I feel qualified to rant here as if you go and look at Egerton St in Oldham on google maps thats my old secondary school.
Towns like Oldham thrived on Cotton Spinning (Well over 200 cotton mills at one point), Heavy Engineering (Platts etc), Light Engineering (Ferranti etc).
If you look into the demographic of the owners of these businesses, in general, they didn't live locally. Had no real connection with the area. Couldn't give a s
t basically.So when it became cheaper to manufacture this stuff abroad thats exactly what they did. All the cotton spinning has gone, 200 mills, 500 people+ per mill. Platts went. Ferranti went in a share dealing fraud.
None of these, and countless other businesses, went because the workforce was bad, or workshy. They went, in general, because the business owners found brown people to exploit.
In the ultimate irony, they imported a large number of indians and Pakistanis over in the late 40s and early 50s to staff the mills (because a lot of the workforce had died in the war) and within 10 years had shut the majority and sent the manufacturing to india and Pakistan.
Heaven forbid any new companies open anything outside the M4 corridor.
So what are these 1000's of people supposed to do?
The reason all the manufacturing went to China and India is because it's cheaper to manufacture there, even making allowances for all the extra shipping costs.
The reason that is the case is because labour is so much cheaper in China and India.
The reason that labour is so much more expensive here is because unskilled workers thought they should be paid more than they were being paid, so went on strike until they got paid more.
This was all well and good when it was expensive to import goods from the other side of the world, but now that it's cheap, all the unskilled labour jobs have gone from this country. Whose fault is that?
The biggest problem we have these days is the lunacy of comparing standards of living and saying that people are in poverty if they earn less than 60% of the average income or whatever it is. If the job you do doesn't generate a value for society equal to 60% or more of the average, how can you expect to be paid it?
If this were truly capitalism at work, then people would be paid what they were worth, and we would have real poverty existing alongside great wealth as we used to have in the past.
I'd rather see trade barriers tbh. I don't want to live in a country with Victorian levels of inequality.
:A couple of years ago I was in Johannesburg talking to some friends who could not believe how much we paid for petrol and diesel (the cost over there was half the price here). I asked them about the South African minimum wage - he didn't think thay had one, but he thought the minimum anybody actually got was about 6 rand (50p) an hour. The South African government don't pay pensions to the population either. There is no Health Service - you get ill, you pay for the treatment. Or don't bother and die. Just a few examples.
We could not compete on wage rates with China because our society is geared up with high taxes on income and expenditure, and there's isn't. We will be able to complete eventually (perhaps it'll take more than a generation) as China's living standards and wage levels catch up with western ones.
And trade barriers? My, that's a good idea. Put obstabcles in the way of other nations selling us things then wonder why they won't buy things from us
Perhaps we could reintroduce the Corn Laws - only made a few million people die of starvation in the UK last time roundEngineer1 said:
One thing I can see that is common to all those estates in the list is that they used to be industrial areas with plenty of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs,for example Washwood Heath home of LDV, Burslem home of the potteries until the work went abroad. These areas are this decades' equivalent to the mining towns or steel working towns, places where even the thickest school leaver could walk into a reasonable paying job.
Try Northern Ireland as an example.Even 45 years ago, made many many ships, huge textiles industry, aviation industry, all sorts of factories. Heavy industry and light industry.
Now I believe 80 odd percent of jobs are state jobs or jobs relying on the state for the income. That is in no way sustainable. And other than few localised areas on the mainland could not be replicated and sustained. (I believe many areas of Glasgow and I think it is Hull or Tyneside somewhere where it is similar)
Very very few of the jobs are actually providing anything of real substance that can be sold overseas and many of the companies that are here (Bombardier, Allstate, etc) are sending profits mostly overseas.
Up a certain creek without a paddle. Many of the poor areas here that were badly hit by loss of textiles and factories is where the whole terrorism thing came from (which is why there are so many government non-jobs) and Im sure if the economic climate in these places in England are as bad, dissent will brew. Doesnt really matter what form itll take but it will be there.
Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff