Ideas to get the country going again

[public school boy]

Stop giving money to India, Pakistan, Nigeria and other Commonwealth countries and spend the money on our elderly, homeless, police, armed forces, the roads, health service, schools, training schemes for the unemployed ( the ones that want to work ) and other beneficial projects within our country.

 

[daveinprague]

I would imagine we took more from India, Africa and most of the commonwealth countries than we would ever give back. The wealth taken from these countries built Britain.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

with wage inflation in excess of 20% pa the Chinese economy will not be able to sustain cheap exports for long and the likes of Nike and Primark are already moving on to Cambodia and Viatnam to source cheap products for western markets. With a true global market now established however that "advantage" too will inevitably be shortlived.

Successive governments of all flavours have abandoned support for industry in favour of services over the last five decades and that is now irreversable. The battle now is to retain our standing as a financial service centre and that is a battle which the current government appear to have little taste for as their ideology insists that money should be allowed to follow money regardless of human cost.

All indicators are that stringent control of expenditure is both unsustainable and, in all probability as the civil service is quietly and successfully resisting real reductions in expenditure at all levels, entirely unachievable. A futile and pointless exercise doomed to failure but whose perseverence allows a few to profit while many more suffer. Equally the days when we could buy our way out by increasing public expenditure has long gone. There is little value in creating employment opportunity for a transient european job market which will move on in due course with little ostensible benefit. Like it or not the answer at least lies EEC wide and to a great degree world wide. Even so there is a lot to be said for some form of workfare which requires people to engage with society to its wider benefit in order to qualify for its succour and the cost of support materials and personnel for such a scheme would be a more readily transferable than quantitative easing channelled through financial institutions who refuse to move it to the next level, particularly if it were coupled with a medium to long term vouchers scheme able to be exchanged in the High Street rather than on-line and thereby encouraging job creation in town and city centres.

Your precept that the move to a service based economy is irreversable just doesn't have any credibility. General Motors certainly don't agree with you - they've just awarded production of the new Vauxhall Astra to Ellesmere Port, investing £ 125 M, directly creating 700 NEW jobs and potentially £ billions of new orders and 1,000's of jobs for UK suppliers. The UK as a whole built 10% more cars this year than 2010 - 2011 due to strong export orders.

Top 5 UK car manufacturers 2011
Source: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT)

Nissan 480,485

Jaguar Land Rover 238,237

BMW Mini 191,474

Vauxhall 137,971

Toyota 128,146

Now if we can get that kind of inward investment for other manufacturing sectors then there might actually be a chance of generating some growth.

Vietnam and Cambodia don't have the skills or technical know-how to build high value added goods - we certainly did, and arguably still do. But once the generation that has those skills dies out, then they will be much harder to regenerate.

Thai firm Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) have just re-lit the steel furnaces at Redcar, because they kniow full damn well that they don't have the skill set, nor the facilities in their own Country to produce their own product.

 

[severnside gull]

Your precept that the move to a service based economy is irreversable just doesn't have any credibility. General Motors certainly don't agree with you - they've just awarded production of the new Vauxhall Astra to Ellesmere Port, investing £ 125 M, directly creating 700 NEW jobs and potentially £ billions of new orders and 1,000's of jobs for UK suppliers. The UK as a whole built 10% more cars this year than 2010 - 2011 due to strong export orders.

Top 5 UK car manufacturers 2011
Source: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT)

Nissan 480,485

Jaguar Land Rover 238,237

BMW Mini 191,474

Vauxhall 137,971

Toyota 128,146

Now if we can get that kind of inward investment for other manufacturing sectors then there might actually be a chance of generating some growth.

Vietnam and Cambodia don't have the skills or technical know-how to build high value added goods - we certainly did, and arguably still do. But once the generation that has those skills dies out, then they will be much harder to regenerate.

Thai firm Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) have just re-lit the steel furnaces at Redcar, because they kniow full damn well that they don't have the skill set, nor the facilities in their own Country to produce their own product.

Great news all but the term "pissing in the wind" does rather come to mind.

Compare and contrast. Germany hasn't allowed a sigle car plant to close in 42 years - we have barely fought to keep one open. Our primary car manufacturies and much of their support infrastructure are owned abroad. The needs of the German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, American and Korean economies will all play a larger part in corporate decision making than ours. The same is true of our train industry (the little that is left) and our aerospace industry. Our steel industry is largely Indian and our energy industry French. It is, as I said, a truly global market - we will inevitably get some of the scraps but we don't have the will, nor any longer the depth of resource, to take up a place at the top table of manufacturing.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

Well, if we're now heading rapidly back to the kind of economic woes prevelant in the pre-industrial days, where people are seriously suggesting that killing off a large proportion of our population in a war will make things better, then it's time to find the next Napoleon Bonaparte, re-invade India and claim back the Americas and Hong Kong for the Queen. Right, where's the nearest army recruiting office, oh, hang on, isn't the Army, Navy and Air Force supposed to be shrinking as well, damn..........

Back to trying to flog financial products to people with no money then I suppose........

 

[severnside gull]

If we no longer have the will or the depth of resource then we have not only left ourselves with no solution, but we have royally squandered all the hard work of previous generations to make this Country 'Great'.

And don't even get me started on 'Cool Britannia', what a total load of cock..........

.........................with all of which (sadly) I am in total accord. Our prosperity is almost entirely dependant on our ability to negotiate our position with others which is the truth for most nations. Whether we choose austerity or spending our way out of our current situation isn't entirely the issue (in my opinion) because ultimately other nations will prevail. We can no longer stand alone and distant from our neighbours whether near or distant and the potential for greatest harm is in pretending (or wishing) otherwise.

 

[Worthingite]

a fairly straightforward way surely would be to incentivise companies to bring back their outsourced call centres and customer service from the subcontinent. How many people could that employ?! Tax breaks perhaps?

 

[public school boy]

Prunes

 

[Don Quixote]

We need a war so we can build up our manufacturing base.

Might get rid of a few people as well, great idea.

 

[Glawstergull]

Kill all the journalists.

 

[pastafarian]

if only God when he made Britain would have had the foresight to have installed a reset to factory default button