Raising money

The problem is that everyone wants the UK to have a manufacturing industry but they're not prepared to put their money where their mouth is and buy these more expensive goods which factor in higher labour costs

Take a look around your kitchen. How many of your white goods are made in the UK? What about your car? TV? Laptop? Nope, thought not.

We can't have it all ways.

Businesses will soon have more incentive to keep their opperations in the UK, ammendments to the basic minimum wage bill.

Politicians believe the way to keep businesses here is to allow them to exploit cheap labour, just as they have been doing in India and China.

All these horror stories we hear of slave labour, people working for pennies and sleeping rough, coming to a factory near you soon! Not content to facilitate corperations greed and exploit of third world countries, Dave would like to see such enterprise here.

Newwave - no it isn't. If other parts of the company remain here, that provides employment and tax revenue. If the company closes down or leaves the UK you don't get that.

newwave- Its not though is it, if the HQ is based in this country then people are being employed even if the goods are produced elsewhere. We can't compete with developing countries when it comes to producing low-skilled goods and services as they have such a large competitive advantage over us. We need to look at encouraging more higher skilled goods and services to grow in the country like they have in Germany

Taxing the rich more is a good idea but too obvious is it OP? I reckon you should have stopped your post right there. If that has become too obvious a notion then breathing's too obvious.

The solution of the left rears its head again - tax those evil companies more!

I would do the very opposite - give corporations a tax cut for every person they employ long-term.

It would make entrepreneurs from around the world want to invest in Britain, instead of driving them away.

Taxing companies for moving jobs out of the country wouldn't work I don't think. It would be a highly protectionist measure that would cause firms to become uncompetitive and go out of business. If a company kept their production in the UK, they would obviously have to pay UK labour market rates, whilst a firm from a different country could base their production in a country such as China. The wage rates would be much lower and so the cost of production would be lower meaning they could charge a lower price for their good making them more competitive.
Another option would be for a company to have their hq in another country and just have a branch in this country.
The idea would also almost certainly go against many free trade agreements that the UK/EU has signed.

What about the Indian call center workers? Why are they less deserving of work than UK ones? This would be pretty callous to them.

Cut regulation and cut taxes on business - then they can create the jobs that will in turn produce more revenue in income tax etc.

"The only people who could lose is the shareholders/owners/directors by getting lower dividends "

I take it you do not have a private pension or expect to have one in future? The biggest shareholders aren't fatcats, they're the pension funds on which our retirement prospects depend. They've already been hit massively by dividend tax changes: how much more do you think pensioners can afford to lose?

Let's just for a moment say this came into effect.

What would happen? Well firstly Dyson would find his products are way more expensive than competitors as his manufacturing costs (in the UK) are 10x higher. So he'd sell less hoovers which would mean less profits and of course less corporation tax. He'd then have to make people redundant who then aren't paying income tax.....rinse & repeat.

Didn't M&S try this? They tried for over a decade to keep their products made in the UK "St Michaels" brand anyone? It nearly killed them and eventually they had to offshore just like all their competitors had.

Call centres are already coming back to the UK. The reason again is competition. Costs in India have gone up substantially making it less attractive. That and increased demand from customers for UK call centres has meant that a lot of companies (and many banks) are now advertising "UK based call centres" because we're sick & tired of talking to people whom we can't understand.

Actually that's a good example of where us consumers get what we demand. We buy the cheapest clothes and don't care if they are made in China or not. Result, companies like M&S are forced to offshore. But we do care about being understood when calling our banks/utility suppliers so they onshore the call centres to avoid losing customers.

My suggestion for raising money in the business sector would be more carrot than stick i.e. encouraging more companies to set up in the UK. I don't know enough about the barriers in the way of that happening at the moment but I'm sure that there are some. The banking sector may have gone 'pop' due to too little regulation but, learning the lesson from that experience, we could combine greater incentives with better control. More businesses choosing to set up here means more employment, growth and more tax going into the economy all round.

All that would happen is that manufacturing companies wouldn't set up in the UK in the first place. They'd have the official headquarters of their business in another country and operate a 'UK branch'... I work for such a company, in fact.