'So what you're suggesting is state-subsidised manufacturing. What's the point of that?'
the point of that is to strengthen the country, provide jobs and wealth for teh citizens, invest in technology to advance production in this country and provide engineering skills to this great nation of engineers that gave the world people like Brunel, Stevenson and thousands of others. If we lose our skills, we will decline in the technological race that every nation on earth is part of. If we lose our apprenticeships, our industrial base, then we will eventually become a third world nation lorded over by the financiers in the City. We will produce nothing and destroy the prosperity that our people deserve. There will be no outlet for the inventiveness of the British people apart from financial speculation and gambling, and we have seen where that leads to.
We have become a service industry country and have deliberately destroyed our industrial base, privatised our industries and sold them off to foreign owners. We are no longer in charge of our own future but are swept along by the winds of teh global market. Some have grown rich off teh back of it, but many more will grow poor.
We have lost self-sufficiency in energy and are at the mercy of foreign producers who can cut our gas supplies off. We are no longer independent, but globally dependent.
We are not the powerhouse of Europe and may soon need handouts from Germany too. Germany is the powerhouse of Europe, the world's largest or second largest exporter, a country built on manufacturing excellence, whose firm Siemens has got teh contract that means we have this week had to shut another of our engineering companies down.
Germany is a rich country, its wealth based on exports of manufactured goods. Cars can be made cheaper in Japan, but the world still buys quality German products like BMW and Porsche.
'What's the point of paying over the odds for local products when all that achieves is an unreasonable strengthening of our currency and hence the crippling of our exports? Exports are what brings money into the country and allows us to buy things from abroad without an even bigger deficit and crippled currency.'
We pay over the odds in order to protect our industries and our people, because we think of tomorrow and not just today. We want a future for our nation, not something that will just let bankers and fat cats make hay for today.
We have destroyed our exporting manufacturing industry, we import manufactured cars and goods from abroad. We are selling our people down the river for the benefit of the global, banking financiers.
'We have to find things we can offer at a competitive price (specialisation, in other words) to the rest of the world, or accept that production of something that's cheaper to source abroad means accepting its lower subjective value and hence accepting that you'll earn very little for producing it.'
No, we have to invest in our industry and our people, not in our competitors.
If you ran a family business, would you not employ your children first, or would you invest your money and give employment to people on teh other side of the world, just because they could make the same goods cheaper.
If you do that, then you'll soon find you have no money left, and you will undergo cuts and cuts in your living standards and fall behind your competitors. Then, you will have sold your future and will be at the mercy of the IMF. You won't be strong like manufacturing giant Germany, you'll end up poor like Greece, owned lock, stock and barrel by the bankers.