How miserable are you that the Tories are in power?

[sundayrose10]

I feel tense and twitchy. I used to enjoy reading the politic section/ other political forums, but I fear if I keep on going there and reading more and more about Tory plans, I will give myself a heart attack.

I loath them but worst I fear them. I am anxious for this country and the ordinary man and woman.

Dave makes me feel insane with hatred.

I have a colleague who is in love with the Tories. I don't share biscuits with him any more.

Dave makes me itch. All over.

food tokens is that so people feel embarrassed that they are on benefits. what about a person who has worked for years and is made redundant and unable to find another job as the factory in their town they worked in was the main employer and has shut down

shoudl those on disability or sickness benefits have tokens too

Labour of course did do many good things too. Unfortunately much of this was unfunded and from borrowed money. Oh god, not this again. There are people who are far more knowledgable than me in this area but I am sick of people saying this as a simple fact. My understanding is that it is normal practise for countries to borrow money and have a defisit etc. the British one was not that huge compared to others, until the banking crisis. This was a world-wide crisis that Labour did. Not. Cause.

A country's budget does not work in the same way as a household budget, why won't people understand that? The governemnt should now be looking at ways of promoting growth - creating jobs, not cutting them and creating more benefit claimants.

My family now has a lower disposable income than before, due to the combination of a pay-freeze, high inflation and fuel costs. Therefore, we have cut right back on our spending, like thousands of other families. This is not the way we are going to recover from this recession,whoever you choose to believe caused it.

the point of that is to strengthen the country, provide jobs and wealth for teh citizens

How does state-subsidy create wealth for the citizens? Where does the money miraculously appear from? "That sack of coal you just mined is only worth £5 on the open market, but here's £10 for it".

...Siemens has got teh contract that means we have this week had to shut another of our engineering companies down.

Bombardier is Canadian, not British.

We pay over the odds in order to protect our industries and our people

Protectionism has never helped anyone. Where has that system ever created prosperity? It hasn't, other than in the very short term.

I work (at a senior level) for a global manufacturing business, by the way. We produce very competitively in the UK and export more than we import (we sell things here that were made in other countries as well as UK).

If we become un-competitive due to pressures from overseas manufacturers we use creative destruction and the comparative advantage of our people to create products with more subjective value, not expect a state handout.

mauricetinkler, years ago I read a book by Anthony Sampson about who owns Britain, who owns the land, who has the power. It's a handful compared to the rest of the population and something like 90% of the land is unused. I can't remember the figures. Then the green lackeys of this same elite rich handful of people tell us we are using too many resources, and that new houses will be ever and ever smaller, because there isn't enough land and we're using it all up.They want to stop development, dtop building, stop airports, stop building roads and new towns that will enable people to prosper and create wealth and grow and move out of London. They want us crammed together in ever smaller spaces, while the rest of the land remains green and pristine, conserved for the dung beetle alone.

"mauricetinkler, don't believe the population growth lies. That's the greens, lackeys to the elite."

Yup, no right wingers have ever used the "we're too overcrowded in the UK" argument against immigration have they clag? Just the greens.

Anyone who thinks things would have been vastly different if we'd had the Tories in charge is being a little naive imo.

Both parties have drifted towards the centre to the point where they have been on a ideology free middle ground race to the bottom where PR and spin are the only real thing they put any effort into.

It bares repeating that the Tories committed to spending exactly the same amount as NuLab (more on the NHS) right up until the credit crunch and yet there's this myth (bought into by many on here seemingly) that they would have been less spendthrift.

They are also not a party that has any love of regulation, especially of financial institutions and I guarantee you we would have had just the same banking implosion (if not worse) if they had been in power. They were recommending less regulation of the mortgage industry just before it blew up and nearly took the entire global economy with it.

As NuLab were and are too chummy with the unions The Tories are waaay too chummy with the city and incredibly reliant on them for their funding. It's these financial institutions that caused the recession with their incompetence and greed and it's us who are suffering because of it.

This partisan bunfight where people are being apologists for Dave the lightweight wet lettuce and his Nu Blue crew we currently have running the country just because he isn't as bad as Gordon Brown and the Nulab disaster are missing the point; he's not as bad as Gordon Brown and Nulab just yet but will be, just in a slightly different way.

btw Clag, are you aware your idol Paul Dacre (editor, leader writer and beating heart of the Daily Hate Mail) said this of our last prime minister:

"I have an awful lot of admiration for Gordon Brown. I feel he is one of the very few politicians of this administration who's touched by the mantle of greatness"

Didn't you say recently that the Daily Mail is always right?

"Open up factories, produce basic goods, TVs, laptops, furniture, cutlery, cooking utensils, hoovers etc. Stop importing it all from abroad, stop shipping the people's jobs abroad and stop depriving people of work, hope and wages."

Wow, Claig I thought you were a Tory and yet here you are recommending protectionist, command economy policies that would make a communist very happy. The BNP have policies much like yours in their manifest too btw.

Where's your free market sensibility or are you a closet commie?

Was the plant in Derby originally a British company that was taken over by Bombardier of Canada or was it a new plant built by Bombardier from scratch. Bombardier took over our Short Brothers of Belfast.
But that is just one example. Our manufacturing industry has been decimated and our car industry has disappeared unlike that of France, Germany and Italy. I'm surprised that you aren't upset by that especially as you work in manufacturing.

'Protectionism has never helped anyone.'
That's what the bankers say. Of course it has. Why do you think teh Greek people are rioting over privatisation. They know their industries and futures are being forcibly privatised by foreign bankers and that their future is being given away. Why do you think that countries like France have many of their key industries in state hands, including some of their banks. Why do you think that France still has Renault producing cars. They subsidise their industries so that they are able to exist for tomorrow. Why do you think that Charles De Gaulle nationalised large parts of French industry and turned France into the technological fo4rce that it is today, with its Ariane space rockets, TGV trains and technological achievements. Why do you think that our great engineers had to abandon plans for their superfast trains, when countries like Italy, another great engineering country with its Ferraris and Bugattis, has teh superfast pendolino train. It's all about investment and subsidy to produce the goods of tomorrow.

'If we become un-competitive due to pressures from overseas manufacturers we use creative destruction and the comparative advantage of our people to create products with more subjective value, not expect a state handout.'

What do you manufacture? I think that when the tide turns, one day you may change your tune, and join with those who deplore the loss of manufacturing capacity in this country. When the senior management decides that what you make can be done cheaper in teh Philippines, then you may see what the rest of manufacturing has been saying for decades.

'Yup, no right wingers have ever used the "we're too overcrowded in the UK" argument against immigration have they clag? Just the greens.'

The right wingers run the greens. The greens are lackeys of the billionaires. They are all for population reduction, low growth and sustainability. Exactly the policy that the super rich have always wanted to keep the breeding masses, the peasants and the hoi polloi in their place.

claig - what you are saying is all v good and laudable. But, to compete on the global scale in manufacturing the UK would have to do one of two things. It would 1 - have to accept that those who worked in manufacturing worked for chronically low wages. Which would never happen due to legislation or 2 - the govt would have to subsidise it - which it cant afford to...unless it prints money. Which is daft.
To say we can go back to mass manufacturing is just...pissing in the wind. Where we can make a difference is in the niche manufacturing, high end technology transfer etc and there is plenty of that going on. The horse bolted on mass manufacturing in the UK 25 yrs ago.

btw Claig, are you aware your idol Paul Dacre (editor, leader writer and beating heart of the Daily Hate Mail) said this of our last prime minister:

"I have an awful lot of admiration for Gordon Brown. I feel he is one of the very few politicians of this administration who's touched by the mantle of greatness"

Yes, he was uncharacteristically wrong on that occasion. I don't know if he had been drinking when he said that.

We can agree that the Daily Mail is not always right, but we can also agree that it is the best we have.

Oh and you think that things would be hunky dory with a Labour Government

'The horse bolted on mass manufacturing in the UK 25 yrs ago'

The horse bolted because we deliberately opened the stable door and pushed it out.

We can be protectionist, even within a European Union as France always wanted. But we were always sold lies against the French protectionist policies, because our elite wanted to privatise our industries and sell them off to foreign ownership and because it wanted to follow liberal free trade globalisation policies, which led to the destruction of our manufacturing base and destroyed our self-sufficiency in energy production etc.

We would pull out of EU for me claig. But it wouldnt make a jot of difference because in the Far East there are people who are cleverer, harder working, hungrier and happier to be paid a low wage to produce manufactured goods than there are in the UK. You simply can't manufacture goods en masse in the UK at a profit within the current legislative and political framework.

mauricetinkler, you would have to impose tariffs on foreign goods, so that you increase the competitiveness of home-made goods. France often followed that policy, but we always derided it and said we wanted liberal, laissez-faire free trade policies. That was alright for the global investors and financiers since they invested in shares of our competitors which rocketed up, but it wasn't good for our industries and people.

No change will happen because all parties support globalisation, but if there is a will, there is a way and it could be changed and agreements could be made with France and possibly Germany that we would all carry out the same policy in unison, which is partly how the French wanted the EU to be.

Well, claig, interesting argument. But surely the tariff business only answers half the question - ie how we stop UK being flooded with cheap foreign imports. But how do we export our expensive to produce (by global standards) products? Who would want them?

Maurice. Not sure I follow you. Yes, so people elsewhere may be happy with a low wage. They may not have the benefit of MW protections, like this country does. Or is that your point?

erm, k999, i was just making point that in the far east countries can knock products out for next to nothing because there are not the employment law and min wage restrictions there are here. in most manufacturing scenarios, labour is the major cost of the good. in the uk labour and employment related costs are so much higher.

Clag, do you not think that seeing as the BNP are the only party I can think of who would endorse your protectionist command economy and privitisation policies that you might not be onto a winner there?

Do you really think the Daily Mail would endorse these policies?

As for your argument that the billionaire elites of this world are all rabid environmentalists I think we can safely say it makes you sound pretty much like an environmentalist yourself, just minus the environ. The worlds richest people (industrialists, oil producers, commodities traders etc etc) are for low growth and high environmental regulation / taxes?

btw UK manufacturing is in decline and employs fewer people than before but we are still the worlds sixth largest manufacturer and as an industry it brings in hundreds of billions a year and employing over 10% of the workforce.

I'm not convinced your total revamp of the UK economy would help that tbh, in fact I'm pretty sure it would be more likely to turn us into somewhere totally insular / protectionist like North Korea.

I wouldn't call them "restrictions". I would call them fundamental rights. Being paid peanuts and getting treated like shit, just so someone can profit from mass producing crap goods, is exploitation.

good point , mauricetinkler, about how do we export. That was teh original idea of the Common Market. I think most of our imports are from the EU, and most of our exports probably go to the EU. A protectionist EU market would be a big enough market for us to prosper and export. That is a short term solution. I don't mind a common market, but I am against a political union in Europe. Also protecting our industry in teh short term would allow us to develop new technology that would increase our productivity and allow us to make future goods that were more competitive and could be sold to the rest of the world. The only reason Japan, Korea and China have advanced so much is because partly we invested there and opened our markets up to them. We could do the same in our country, but it would provide smaller profits to the bankers and investors. However, that is a price worth paying for the sake of our people and our industries.

Totally agree K999. The way of the world, I guess.

I like your last post claig and agree with a protectionist policy in the short term at least. We both know it wont happen though...off to bed now having consumed a v nice bottle of locally sourced wine...

Interesting posts claig, I see you've been thinking strategically.

What do you manufacture? I think that when the tide turns, one day you may change your tune, and join with those who deplore the loss of manufacturing capacity in this country. When the senior management decides that what you make can be done cheaper in teh Philippines, then you may see what the rest of manufacturing has been saying for decades.

It's irrelevant what we manufacture and saying what our products are would easily identify the company, suffice to say we (as a global business) are the world's largest at what we do.

As for senior management deciding what can be made cheaper in the Philippines, it would be me who would drive that. My office is in Brussels (relevant because although I work from a UK base, I'm employed over there) and I lead our end-to-end supply chain at EMEA level without prejudice towards towards the UK. That in turn means I have decision rights as to where our products are sourced for each EMEA country.

We have plants in most major European countries and freely trade between them for best effect. For example, we have a specialist centre in Rouen (France) which makes a particular product for all of EMEA, except for Nordics. Nordic plants in turn make their own version of the Rouen product and supply that into their region and also Russia. The Nordic plants make another specialist product which is sold into UK and French healthcare industries, but not their own.

We also now source products from a competitor in China which up until recently were made in Germany at one of our facilities. Germany was too expensive for a labour-intensive product, so through creative destruction, that plant looked at their comparative advantages and invested in other technologies.

Every plant is free to compete for their own market share against other plants in our group (it's carefully audited so that no one can claim to be a lower cost producer if they're not). That encourages innovation, specialisation and process improvement.

The only reason manufacturing capacity is lost in the UK is when it's not cost-effective to continue its operation. It's churlish to suggest I don't deplore the loss of our manufacturing base just because I have a realistic outlook and appreciate that there's no use in creating sunk cost (good money after bad) propping up ailing industry just for the sake of it.

The BNP may well want some of those policies, but so does Bob Crowe and Arthur Scargill and successive French governments and also billionaire Oliver Goldsmith was in favour of protectionism. I am all for free markets, but with regulation for the benefit of the people, not for the profit of bankers. I am not a communist, since they are against capitalism and private property and are just lackeys of the same billionaires that the greens are lackeys of.

'The worlds richest people (industrialists, oil producers, commodities traders etc etc) are for low growth and high environmental regulation / taxes'
the world's richest people are in favour of population reduction and use the greens to push the message and educate the public. They tell teh public that by breathing out carbon dioxide and by eating meat to make them fit and healthy, that they are contributing to teh carbon footprint and destroying the planet. There are people like Sir Jonathon Porrit, educated at Eton, who say that in the future there will come a time when it will be socially undesirable to have more than two children, in order to save the planet. They know they won't convince the people overnight, but they are slowly spreading teh message and the greens and recycling and global warming etc. are all part of Sir Jonathon's message.

'I'm not convinced your total revamp of the UK economy would help that tbh, in fact I'm pretty sure it would be more likely to turn us into somewhere totally insular / protectionist like North Korea.'

that's because you have been influenced by what the City says, the people who Gordon Brown listened to and provide light touch regulation for. They don't want protectionism because it will decrease their profits. But look at the largets capitalist country in teh world - the United States. They operate protectionism with Boeing and their aerospace industries and their computer industries and even trade in farm products. They are powerful enough to tell the world take it or leave it. They don't allow their key industries to be taken over.