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.

I feel like I've fallen through the space-time continium and arrived in the 1930s.
Do people really think that the route to economic growth is through protectionism?

inappa, you've been conned by the one message they always sell you.

Listen to Sir James Goldsmith, billionaire, who was against globalisation and in favour of protectionism arguing against one of Clinton's leftist globalisation supporting economic advisers

There were some policy ideas on investing in green technology - develop Britain as a world leader - reinvigorating our manufacturing industries and building on our world class research base.

However it seems we are currently in the process of missing the boat on that one. Shame, as it looks like a huge growth area.

inappa - "I feel like I've fallen through the space-time continium and arrived in the 1930s.
Do people really think that the route to economic growth is through protectionism?"

Some do, apparently.

Listen to Goldsmith. He is good.

HHLimbo - policies advocating investment in emerging green technologies are a great idea, IMO. It's a great opportunity to invest in something that would have a good chance of a decent return while at the same time encouraging growth. As you said, that ship is beginning to set sail without us now, though.

That's an example of where government can help prosperity. Propping up failing industry is not.

clag are you seriously saying that somehow because Bob Crowe and Arthur Scargill support your policies that somehow makes them credible?

So you are saying that billionaire industrialists, Oil, Gas, Metals, and other commodities moguls are behind a global green movement to decrease our reliance on their products and to tax and regulate their respective industries far more highly?

Just checking.

If you think totally cutting ourselves off from a continent that is pretty much the only guaranteed source of meaningful economic growth over the next few years (Asia) is a good economic strategy then you (imho) are out of your mind.

Not sure your idea of cutting ourselves off from the US (a country to which we export around £35 billion worth of goods to a year) is that genius a move either.

'So you are saying that billionaire industrialists, Oil, Gas, Metals, and other commodities moguls are behind a global green movement to decrease our reliance on their products and to tax and regulate their respective industries far more highly?'

The billionaires are just like the Roman emperors of old. They have riches beyond compare. The mangers at BP etc. are just employees on high wages, here today and gone tomorrow, just like political leaders. Money is not their end goal, just like Roman emperors, it is power and control over society. Political leaders do their bidding or they find themselves gone tomorrow. Look at the power that News International had and the incredible things they were up to. All of the leaders follow the same green policies, they are not defying the emperors, they are doing their bidding. The world is not what it seems, just as we have seen in teh News International affair. The real objectives are often different to what they seem.

Sir Jonathon doesn't do what he does for money. He wants lower growth, reduced and controlled population, and less prosperity. So do the emperors, because they are as rich as Croesus, they want to stop the peasants prospering.

Not everything that Bob Crowe and Arthur Scargill say is wrong. I used them because I thought you were a left winger.

"Listen to Sir James Goldsmith, billionaire, who was against globalisation"

He certainly was, wasn't he

In 1990, Goldsmith also began a lower-profile global "private equity style" investment operation. By 1994 executives working in his employ in Hong Kong had built a substantial position in the intermediation of global strategic raw-material flows. Studies of public filings have found signs of the same Goldsmith-backed Hong Kong-based team taking stakes in operations as diverse as Soviet strategic ports in Vladivostok and Vostochny, and in Zee TV, India's dominant private television broadcaster later sold to Rupert Murdoch. A large Hong Kong-linked and Goldsmith-funded stake in one of the world's largest nickel operations, INCO Indonesia, was also disclosed in the 1990s, showing Goldsmith's ability to position capital before a trend became obvious to others. The Group was also a major backer of the Hong Kong based and Singapore listed major raw material player Noble Group

I'm not sure your other conspiraloon nonsense about a global environmental billionare elite warrants a response tbh

'I'm not sure your other conspiraloon nonsense about a global environmental billionare elite warrants a response tbh'

that's ok. When you understand it, then you can reply. I'm patient.

"Not everything that Bob Crowe and Arthur Scargill say is wrong. I used them because I thought you were a left winger."

My point was that I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people outside the far left who would agree with your desire for massively increased levels of privitisation / protectionism.

The BNP fully fall in line with your new world order, they're extremely left wing in their economic outlook but hugely conservative in their social policy; a dichotomy one might find in a rabid supporter of the Daily Mail who's also in favour of command economy insularity.

Don't you think that powerful people conspire to achieve their ends?
What was the News of the World doing with this phone hacking scandal?

Miserable.

He is too

"Don't you think that powerful people conspire to achieve their ends?
What was the News of the World doing with this phone hacking scandal?"

you're conflating all sorts of rambling nonsense ranging from a global elite who want a cull in the earths population and are so rich they don't care for money anymore and so want the worlds economy to shrink to corruption at a tabloid newspaper.

Conspiraloon wacko mumblings from the dark recesses of the interweb imo.

Are they all shape shifting lizards too?

'My point was that I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people outside the far left who would agree with your desire for massively increased levels of privitisation / protectionism.'

I found billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. He wasn't far left or BNP and nor am I and nor are the millions of good people who read the Daily Mail.

But I am not surprised that you call me a conspiraloon and equate me and Daily Mail readers with the BNP. Insults are always the last resort of a person losing a debate.

Oh dear, now we're onto lizards. No they're not lizards. Any other insults you'd care to throw?

'We both know it wont happen though...off to bed now having consumed a v nice bottle of locally sourced wine...'

. I've been drinking wine too, but it was a French one. I will have to seek out a locally produced one too. You can never have too much wine.

'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.'

I disagree with you about it being 'sunk cost'. That is the bean counter mentality. It is all about investment for the future, just like education is an investment without returns today but which will provide tremendous returns for the future. It's about not cutting your nose off to spite your face, about continuing to keep businesses open ande people employed so that you can produce new products tomorrow. It's about maintaining skills in shipbuilding, aerospace and engineering so that you maintain the skills necessary to create teh products of tomorrow, just as education trains children today who will contribute tomorrow.

We may be good at pharmaceuticals today, but there is nothing to stop that changing just as it has changed in other industries.

Somewhat alarmed to find myself agreeing with claig ...

Green initiatives are nearly all a scam. There is ample documentation of this, from reliable sources. Billions of taxpayers' money, from our country and others, has been sunk into renewable energy and recycling schemes which are nothing but cynical manipulations. It is actually true that many of them exist primarily as means to other ends.

It's too late to find my sources now. There's some hare-brained solar power scheme going on the Sahara. In order to cool the equipment needed to convert the power to electricity, deep underground water will have to be mined under the desert. This will lead to further desertification, hyper-salination of the coastal waters and possible collapse of the ground. Last time I looked, we were still pumping money into it.

hi garlicnutter. You certainly are no nutter, please change the last part of your name. By the way I am also a garlic nut, it is magic stuff.
Don't bother wasting your time with links, it won't persuade the majority, they have imbibed the messages they have been told. One day they will come to the same conclusion, they are not ready yet, it will take a long time.

claig - "We may be good at pharmaceuticals today, but there is nothing to stop that changing just as it has changed in other industries."

I don't work in phamaceuticals as it happens but I can see why you might think I do, from my post.

"I disagree with you about it being 'sunk cost'. That is the bean counter mentality. It is all about investment for the future, just like education is an investment without returns today but which will provide tremendous returns for the future."

Considering sunk cost doesn't preclude investment in research and development and training.

It's a case of looking realistically at what a brand, product, production line, marketing campaign, warehouse, software system or stock (or one of a multitude of other tangible elements) might be worth to the business going forward. You make a decision based upon projections and theoretical future values and take them into account.

We invest millions (in fact hundreds of millions on one project recently) and years of loss-making into the future of our technologies and facilities, when there is evidence that it's the right thing to do.

As I said, you just don't throw good money after bad which is what would have happened if UK PLC had propped up many of those industries which have now gone.

You have to be realistic and propping up a failed industry is not the way forward.

...it won't persuade the majority, they have imbibed the messages they have been told. One day they will come to the same conclusion, they are not ready yet, it will take a long time.

I'm sorry claig, but patronising rhetoric isn't helping your argument. Some of us are living the reality of global industry on a daily basis, not just repeating what we've been told.

'As I said, you just don't throw good money after bad which is what would have happened if UK PLC had propped up many of those industries which have now gone.
You have to be realistic and propping up a failed industry is not the way forward.'

But banking was the biggest failed industry ever, and that was propped up.

Look at the largest capitalist country on earth - the United States. They bailed out and propped up their car industry - Ford and General Motors. They didn't let it go to the wall along with its hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The car industry is not a 'failed industry'. Look at the world's number one exporting nation - Germany, with its Volkswagens, Audis, BMWs and Porsches. Look at France which propped up Renault, Peugeot and Citroen and Italy which propped up Fiat. They didn't say they were 'failed industries', throw their hands up and throw them to the wall.

It's about investment for the future, less profit today in order to gain more profit in the future. Our engineers and people are just as clever as any others in the world, but they don't receive the same investment as others do. Our engineers could have made a TGV train or an Ariane space rocket, but they would have needed investment.

'Some of us are living the reality of global industry on a daily basis'

and some people are living the reality of globalisation on a daily basis - unemployed or in low-paid low skill jobs because manufacturing has declined, because they worked in 'failed industries' and their jobs vanished abroad.

'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.'

I must admit I'd never heard of 'creative destruction'.
You have to laugh, that's some kind of Orwellian newspeak, a bit like 'collateral damage' for people's jobs and lives.