UK slowdown worst amongst advanced nations - but why

[LadyMuck]

IMF seems to view that the UK economy will shrink more than the Eurozone or the US this year. Why is it looking so bad in comparison with these 2? Any economists out there?

50% of the growth in tax revenue in the past decade has come from the Financial Services Sector. The decline in this is going to leave one almighty black hole in the ountry's finances.

we have the most unsecured debt, plus our government has a massive overdraft..

because gordon brown sold off our gold reserves?

sorrento - if people migrate here to work - surely they then migrate somewhere else when there is no work ? They don't have a reason to stay long term if there is no work - surely they would prefer to be at home with no work than in a foreign country ?

But as to the larger question - we have spent 30+ years running down our manufacturing base in favour of service and financial services. So we have very little to export and have to import most of our needs.

I am guessing America is similar - but being so big and so crucial to the global scene it is going to be propped up by others if necessary - we however are small fry.

I think a contributing factor to the catastrophic economic mismanagement has been the non-dom tax policy.

It creates the illusion that London is a vastly wealthy city. My mind always boggles in those helicopter shots of London in The Apprentice - just the trillions of pounds worth of property you see in one shot. But I wouldn't be surprised if I read that SW1 contained fewer taxpayers than Orkney or Oban.

Throck:- I completely understand that and many are returning, but honestly why the heck should they ? I moved countries with a young child and it's not a decission anybody takes lightly and having settled here, made a life I don't see why they should return.

The non-dom policy means that people who aren't ordinarily resident only pay tax on income that is earned/ brought into the UK. In other words, they don't pay tax on savings held offshore unless they bring it in to the UK. That does however mean they pay tax on any mony which arises from employment/ economic activity within the UK.

I agree with Spokette that we need a government with a long term plan.

I really hope the long term plan will be emcompassing green issues. Not building more airports.

I think a lot of jobs have been lost in the country by outsourcing work overseas..eg. call centres in India.

Consumers have also expected to buy cheap clothes meaning it was no longer viable to make clothes in this country and they have to be bought in from overseas. The same for china.

I don't think privatising the railways or public utilities has been a good thing. The French have a state run railway which runs more efficiently and with cheaper fares than ours. Now that our engergy is provided by EDF (french owned) and others we are having to pay higher prices for electricity and gas than people in Europe.
Companies such as British gas have been fragmented meaning that if you smell gas one company turns the gas off and then 2 days later another company comes to fix the boiler.

I hope that more money is invested in green energy sources (not nuclear power) and rail travel.

I also hope the financial companies will be better regulated so that people are not allowed to borrow more than 3 times their salary to buy a house. City bonuses also need to be smaller. Otherwise if you are in the South East the city workers are able to snap up property every time they get a bonus meaning prices go up for everyone.

But chocolatedot that is nothing new, it has always been the case, Rod Stewart and the beatles moved to the USA in the 70's to avoid tax, it really is only the little people who pay tax in this country ie anybody on PAYE.

One of the things is the have everything attitude - hence big debits.

For the ecomomy it's keeping afloat industry that can't survive at recent production levels - why are we paying for the car industry when it's mostly foreign owned?

Building at Heathrow - madness.

It will be worse here than anywhere else because Gordon Brown led a policy to build econonomic growth on 3 pillars.

1. The financial services industry
2. Property Prices
3. Debt

Oh dear.

Sadly, and loathe as I am to admit it my Mother has been proved right. All labour governments bring this country to it's knees.
My only regret is voting for them frankly.

If all your money is coming out of the ground in Saudi Arabia or from iTunes and you live in London but carefully bugger off to Monaco for the requisite number of days a year, you enjoy all the benefits of living in the UK but you don't contribute anything to society.

But you'd have have money held in the UK in order to live and that money you pay tax on. There's only 110,000 non-dom's anyway (less than the population of Kensington & Chelsea) alone) so I struggle to see how that was a major factor in the bust.

I wasn't born in the UK and so am non-dom. I have however paid PAYE tax for the past 20 years and while I don't pay tax on interest earned on savings held in my own country, the minute I bring any of that money into the country, it of course becomes taxable. I suspect the vast majority of non-doms fall into that category i.e. they have jobs in the UK.

Sorrento

1. Immigrants/Migrants to the UK come from places other than the Eastern Europe, Africa and Asian sub-continent. I mention the latter two because people with your mindset always pick on those groups too.

In fact, how many immigrants/migrants do you think come from countries like Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Germany, France, Sweden etc. Funny how the non-immigration lobby never rail against those groups?

1. Many immigrants to the UK are actually highly skilled and do highly skilled work, e.g. doctors, nurses, software engineers, chemists, mathematicians, hedgefund managers etc. Quite a few are also business owners and employ British people. My DH works at a university and over half the professors are immigrants. My DM is Jamaican and if it was not for her and many of her colleagues, the NHS would struggle.

1. Would you also stop emigration? Would you stop British people working abroad in places like Dubai, Nigeria, USA, Australia as a quid pro quo trade off?

1. Would you tell the ever growing British expat community in Spain, France, Italy that they were depriving the indigenous population in those countries of accommodation, jobs etc?

Your logic is seriously flawed, ill-conceived and based on some warped belief that limiting immigration/migration equals employment for the indigeneous.

Why don't you just be honest and say that you don't mind immigrants as long as they come from acceptable countries?

No, you're trying to put words in my mouth and read things that simply aren't there at all.
Immigration alone isn't the problem in times of plenty but no provision is put into place when times are hard and we've basically increased the mouths we now need and rightly should feed.
I do not care in the slightest what colour/nationality these people are we should not be importing labour whilst allowing the indigenous popualtion to sit on their arses.
As for skilled workers, how many points are required to get into the UK I wonder ?

Actually no Kerry some poor souls are sleeping on the streets because they were promised a better life and have sold everything they owned to fund a trip to the UK and are now to ashamed to go home.

i don't buy this 'small island' thing.

sorry, but after having lived in the Phillipines and some other densely populated places like that there's no comparison.

Planning laws make ours a small island expat.

Hmm - think I better get on to Robert Peston and tell him our economic situation is due to immigration.

What and then nobody wants to trade with us, top idea as we're just so self sufficent aren't we