Current Affairs EU In or Out

In or Out

  • In

    Votes: 688 67.9%

  • Out

    Votes: 325 32.1%
  • Total voters
    1,013
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The Esk said:
The audacity of a Thatcher supporter blaming Blair or Brown for the destruction of British industry .
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Industry has changed, it hasn't been destroyed. If you look at the manufacturing that is thriving in Britain it's in the high end of things around university towns such as Cambridge. What has changed is that we no longer offer much in the low-skill side of manufacturing, in large part because trying to compete on cost with China, Mexico et al would be madness, so we've moved up to compete more on quality.

I think I'm right in saying, for instance, that the manufacturing sector has seen faster growth in masters degree holders than any industry in the UK.

The challenge, both politically and socially, is in providing work for those with few skills, and I feel that this notion that we should have a manufacturing industry to provide work for such people is rather fanciful.
 
Tubey said:
Cwa8jWZXgAAIdH5.jpg:large


lol
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Where's that. the Supreme Court?:eek:
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Industry has changed, it hasn't been destroyed. If you look at the manufacturing that is thriving in Britain it's in the high end of things around university towns such as Cambridge. What has changed is that we no longer offer much in the low-skill side of manufacturing, in large part because trying to compete on cost with China, Mexico et al would be madness, so we've moved up to compete more on quality.

I think I'm right in saying, for instance, that the manufacturing sector has seen faster growth in masters degree holders than any industry in the UK.

The challenge, both politically and socially, is in providing work for those with few skills, and I feel that this notion that we should have a manufacturing industry to provide work for such people is rather fanciful.
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That's certainly true mate. A lot of these business's are small/medium family business's and there's a worrying trend that many of them (not surprisingly) are selling up to overseas companies, mainly from China. Korea and India. On the one hand you would welcome this overseas investment, but there is still the worry that the long term goals of these overseas investors is, once they've acquired the expertise, goodwill and reputation of the UK business, they will move the manufacturing overseas to cut costs.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Industry has changed, it hasn't been destroyed. If you look at the manufacturing that is thriving in Britain it's in the high end of things around university towns such as Cambridge. What has changed is that we no longer offer much in the low-skill side of manufacturing, in large part because trying to compete on cost with China, Mexico et al would be madness, so we've moved up to compete more on quality.

I think I'm right in saying, for instance, that the manufacturing sector has seen faster growth in masters degree holders than any industry in the UK.

The challenge, both politically and socially, is in providing work for those with few skills, and I feel that this notion that we should have a manufacturing industry to provide work for such people is rather fanciful.
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In a macro sense, I agree Bruce. There are positive and negative effects on the labour market. I'm sure that a degree level employee in a manufacturing business would be earning a lot more than an unskilled person and this is ace. Sadly, these unskilled or low skilled people who are less in demand are going to struggle to find work unless we make it a lot easier to re-train (or just train).

Relating it back to the original point though, there's some hypocrisy in blaming Blair and Brown but neglecting to mention Thatcher.

At least Blair and Brown invested hugely in education (not always in the most efficient sense, but they certainly did invest).

Thatcher hit the accelerator in destrying the industry for low-skilled workers and did little to help them to re-train.
 
abelard said:
"How the UK got into this situation is told in detail by two books: Nicholas Comfort’s Surrender: How British Industry Gave Up The Ghost 1952-2012, which deals especially with the collapse of British manufacturing in the late twentieth century, and David Kynaston’s The City of London: Club No More: 1945-2000, which chronicles the corresponding failure of British financial institutions and their displacement by international competitors...Kynaston and Comfort are best read in tandem, and the cumulative impact of their histories is devastating.

The most telling chapters of Surrender are those dealing with the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, because they give the lie to the claim that Margaret Thatcher as prime minister arrested and reversed Britain’s industrial decline. Some of the most damaging cases of British industrial collapse took place during and following her period of office, and are well described by Comfort. Among them was the implosion in 2004 of GEC, a sprawling engineering conglomerate and a rough British counterpart to GE as the UK’s market leader in power generation, industrial control systems, and defense electronics."

The next five paragraphs describe this process in detail, citing several other examples.




"As a member of the EU, Britain was able to prevent this, but outside the EU it will be highly vulnerable to further regulatory assaults from Brussels."
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I like how Maggie is getting the blame for GEC in 2004 after we had had a Labour Government since 1997......
 
Pienaar's gloves said:
In a macro sense, I agree Bruce. There are positive and negative effects on the labour market. I'm sure that a degree level employee in a manufacturing business would be earning a lot more than an unskilled person and this is ace. Sadly, these unskilled or low skilled people who are less in demand are going to struggle to find work unless we make it a lot easier to re-train (or just train).

Relating it back to the original point though, there's some hypocrisy in blaming Blair and Brown but neglecting to mention Thatcher.

At least Blair and Brown invested hugely in education (not always in the most efficient sense, but they certainly did invest).

Thatcher hit the accelerator in destrying the industry for low-skilled workers and did little to help them to re-train.
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I think Thatcher has a lot to answer for full stop.
 
The Esk said:
The audacity of a Thatcher supporter blaming Blair or Brown for the destruction of British industry .
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Not audacity. I was in the GEC meetings during that turbulent phase, I didn't read about it, I was physically there. Thatcher was long gone, but your mate Gordon Brown took away the legs from under a once great and giant company. The senior people within this company know what happened and exactly who was to blame......
 
peteblue said:
Not audacity. I was in the GEC meetings during that turbulent phase, I didn't read about it, I was physically there. Thatcher was long gone, but your mate Gordon Brown took away the legs from under a once great and giant company. The senior people within this company know what happened and exactly who was to blame......
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In fairness Pete, thatcher had decimated industry to an almost FUBAR state long before then. Yes she'd been gone for 13-14yrs, but her idealogy & legacy tore the arse out of the manufacturing sector.

Had we had an economic policy similar to the German's mittelstand instead of being over-reliant on financial & services then I'd have imagined our exit from the EU would've been a lot smoother.
 
Pienaar's gloves said:
In a macro sense, I agree Bruce. There are positive and negative effects on the labour market. I'm sure that a degree level employee in a manufacturing business would be earning a lot more than an unskilled person and this is ace. Sadly, these unskilled or low skilled people who are less in demand are going to struggle to find work unless we make it a lot easier to re-train (or just train).

Relating it back to the original point though, there's some hypocrisy in blaming Blair and Brown but neglecting to mention Thatcher.

At least Blair and Brown invested hugely in education (not always in the most efficient sense, but they certainly did invest).

Thatcher hit the accelerator in destrying the industry for low-skilled workers and did little to help them to re-train.
Click to expand...

That's still the case now. In large parts, the key is agility, so if jobs dry up in one region, it's relatively easy to move to different regions. If jobs dry up in one industry or skills area, it's possible to re-train for new areas.

Things like the free movement of people therefore is key to that first thing, and something the EU have got spot on, but domestically we haven't, as I've said many times, our local authorities are not empowered to cope with large movement of people.

In the re-training side of things, we still focus almost exclusively on <21 education, and whilst that's important, if we believe the projections that we will have 3-4-5 different careers in our lifetimes, the emphasis surely has to shift on constant re-learning. This is a huge problem, as there are chunks of society that probably don't value learning a whole lot, and quite probably don't have the skills to be always learning (knowing how to learn if you like). So even if the means to learn exist, there remains a gap, and that's manifesting itself in Brexit, Trump and so on.

Rest assured though, leaving the EU or voting in a Trump isn't going to help rectify any of the above.
 
peteblue said:
Not audacity. I was in the GEC meetings during that turbulent phase, I didn't read about it, I was physically there. Thatcher was long gone, but your mate Gordon Brown took away the legs from under a once great and giant company. The senior people within this company know what happened and exactly who was to blame......
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That's a new spin on it Pete, it was Gordon Brown not Lord Simpson and Mayo who brought about the demise of GEC/ Marconi?
 
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