labour under milliband

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Beast of Burden
I do know somebody who is trying to get money together to open a new seam near Aberdare and who also (at the same time) rents out rooms in his vast house in Glyneath to miners who have migrated to Wales to work. There's life in those valleys, yet.

The examples I gave were (possibly) a bit silly, but state support for industry and manafacturing beyond the vague promise of a technical baccalaureate is not risible or impossible, and shouldn't be ignored by Labour. I mean, Peter Mandelson put up a better fight for this than anybody has since. All the Tories could muster was a humiliating trade junket to China.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd have thought a better bet would be to invest in the kind of developmental hi-tech industry that's not (yet) feasible in quite the same way in for example China because of a lack of personnel with the requisite training. I mean, it's telling that I had to leave the UK for Holland to get a worthwhile job with a big tech firm.

But so many Chinese are being educated at top American and European universities these days that this will cease to be a factor eventually.
 
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Beast of Burden
I haven't got a clue, mind -- but there must be options other than banks, shopping, computers, tourism and state employment. I remember watching a documentary about the shipyards that made the big Cunard Liners and such, that were undercut by the Japanese -- they sank because others made better ships for cheaper prices, but also because there was no political will to save them or even the energy or ideas to compete. So they all closed and are surrounded by ageing and unemployed dockers and shipbuilders moaning about it. A lot of the problems were caused by globalisation, but also by the Thatcher administrations, but these were compounded by Blair and Brown who effectively chose to let the manafacturing base disintegrate, placing their bets on finance and technology. It didn't innovate or change, it disappeared.

There is lack of imagination and courage in think tank and policy wonk land. The most daring ideas are the most gimmicky. The most serious issues are the ones everybody is scared to talk about -- or defend. This is partly because the frames of reference are so narrow now and everything is petrified by the news cycle. There is also an endemic fatalism that feeds it.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
so you have all these people saying you lot are mollycoddled you should live like chinese wage slaves or something but that is self defeating it seems to me. a high wage economy is the only one that can support coffee shops and resturaunts and whatnot. one man that can afford 100000 coffees a day is not as valuable as a million people that can afford one coffee a day for fairly straightfoward obvious reasons.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
How does Germany manage? They still have lots of industry and I bet people there earn high wages. Maybe it's that they never had hardline union wreckers in the 60s/70s followed by a Thatcherite backlash, I would guess.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
A high-wage economy is a great thing but it requires industries that make valuable products that people, especially people in other countries, want to buy.

I think a lot of people in Britain would be surprised to know how much stuff we still manufacture and export. Less than we used to, obviously, but still a fair amount.
 
hmg

hmg

Victory lap
Obviously, massive resources should be sent this way so that the UK can control access to space

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqv45

Also a tidal barrage in the Severn Estuary, a space elevator on Diego Garcia, Thorium reactor commercialisation, a 3D-printer in every classroom, every home. Deregulation of pharmaceuticals, GM and embryology would be a winner - if we're an atheist country, fucking well live up to out by creating hideous genetic chimaeras.
 
hmg

hmg

Victory lap
What happened in this country over the past 25 years or so is that most of the smart, energetic, talented people ended up completing their engineering, physics, maths and chemistry degrees only to be recruited by employers in the Square Mile. And we all know how that went - was there actually any net gain produced by the financial industries after the massive bailout in 2008?

So all the country's talent either went into the City to get fat, rich and right wing; or crossed the Atlantic to research and innovate over there. Meanwhile our own research and manufacturing goes into a flat spin. If the best we can do is a range of Dyson vacuum cleaners and a few luxury cars, we deserve to be fucked. Run the banks out of town so clever folk can return to doing what they do best rather than what provides te greatest short-term reward.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
A high-wage economy is a great thing but it requires industries that make valuable products that people, especially people in other countries, want to buy.
Click to expand...

well thats a bit simplistic but yes you have to sell something.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I think a lot of people in Britain would be surprised to know how much stuff we still manufacture and export. Less than we used to, obviously, but still a fair amount.
Click to expand...

this is what robinson is space is about as im sure you know.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
luka said:
we make weapons.
Click to expand...

Surprising number of planes, too. I mean civilian passenger planes. Also quite a lot of other big machinery and infrastructure type stuff. Stuff that brings in money although I suppose the %age of the population directly involved in making it probably isn't that big.
 
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