UK unemployment at 17 year high

[Tony]

I thought St Mick's day was yesterday? However your post seems to be carrying over the effects. If manufacturing is up on the 60s, and from 1965 it wasn't good with the recession, if it is up, it's only up in the terms of manufacturing output and prrrrroooffit. I suspect manufacturing these days is not keeping people in work at the rate that what manufacturing in the 60s did. People (most) want to work, however greed and selfishness rule these days, even more so than back in the 60s, so pprrrrrofit first, people second.

Come on Mecky, you really should read and engage brain before you type a response.

 

Have another go.

 

The real truth is that the UK is the worlds 6th largest manufacturing nation. Back in the 60's it was 7th.

 

What's changed is that modern industry doesn't use the same manpower as it did back in the 60's. Unless we're talking about what is basically slave labour in dangerous conditions the same is true everywhere else in the world.

 

Today's current shopfloor staff may be more likely to be computer programmers than heavy lifters but don't let anyone con you into thinking that that the UK is any less of a manufacturing nation than it ever was.

 

Or perhaps you imagine that UK workers and working practices shouldn't have moved on? Perhaps you think that we should use our beaches for breaking ships by hand or maybe you'd be satisfied for generations to succumb to lung disease, machine injuries and death at the coalface?

[Mecky]

Come on Mecky, you really should read and engage brain before you type a response.

 

Have another go.

 

 

 

Or perhaps you imagine that UK workers and working practices shouldn't have moved on? Perhaps you think that we should use our beaches for breaking ships by hand or maybe you'd be satisfied for generations to succumb to lung disease, machine injuries and death at the coalface?

 

The man in the street is not bothered about manufacturing output. Their only concern is that they have safe work which pays enough to enable them to get by.

[Tony]

Tell us your solution then? Is it for the UK to be like India with the 3rd largest output and 80% real poverty (ie struggling for food and shelter) but plenty of opportunities for back breaking manual work that maims or kills you by age 35?

 

We're all ears.

[vinyl]

But instead the government would have had to continue funding manufacturing sectors that weren't generating a profit, and the free market created by joining the European Union would have resulted in people importing goods for cheaper than they cost when manufactured / mined in the UK?

 

Re-alligning the economy to be a predominantly services industry focused isn't really the problem here - it's the lack of regulation in crucial financial markets that resulted in the crash.

 

Interesting through hindsight isn't it? If we'd chosen to regulate more heavily against the banks, they probably would have moved their HQs out of London, and we would have suffered earlier on in the first place.

 

The main way we could have avoided this situation was from Global Policy decisions and regulations that weren't made. You can probably argue that UK Government should have pushed harder for such changes, but no-one truly foresaw the economic crisis (especially the magnitude)

 

As said earlier in the thread, governmental policy doesn't start to truly show it's impact on an economy for years - Tory/Lib Dem policies will start to show their results by the end of this parliament, giving votes plenty of data in which to make their decisions at the polls in 4 years.

 

I agree. There seem to be a lot of facts that some on here would prefer to see swept under the table. Two of our largest industries are motor manufacture and steel.

In 1979 the UK had a declining steel industry and a declining motor manufacturing industry. We made lousy cars like Austin Allegros. They were built in overmanned factories that were constantly on strike, and often subsidized by the government. Exporting wasn't an option for much of our motor industry because the cars they produced were badly assembled rubbish. The steel industry too was hugely overmanned and heavily subsidised and was unable to compete in the global market.

By 1997 the output of cars and steel in the UK had increased as had the quality of the product. Subsidies had gone and exports were increasing. The Uk was a net exporter of cars.

Sadly since 1997 the output of cars and steel has dropped dramatically to the extent that we are once again a net importer of cars. Not only that unemployment increased between 1997 and May 2010.

A government isn't judged in its early months as much of the events can be down to decissions made before they came to office. The government have 4 years to turn round the UKs economy and reduce unemployment. I will decide then.

[Rowan22]

Tell us your solution then? Is it for the UK to be like India with the 3rd largest output and 80% real poverty (ie struggling for food and shelter) but plenty of opportunities for back breaking manual work that maims or kills you by age 35?

 

We're all ears.

 

The solution is a Marxist worker led revolution which deposes the Bourgeois and replaces them with a government of the body politic. Not an elite whose profiteering and theft of India’s natural resources is sponsored by corporate greed which replaces good old fashioned western Imperialism with a new Asian Neo Imperialist slave/master dichotomy. Selling out their brothers and sisters for thirty pieces of silver.

 

Furthermore it has been suggested that the decline in Britain’s manufacturing industry was due to global markets being unavailable to Britain’s Industry. Frankly this is rubbish! The reason why our industries failed and say Germanys succeeded is that the Germans saw the long term trends worldwide and invested in high end engineering. Something our idiot silver spoon public schoolboy morons were incapable of doing apparently. And due, in no small part, to their staggering incompetence and mismanagement of the British economy. Like say Thatcher abandoning apprenticeships and leaving the country with substandard trades people in virtually every area of industry. Not a very good platform for competition is it when your most vital resource (in Capitalistic terms) is deprived of the skills to be competitive? Never mind though ehh, I don’t see any of the Thatcher’s signing on do you?

[Tony]

The solution is a Marxist worker led revolution which deposes the Bourgeois and replaces them with a government of the body politic. Not an elite whose profiteering and theft of India’s natural resources is sponsored by corporate greed which replaces good old fashioned western Imperialism with a new Asian Neo Imperialist slave/master dichotomy. Selling out their brothers and sisters for thirty pieces of silver.

 

Furthermore it has been suggested that the decline in Britain’s manufacturing industry was due to global markets being unavailable to Britain’s Industry. Frankly this is rubbish! The reason why our industries failed and say Germanys succeeded is that the Germans saw the long term trends worldwide and invested in high end engineering. Something our idiot silver spoon public schoolboy morons were incapable of doing apparently. And due, in no small part, to their staggering incompetence and mismanagement of the British economy. Like say Thatcher abandoning apprenticeships and leaving the country with substandard trades people in virtually every area of industry. Not a very good platform for competition is it when you most vital resource (in Capitalistic terms) is deprived of the skills to be competitive? Never mind though ehh, I don’t see any of the Thatcher’s signing on do you?

 

Ah, you mean that

.

 

PS, Britain's manufacturing industry hasn't it just moved on, got better and left your rather backward ideas behind.

[Rowan22]

Ah, you mean that

.

 

PS, Britain's manufacturing industry hasn't it just moved on, got better and left your rather backward ideas behind.

 

Yeah I can tell that. How many million unemployed is there again this week? And your caricature of Socialism is only accurate to those who don’t know what they are talking about. Or have a vested interest in supporting a system that is comfortable with poverty for millions. Do you think that is advanced then?

[vinyl]

And your caricature of Socialism is only accurate to those who don’t know what they are talking about. Or have a vested interest in supporting a system that is comfortable with poverty for millions. Do you think that is advanced then?

 

It all sounds like Cuba & North Korea to me.

[Tony]

Yeah I can tell that. How many million unemployed is there again this week? And your caricature of Socialism is only accurate to those who don’t know what they are talking about. Or have a vested interest in supporting a system that is comfortable with poverty for millions. Do you think that is advanced then?

Which model of successful Socialism would you like us to follow?

[Rowan22]

Which model of successful Socialism would you like us to follow?

 

A Marxist model. The one which has (never) been tried.