North South Divide - will we ever recover?

[Darth Vader]

Oh dear, I really don't want to go down this route again, but I must reply.

Occupy don't want to overthrow the government, they're wise enough to realise that in reality that would help no one, especially when there's nothing viable to put in its place.

 

They do want to clean up the system we've got to remove corruption and amend the shortlisting system so that people who better reflect the views of the public rather than the views of the party get a voice. I cannot imagine how anyone without a vested interest can object to that.

 

We need and deserve better government. Everyone would benefit from that.

 

Nail on the head.

[spooky3]

The North South divide is growing ever wider. Now the government is talking about reducing wages and benefits in the north -'to help businesses.'

 

The last Labour government recruited loads of Public sector workers in the North to mop up some of the unemployed created by Thatcher's shutdown in manufacturing, something this government is trying to reverse. The private sector didn't deliver then, and it's not delivering now.

 

I personally can't see any way back. Whole towns were created round a particular manufacturing process. Once that is gone, so is the need for the town. The whole thrust of manufacturing these days (what little there is)

is to employ as few people as possible by using technology, thus maximising profits.

 

Very little of this money trickles down into the economy, it mostly goes into the coffers of the company directors. Meanwhile the deficit grows and more and more people are being forced into poverty.

 

Cheer me up somebody. Tell me things will get better.

 

 

Taxes pay for those public sector jobs, how did the last government pay for them all? Now (or until recently) they were a large part of our loans, there were too many for the taxes to pay for.

 

 

Yes, to manufacturing, but seems like we love services nowadays, you know, adding extra profit to someone elses work (similar to banking). We are struggling with manufacturing because we are competing with other countries who have much lower wages than us and do it a lot cheaper than us (with less regulation).

 

 

So, how do we invigorate manufacturing cost effectively? Go back a 150 years and develop cottage industries?

[Anna B]

Perhaps somebody could remind me what the last Labour and last Conservative governments have actually acheived...

[spooky3]

Perhaps somebody could remind me what the last Labour and last Conservative governments have actually acheived...

 

Well the last Labour government ran up a massive debt, sold everything they could, and all in a massive boom time!

 

The current Conservative goverment, the jury is still out in my opinion.

[Rupert_Baehr]

 

However we all rely on doctors, teachers, engineers and scientists and I see no reason why the government should not a least subsidise those professions where wages are not all that high in comparison to the national average, especially if as I do, you believe in a meritocratic society. Otherwise what incentive is there for teachers to train? Universities have in reality been hit pretty hard by the tuition fee changes and there is far less money in them than a few years ago.

 

Why not offer free training (with support grants) in those disciplines which the country needs? Not entirely free - the training would come with a work commitment to amortise the training costs. There is ample precedent. (As I mentioned in a post on another thread, I was trained by a major company (expensive training) at their cost. I was required to work for them for 5 years afterwards (and to repay a significant amount of my training cost over that period - albeit from a pretty good salary.)

 

A reliance on training foreign students is not an industry to be marveled at it's a short sighted money grab which will ultimately export more high value jobs, predominantly to Asia. I can see no long term gain from effectively selling off our intellectual property.

 

There are two ways of looking at this problem, too. When the Czech Republic joined the EU, the government was aware that there was likely to be an efflux of highly-skilled and highly-qualified personnel. Pay in the Czech Republic is nowhere near as high as it is elsewhere. To reduce the outflow of skills, the government poured money into the University of Prague (both to enhance lecturers' pay and to increase the university's facilities) and recruited foreign students.

 

Those foreign students represent an 'invisible export' - they pay university fees and they pay money into the local economy.

 

In many countries, the demand for places in medical schools outstrips supply. The Czechs decided (very wisely, perhaps) to export skills rather than to export skilled people.

 

Is the shortage of engineers, scientists, doctors etc in the UK caused by foreign students coming in and snapping up all the places, or it it attributable to a reluctance among British students to study 'hard' courses?

[MrSmith]

Oh dear, I really don't want to go down this route again, but I must reply.

Occupy don't want to overthrow the government, they're wise enough to realise that in reality that would help no one, especially when there's nothing viable to put in its place.

 

They do want to clean up the system we've got to remove corruption and amend the shortlisting system so that people who better reflect the views of the public rather than the views of the party get a voice. I cannot imagine how anyone without a vested interest can object to that.

 

We need and deserve better government. Everyone would benefit from that.

 

That doesn't explain how supporting a group of squatters would make me better off and why I must be supporting the government because I don’t support occupy.

I support the right of the electorate to decide which government we have despite always ending up with one I don’t want.

[ugo stiglitz]

my ex brother in law is a black cabbie in London and has been for 20 odd years, he says if anything down there its getting busier, i tell him its dead here

[mort]

Off topic and bickering removed. Stick to the subject please

[L00b]

I can see no long term gain from effectively selling off our intellectual property.

You have to be careful with terminology. IP is, of its own, entirely worthless. And IP is not 'people' - it's their output.

 

It is the commercial exploitation of the IP which confers it value, don't forget that.

[biotechpete]

What do you mean the biggest employers? They employ more people than everything else put together? Got any stats relating to levels of government employment in various towns?

 

How's this for starters

From Guardian in 2008

Sheffield 24.86%

Hull 23.42%

Milton Keynes 12.34%

 

Spectacular missing of the point there. I didn't say the conservatives were racists, I said they were doing something they know is bad for business to attract the votes of bigots. And no, OBVIOUSLY not saying there are more racists in the south either. But you have said that levels of business acumen and political savvy are split along geographical lines, so I'm suprised you now seem to be saying you are averse to geographical stereotyping in principle?

 

I take it as a sign that people are unable to defend their arguments when they resort to such wild misinterpretations.

 

Touche...like say, continuing to misinterpret my argument that I am blaming socialist ideologis for the recession, which I am not. I am blaming them for the fact that we, in Sheffield, or even those in Hull, are far less resistant to recession and seem far less capable of innovating our way out of it.

 

 

And you think the foreign students will just give up on getting an education if we don't let them use our universities???

 

If we want the educated people to be here and not abroad, why is the governemnt targeting foreign graduates and making it incredibly difficult for them to stay on? They are a liability when they work here, but they are valued professionals who will greatly increase to the competitiveness of the economy when they are forced to return to their own countries? Sure, that makes real sense. No contradicition there at all!

 

I'm jsut saying it's not a sustainable system. They are already training their own graduates in biosciences in Malasia instead of training them here (I use this example because the University in Sheffield had an initiative with Malasia). Not sure how this might contribute to the north south divide, other than perhaps increase redundancies in universities.

 

They are targetting foreign graduates because there is an all time high proportion of graduates who can't find jobs. We don't need more graduates at the moment. But again, this is an irrelevance to the topic other than it's an opportunity for you to rail against government policy.