muckles:
Mike-C:
muckles:
What made Britain was using and exporting leading edge technology.Not sure this bit is correct !!! Britain was probably worldwide leader in trade since maybe the 1600’s through to relativley recent history. The last leading edge technology we exported was probably the industrial revolution !!
muckles:
That was my point, we lead the industrial revolution, and it’s what built the Empire, (right or wrong) We then rested on our laurels expecting people to buy our products because they were British and forgot about giving the customer what they wanted when they wanted it. Meanwhile our competitors were giving the customer what they didn’t realise they wanted.
Mike-C:
And that is how we’ll get ourselves out of this, not by closing the doors.Hmm, not sure how this works. We’re an Island with a massive 60 million population and massive consumer thirst for products/goods. The means to consume these goods is being taken from us by business’s as they pack up and go elsewhere as its cheaper for them. This then leaves them with a shrinking consumer base. Biting the hand that feeds you i think its called !!!
We’ll never mass produce goods like the Chineese do although I agree that mass relocation of companies to low wage economies is short sighted, but that’s one of the major problems with the system we have it’s about short term profit.
It’s like the story about Fords.
CIO President Walter Reuther was being shown through the Ford Motor plant in Cleveland recently.
A company official proudly pointed to some new automatically controlled machines and asked Reuther: “How are you going to collect union dues from these guys?”
Reuther replied: “How are you going to get them to buy Fords?”I remember leaving school in the early 80’s, we really wondered what we were going to do for employment. All the traditional employers were closing and there didn’t seem to be anything else.
By the early 90’s I was working in a cutting edge business,Digital Mapping and Navigation software and hardware, we exported our stuff all over the World, in fact most of our stuff was exported, Including to the US and China (a market that was just starting to open up) this job even the technology didn’t exist when I’d left school less than a decade earlier.
The company did go under and some work especially mapping did go abroad, but I know of many UK and UK based companies that are World leaders. Working in Motorsport you get to see loads of small Hi-tech engineering companies making stuff for the Automotive and Aerospace industry and much of it is exported. But of course the biggest problem they have is finding well educated and qualified people to do the job and develop the next idea. Which is where the Education and apprentience system is letting us down and of course the old fashioned idea that an Engineer works in overalls and is covered in oil and thus the social status of engineers is seen as low. This doesn’t happen in other Countries, Germany being one example.Mike-C:
Just pull out the EU, we’ll be fine.Switzerland, Finland do fine without being in it. And of course we thrived for hundereds of years before without being in it. EU is mostly good for business thats all, and as business’s grow and go global they do whats best for them, not the UK.Finland is in the EU, I think you mean Norway. But Norway has a very small population to spread it’s large income from it’s natural resources round.
Also both Norway and Switzerland pay the EU to be part of the EEA and have to abide by certain agreements to gain access to the EU markets.Furthermore, membership in the EEA is very expensive:
Since 2004, Norway has had to pay close to
227 million euros annually to the EU, about ten
times the past amount. This money is primarily to
help the new EU accession countries to move up,
economically and socially, to the old EU members.
Despite this generous participation in EU politics,
Oslo must accept the decisions on the Internal
Market and implement them in national law. Only by
becoming an EU member could the country have a
voice in EU decision-making.Switzerland imports more from the EU than it exports.
The EU is Switzerland’s largest trading partner, and Switzerland is the EU’s fourth largest. Switzerland accounts for 5.2% of the EU’s imports; mainly chemicals, medicinal products, machinery, instruments and time pieces. In terms of services, the EU’s exports to Switzerland amounted to €67.0 billion in 2008 while imports from Switzerland stood at €47.2 billion.
The fact is we are in a much stronger position than both Norway and Switzerland because we’re a much bigger populated marketplace for EU exports.‘If’ we were to leave the EU we would just dictate to the EU on our terms in that we won’t accept it’s bs contribution terms,to pay for the east europeans to get rich at our expense,in order to trade with it and we’ll limit our imports from it to those that the EU takes in return,if not less.But fish stocks and North Sea Oil and gas are off the table.
Now let’s see how much bottle and backbone that Tory zb Cameron really has.It’s my guess he’s all mouth and no trousers.
But I agree that there should be a certain level of goverment influence on it.
But guess what no shortages and everyone,including the locals,was filling up cars there using cheap Russian petrol that could have been sold just across the border in Italy for (a lot) more.
,while still keeping the beneficial parts of it’s relationship with Russia like fuel supplies and armaments for it’s armed forces.I can certainly remember sitting on Yugoslav beaches and the peace was often shattered by Yugoslav Air Force,Russian supplied MiG aircraft,patrolling the coastline certainly not US supplied ones,all powered by cheap subsidised Russian supplied fuel,just like Yugoslav transport was. 
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