del949:
Your first paragraph concerning the issue of competing in the global free market economy is enough and explains everything.We don’t have to compete with low wage countries like China etc at all.You just need trade barriers and import tarrifs
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As an addition to the trade barriers / tariffs argument, we also need to stop multi -national companies removing profits made in Britain to other countries where they are used to subsidise their industries.
For example.
In America (some states, possibly not all) before electricity prices can be increased there has to be a full consultation between all parties. This obviously makes it difficult to increase the cost of power.
So, one large power supplier (American owned) in the UK takes its profits from here and subsidises its American operation.
Thus, the American industry straight away gets an advantage over home grown industry.
We need to ensure that profits from British customers are reinvested in Britain, not syphoned off to other countries in order to subsidise thier industries.
The whole issue of globalisation and the big multi nationals is a minefield del it just seems to be a type of massive foreign aid excercise in which we send our money to subsidise other places.It seems to go along the lines of the British public are stupid enough to stand for anything so the foreign companies rip us off to keep prices as low as possible in their home markets.No surprise there then and they’re probably right considering that many British consumers and Thatcher supporters still think that they are better off under that system than under the one in which we paid the NCB to pay our own miners a fair wage to provide our own coal for our own power generation. 
schrodingers cat:
So what in your view is the difference between Fordism and Socialism, they both rely on relatively high wages to workers and as such reduce competition (and we are in competition with other countries).
I agree that our senior management is overpaid and that maybe reducing their wages would help our competativeness but how the hell do we deal with that? More strikes that hurt our economy even more? Who would that hurt? It would just reinforce our crap and previous crap Government that what we need to concentrate on is financial services.
How about a reduction in taxes with the result that the wasters that make the decision to have children to get a guaranteed pay rise (child poverty ffs) have to actually find a job so they haven’t got time to spread their thighs as a lifestyle option.
But WHO do you vote for? Who looks after the working majority of this country no-one thats who [zb] the lot of them.
From what I saw of socialism it was more about bringing those earning more down to the level of those earning less which was the east european revolutionary way and is what zb’d up that idea from the beginning.That’s very different from the capitalist American (Fordist) way which really took off and reached it’s logical conclusion in the US economy of the 1960’s.That’s the difference.Unless you’d have preferred to be working in Russia at that time instead of America.
Who to vote for that’s simple.Anyone who’s prepared to ditch the whole zb’d up global free market economy experiment and who thinks that the American way of the 1960’s beat the Russian one and what we’ve got now. 
But WHO do you vote for? Who looks after the working majority of this country no-one thats who
I agree with that!
But change is possible. Change HAS to be possible otherwise we will simply go round in the same way as the last 40 years…
On a local smaller scale, I used to live in Bradford and the council there was/is useless.
In a recent by-election for an MP George Galloway stood and was elected with his Respect party.
Now, no-way is this an advert for either him or his party.
What has hapened though is that the council, the Labour party and I assume the Tory party are all running around in a panic and starting to listen to the electorateand address some local issues, all because Gorgeous George is upsetting the apple cart.
Maybe, just maybe, at the next election voting in some radical politicians may just rattle a few cages.
Carryfast, you really are trucknets own Vicky Pollard. Yeah, but, no, but, yeah. You say your ideas are sound capitalist ideas on one hand, then say the mines should never have been shut and the workers should be led by the unions and earn a fortune. Shutting the pits and letting plc’s make a fortune in the wake is the very being of capitalism. Which side of that fence are you really on?
OVLOV JAY:
Carryfast, you really are trucknets own Vicky Pollard. Yeah, but, no, but, yeah. You say your ideas are sound capitalist ideas on one hand, then say the mines should never have been shut and the workers should be led by the unions and earn a fortune. Shutting the pits and letting plc’s make a fortune in the wake is the very being of capitalism. Which side of that fence are you really on?
That’s a typical blinkered stereotypical right or left being the only choice type of logic.
My point is that it’s possible to have both strong union ideals,in which the object is just fighting for the continuing increase in living standards and working conditions of the members,within a capitalist non socialist system.Without being a raving socialist supporter of the Russian revolution in just the same way that the US unions weren’t run on socialist Russian type revolutionary ideals with any wish for any socialist type government,during the time which I’m referring to as being the peak of the US Fordist Capitalist economy.
umwa.org/?q=content/brief-history-umwa
blossburg.org/wb_wilson/thestory.htm
Capitalism is/should be all about continuing increases in wage levels and working conditions for the country’s workers to make life better not the opposite.If it can’t provide that basic provision for the country’s population then what zb good is it and where’s the big difference between it and the zb’d up idea of Russian revolutionary socialism 
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