Weak weak?
I'd say utterly miraculous given the damage that both New and Blue Labour have done to the UK.
Chambers of Commerce say UK recovery is weak
The UK's economic recovery remains weak and the Coalition has failed to tackle the underlying reasons. The British Chambers of Commerce surveyed 6,600 of its members and found efforts to move the economy towards increasing exports has failed. Although manufacturers are having more luck with exports than with domestic sales, …
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Monday 11th July 2011 12:53 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Coalition warfare!
"We accept the need to persevere with painful measures to cut the deficit. But the government must move beyond the rhetoric of growth, and introduce radical reforms to help businesses export, invest and create more jobs."
Because it's in the government's power to do so? Even Gandalf refused jobs he knew he couldn't tackle.
"It called on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee to postpone premature interest rate rises and the government to implement more growth-enhancing policies"
Code for Keynesian policy and quantitative easing. Meanwhile they are moaning about inflation....doublethink or hopeless confusion?
When will the "Whip Inflation Now" Cameron-Pins come out?
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Monday 11th July 2011 13:40 GMT Dave 15
UK government is the PROBLEM - Labour or Conservative
BOTH of these two parties have been in charge while announcing that FOREIGN manufacturers are better value than British ones. This is of course total bullshit but can have nothing other than a disasterous effect on the companies concerned.
Imagine being the manufacturer of British tanks and the defence minister says they want to buy American because they are 'better value' - do you think you will ever sell a tank to anyone ever again?
Or perhaps the last manufacturer of trains in the country that invented them - listening to an announcement that the Germans are better value than you are (for the British government), not a chance of another sale for them - they should (I would) have shut the factory totally instantly, leeaving the half built trains where they were.
We see the Royal Wedding food served on Chinese plates - nothing from 'the potteries' there.
The Chinese supply the British Army with uniforms - no employment for the textile industry in Lancashire then.
The NHS goes to India for its software - no British jobs there
The Police go to Sweden or Germany for cars - we pay unemployed Peugeot, Rover, Jaguar workers.
The Army get their lorries from Renault so Bedford, Forden, ERF are left closed
The NHS gets ambulances from Germany and LDV is closed.
The government census is run by the Americans (so they get the work AND our data).
The list goes on for pages. Each time this happens we, the tax payers, pay TWICE, we pay once for the goods, and then for the benefits needed for the British workers who should be producing the goods. In the long term this trashes the British manufacturing base and we wend up supporting an ever increasing pile of unemployed former workers. This can NOT continue.
If it was just one party then we could vote for someone else, but its not, its ALL the major parties.
This is just stupid, any fool, any idiot, can add up the costs of sending the work abroad in terms of lost primary and secondary jobs, lost exports, lost profit, lost taxation and the huge bill for benefits it is clearly NEVER cheaper to send the work abroad. This lesson has been learnt to great effect by Germany, China, France, USA and others. Some have additional problems, but Germany and China do NOT import cars, lorries, software, services, tanks etc. from abroad. And for GOOD reason.
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Monday 11th July 2011 13:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Clarification
Just a wee clarification; Germany etc *do* import, and import loads. They just happen to *export more than they import*. But totally agree with you on all points.
Also, and potentially more alarmingly, we now *need* to import food, electricity and gas, and lots of it. That says a lot - on so many levels. Textbook 'optimal population' case study for one thing.
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Monday 11th July 2011 14:43 GMT DragonLord
Minor point
When you're budget is squeezed then you look to save money where you can, so if you can buy stuff significantly cheaper elsewhere then you do (look at the number of people that shop at tesco vs sainsbury, waitrose, etc.) or you buy cheaper quality components. While you're view is quite valid given a holistic view of the country, the benefits that those people are claiming wouldn't be given directly to the companies that didn't shop overseas for the cheaper goods, so they'd be losing money hand over fist just to keep brits employed.
Doesn't sound much like a business plan to me... The best way out of this is to lower manufacturing costs in this country so that it's cheaper to buy from us than elsewhere...
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Monday 11th July 2011 16:07 GMT Naughtyhorse
depends how you count it.
there were some mumblings some time ago about 'hapiness indexes' coupled with an admission from the govt that the obsession with balance sheet figures was not the best way to proceed.
sadly it was all bollocks, when it came to saving a few quid on 1 supply contract, they went for the bottom line, no more uk train manufacturing.
so what (y'know i dont think the sort of people who make trains for a living are 'people like us' after all)
and the knock on devastation in the local community (up north - who gives a fuck?) - not enough of them vote tory, that;ll teach the buggers.
Just waiting now to find out that the whitehall numpty who signed this contract didt stupulate that there should be seating in the carriages, and thats extra!
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Monday 11th July 2011 22:30 GMT Asgard
@DragonLord
@DragonLord, “When you're budget is squeezed then you look to save money where you can, so if you can buy stuff significantly cheaper elsewhere then you do”
That is a false economy and extremely short sighted, because whilst they save short term in one area Britain looses yet more money having to support the out of work British people. Plus the British economy then isn't infused with *our* money, (as we are also leaking *our* money out of our country!) and so British companies cannot grow. Plus don't forget that when one British company earns good money, then all British companies supporting that one company also see increases in their incomes as well and our overall economy then grows and improves.
Other countries know this but our politicians refuse to do it.
Dave15 is right, our country is failing to reinvest its money back into its own country and worse its undermining what companies we have. Plus its a vicious circle forcing our companies out of business and don't forget, as our companies don't get the work, that's making it even worse, as its forcing their prices even higher, not least because they also don't get as much volume sales as they would otherwise have had. Our manufacturing base has been utterly decimated over the past 30 to 40 years and it is exactly this endless short sighted political thinking that is one of the root causes of the problem. :(
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Monday 11th July 2011 16:07 GMT Tom 38
Dont want to interrupt your rant Dave 15
However, some key facts glossed over wrt Bombardier/Thameslink
1) Bombardier are a Canadian company
2) Bombardier would have been a more expensive choice
3) As Bombardier didn't get the contract, they slashed 1400 jobs. If they had got the contract, they were going to cut 1200 jobs.
4) No-one else, anywhere around the world, is remotely interested in buying Bombardier trains, hence the lack of orders.
5) The main reason Bombardier didn't get the contract is that part of the contract is contingent on leasing the trains back to the government over 30 years. This requires up-front borrowing. Bombardier Group has a less secure financial footing than Siemens, and hence borrowing is significantly more expensive - some £500m over the course of the £1.5bn contract. If we listen to your 'only local' rhetoric, taxpayers would be subsidizing a Canadian company for the next 30 years. No thanks.
Frankly, if we were to become the sort of inward looking, sycophantic country where everything must be handled 'in country', I'd be looking for the exit. Why should the taxpayer subsidize the inefficiency of these failed industries?
Also, China does import a mass of infrastructure spending. Been on a high speed train in China? Its German - as are the contents of most of their factories. If Britain's manufacturers could compete with the Germans in these sorts of sectors, then we wouldn't have these issues.
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Monday 11th July 2011 14:35 GMT Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Someone explain to me...
Serious : as i'm not sure I get it...
It's all shit, nobody is buying anything, and those that are buying are buying from cheaper foreign sources - so there is limited UK growth. Yet UK manufacturing confidence is high?????
Does this mean that if we (the manufacturers) had the orders, we are confident we have the means to fulfill i.e. we are confident we could produce; but we don't have the orders, so we can't???
Thanks.
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Monday 11th July 2011 14:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why moan and groan? Get on with it?
Alternative titles:
Greed is greed
Need is need
1 - UK has historically always been a two tier society and in most likelihood always will be (the poor get poorer while the rich get richer)
2 - no job in the UK is "safe" (similarly so in other nations but other nations blend in more protection)
3 - creating unemployment is and always has been a Tory strategy and aim for as long as there has been a Tory party (unemployment as a government strategy is arguably the main reason that UK cannot get into an enterprise culture - well, that and the banks)
4 - beware of fashions and fads (
http://www.publicserviceevents.co.uk/172/scitech-2011
is an example. Say the right things, spend the increasing "innovations" budget usually in public sector organisations or pseudo-public sector orgs now relabelled "private companies registered at companies house)
5 - social trends in UK will always lag other countries (private pensions for unskilled workers were available in Europe pre-1939, started in UK in the 1970's and soon after investors, governments and whitehall could not get their collective and individual hands on soon were massive pension pots (Maxwell anyone?))
Best advice: get used to it, treat impoverishment as a necessary fact of life, look after you and yours?
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Monday 11th July 2011 15:05 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Buy British is what caused the mess
Doesn't matter how crap a Leyland car is - you don't have any choice to buy British.
Aircraft, tanks, ships can be years behind schedule, billions over budget and useless - but it doesn't matter because the government has to buy British.
Amazing how great an industry can get if the customer's don't have a choice of what to buy, the workers can't work for anyone else and the management is picked by the government.
Just run the entire country on the same logic that gives you S4C
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Monday 11th July 2011 16:06 GMT MountfordD
Interest rise? Not in any bank's interest
"It called on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee to postpone "premature interest rate rises"...."
No chance of that. Bankers looks after their own and the BoE is a bank by any other name.
Low interest rates = cheaper for all banks to repay the billions in loan owed to the British public. They shaft us once and they are doing it again (we get bugger all for our savings) except that nobody has cottoned on to this new scam.
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Monday 11th July 2011 17:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Broke.
That is what the banks are, all of them, in every country.
They all operate one of the largest "ponzi" schemes called "Fractional Reserve Banking".
They can only pay their depositors less than one percent of what they owe.
They have all been "bankrupt" for decades.
As for the Uk problems, Tullet-Prebon has an interesting report out on them:
http://www.tullettprebon.com/announcements/strategyinsights/notes/2010/SIN20110526.pdf
"Government and opposition alike base their thinking on the assumption that, by one means or
another, growth can be restored.
We see no reason whatever to assume this. To focus on the deficit is to ignore the fact that the
British economy had become debt dependant long before the financial crisis"
Pessimistic, or what ?
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Tuesday 12th July 2011 05:30 GMT Mark 65
Imports and Exports
Is one of the main problems that we import our energy (coal, gas and French electricity) and that the vast majority of our exports are to the EU/US who collectively aren't buying anything? Germany is no doubt doing OK because they export to China - heavy industrials and luxury cars that don't break down.
If we had more modern nuclear power we might adjust the balance of the energy issue, but when your trading partners aren't buying you're not exporting. Nothing the Government can do about that.
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Tuesday 12th July 2011 10:41 GMT John Smith 19
Banks have a foolproof excuse
"We *want* to lend more but we have to keep our reserves up due to the liquidity regulations"
In reality their reserves were quite high before the crash, on *paper*.
They'd actually got the wheeze that they could count various assorted financial instruments as *part* of those reserves.
Which turned out to be worth varying levels of f**k all.
But *real* lending to UK SME's involves *real* (although I suspect exaggerated) levels of risk to UK banks.
I also note that in France when the government wanted their banks to increase mortage lending the relevant Minister simply invited them to his office and *told* them to do it.
In a country where the government *owns* 70% of one of the biggest banks in the country this is not even a matter for negotiation. As the majority shareholder (with Board members) this should be simply of stating the policy wish.
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Tuesday 12th July 2011 14:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Switzerland
You wanna see what the Swiss do with their banks...apart from the obvious secret-account stereotypes, banking regs and requirement are far stricter than here.
Baring a couple of notable retail bank exceptions, the rest have slipped under the radar, because they're notoriously conservative investment banks and are doing just fine, thank you very much.
Anyone know how to forge a work permit and residential visa for CH...?
What - no St Bernards icon?
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
