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The aim of this blog is to accrue information that may be of help to you & links to other sites I have found of help, including sites run or managed by friends and associates.
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Regards, Greg L-W.
Greg_L-W@BTconnect.com

Friday 21 October 2011

#G0617* - Quote Originally Posted by Baron von Lotsov View Post

#G0617* - Quote Originally Posted by Baron von Lotsov View Post

Libertarian

Here is a question for you regarding banks and investment. What is your view of British manufacturing and how can we recover it. At the moment the infrastructure is so weak that to set up a manufacturing operation in the Uk it is quite likely to be doomed because we have not got the expertise, the other companies that provide all the products and services a manufacturer would need and so on. However Germany does seem to manage OK and they are not a third world country with cheap labour.

It seems to me that reliance on service industries is a flawed idea because in times of recession the various companies and countries that provide this work are likely to bring it back to themselves. Furthermore manufacturing would hedge against the ups and downs of the economy and make our economy more stable. So what would it take for banks to start investing in British manufacturing once again, and what are the main things the government can do in order to make this happen? You see I think this could help to solve our unemployment problems, especially up north, which is traditionally a manufacturing area. I need to know what is blocking this so that it can be unblocked, or is it simply a history of bad government policy that had led to the current situation?

Baron,

I will answer your question as you asked it honestly and by that I mean you actually highlighted the real reason that you think manufacturing is the answer. You are not alone most people want a rise in manufacturing over service because they think that making things is skilled ( it isn't) and service business is low grade burger flipping ( when in fact service industries have the highest skilled people of all). To answer your questions.
For the last 20 years the UK has been the worlds 8th largest manufacturing nation. During the last year we rose to 7th !!!!! As of April 2010 the UK manufacturing sector recorded its highest rise in productivity and output for 15 years. The UK IS a manufacturing nation. What has happened is that new technology, innovations and new industries have arisen which have made the old metal bashing industries redundant. Where they do still exist manufacturing employs very few people. What was once a minimum wage metal bashing production line of poorly paid people riveting door panels in a Birmingham car plant is still done, but by a dozen industrial robots. Here's the thing Baron, service industries invented and designed those robots. Service industries write the programmes.

In UK manufacturing in the 21st century we lead the world in very high tech manufacturing. 80% of ALL mobile phone chips are made in the UK. Wolfson Microelectronics make Android chips and Cambridge-based CSR a maker of chips that use Bluetooth short-range wireless technology. There are more than 40 ( forty) companies making vehicles in the UK. Just because the old Ford, British Leyland and Vauxhall mega plants no longer exist that doesn't mean we don't make vehicles. Jaguar announced this weekend a new investment of £750 million in its Halewood plant creating another 1500 jobs. The UK also lead the field in the design and manufacture of advance medical equipment and scanners. There are more than 250 medical equipment manufacturers in the UK.
I fundamentally disagree with you. Service industries are profoundly important. Financial Services provides more than 4 million highly paid jobs, IT more than 1 million and growing, the public sector ( all services including health care) 6 million. Manufacturing currently employs 5 million ( but most of them are service related jobs like R&D, design, programming, laboratory work).

Baron, this may come as a shock but despite the fact we have high unemployment there ISN'T a shortage of work. Last quarter there were 482, 606 unfilled jobs in England. What the problem is, is that our universal benefits for all system makes working poorly paid. The minimum wage is £12k ish before tax. The minimum benefit is £15k after tax. You figure it out.

On to Germany ( and Denmark) . The reason the German economy has strong engineering ( especially automotive) is because of a scheme that has been in existence for many years called the Mittlestand Investment Programme. This encourages investment in small and medium sized engineering businesses through the tax system. It delays capital gains tax, so none is paid for first 5 years and then a sliding scale. The biggest benefit though is that for SME's their profits attract NO corporation tax if reinvested in the business. This is NOT what happens in UK. In Denmark, all businesses are exempt from corporation tax on the first £100k of profit if they put it back in the business. So the difference is German and Danish businesses are self financing. We could be the same if it wasn't for our socialist taxation system.

Much as it pains me to say this as a Libertarian but I also quite like the German programme, known as 'Kurzarbeit', it has helped Germany weather its worst post-war economic recession with only a modest rise in unemployment. The incentives, to encourage employers to retain workers on shorter hours instead of firing them, by paying the wage difference were due to expire at end-2010. They will now run through to March 2012.

Now I'm not normally one for taxpayer subsidy of the unproductive, but I'd rather see people work for their (my) money than lay in bed until lunch time and then go down the pub.
The banks aren't lending because they have been told not to, it's as simple as that. That is why the banks are all back making profits but have been forced to rebuild their balance sheets and to make themselves suitable for sale if they are a part nationalised bank. The new Basle III capital requirements are also due to come into force soon. The myth that banks can create money "out of thin air" and are able to lend vast multiples in the fractional reserve system is a load of old bollo. These are the new draft capital requirements

Tier 1 Capital Ratio = 6%
Core Tier 1 Capital Ratio (Common Equity after deductions) = 4.5%
Core Tier 1 Capital Ratio (Common Equity after deductions) before 2013 = 2%, 1st January 2013 = 3.5%, 1st January 2014 = 4%, 1st January 2015 = 4.5%
The difference between the total capital requirement of 8.0% and the Tier 1 requirement can be met with Tier 2 capital.

These are the ratios of deposits, assets and equity that a bank must have.

 Interestingly in terms of business investment ( I am a dragon/business angle investor as well as a business owner) means that more SME's are raising money by selling a stake to people like me than relying on banks.

There are also some quite interesting private bond schemes in operation now.

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." 
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Regards,
Greg L-W.

for all my contact details & Blogs: CLICK HERE  

British Politicians with pens and treachery, in pursuit of their own agenda and greed, have done more damage to the liberty, freedoms, rights and democracy of the British peoples than any army in over 1,000 years.

The disastrous effects of British politicians selling Britain into the thrall of foreign rule by the EU for their own personal rewards has damaged the well-being of Britain more than the armies of Hitler and the Franco - German - Italian axis of 1939 - 1945.

Make your vote count vote:
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Monday 10 October 2011

#G0616* - As A Polish/Scot Could he be protecting his pension!

Hi,

I've just read this study in stupidity regarding UKIP & The EU in none other than Tribune - The article is so very simplistic, so very biased and so very fundamentally anti British I guess it could only have been written by an ex Labour EUrope Minister in protection of his EU Pensions and those of the rest of the cadre of self enriching EU Parasites - little wonder he is a Polish / Scot!

by Denis MacShane Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Quote The late Julian Critchley was the Conservative MP who invented the concept of the “Garageiste Tendency” to describe hard-line Tory MPs who had made money by selling cars and wanted Margaret Thatcher to be even more right-wing than she was. Now let us all welcome the “Farageiste Tendency” – the group of hardline Tories who want Britain to quit the European Union, seek the unilateral renegotiation of EU treaties to weaken workers’ or women’s rights, or force David Cameron to organise a plebiscite with a view to withdrawal.

One hundred and twenty Tory MPs – a majority of non-payroll Conservative backbenchers – have formed a group calling for a referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU. They echo the UK Independence Party leader and MEP Nigel Farage, to whom it seems the BBC has almost given staff status, so often is he on television and radio as an anti-EU propagandist. Farage is to the Conservatives what Ted Knight was to Labour. Tory MPs may not be paying UKIP membership subscriptions but they are infiltrating Farage’s philosophy deep into their party and government. Conservative ministers are in a bind.

For more than a decade, David Cameron, William Hague and Liam Fox all used vivid language to denounce Europe. Hague made openly xenophobic jokes about Germans or the French. Mocking our European friends is time-honoured and they give as good as they get when describing “les Rosbifs”. But Hague’s language had an uglier edge. It still has. Last week, he used the extreme metaphor of saying the eurozone is a “burning building with no exit.” At a time when German and Polish leaders were meeting in Warsaw to discuss what to do about Ukraine and Russia, a British politician talking of Europe as a “burning building” was tasteless to say the least.

In order to win the Tory leadership, Cameron entered into a pact with Fox’s supporters. Fox’s price was that the Conservatives should quit the main EU centre-right political family where Tories had worked since Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan gave birth to Tory Europeanism 60 years ago.

Nick Clegg was on the button when he described Cameron’s and Hague’s new European allies as “nutters, anti-Semites and homophobes”. So the idea that anyone in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid, or Warsaw has any interest in anything David Cameron or George Osborne has to say is laughable. For all its problems – and they are many – the EU is the world’s biggest economy. Half the world’s top companies are based in the EU with more coming in to take advantage of its 500 million consumers and £10.3 trillion economy. Of course, China and Brazil, and mono-economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, are important. Yet Chinese goods are made in China but by EU or United States firms. The United Kingdom exports more to Ireland than to China – and the Irish are not giving up the euro... etc.

I tend to read Tribune from time to time as it is so much more expensively produced than Private Eye though less informative and trustworthy - but being of a certain age I find The Eye a struggle to read even in good light with glasses!

Tribune though less colourful than Viz is much funnier and less inclined to obscenities although the humour in Tribune passes for serious thought at least it isn't riddled with obscenities!

Do read the whole of the hapless Denis MacShane's article parts of it are even funnier!

Let us look at just the last sentence of the extract from Tribune of the idiotic article by Denis MacShane, one time Polish/Scottish British EUropean Minister for the odious and utterly inept and corrupt Labour Government booted out on excellent grounds leaving Britain with £$.2Trillion of debt ALL based on their economic illiteracy and total dishonesty.

Here is an example:
The United Kingdom exports more to Ireland than to China – and the Irish are not giving up the euro.

Clearly this sentence alone is based on dishonesty and seeking to play on the ignorance not only of Labour but of the population at large consider:
The United Kingdom exports more to Ireland than to China

Indeed These United Kingdoms export little to China in our own right as sequential Governments have handed over control of our industry to the malign forces of corruption and profligacy of The EU central control.

British Airo Space & BAE Systems etc. have largely been absorbed into the airo space industry of the EU where the wings are made in one place and the wheels in another, the engines in one location and the fuselage in another and run as a bolt on industry owned in consortia with EU Countries - one of THE most inefficient ways to build anything in the world and by The EU crass maxims of communism aka green idiocy on stilts with so much transport cost and spread of pollution.

None the less, although unprofitably, These UK are a party to this madness and exports planes to China - thus with Airbus Britain exports a great deal to China - not to mention the BRITISH share of payment for such projects as the inopperable and failed Gallilleo Project of which about 50% was sold to China.

I would say that as ever Denis MacShane is being utterly dishonest when he misrepresents the huge amount of trade Britain does with China!
the Irish are not giving up the euro.

Regardless of the democratic wishes of The Irish peoples who promptly fired their domestic politicians for their betrayal of the people - when the Irish peoples had voted NO and a huge amount of EU money was used to buy a re-run and an undemocratic Yes vote was corruptly obtained completely ignoring the rights of self determination and democratic wishes of the peoples.

I presume that as an example of the achievements of such democratic processes Denis MacShane would present Joseph Stalin & Adolph Hitler since both were voted into office by a democratic process - I would be unsurprised to hear him extolling the virtues of such a concept as economic miracles despite the death of some 30Million in The USSR Labour force and starvation and the concepts of IG Faben with their Cadburyesque / Port Sunlight style workers villages though I guess Auschwitz did have a few minor faults!!

I see absolutely no value in these United Kingdoms being shackled to a steadily dieing arcane experiment in communist/socialist social engineering.

Perhaps Denis MacShane, since he quoted him, might care to share with us any single instance where Winston Spencer Churchill advocated these United Kingdoms be subsumed as a vassal region of the malign behemoth of a centralised and undemocratic EU - Just one!

Many will remember WSC stated: Quote "If the choice is join with Europe or take to the open sea this island nation should take to the open sea".

Regards, Greg_L-W.

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." 
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Regards,
Greg L-W.
for all my contact details & Blogs: CLICK HERE  

British Politicians with pens and treachery, in pursuit of their own agenda and greed, have done more damage to the liberty, freedoms, rights and democracy of the British peoples than any army in over 1,000 years.

The disastrous effects of British politicians selling Britain into the thrall of foreign rule by the EU for their own personal rewards has damaged the well-being of Britain more than the armies of Hitler and the Franco - German - Italian axis of 1939 - 1945.

Make your vote count vote:
INDEPENDENT Leave-the-EU Alliance
or Write on YOUR ballot Paper 
LEAVE-THE-EU
Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
tel: 01291 - 62 65 62
of: Greg_L-W@BTconnect.com DO MAKE USE of LINKS & >Right Side Bar< Also:
Details & Links: http://GregLanceWatkins.Blogspot.com General Stuff: http://gl-w.blogspot.com Health Blog.: http://GregLW.blogspot.com TWITTER: Greg_LW

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Sunday 9 October 2011

#G0615* - CLIMATE CHANGE Zealots by Dr. Richard NORTH

 #G0615* - CLIMATE CHANGE Zealots by Dr. Richard NORTH

How climate change zealots are wrecking every last industry this country possesses


Last updated at 12:35 PM on 9th October 2011


Rather overshadowed by events at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week was a line in George Osborne's speech which could mark the start of a long overdue political transformation in Britain.

The Chancellor acknowledged that a decade of environmental laws had been piling unnecessary costs on households and companies, adding that Britain was not going to save the planet by putting ourselves out of business.

He was referring in particular to the Climate Change Act, famously passed by the House of Commons in October 2008 by 463 votes to three, even as the snow was falling outside. By the Government's own estimate, it would cost £404 billion to implement – £760 per household every year for four decades.
Converted: Chancellor George Osborne has pulled back from the 'green abyss'
Converted: Chancellor George Osborne has pulled back from the 'green abyss'


The Act included a voluntary commitment to reduce Britain's carbon dioxide emissions to 80 per cent of their 1990 level by 2050 – a target generally acknowledged to be achievable only by shutting down most of the economy – in an effort to demonstrate 'global leadership'.

The lunacy of this commitment can be demonstrated by the fact that neither China nor the US – who together produce 40 per cent of global emissions compared with our two per cent – are committed to such draconian reductions.

Instead Mr Osborne suggested last week that we follow the EU, whose members agreed in March 2007 – as one of Tony Blair's final acts of hubris – to a 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020. The European Commission is still discussing a 'road map' for its 2050 target, putting the UK at a huge competitive disadvantage.

But while Europe is taking a relaxed view of climate change, Britain seems to have excelled in devising more and more bizarre ways of bankrupting the nation.

In December 2008 the Government's Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, recommended that we should switch from eating beef and lamb to 'less carbon-intensive types of meat'.

Within 11 years, the committee said, it wanted to see 40 per cent of all the cars on Britain's roads powered by electricity. That very week it was reported that in the first ten months of 2008 just 156 were bought, fewer than half the 374 in the same period of 2007. That made a grand total of 1,100 on the road in Britain.

It also insisted no more coal-fired power stations should be built unless they could be fitted with 'carbon capture', funded by a levy on energy bills which would raise £3 billion from hard-pressed consumers.
Lobby: Lord Turner of Ecchinswell was part of a group of MPs who recommended we switch from eating beef to lamb
Lobby: Lord Turner of Ecchinswell was part of a group of MPs who recommended we switch from eating beef to lamb


The overall effect of the unproven and probably unworkable technology to effectively bury carbon dioxide underground would be to double the price of electricity and make us even more dependent on Russian and other imported energy, which already supplies 70 per cent of our needs.

Nevertheless, a mad and ruinously expensive scheme was launched on the European stage. Industries should pay for using fossil fuels, through a 'tax' paid on each ton of carbon dioxide produced. Each company would have to buy certificates, known as 'European allowances' or 'carbon credits' – each representing a ton of carbon dioxide – with surpluses traded as a commodity.

Each year, the total would be reduced and commercial firms, hospitals and even Government offices would have to compete on the open market for enough certificates to enable them to operate.

The theory was that competition for a dwindling supply would force energy users to be more efficient. Instead, commercial users passed on the costs to their customers, with electricity prices rising for the average consumer by as much as £300.

Tens of thousands have been pushed into fuel poverty. Firms that could not pass on their costs moved abroad. Huge tranches of the aluminium industry have disappeared, one major firm having moved to the Emirates in October 2009 – taking 300 workers from Anglesey who had to follow to keep their jobs.
Pro green: Chris Huhne said he wanted to go 'further and faster' when he was Energy Secretary
Pro green: Chris Huhne said he wanted to go 'further and faster' when he was Energy Secretary


The madness didn't stop there. In February 2010, Gordon Brown's cash-strapped Government spent £60  million on 'carbon credits' for Whitehall and other Government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.

Thus while troops were going short of kit in Afghanistan, the defence budget was being raided to buy carbon certificates.
When he became Prime Minister, David Cameron carried on the theme, promptly declaring that he wanted the Coalition to be 'the greenest Government ever'.

His new Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne added that he wanted to go 'further and faster than ever before'. Then it was announced that Britain, uniquely, should set a minimum price for carbon credits, instead of allowing the market to decide.

Known as the 'carbon floor price' the idea was that firms such as electricity generators would pay £16 per ton of carbon dioxide produced – compared to a market rate of £9 – with the price rising to £70 by 2030.

Announced by Mr Osborne in June's budget, the Institute for Public Policy Research immediately warned that the policy would cost British industry at least £1 billion and drive manufacturers offshore, while pushing down the price of European permits, giving our EU competitors a generous gift.

And last week, even as Mr Osborne was standing up to deliver his speech in Manchester, Davin Bates, a management accountant at one of Stoke-on-Trent's remaining successful potteries, was preparing to tell the world how spiralling energy costs – artificially inflated by 'green' levies and taxes – were driving energy-intensive companies like his out of the UK.

Particularly affected is the chemical industry, which contributes £30 million a day to the British economy. Major chemical multinationals are now looking to move production to places such as South Africa, India and China. There, under a global carbon credit scheme, we actually subsidise them by giving them credits – which they then sell back to our industries, making huge profits.

I haven't even mentioned the madness of the wind machines. Subsidies, paid for by consumers, make wind power three times more costly than the normal tariff electricity. But as the pull of the subsidies draws investment away from new conventional plants, the spectre of power cuts looms large.

Caught in this vice of increasing 'green' costs and subsidised competition, the manufacturing industries which Osborne hopes will lead the UK recovery simply cannot survive.

Small wonder, therefore, that he bowed to the inevitable and pulled back from the green abyss.

Many believe that Osborne's conversion is too little too late, but it is some small comfort at least, that we no longer have a Chancellor – or even a Prime Minister – keen to parade his 'green' credentials. Perhaps they are beginning to understand that, when the lights go out, all colours look the same: black.

If Britain is to pull itself out of economic crisis, Mr Osborne is going to have to go much further. At the very least, he has to lift this senseless raft of green taxes from industry and the electricity generators.
  • Richard North is co-author of Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming – Why Scares  Are Costing Us The Earth.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2046961/RICHARD-NORTH-How-climate-change-zealots-wrecking-industry-country-possesses.html#ixzz1aHviKIxk
"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." 
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Regards,
Greg L-W.
for all my contact details & Blogs: CLICK HERE  

British Politicians with pens and treachery, in pursuit of their own agenda and greed, have done more damage to the liberty, freedoms, rights and democracy of the British peoples than any army in over 1,000 years.

The disastrous effects of British politicians selling Britain into the thrall of foreign rule by the EU for their own personal rewards has damaged the well-being of Britain more than the armies of Hitler and the Franco - German - Italian axis of 1939 - 1945.

Make your vote count vote:
INDEPENDENT Leave-the-EU Alliance
or Write on YOUR ballot Paper 
LEAVE-THE-EU

Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
tel: 01291 - 62 65 62
of: Greg_L-W@BTconnect.com
DO MAKE USE of LINKS & >Right Side Bar<  
Also:
Details & Links: http://GregLanceWatkins.Blogspot.com  
General Stuff: http://gl-w.blogspot.com  
Health Blog.: http://GregLW.blogspot.com  
TWITTER: Greg_LW
 

 Please Be Sure To
.Follow Greg_LW on Twitter.  
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