Kenneth Clarke is being laid back about the New Labour government having to go to the IMF for funding in the face of massive deficits and few takers for UK debt. The manner possibly covering a higher level of concern than he chooses to make public. But there is a far worse aspect to the incredible economic shambles Brown personally, and New Labour collectively, have led us into.
Steelmaking, car production, ship building, machine tools, aircraft production - week after week the numbers going onto short time working or into redundancy mount. These industries were already gravely weakened by an economic regime that had neither concern nor interest for their well being. Once closed they will not be re-established in our country again. Why bother when there will be excess capacity far into the future across the world.
There are many reasons why the UK is least ready to face recession but the under -defended industrial and manufacturing sectors loss will probably do the most permanent damage to our living standards, for good.
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In case your readers missed it, this interesting (but, if true, rather scary) lecture will help pass the time and go some way to explaining the background to all this desecration. (Sorry can't do proper auto-links, so a spot of cutting and pasting will be needed.)
The Creature from Jekyl Island.
http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=the+creature+from+jekyl+island
Not sure that "under-defended" is the right way to look at it.
Under-competitive, yes; over-regulated, certainly; also meddled-with, dabbled-with, and nannied to death.
But the State "defending" things takes us back to Harold Wilson's white heat of technology, and Jim Callaghan picking winners; we all know how all that ended.
The best thing the State can do for industry is get out of the way, but infortunately that doesn't do much for the self-importance of the rulers.
trouble is, most of them aren't British any more.
But you're quite right. When they do go the startup costs to re-establish them will be so high they'll never come back.
Guess we'll have to become a "heritage island" attracting foreigners to gawp at what we used to be.
Ship building, helicopters, cars, textiles, armaments, aerospace, advanced engineering, machine tools, apart from high end designer consumables as well as heritage and culture with a vengeance - but that's Italy now, and the UK once upon a time, Mick. I suppose both countries have food processing and pharmaceuticals. But for UK manufacturing and industry the years since 1997 have been the true Wilderness Years.
Both countries have pharmaceutical companies, that is true (in some cases, the same companies).
But manufacturing - that's a different story.
There is carnage amongst the UK's pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities; most of them are in the process of being moved to "low-tax" areas of the world, such as Singapore and - especially - Ireland.
What's left is a bit of R&D, marketing operations, and Head Offices.
British companies they may be, but they don't make anything here, any more than anybody else does.
Drip drip drip ...
Isn't that far worse than just accepting that we're finished ?
A change of personal expectation is what is required from us at this juncture. The other way madness lies.
Can't we just menace the world with our weapons and have another house price boom and bust?
Shitty I know but beats working!
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