Vocal Voices

Corbyn says we must ensure that "we build things here that for too long have been built abroad".

He's not wrong, but how? We cannot "bring back" the old manufacturing we exported; it's gone. The only way to make things in Britain is to start again, and that will take investment. Where will the money come from?

And if we do make more things what will they be? To make money we will have to look at the South Korean model and make things that people want; and in volume. We might also need to look at more high tech, which we happen to be damned good at.

It is not a bad idea from Corbyn, but the devil will be in the detail.

For sure he is right about privatisation - water, electricity, and gas definitely should not be in private hands. Perhaps even the railway (although I am old enough to remember Dr Beeching - there were always complaints)

We certainly should renationalise.

Kaz wrote:We certainly should renationalise.

That's something we can strongly agree on, Kaz.

Nationalisation / re nationalisation is one thing. Some of it might work, but not all, well not in the way many people think.

However, in this case Corbyn is talking about rebuilding British manufacturing. Unfortunately many people have a hate reflex regarding Corbyn, and they are very vocal. He is mad, you know, a Marxist, an anti-Semite, his ideas are mad, unworkable, irresponsible, costly, from the money tree, etc.. He is Trump's poodle and Putin's poodle - work that out.

It does not matter whether what he says makes sense, as in this case, they will rant and rage and stamp their feet.

I do not like the man or his ideology, and I have never voted Labour and probably never will, but I am prepared to listen and analyse what he says in a neutral way.

I love this from some IOD or CBI wonk:

"Britain has many fantastic manufacturing firms, but the fetishisation of factories and production lines over all other parts of the economy is misguided."

But the closing down of manufacturing (Thatcher) and the fetishisation of service industries and the City of London and the South East at the expense of the the other 55 million of us was a fantastic idea? Or not!

Had Corbyn's announcement come from mouth of Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, it would be lauded as innovative and "the future".

Workingman wrote:Where will the money come from?

I can tell you where it won't come from. Inward investment. Once Corbyn has finished destroying investments by nationalising them, there is no way anyone will invest a bent penny in him without cast iron guarantees of return and any "investment" will be fettered with so many shackles that it will never grow beyond the original investment.

The last time we had an idiot like Corbyn anywhere near power we ran up 26% inflation, had 33% base rate of income tax, 90% higher rate tax, bankrupted the country and had to go running to the IMF for loans.

But it was wonderful if you were a teacher. Mrs S tells me she never had it so good.

I was looking for work in 1978 and 1979. It wasn't Thatcher that killed the industry in Lincolnshire, it was Wilson and Callaghan. Thatcher just nailed the lid on and buried it.

Corbyn is what Stalin would have called a "useful idiot". Corbyn may want to manufacture things, but the only people with enough money to pay for them are in the UK, Germany and Switzerland and only the people in the UK would be daft enough to do that.

The UK manufactures highly specialised, or very high quality, products to sell outside of the UK; to people who can't afford not to buy them. It is what we do best since the Thatcher years. We cannot compete with Eastern European, Asian, Indian subcontinent and Russian labour prices. Not unless we're going to re-think our standards of living.

We can't even compete with the US labour costs.

How are we going to manufacture stuff to sell to the world when we spend all our time making our people the most expensive in the world?? Automation only goes so far and automation produces products without jobs.

Corbyn is the worst kind of sound bite idiot. First of all he wants to take a wrecking ball to investment in the UK, then he wants to make stuff nobody wants to buy from us....

Of course, in the short term, very little he says or does, even if he does become PM, will have any major material impact on me. So I will watch with great amusement if he ever makes it to the office of PM.

It was idiots like Corbyn who created Thatcher. I'm quite happy for him to try again.

Ah, I see you are one of those with the hate reflex.

So, we should not even try to rebuild British manufacturing (destroyed by Thatcher) and try to help those of us who are on the receiving end of "service industries" and capital investment in London and the S.E. to the detriment of making things in the rest of the country?.

It's OK for a few of us to make satellites and other high-tech goodies, and earn high salaries, but not so good if we make widgets for min wage to sell to the world?

Of course, in the short term, very little he says or does, even if he does become PM, will have any major material impact on me.

And that, my friend, drives your thinking. It takes no regard of the millions of us not in your situation, That would be living in the EU, but simultaneously against it. It would be availing yourself of the benefits of the EU, to you, but wishing to deny them to others, would it not?

Come back to the UK, to your beloved Scotland. Settle down and pay your taxes here in the UK and then preach to us about the EU and UK. You might get a different personal perspective, or maybe not, given your hatred of all things EU.

AliasAggers wrote:

Kaz wrote:We certainly should renationalise.

That's something we can strongly agree on, Kaz.

I do admire the Germans (and the Italians) for hanging on to their manufacturing base. It's too easy to say that we can't compete with the Far East on labour costs, so bye bye manufacturing. Other European countries have managed it, but not us.

Renationalisation? The utilities were virtually given away, but they will be VERY expensive to buy back.

And politicians love getting rid of responsibility. They love other people being in charge of the railways, gas and electric - it means they never get the blame when things go wrong in those industries. They like that.

By and large the utilities do not make things we can sell, though they do provide the infrastructures to enable us to do so.

Manufacturing at least allows us to export things we make, depending on what those things are. With the upcoming revolution in automation and AI we are going to have to take a long hard look.

One of our big problems is that we are not so rich in natural resources and that will inevitably lead to us cherry picking what we produce. Another issue is population (size and density) which could be positive or a drawback depending on point of view.

Of the major manufacturing countries of the EU the UK has the highest density, followed by Germany, Italy and France. However, it the UK is looked at as its constituent parts then Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland drop into the middle ground with England leaping way ahead: Twice as dense as Germany; two and a half times that of Italy and nearly four times that of France.

Corbyn's manufacturing dream could turn into reality, but it will take a lot of hard work and goodwill.