Build it in Britain.

[Suff]

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

Not at all. Let me be clear here. I don't care if we have a "useful idiot" in charge. It won't cause me too much pain and I won't be the one paying the price of his failure.

Talking about Germany and Italy hanging onto their manufacturing shows a very woeful lack of understanding of how the EU operates.

French buy French, just go and drive on the roads. Germans buy German and Italians buy Italian. The rest of the EU buys French and German because the French and German banks lend them the money to spend on their cars. Or they did until 2009. It is noticeable that both economies have struggled to perform post 2009 and if you actually care to read the EU press you find out that German manufacturing workers haven't had a meaningful wage rise in a decade. In fact Germany has run more inflation than the UK, due to the Euro stance on lending money and wages have deflated against that inflation.

As for Italy? Basket case may be a kind statement there. Yes it is back to growth but if you look at the table of businesses, of the top 10 businesses, 7 are service. One is Electricity which is not quite manufacturing, another is petroleum which they are not a net exporter of. Only Fiat, their #1 business, is actually manufacturing.

Let's get down to brass tacks here. Labour does not like businesses, it likes employees and employees rights. The more rights and benefits you give an employee, the less you manufacture with the same employee. I don't have to like it, but I do have to respect facts.

Italy retains its manufacturing crown because it sells to the Italian home market and to the EU as a whole. If it had to face uncontrolled world competition, half its manufacturing would fold in a decade.

If we are to talk about the UK manufacturing goods and selling them, then Dyson would be a good example. Dyson created his product and generated his market in the UK. He then shifted manufacturing to Asia. However his extremely large R&D unit remains in the UK.

This is what we do extremely well. We design the products for the world. We sell design services.

When we talk about world economies and where the UK fits in, do we want to be the labourer or the architect?

People talk about the UK "services" industry with disdain. We don't make anything therefore we're useless. Regardless of the fact that finance is only 12% of our economy, those who talk about the UK not making anything and deride the services industry, often talk about us as a nation of Bankers and not Makers.

The stuff we do make is extremely high value. Like our defence manufacturing. The 3rd largest in the world. But, no, those who want us to Make stuff, generally, don't want us to Make that stuff.

The UK is the white collar of the world manufacturing. We have stopped being the blue collar, apparently we need far more rights and money for our workers than that.

Just tell me, what is wrong with being the white collar workers of the world? India is extremely happy with it, India wants to become the white collar back office of the world. They can only do it by deposing the UK from that crown. Not supporting our service industries, voting in an economically hostile Labour government on old and outdated "ideals", is not going to stop India from taking our economy away from us.

I end as I started. Whatever Corbyn does or does not do, whether he gets into power or now, whether he does something so brain damaged as to indebt the nation for half a century nationalising our infrastructure, it won't hurt me.

Personally I believe in the principle of Enlightened self-interest. Unions, on the other hand, believe in Un-enlightened self interest. Where they would destroy a company before allowing their own to be fully competitive.

Want to go back to Labour and "manufacturing".

Here is a view I completely agree with. What have trade unions done for Great Britain?

Unions started out well. But Un-enlightened self interest did its job all too well thereafter.

[Suff]

With the upcoming revolution in automation and AI we are going to have to take a long hard look.

We already are, we are one of the very top in this world.

But, let us face it, the money in Automation and AI is not going to be made in making the hardware. It is going to be made in designing the hardware, the software and selling the Automation and AI services. Something the UK is a world leader at.

But because we won't make an actual physical "product" people will always deride it as the UK doesn't "make" anything.

We need a new definition of "make". Software is "product". Especially manufacturing software, supply chain software, control software. Not the stuff which sits in your living room, the stuff which runs the firms and factories which rely on it to cut costs. They pay a premium to cut those costs and the UK should be getting that premium.

That is "PRODUCT" and we make a hell of a lot of it.

[Workingman]

Suff, I do not disagree with what you say, but you are missing the point somewhat.

The economy of the UK has been out of lick for decades. Our balance of payments has been in deficit since 1998, a situation that cannot go on forever.

It is true that we have more people that ever in employment, some 33.5 million of us, but consider a few things. The inflow of money is down the three main sectors: Finance; (Some) Manufacturing and Tourism. They account for 96% of our income. The other 4% comes from a mixed bag of things like science services, arts and entertainment and so on. In total they employ about 21% of the workforce.

The other 79%, about 25.4 million of them are working within the economy, or taking out, for want of a better phrase. The biggest group is the public sector with 6.9 million, then health at 4.3 million then retail at 4.2 million. The other 10 million are doing all sorts of things.

So 21% of us bring money in and 79% take money out... quite a lot more than we bring in, about £1.2 billion on average.

We need to change the numbers so that we bring in more money than we spend. If that means taking up Corbyn's idea where is the problem?

[TheOstrich]

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

Who said anything about "buying" ?

[AliasAggers]

Who said anything about "buying" ?

Not me!

[Suff]

WM, in 2017 our net economic inflow from tourism was estimated as 25.1bn.

In 2016, our NET (both inflow and outflow), global economic activity for services (Excluding travel, banking and transport), with the rest of the world (not the UK), was £79bn.

Services is important to us. Whilst we import quite a lot we export one HELL of a lot and people pay us for them.

Tourism? Not quite petty cash but also not impossible to lose.

[Workingman]

Suff, did you actually take in what I said?

I said that Finance; (Some) Manufacturing and Tourism account for 96% of our income. In other words they are our life blood. Yet only one in five of us work there, the other four work elsewhere and are taking out more than the one in five put in, so we have a balance of payments deficit and have had for 20 years!

Imagine what things would be like if two in five put in and only three in five took out and we had a positive balance of payments.

Nowhere did I say that Tourism was petty cash. We certainly can NOT afford to lose it. Mind you it is not that long ago that some morons thought it was fine to lose large sections of manufacturing.

[Suff]

I did take in what you said WM.

However there is no point in manufacturing when we can import, even with WTO tariffs, at half the price. Any manufacturing industry would be destroyed before it got off the ground.

I was talking about exports because that is where the country brings in money. That is what we should be manufacturing for. Tourism is an "export" even if we export it right in the UK.

What we need is manufacturing to balance our trade deficit and turn it positive. For that I see services as a product we manufacture. There is little point in using old metrics to measure the 21st century, it simply won't fit and you just wind up with a poor correlation.

In reality we need another 100bn of manufactured products exported, then it doesn't matter what we buy in, just how we balance it.

[Workingman]

You do not get it, do you?

If you are a city state or a principality you can probably get away with having an economy with only one or two major sectors. An economy of 65 million people needs a lot broader range of sectors earning money.

I understand what you say about services being a 'product' to export and that it makes a lot of money. I also recognise that it is a very big deal for you, personally, but you are not all of us.

Services sure as hell bring in a lot of money but employ relatively few people in doing so. The sector is more vulnerable to automation and AI so in future times the number of employees will drop.

People need to work for their physical, mental, and, yes, financial wellbeing. We do not all have the ability or the contacts to make "loadsa monee", but ever so many of us could contribute given the chance.

We might be put to work making Corbyn's widgets, but where is the problem?

Where is the 'king problem FFS?!

[Suff]

You do not get it, do you?

<snip>

We might be put to work making Corbyn's widgets, but where is the problem?

Where is the 'king problem FFS?!

Of course I get it. I have worked, as a career, with my hands in a pretty damned dirty job. I passed out second in my class in vehicle mechanic training and I did that for 7 years. I've laboured stripping roofs, building barns and plumbing in portacabins. During my days back at college I chopped and packed veg on a swing shift to add to the household budget and did a year there, full time, following leaving college; before I could get into computing.

I've been unemployed, long term, in a part of the country that had 50% unemployment, due to the mine closures and at a time of serious economic crisis. I got into computing through Employment training, begging a placement, AFTER completing my college training in computing. Apricot computers told me they'd love to have me for 6 months but didn't have the budget to buy the chair to put me on, let alone pay for Lunch every day and I could have walked to the Apricot factory.

Just because I dragged myself out of the mire, sacrificed family, time and, to a degree, marital harmony, to get where I am today; does not mean I don't GET IT.

So where is the problem with making Corbyn's widgets? It is a LIE. Nothing more. At 20 times the cost of doing something really worthwhile and actually contributing to both economy and treasury. Something that will provide a very short term bubble until it becomes more expensive than even the NHS. At which point it will be shut down and millions of people will find themselves on the scrap heap. Not only "again" but a whole new raft of dispossessed who never needed to be there in the first place.

But the point is that those millions will have built a life based on Corbyn's widgets, bought houses funded on mortgages backed by the wages from producing Corbyn's widgets.

Come the time it all falls apart, a whole segment of our population will be financially and emotionally destroyed.

Worst of all, taking the same money and investing it into realistic opportunities, would net more jobs, more GDP and more revenue into the government to be able to provide for more startups.

Never mind the fact that Government supported, loss making, widget manufacturers, are illegal in WTO rules if they block widgets from other WTO countries.

In order to Truly Get It, you need to take a longer view than a 3 year Labour leader sound bite.

If you want to look at the kind of opportunities, you need to look at the UK Video Games industry. Oh yeah, who needs that you say...

With the global games audience estimated between 2.2 and 2.6 billion people and the global software market expected to grow from $137.9 billion in 2018 to an estimated $180.1 billion by the end of 2021, the opportunities for the UK games industry have never been greater.

•There are 2,261 active games companies in the UK (listed in the map, as of June 2018)
•2,712 UK games companies have been mapped to date
•62% of UK games companies were founded since the beginning of 2010
•Only 41% of UK games companies use the right Standard Industrial Classification codes
•The map also lists 149 games industry service companies and 231 games-related courses across 95 universities and academic institutions.
•As of June 2018, there 21 towns / cities that are home to more than 20 games companies, the top 10 of which are listed below:

•In 2013, taking into account the total economic contribution (including multiplier and spillover effects), the core UK video games industry supported 23,900 FTEs of employment, generated £1.4bn in GVA and contributed £429m to the Exchequer.

This last one should really open your eyes. 60% of those companies had only been going THREE YEARS. Did they die and go away? No, they are stronger than ever, growing and thriving.

Deride services as much as you want, those businesses are ALL over the UK and we are leading the world in it.

THAT is what Corbyn should be talking about. Not manufacturing overpriced, oversubsidised, goods that will eventually disappear. We need tens of thousands of small, agile, profitable and, above all, Truly Modern, companies. I'm not just talking Service, or computing related, although that is the very largest growth area there is in the world right now. There are tens of thousands of areas that small agile UK companies could look at.

Why won't Corbyn even look at them?

They don't have unions, won't look at unions and if anyone actually tried to force unionisation on them, they'd probably shut down and re-open 6 months later as a new firm. Corbyn doesn't like firms like that, the people don't vote Labour.

If you don't believe me, you might want to try getting hold of some of the Ryanair Irish Union Pilots who are about to be offered to a job in Poland or to leave the company! Which is the modern way of making people redundant without having to pay redundancy and to control the Unions.

Corbyn's plans for making widgets have about as much legitimacy as his plans for Nationalisation.

But they sound really good to a subsection of the UK who still have a strong vote. Better get it out there now, because 25 years from now they'll all laugh at him/his successor/his ideas.

Oh and I missed a bit I found whilst researching the games industry. 80% of the companies Export. Heavily!