Saxondale Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 I was having a conversation with my old man the other week about the decline of industry. It occurred to me that almost every town in the North and the Midlands can be instantly associated with one or more major industry from over the years. For example: Leicester + hosiery / shoes, Derby + train building / textiles, Manchester and other towns in the North West + cotton mills, Sheffield + steel, various places + coal, etc. etc. By the same token, with the small exception of the odd shipbuilding town such as Chatham, there are no places in the South of England with which I could make the same connection. Where the frig did these Southerners work in the olden days? They can't all have been wanking off while the North and Midlands were busy making stuff?
Zingari Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Luton made lots of hats . I can't imagine Britain would have been able to master a global Empire without stylish head-wear
Webbo Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Can you imagine the effort involved in sewing the buttons on this? Would have kept a Dickensian street urchin in bread and water for weeks.
Mike Oxlong Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Can you imagine the effort involved in sewing the buttons on this? Would have kept a Dickensian street urchin in bread and water for weeks. Is such a decorated cockney known as a cockjazzle?
Webbo Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Is such a decorated cockney known as a cockjazzle? Cock for short.
Jon the Hat Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Even if that were true, as we are paying for the rest of the country's welfare bills these days, lets say things have evened out shall we?
leicsmac Posted 16 March 2013 Posted 16 March 2013 Even if that were true, as we are paying for the rest of the country's welfare bills these days, lets say things have evened out shall we? And who's fault is that? What did happen to our manufacturing industries?
Rincewind Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 It's not the Government's fault, it's the lower classes fault.
Finnegan Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 And who's fault is that? What did happen to our manufacturing industries?
Guest BlueBrett Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 And who's fault is that? What did happen to our manufacturing industries? umm at the risk of sparking untold controversy I'm going to say eroded by foreign competition. Must be the government's fault though. Why the hell didn't they just bomb all the Chinese factories ffs?!
MooseBreath Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 Must be the government's fault though. Why the hell didn't they just bomb all the Chinese factories ffs?! Because we all love cheap spatulas bro.
Guest BlueBrett Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 Because we all love cheap spatulas bro. Good point. And if the toy in my happy meal was made down the road in Coalville or some other such shithole I wouldn't feel half as cultured as I do now with my exotic Taiwanese collection
davieG Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 a fair amount of manufacturing will probably end up back here after it's done a tour of the worlds low paid economies, having lifted up their standard of living and pay levels, we've had Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, India etc now it's China's turn at the grind wheel. Even now there's stories of companies abandoning India and returning to the UK.
Zingari Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 a fair amount of manufacturing will probably end up back here after it's done a tour of the worlds low paid economies, having lifted up their standard of living and pay levels, we've had Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, India etc now it's China's turn at the grind wheel. Even now there's stories of companies abandoning India and returning to the UK. Yes, there does seem to be some sort of Sweatshop Rotation System in operation around the world .
leicsmac Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 umm at the risk of sparking untold controversy I'm going to say eroded by foreign competition. Must be the government's fault though. Why the hell didn't they just bomb all the Chinese factories ffs?! Possibly so, but I'm going to spark controversy myself here and say the movement to financial services as the main industry in this country was one of the most massive economic mistakes ever made - it put us at the mercy of the precise situation that's happening now. Evidently it seemed like a good move at the time because as you say with globalisation multinational companies instinctively moved their manufacturing bases to whatever country offered the best slave labour deal at the time (currently China) in order to reap higher profits, but the manufacturing base in this country should have modernised not just disappeared almost completely. You can't run a big economy just offering one thing - especially when what you're offering is totally immaterial. And making stuff has been the backbone of the economic growth in any big country. South Koreas (an "island nation" of similar size and population to our own) economic boom of the last 20-odd years - and they've weathered the recession far better than most - has been built on making stuff and exporting it out, along with mass employment. And it's not low-paid either - I didn't see many people at all over there who I would consider to be poor. We need to get our manufacturing industries going again, and by extension get people working again.
MooseBreath Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 3D printing could destroy manuacturing as we know it just as we've gone and devalued our own currency enough to tempt traditional manufacturing back. We'll miss the boat and continue our slide down into the bottom half on the global league table along with the rest of Europe.
Webbo Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 Possibly so, but I'm going to spark controversy myself here and say the movement to financial services as the main industry in this country was one of the most massive economic mistakes ever made - it put us at the mercy of the precise situation that's happening now. Evidently it seemed like a good move at the time because as you say with globalisation multinational companies instinctively moved their manufacturing bases to whatever country offered the best slave labour deal at the time (currently China) in order to reap higher profits, but the manufacturing base in this country should have modernised not just disappeared almost completely. You can't run a big economy just offering one thing - especially when what you're offering is totally immaterial. And making stuff has been the backbone of the economic growth in any big country. South Koreas (an "island nation" of similar size and population to our own) economic boom of the last 20-odd years - and they've weathered the recession far better than most - has been built on making stuff and exporting it out, along with mass employment. And it's not low-paid either - I didn't see many people at all over there who I would consider to be poor. We need to get our manufacturing industries going again, and by extension get people working again. Korea's not an island, it's a peninsula.
leicsmac Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 3D printing could destroy manuacturing as we know it just as we've gone and devalued our own currency enough to tempt traditional manufacturing back. We'll miss the boat and continue our slide down into the bottom half on the global league table along with the rest of Europe. This is possible. What would you suggest we do?
leicsmac Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 Korea's not an island, it's a peninsula. Hence my use of quotation marks From a trade and economic perspective, it is an island nation as everything has to be brought in or out by air or sea. There ain't nothing getting out by land, not with the nutters up North.
Finnegan Posted 17 March 2013 Posted 17 March 2013 Korea's not an island, it's a peninsula. That's why he put it in quote marks. It's cut off from it's mainland by a little something called North Korea, you've heard of that, yes? I suppose being flippantly pedantic is one way to ignore the fact he made a pretty good point you've no counter for, though.
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