Britain: the Coming Crisis

paracelsus

Welcome to the reality of life in Britain after twelve years of Labour government. God only knows how bad it will be after another ten months.

If anyone still held any allusions about how bad Labour is for this country, they have surely vanished over the last few months.

It will take a decade or more to begin to repair the ruinous effects of this government. To all who voted for them, you are reaping what you sowed.

Ruby Duck

paraclesus, plump cat managers earning 6-figure salaries in the Town Halls and the NHS don't seem to be doing a lot of reaping.

But thanks for the thought. I'll try adding "voted Tory in 1997" to my cv.

Jim

I think you are going to be quite stunned at how bad things are going to get.
If the BoE has now stopped buying gilts, then interest rates will rocket, large numbers of people will lose their jobs and businesses.
Government bankruptcy will force mass sackings across the public sector. Huge bank losses will follow, further restricting credit, forcing more businesses into bankruptcy, increasing unemployment, forcing down house prices, causing further losses at banks, and on and on.
Unemployment will probably peak at 40%. Then falling oil revenues... blah blah.
Labour has spent everybody's money and now there is none left. One good thing though is that the Windsors and the aristocracy will probably get swept into the dustbin of history. Another good thing is that most socialists will lose their jobs as the state slowly shuts down. peace at last.

David Bouvier

Are you saying that you now realise that Gordon Brown is a dangerous fantasist who was over the last 12 years trashed the strong economy he inherited?

Or have you drawn some other conclusion more to do with arts funding?

Toodle-pip

cjcjc

You may be right about the crisis, but "Freefall" was cliche-ridden cardboard-cutout-character rubbish.

J. Richardson

We do not face a recesion exactly , but instead an economic 'correction'.
Either, the pretend jobs/pretend wealth created by the 'dangerous fantasist' ( obviously correct mr D. Bouvier, above ) are extinguished; or they will devour all the real wealth/jobs.
Simple.
During the coming dark days;at least the public will be able to console themselves with the knowledge that 'our brave boys' are killing and being killed to ensure the temporary Primary School education of a number of Afganistani children.
Oh , and changing women's clothing strictures, naturaly.
On their return , the troops can chat with Burka wearing new arrivals about the pros and cons.
Last days of Weimar anyone ?

mac

"Do we really have any idea of how serious this is about to become?"

Some of, yes. Darling, assuredly. Habituees of utopian planning seminars in Portmeirion . . . er, almost certainly not.

Disorganised1

Just had confirmed today 30% of my staf are being made redundant. Because the company is losing money ? No. Because we've lost contracts and no longer need them ? No. Because the work can be done cheaper using third world staff ? Now we're getting there.
Some legislation to prevent this type of abuse by 'global' companies would help the country.

Ian Walker

Disorganised: I hope you're not expecting Labour to do anything about "British Jobs for British Workers" - £2m from Lakshmi Mittal says they won't.

An import duty on services would make a lot of sense, since we're moving towards being a service economy. Probably a vote-winner too; raises funds from a new source, and protects British jobs.

Susan Hill

Depends entirely where you are and what your line of work is Martin. There is no recession and has been no recession to speak of where I live.. plenty of money sloshing round and shops, pubs, restaurants, cafes always packed. Three huge houses being converted and doubled or trebled in size near me, with the local building firms taking on at least 100 more workers to cope. I went to book my car in for service - 18 days wait. Went to see about having our sofa recovered.. he can't start it till mid-September, order book full. And that is the story all round here and in many other local area of the country. Yes, we are very very lucky.. but it does need pointing out.

Disorganised1

Sorry I should have made myself clearer - the jobs are going to be done in Malaysia and India, though the habit of bringing a string of workers on 6 month visas continues.

TomTom

Maybe a real crisis will rid us of these political parties and their pompous bombast

Nicholas

The outsourcing of jobs abroad does need to come under scrutiny because the organisations making their British staff redundant to exploit lower wage structures abroad are, literally, benefiting at the taxpayers expense. It is also arguable whether jobs transferred abroad are really redundant. If there was a precedent in this country that A could be sacked because B offered to do his job for less money we might take a much dimmer view of the practice.

In addition, some large organisations (like Aviva) regularly re-structure and make hundreds redundant not through necessity but to balance their books, meet shareholder expectations and preserve profits. Many of those made redundant become a burden on the taxpayer (not to mention the very real human tragedy in each case). It ought to be straightforward to create a tax regime to negate or offset this exploitation and to incentivise the creation of jobs here.

The current cynical redundancy ploys of big businesses are a far cry from the factory era of laying people off because there were no orders. Why should the British tax burden increase because British big businesses benefit from moving the jobs of minions abroad? Why not get a third world CEO to do the job for a quarter of what the British CEO is paid?

And, apart from everything else, the proliferation of offshore call centres and multi-tiered telephone menus are generally not good experiences for the customer.