Originally Posted by Caecilius

I see what you mean by more than GDP, but I disagree with your assertion that it would be in the national interest for us to make our economy take a nose dive for the near future. Besides, it is unclear which industry the UK is equipped to compete in. Manufacturing and primary industry are out, so whats left?

I might take the liberty of reproducing a post I made elsewhere as it seem relevant here, concerning the education system and how many school-leavers are effectively forced into university by propaganda and lack of alternatives.

For a lot of young people the only option they're presented with is that if you don't go to university you won't get a decent job, which isn't the full story but has some element of truth in it. However the system deceives sixth formers into believing that their BA in Media Studies or Sociology from Scumbag Modern University is a magic ticket to a decent job; it's not until they leave uni with their degree that they realise the education system has let them down by failing to equip them with the fundamental skills, many employers look upon their degree as frankly worthless and finding any job at all becomes a struggle.

Education is fundamental for the UK in the 21st century. We can't compete as well as we could years ago in traditional manufacturing or heavy industry because of the cost of labour in this country compared to, say, China, so we have to find some hole in the global market that the Chinese can't fill. The financial sector is one notable thing the UK's known for; defence exports based upon high-tech engineering by the likes of BAE is another. Education itself is a third; foreign students coming to study in the UK and paying handsomely for the privilege is an industry in its own right, and the sums these students and their families pay show how well-regarded a decent education is in countries which don't take it as much for granted as we do. These three examples all require an intelligent workforce to deliver them, and to produce this "knowledge economy" the education system needs sorting; there needs to be the option of decent, respected degrees and decent, respected vocational alternatives so the youth of the future can make an educated choice, rather than be corralled into something to meet a government target. Blair coined the soundbite "education, education, education" years ago, and now Cameron needs to turn that from words into a workable system as an investment into the future of the UK.

Originally Posted by Caecilius

I see what you mean by more than GDP, but I disagree with your assertion that it would be in the national interest for us to make our economy take a nose dive for the near future. Besides, it is unclear which industry the UK is equipped to compete in. Manufacturing and primary industry are out, so whats left?

It would be incredibly painful in the short term to wean ourselves off the tit of financial services but the present imbalance is unhealthy and short term. Money, in large quantities, is just information; the profit lies in what that information is and how and how quickly it can be passed to where it's needed/wanted.

Anyone who thinks that the traditional financial services centres have an unassailable position clearly hasn't read a paper for the past decade. The Square mile may not become a ghost town any time soon, but that doesn't mean it'll remain a constant source of manna for unimaginative governments.

Personally, I disagree that we can't compete in manufacturing. We just need to pick our markets and products more carefully. We do a lot of things very well in engineering, electronics and bioscience in particular and if we restructured e.g. our corporate tax system to avoid penalising infrastructure-heavy industries we'd make a big start to being a manufacturing economy again.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

It would be incredibly painful in the short term to wean ourselves off the tit of financial services but the present imbalance is unhealthy and short term. Money, in large quantities, is just information; the profit lies in what that information is and how and how quickly it can be passed to where it's needed/wanted.

Anyone who thinks that the traditional financial services centres have an unassailable position clearly hasn't read a paper for the past decade. The Square mile may not become a ghost town any time soon, but that doesn't mean it'll remain a constant source of manna for unimaginative governments.

Personally, I disagree that we can't compete in manufacturing. We just need to pick our markets and products more carefully. We do a lot of things very well in engineering, electronics and bioscience in particular and if we restructured e.g. our corporate tax system to avoid penalising infrastructure-heavy industries we'd make a big start to being a manufacturing economy again.

We will be limited to those industries with a very low labour requirement due to the lack of minimum wage in the far east. This doesn't give us a huge number of options.

I'm not sure why we'd want to do it anyway. When the financial secort of one country collapses, the world gets f*cked. Spain and Greece have no serious banking industry that caused their economies to tank. They were as dependent on the US/UK/Japan as the rest of the world. However if we have the worlds largest financial centre in the UK we can, at least, reap the rewards when things are going smoothly. With a little more planning we would be much more able to weather the next financial storm when it comes, which would mean that we win both ways.

Education, yes, Manufacturing, OK, but my real concern is that we appear to be coming to the end of the Service/Credit era as a way of funding our National Lifestyle. What we do not seem to have found is a viable, comprehensive alternative economic strategy that will see us through another generation or better. As noted above by Micawber, I'm not sure that the excessively extroverted, short termist culture of the moment is helping either.

In the past, we as a Nation have been genius at finding new, innovative (and profitable) ways out of National crises: examples are the use of our maritime strength to make us a trading superpower; the industrial revolution and (I guess) the "consumer revolution" of the 1980s. All were stimulated by periods of real or perceived economic crisis.

For what it's worth, there seem to be things about this country that everybody else appears to admire and like (hundreds of millions would come here if they could); finding the right way to export these qualities in a post-expansionist age may hold the key...

Originally Posted by Caecilius

Spain and Greece have no serious banking industry that caused their economies to tank. They were as dependent on the US/UK/Japan as the rest of the world. However if we have the worlds largest financial centre in the UK we can, at least, reap the rewards when things are going smoothly. With a little more planning we would be much more able to weather the next financial storm when it comes, which would mean that we win both ways.

Spain is working at getting a serious banking industry - Santander has bought the Royal Bank of Scotland (England and Wales branches) and NatWest (Scotland branches) thanks to the European Commission.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

Answer me this. If the banking sector had decided to continue running their affairs the way they previously had prior to deregulation - as they were perfectly at liberty to do - would we have landed in this state of affairs?

To a large extent, yes. But maybe not quite so severe.

Originally Posted by StickyEnd

Then how come my local conservative MP has been fighting for local services for years? How come he came out squeeky clean in the expenses scandle?

Because they all do that. They all get their mugs in the local rag to show how much they support the local issues.

When they are in opposition they do it all the more because their Party is not driving what ever cut it is that they are against.

When their Party is in power they continue to campaign publically BUT then vote as directed by the Whip. Hypocrisy in action.

It's not a Tory thing, they all do it. In 1994 I wrote to Robin Cook complaining that my job was about to be outsourced. He wrote me a very supportive letter back. In 1997 I wrote again, reminding him of his sentiments and asking him to do something now he was in power. I got another letter basically telling me "Tough shit".

As for expenses. That's not the debate here. Plenty of crooks on all sides in that particular shambles.

Originally Posted by Kitmarlowe

The Mapeley contract to take over 700 odd buildings was signed in 2001, nothing to do with John Major's government. Get your facts right via Google fu first

New Labour was doctrinally bankrupt on the whole PFI mantra. Their ONLY solution was PFI, regardless of it's viability. If the consultation phase gave the wrong answer, the figures were massaged to get the right answer.

I wasn't talking about Mapeley. I know nothing about that other than what was printed in Private Eye. I was talking about the outsourcing of IR IT services to EDS and later Capgemini. Your assertion was that Labour had a) initiated the IR (HMRC) IT outsource and b) Labour had sent work to India.

Both assertions are incorrect. John Major initiated the privatisation and EDS did not send any work to India. Capgemini did that following the recompete that saw the Aspire consortium take over from EDS in 2004. In 2004 the contract was already in private hands of one sort or another. Capgemini used India on a subcontract basis. Labour sent nothing to India themselves. Don't need Google old boy. I was there.

Cracking rants, but we've allowed dullards to run the place and paid them a fortune to do it.

Everyone is outraged now that they need to pay for their sloth.

Tough shit, payback time, its not like you weren't warned.

Even I've been saying so since at least 2008, bummer eh?

Originally Posted by msr

Lots of IT spend happened - not all of it good.

MSR

Please point out where I said it was all good? You should see some of the pointless suggestions that didn't get commissioned!

IT by it's very nature is prone to expensive and high profile failure. Not least because many civil servants struggle with personal hygeine and doing a full week without fiddling their flexitime sheets let alone know how to cope with creating Detailed Business Requirements or Test Acceptance Criteria.

That said, particularly in the are of putting public services online, there was a lot of worthwhile IT work completed under Labour.