Sal Paradise wrote:The government - both parties are equally guilty - seem intimidated by the bankers, doesn't help when you have so many eggs in that basket...
Agreed, certainly on the latter point – to an extent on the first. My own interpretation would be that, ideologically speaking, the current government (not the Conservative Party in its entirety, perhaps) but the Parliamentary Party, certainly, have little problem with the power of big finance – and, indeed, big business.
A number of them have financial interests with just such companies.
I think it's more a case of intimidation with Labour and a feeling that nothing can be done; they'll threaten to leave etc etc. Although I'd equally say that (my own interpretation again) that some of them are ideologically not far from a similar view.
Sal Paradise wrote:... You would have thought their arrogance would have been dented by their abject failure to run their businesses properly, but no their self esteem knows no bounds. As usual when business really needs them to step up to the plate they ensure they look after their own first...
Which raises the need for regulation. But it needs to be done properly and with proper legislation to back it up and proper penalties too. It's not just the banks: I'm just reading Ben Goldacre's
Bad Pharma, about how big pharmaceutical corporations behave, and it's pretty shocking. You cannot escape from the view that, at core, their ultimate priority is making money (a legal obligation for a company, of course) but that that frequently comes well above patient wellbeing. But it's also a story of cack-handed regulation with no real clout behind it.
Sal Paradise wrote:... I can understand the large scale deindustralisation for mass produced basic products - we simply cannot compete with the BRIC countries, but for small run highly technical products we are as good as anywhere and this should be encouraged. From a skill retention basis if nothing else
Did you see Sally C's comment about engineering graduates ending up working in the City, because of the money?
Skills retention, certainly.
I'm think I'm correct in saying that we lose many researchers too, because of a lack of investment in research, and because jobs abroad, and other lines of work, pay better.
We have expertise and excellence in a number of fields – and we need to look for more. But at the risk of repeating myself, they won't happen overnight. What is clearly unsustainable, though, is a general population, with dwindling income levels, in a country that needs people to spend for the sake of the economy. And that's without considering the human aspect of that.
