# I'm concerned about the economy



## johnelliott (13 Mar 2005)

700 redundancies were announced by Mars Uk this week. No cuts in production, as I understand it, just moving the production abroad.
This is another example of what is happening in this and most other developed countries around the world. If it can be made or done somewhere else in the world a fraction, be it large or small, cheaper then it will be.
BBC TV news this morning had a piece on people who have been made rendundant starting their own businesses. I though it was quite a good piece, and the chap (ex banker) they interviewed seemed happy with what he was doing (garden design)
As a person who has also started his own business I find this stuff interesting, but what really concerns me is this question---
When everybody has been made redundant, and all the manufacturing and most of the service jobs have been moved abroad, and when many of the pension funds have collapsed under the weight of too many pensioners and not enough people paying in, who is going to have the money to be my customer?

Worried of West Berks (AKA John)


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## Gill (13 Mar 2005)

My other half works for MG Rover and he's concerned about the forthcoming deal with China to take over the company. There'll be about 2,000 redundancies at Rover alone, but that'll have a knock-on effect throughout the rest of the West Midlands. He reckons the potential harm to components suppliers has been exaggerated, though, because most of MG Rovers' components are imported anyway. Nevertheless, times look difficult for many of his colleagues.

Since the company operates a 'last in, first out' policy, he believes that his seniority will protect his position. Fingers crossed.

Incidentally, the only difference in the long run between the Phoenix consortium taking over Rover from BMW a few years ago compared to the Alchemy proposal that was defeated, is that John Towers and his co-directors have made themselves millionaires through restructuring the company. Plus ca change.

Gill


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## Chris Knight (13 Mar 2005)

Gill,

Indeed, Jon Moulton is rich but he ain't a crook! I shall keep my fingers crossed for your hubby.


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## johnelliott (13 Mar 2005)

I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.
Is there anyone out there who feels economically safe? I certainly don't, and I think very few other people are entitled to. 
How about some suggestions as to what we, or companies who are doing the job exporting, or the government should do about the situation.
I think it's getting worse, and that it may not be long before something financially bad happens

Worried of West Berks


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## Noel (13 Mar 2005)

Call it apathy or indifference. People just get on with their own lives, ensure that they can protect and look after their nearest and dearest, have a beer on a Saturday night and not worry about the bigger picture. 

Noel


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## Steve Maskery (13 Mar 2005)

Hi John
Well if you really DO want a response...

Your analysis is spot on. The end is nigh, repent and be saved, or not as your beliefs dictate. I have spent the last 15 years in enconomic limbo. I'be been self-employed and had very good years and very bad years. I've invested in my career (it's expensive to get an MBA out your own tax-paid income) and as a result I am highly educated, highly qualified, highly skint and highly unemployed. Indeed my friend Akram only got a job by forgetting to mention he had an MBA, and my Indian friend Khemraj was keeping body and soul toghether in this country by sqirting the jelly into pork pies. He is Oracle Certificated and also has an MBA. He couldn't even find a job in India, and is now working for some pittance in United Arab Emirates. If you or I did the job we would be well-paid, but he, as an Indian, is the lowest of the low.

One of the problems is that we in the West, have got used to living a nice comfortable middle-class life-style for several generations, based on an aconomy which itself is based on buying raw materials very cheaply from the third world, and then paying ourselves more than we are worth for processing them. Yes I know that's over-simplistic, but it's basically true. It is the same inequality which fuels social uprising in our own history and terrorism in the modern world. One group of people sees another group as having an unfair advantage and is unwilling to acept it. At the same time the Haves are unwilling to give up their way of living and convert to living in a mud hut.

I don't have a solution, if I had I have no doubt I could get rich on the knowledge, but this is just classical economics working on a global scale. My foreign friends see the same situation as an opportunity to have a better life, a better standard of living.

I'm not sure if I will ever have a "proper" job again. Maybe my whole lifestyle will be dependent on my wife's continued employment as a GP. If her MS takes hold, maybe even that will go and I'll be selling the Big Issue. Who knows? But I stopped being optimistic about my personal economy a long time ago.

Sorry to sound so miserable but it's how I feel.

On the positive side, I'm not disappointed with the Festool saw.

Cheers
Steve


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## Midnight (13 Mar 2005)

> I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.



What exactly do you feel we _should _ be saying John?? Personally I'm enough of a realist to have figured that anything I said to whoever will have little or no impact on the trend...



> Is there anyone out there who feels economically safe? I certainly don't, and I think very few other people are entitled to.



Job security in my business is directly proportional to the trends in the price of oil; I figured that out pretty quickly... I'm a hands on tech... I build the impossible with the improbable for the ungratefull... I've felt secure in that position for about 10 mins in the last 14 years... is there anything to gain by worrying about it.????



> How about some suggestions as to what we, or companies who are doing the job exporting, or the government should do about the situation.



OK... how's this for a suggestion... we (the electorate) ban the profession of Professional Politician (is that a contradiction in terms??) all the way down to local council level... sack the lot of em. Ohh.. and the same goes for the House of Lords... Remedy the herreditory peers via the French solution i.e. guilotine...In their place, hire a bunch of Post Grad students from India / Bangladesh / Pakistan to do the job via tele-working... We'd save a fortune in taxes (as the post grads work for tiny sums compared to the mob of louts we have today), they'd probably be infinately higher qualified to do the job, and in spite of any language difficulties, there's a fighting chance that they just might answer the same question that they're asked rather than waffle for hours on something totally unrelated... I figure there's a chance they'd do a much better job than any government we've seen in the last 100 years....



> When everybody has been made redundant, and all the manufacturing and most of the service jobs have been moved abroad, and when many of the pension funds have collapsed under the weight of too many pensioners and not enough people paying in, who is going to have the money to be my customer?



I figure that if that situation were to arrise, the last thing I'll be worrying about is your customer base; I'll have slightly more pressing concerns...


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## ike (13 Mar 2005)

John Elliot wrote



> I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.



Some possible reasons:-

Some don't like threads with a political slant.

Some always see the glass half full.

Some think it a boring subject.

Some think a load of hot air isn't going to change anything so why bother.

Some think it's only about woodwork isn't it?

Me?.... I couldn't possibly comment!

Ike


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## johnelliott (13 Mar 2005)

Midnight":3igko4ou said:


> > When everybody has been made redundant, and all the manufacturing and most of the service jobs have been moved abroad, and when many of the pension funds have collapsed under the weight of too many pensioners and not enough people paying in, who is going to have the money to be my customer?
> 
> 
> 
> I figure that if that situation were to arrise, the last thing I'll be worrying about is your customer base; I'll have slightly more pressing concerns...



Sorry, didn't mean that I wanted any of you to be concerned about my potential problems. I was using me as an example. 
So often the answer offered when people lose jobs is to start their own business. The problem with that solution is that if everybody else has lost their job too, then no one will have any money to buy anything.

Should we be concerned about it? Is there anything that we can _do_ about it? No, I don't think so either. No reason not to talk about it though. There's plenty of other stuff people discuss here that they can't change

John


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## Neil (14 Mar 2005)

Steve Maskery":1y0epms5 said:


> On the positive side, I'm not disappointed with the Festool saw.


You kept that one quiet, Steve! :wink: 

Neil


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2005)

New saw then Steve? Nice one!


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2005)

johnelliott":2crsjnhj said:


> I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.



John, speaking for myself, I come here to (mainly) discuss woodwork, not politics.


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## Aragorn (14 Mar 2005)

johnelliott":3w3xueka said:


> I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.


I've noticed that Off-topic posts seem to get a post rate of about 1:15 views. On-topics seems to be more like 1:10 views: this whilst the topic is "fresh".
This thread seems to fit the average about right, although now of course it's not about the main topic any more :wink:


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## johnelliott (14 Mar 2005)

Tony":lm7fv2yg said:


> johnelliott":lm7fv2yg said:
> 
> 
> > I'm more than mildly surprised that so many people (53 so far) have so little to say about this subject.
> ...



Me too, in fact I don't even look at threads that don't interest me

BTW there is absolutely nothing political about what I have said in this thread

John


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## Adam (14 Mar 2005)

I left a large electronics company after several years where cutbacks were made. This wasn't just a case of moving "production" work - they were taking Research and Development too. The chinese government is playing their cards very well in only really opening their technological markets to companies that show they have brought skilled jobs, not just production jobs. I have left and joined a small startup company where it is the knowledge in our heads which is our value. 

I hear in southern China there is now a shortage of labour, which means salaries have started climbing, and workers have been refusing to work in companies who have poor health and safety. The upshot of this is that its not quite so cheap as (say) a few years ago.

Isn't it inevitable that over time, people become more accustomed to the nicer things in life, salaries rise, people become more educated, demand better working conditions and safety, drives up cost and a new "low cost" country suddenly becomes the buzz?

Japan? Taiwan? China? Phillipines? 

Adam


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## ProShop (14 Mar 2005)

Steve Maskery":1dvvp4gl said:


> Sorry to sound so miserable but it's how I feel.
> 
> On the positive side, I'm not disappointed with the Festool saw.
> 
> ...


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## ProShop (14 Mar 2005)

This is a double edged sword thread, we have spent hundreds years ripping off other countries raw materials and resources and made a fat profit. employed thousands of people and build an empire with huge industries. And now the tide is turning, the third world is starting to wake up.....fast. It's the start of their turn.


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## UKTony (15 Mar 2005)

johnelliott":88p4albv said:


> 700 redundancies were announced by Mars Uk this week.)


 

John if 700 people pouring chocolate in moulds want 30K per year when someone in the Far East will do it for 1 -6K why are you so suprised. In answer to your question though the outcome is War :arrow:


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## Midnight (15 Mar 2005)

I'd love to figure out how guys in the stock exchange earn what they do for shouting at each other... :? :shock: :?


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## trevtheturner (15 Mar 2005)

I read nothing political in John's original post, and there are some interesting points made subsequently. I think Steve and Felderman have summed up the situation about right. For decades the Western world has been materialistic and greedy and we, unfortunately or fortunately, have all happened to have grown up in (and benefited from?) this culture

The world-wide picture? I believe, as has already been alluded to, that the Western 'civilised' world has had it good for a long while but that prevailing and developing market forces are likely to leave us a bit on the receiving end in future.

Cheers,

Trev.


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## chiba (15 Mar 2005)

Why don't people seem to give a damn? Simple really - because we've evolved not to. Give this a read if you want the long version. Fascinating book, and a potential life changer...


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## trevtheturner (15 Mar 2005)

Bit of a generalisation, chiba? Not quite sure what you mean. Many people are selfish and self-centred, many others are generous and committed to others, but most are in some ways probably a bit of both. And many peoples live happily, although struggling to survive, in mud hut villages with no knowledge or perception of materialism, money or the outside world (I know, I've met some of them).

Still, I enjoy having a read, so I'll give it a go. Doesn't seem that it is widely known about? - an Oz book with only two reviews, both from Oz.

Cheers,

Trev.


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## chiba (15 Mar 2005)

There are 12 reviews on Amazon US. The book is published by an Australian non-profit foundation, which has its own website here.


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## devonwoody (15 Mar 2005)

Message to Johnelliot and others.

Regret to say very little an individual himself can do on those problems.
If dedicated to solving the problems becoming an MP & PM eventually could go someway to creating Utopia??


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## Anonymous (15 Mar 2005)

trevtheturner":1nav2boz said:


> I read nothing political in John's original post,
> Trev.



Trev

When did the economy stop being controlled by the government and particularly the chancellor of the exchequer (and bank of England) then?

And I guess unemployment is nothing to do with politics too eh? 

Of course this is a political issue. To claim otherwise is at best nieve


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## devonwoody (15 Mar 2005)

What we are living through is Capitalism, but has anyone come up with something better?


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## woodshavings (15 Mar 2005)

Hi Chiba,
that looks a very interesting recommendation - I'll give that a read!
Thanks
John


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## johnelliott (15 Mar 2005)

Tony":w8h8itl7 said:


> trevtheturner":w8h8itl7 said:
> 
> 
> > I read nothing political in John's original post,
> ...



Well, I don't think that the WORLD economy (which is what is affecting us all here, or will do sooner or later) has ever been controlled by the government or the Bank of England. 
This is therefore NOT a political discussion

Calling other people naive is best left to people who know how to spell it

To quote from another forum user here-
"I do not see why I should not ask about peoples views on such an important topic. I respect our members views, some of which I regard as friends, and was eager to hear their thoughts "

John


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## Anonymous (15 Mar 2005)

John

There is no need to get personal and insulting (again) over my typing OR spelling. 

World economics is linked to *world politics*. To think otherwise is *naive*

You are attempting to call black as white by denying the link between politics (world or domestic) and economics (world or domestic). Who do you think controls economies eh?

My statement was that *I* do not wish to discuss political subjects. I too respect other people's views. My point was that I have no wish to engage in political debate on a woodworking forum.


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## ike (15 Mar 2005)

John wrote:



> Calling other people naive is best left to people who know how to spell it



and then he wrote:



> ...I respect our members views, some of *which* I regard as friends, and was eager to hear their thoughts "



So, you regard some of our members views as friends do you, or did you mean them as friends?. Talk about the pot calling the kettle...

So John, if you want to be insulting to others on the forum, try to make sure your grammar is correct first. :wink:


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## Aragorn (15 Mar 2005)

Deary me.
Does it really have to come to comments about spelling and grammar?
English isn't necessarily a forum user's first language!
Even for those of us for whom it is, "correct" spelling and grammar doesn't exactly take into account the accepted changes that develop through mediums such as online fora, text messaging and general colloquialisms.

Isn't it naïve to think that members' views can't be adequately expressed without this kind of petty squabbling?


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## Anonymous (15 Mar 2005)

Back on topic...?

Personally I'm not worried. That could be something to do age and being, shall we say, comfortable (although not rich by any stretch of the imagination), but I actually have confidence that there are enough people with brains in this country who will figure out how to make a different 'order' work should it become necessary.

In today's system, even if Mars moves jobs offshore, the profits are still repatriated. Where do you really think the profits from all those Japanese cars sold in the UK really goes? Some of it is reinvested, but the bulk ends up in Japan. So, the cash inflows still look good, the government still takes its chunk of corporation tax and so on. The time to start worrying is when the companies themselves abandon the UK - or the US, or Europe... I think we can all be sure our governments would be very quick to react if that was ever to loom as a possibility. Actually, the time to start worrying about a company's viability is if they *aren't* taking a global perspective on their operations. That's my 20+ years as a senior strategist and consultant showing...

I do feel sorry for the people thrown out of work (my youngest is in that boat now, has been many times before and will be again), but that's a short term problem, and if you do think the glass is still half full you're halfway to solving it.

My wife's aunt had a wonderful philosophy. She worked in the barrios in Nicaragua for a number of years and said 'you are only poor if you don't know where your next meal is coming from'. We are VERY lucky.


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## johnelliott (15 Mar 2005)

ike":3ohd7883 said:


> John wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ike, the quotation was from one of Tony's contributions to his own thread "Bush or Kerry?". It was (obviously) from the time of the presidential election last year. Would that have been a political thread, I wonder?
Naturally I could not make any changes to the quote

John


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## johnelliott (15 Mar 2005)

I don't wish to argue with Tony or any one else, so perhaps this thread should be allowed to die a death.
I still maintain that it was not in any way political
John


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## trevtheturner (16 Mar 2005)

Tony":21v32mp1 said:


> trevtheturner":21v32mp1 said:
> 
> 
> > I read nothing political in John's original post,
> ...



Tony,

In your post addressed to me, to claim that I am at best nieve is at best naive. :lol: 

If you read my post again you will see that I have neither made any reference whatsoever to the issues you have raised nor included any political observations - I don't think the original posting called for that. I have merely given my overall viewpoint in respect of the general topic of this thread.

I am very surprised that you have raised two such blatantly political questions when you have previously shown such a propensity for clamping down on any, what you see as, 'political' discussion. However I will not, although I could, respond with sound argument (as your rhetorical questions are in many ways defective).

In my view, the subject raised was a valid off-topic thread, with several valid responses, none of which were in breach of the Forum rules, which was going along quite happily until you stepped in and caused its degeneration!

Trev.
(economically safe, fortunate to know where the next meal is coming from, not personally worried, but still caring).


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## Gill (16 Mar 2005)

OY!

Aren't we supposed to be mates?

Gill


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## Midnight (16 Mar 2005)

I still think that french solution's better.....


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## UKTony (16 Mar 2005)

Can i just mention that many many years ago I used to date a Welsh girl called "Nieve" and this thread has brought back terrible memories


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## Aragorn (16 Mar 2005)

UKTony":1idrvkc9 said:


> I used to date a Welsh girl called "Nieve"


... so that'll be pronounced "Charlotte" eh Tony!??
Sorry Welsh folk - couldn't resist  :wink:


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## trevtheturner (16 Mar 2005)

That's okay, Aragorn, we always appreciate a little jest :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: but I do think she might be starting to wise-up a bit!

Oh, by the way - Six Nations. Heard a rumour that if Scotland win on Saturday then England will be known as the Triple Clowns! :wink: :lol: 

Anybody got a spare ticket for the Millennium Stadium? :roll: :roll:  

Cheers,

Trev.


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## Noel (16 Mar 2005)

Trev, better to watch it on the TV, always disappointing to pay to see a team lose....

Noel, no work on thursday, St Paddy's day.


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## Midnight (16 Mar 2005)

> Noel, no work on thursday, St Paddy's day.



we should be green with envy..??

:wink:


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## trevtheturner (17 Mar 2005)

Noel,

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: 

Watched the game at Murrayfield last Sunday. Scots and Welsh fans standing together, arms round each other, all singing, or trying to sing, both the anthems. Brilliant!

Win or lose, I'm just hoping to see another super game on Saturday.  
(No, not sure about the first part of that sentence............................}

Cheers,

Trev.


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## Noel (17 Mar 2005)

"Win or lose"??? Such confidence in your team!!! 
You're right, as long as it's a good game. Whatever the outcome the pubs and off-licences will be very busy giving comfort to all those celebrating and commiserating.

Noel


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## trevtheturner (17 Mar 2005)

Sorry, Noel,

I missed a bit out. Last line should have included ..............of course we'll win)! :wink: And I'll raise a glass to your boys anyway.

Cheers,

Trev.


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## ike (17 Mar 2005)

John wrote:



> Ike, the quotation was from one of Tony's contributions to his own thread "Bush or Kerry?". It was (obviously) from the time of the presidential election last year. Would that have been a political thread, I wonder?
> Naturally I could not make any changes to the quote



Then I owe you an apology. Sorry John.  

Ike


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## tim (17 Mar 2005)

trevtheturner":pg3bczt7 said:


> Scots and Welsh fans standing together, arms round each other, all singing, or trying to sing, both the anthems. Brilliant!




Walls and castles! Where are they when you need them? 


Thats all I'm saying :wink: 

T


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