Where is Great Britain?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I do not see it as bad as you, obviously, i really do not think Great Britain is off the stage in any respect

But i could throw in some cheap advice:
1. Go off the financial market, do not rely on financial juggling as the sole means of wealth (because you only generate debt, and the breakdown of the middle class)
2. Ban interest (and screw the banks and their promises).
3. Begin to produce something real again; you have been great at it, you will be again.
4. Decide what you want to do. Finally get along with the EU, or create an exclusive five-eyes commercial zone.

I know what the EU will say to this


P.S: on a cynical sidenote: Maybe you should use your information advantage, and put your GCHQ industrial spying results to some better use

Can't disagree with this, but there are some distinct problems, sadly.
Brace yourself, I'm going to waffle a bit here, and it might get of Skybirdian length.

1. Go off the financial market, do not rely on financial juggling as the sole means of wealth (because you only generate debt, and the breakdown of the middle class)
3. Begin to produce something real again; you have been great at it, you will be again.

I shall bring these two together because the answer lies in both.

Britain had a thriving manufacturing industry at the turn of last century, we produced coal, steel, ships, and so forth, just as Germany did. However, our productivity declined through two World Wars and when we got to the 1970s the industries were not as profitable as they had once been, the car manufacturing industry was losing out to Japan and Germany, the steel industry was in decline after being used as a political football and the coal mines were also operating under par with a major conflict taking place between them and the governments of the day. The 1970s and early 1980s were marked with major industrial action and strikes.

Then came Margaret Thatcher, and she had an axe, a very sharp axe.

She swung that axe and sold off nearly everything that was run by the government, it was advertised as a way to make them more efficient and to generate money that would then be put back into the public through their ability to buy shares in these new companies.

It didn't work out that way. The new privatised companies couldn't compete in the international market and were soon eaten by multinational companies and the various manufacturing plants shut down. The coal mines were butchered, the steel industries gutted, and thousands of people made unemployed. It was a great and abrupt swift from secondary industries (steelworks, manufactured goods, etc) into the teritary industries and service sector (IT, banking, supermarkets, etc) and we're still recovering from the abruptness of it. The mid to late 1980s was when the seeds of the 2008 recession were planted, people were encouraged to borrow money to spend it to make more money, 'speculate to accumulate' was the phrase and it was, in short, a form of financial gambling. It created a new form of people which were dubbed the 'yuppie' who were usually seen talking loudly into their brick-like mobile phone whilst driving an open top car into the business sector of the city. Gone were the men in the bowler hats and suitcases trudging to work on the 7:45 train, and in were men in shirts and slacks, chewing gum and wearing sunglasses. 'The Wolf of Wall Street' summed up the era very well, the excesses and extremes that this new class of people went to.
Meanwhile the average public were encouraged to get credit cards and buy things now to pay later, houses, cars, holidays, TVs, VCRs, anything you could dream of could be yours and you wouldn't need to worry about paying it right now. Britain came into an era of plenty, buoyed by cheap goods from places like Taiwan and Japan, and the people spent because they could, because it was good to spend, because they had to spend, because someone without the latest commodity was someone who was to be looked down upon.

And so we racked up the personal debt, and so our government went from Conservative to Labour, who promised great works and great achievements, we saw the Millenium in with the Millenium Dome...which ran massively over-budget and over-timetable. The Financial sectors grew and grew, the old Docklands and run down areas of London were transformed within a decade from abandoned warehouses to upmarket flats and apartments.
The factories stayed closed, the coal mines did not reopen, the railways remained privatised. We became a nation where our success was measured by how much we earnt rather than what we made.
Then all our pigeons came home to roost and we didn't have the industry to fall back on.

These days China is where the cheap manufacturing comes from, and there's not a great deal that Britain can do in order to out-produce China, we might be able to make better quality materials but those people who seek only profit will go for the cheaper option rather than the better quality one. Thus any industry we created would have to be heavily government funded, and would struggle in the international market. In fact, most of our agricultural industries are only still running because of EU subsidies, if they were taken away they would likely collapse shortly after. Another reason why I am vehemently opposed to the UK leaving the EU without taking adequate measures in order to counterbalance the massive loss of trade that would take place. Farage may state that we can save £10b from leaving the EU, but I'd wager that the cost would far exceed that saving.

2. Ban interest (and screw the banks and their promises).

I believe it's sitting at 0% at the moment anyway. I'd love to say screw the banks and their promises, but they're the primary industry of this country at the moment, so that would be problematic.

4. Decide what you want to do. Finally get along with the EU, or create an exclusive five-eyes commercial zone.

Fully agree, I do feel sorry for Tante Merkel with our constant 'In' 'Out' 'In' 'Out' attitude, the UK honestly can't compete on its own without our links to the EU, we are the gate-way to Europe and if we pulled up the drawbridge we would lose all relevance.

Here's an episode of 'The History of Modern Britain' which gives you an idea of the change that Britain went through in the 1980s:
http://rutube.ru/video/66256fcb3fc2f...a459/?ref=logo