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Posts Tagged ‘UK Economy’

Whether Scotland chooses to stay in the Union or leave has fairly rapidly become one of those issues that to the average inhabitant of the UK, likely seems both self indulgent and parochial to the deluded wishes of the politicians of Scotland. Even if I were Scottish and given the current economic circumstances, would this seem the most pressing issue to be dealt with right now ? I rather suspect not.

From the perspective of the rest of the UK, Scotland holding a referendum on the issue tomorrow would be a good idea but, from the perspective of the SNP, they want to string it out as long as possible to ensure the best possible outcome for the SNP. I must say that if I were a Scot that believed in independent Scotland, I would want the vote right now not, later because I would see it as a national rather than a party political issue. Either we are ready to go or, we are not and if not, why not ?

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The other day, David Cameron gave a speech on the “Crisis in Capitalism” as has every other ‘Party Leader’ in recent times as they “struggle to explain” just what went wrong with the UK and even the Global Economy in recent times.

The real problem behind all of this may well be, that politicians are confusing the ‘What Happened’ with the previous held “assumptions” based upon class and politics that frankly, no longer apply in any sense at all… the very idea that “Tories are for treading on downtrodden workers” is no more relevant than that Labour are all for “Nationalising everything”, the world has moved on…

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I suppose and in often strange ways, we sometimes discover “the fatal flaw” in most ideas. Having started my commercial life as a designer concerned with engineering and production, there was a very amusing story about a “new mousetrap”, I will not bore you with the tale but the ‘punch line’ was quite simple:

The basic concept behind the design was obviously flawed and when called upon to deal with this, the designer instead of having a total rethink, just “improved” upon or refined his own flawed original concept. To engineers, this was all very amusing because it was something that we had to deal with on a daily basis and knew that it was far too easy to be led astray. I have an awful feeling that Scottish independence is the same…

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At the ‘turning of yet another Year’ there was a really interesting article in The Economist recently about the continuing phenomena of yet further increases in US productivity, it is well worth a read even if it raises more questions than answers : http://www.economist.com/node/21542211

Of course it led me to consider a personal “theme” I have been developing and that I feel will become ever more important from 2012 onwards, right across the “Old” Western industrialised economies and the World at large, “Productivity” in the old sense, is no longer any kind of solution, new thinking is needed.

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The “in between Christmas and the New Year” does produce some interesting if rather odd articles in the “Media” that are not current news and have been sitting on some Editor’s shelf, waiting to be trotted out for times such as this “holidays and no actual staff currently working…” The following article about building a Heathrow replacement in the Thames Estuary being a prime example: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nicholas-faith-boris-island-must-never-be-able-to-get-off-the-ground-6281804.html

But all that said, it did provoke a mild stirring in the grey cells and some following thoughts…

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I was slightly amused by Chris Huhne giving an opinion on the motives of the “Tory Right Wing” with regard to the EU the other day but more than that, I also read a number of articles on Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/ with regard to the current Euro Crisis which gives an interesting insight to some German thinking on the whole thing.

What struck me about these articles and however ‘reasonable in tone’ they are, the authors completely miss any basic understanding of a “British Perspective” which has been shaped over a long period of time and is largely influenced by us being “island races”. By the same token, I don’t suspect that we can easily understand Continental Europe with its contiguous land borders either that have shaped their present day views in both peace and war.

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There is a proposal by a UKIP Peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch to set up a House of Lords Committee to examine the value of the UK belonging to the European Union. It is envisaged that the membership of this committee would be made up of seven people, two “For”, two “Against”, two of no strong view on the matter and, an independent chairman.

The idea would be by diligent examination of the issues, it must be possible to arrive at a firm view, backed with facts that says that it is either “In” or “Against” the UK’s interests to be a member of the European Union. This is a fine ambition I might suggest but there are quite a number of obvious problems with the whole idea…

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For all the fuss over the EU, we really must concentrate on more important things like Christmas because the farce over last Friday, is emerging into a Pantomime in it’s own right. There was a LibDem MEP called Sharon Bowles who is chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, declaring that she wished she could change her nationality to Irish to show support for the Euro – daft cow !

What made it all the funnier was she both looked and sounded like Julie Walters playing her role as “Mrs Overall” in the mock soap “Acorn Antiques”, I almost wet my pants watching the woman being interviewed, it was hilarious…if also slightly sad too.

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Whatever else may be said or written, as an Englishman, I am just so ‘stoked’ that for once, a British Prime Minister has returned from an EU Meeeting having made a positive decision and without excuses about why they were mugged by the ‘other big boys’, that is something even the ‘sainted Maggie’ never did. Well done David Cameron, I say.

Well we have the overnight fallout from the EU Conference on Treaty Changes to accommodate the Euro Crisis although these “changes” obviously don’t require a Treaty Change, they are just a further strengthening of the so called stability pact rules that everyone has already disregarded, led by Germany and France in the first place. What a load of bullshit this all was !

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A couple of recent stories, which may seem rather disconnected at first glance set me thinking about the way politicians “manipulate the truth” and whilst it is easy for the electorate to condemn them as “Liars prepared to say anything to get elected…” The real question I suspect should be asked of ourselves: “Are we being realistic in our demands and expectations of them ? Do we even listen properly or is our hearing both selfish and highly selective ?

There were two ‘stories’ this week that highlighted this for me, the Unison strike over pension benefits and Angela Merkel’s speech to the German Parliament promising to save the Euro etc… To my mind behind both of these events sits a damn big lie or, a rather large Elephant sitting over there in the corner of the room…

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