Poll: The Last Leaders Debate – Live tonight at 2030 BST on BBC One

Who will you vote for?

  • Labour

    Votes: 67 11.8%

  • Conservatives

    Votes: 231 40.7%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 227 40.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 42 7.4%
  • Total voters
    567
  • Poll closed .
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Dolph said:
But that is a result of a widening income spread, not necessarily a rise in actual poverty. Thatcher cut off a great many overpaid but thoroughly economically unproductive jobs during her time in power, mainly because (as now) they were funded by the state for no readily apparent reason and weren't actually affordable.

This is the problem with the measuring approach.

As an example, if the median household income was £20k, then everyone with a household income of £12.5k is below the poverty level. Assuming (as has been the case for the last 20 years or so) that earnings outstrip inflation, the median income could rise to £30k, and therefore everyone earning £18.75k is suddenly in poverty, and the rate of increase in lower earnings may have been lower than those at higher earnings. It doesn't mean that everyone under that band is worse off than when they were earning £13k and not in 'poverty'.
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sorry, I have no idea what you are on about, although you appear to be happy to apply an arguement to one side but not to the other. Please at least apply a consistant process of comparison.
 
Slam62 said:
this question is such a good example of what is wrong with this country. or are you taking the mickey?:confused:
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It's a serious question that you are not going to be able to provide an answer for, unless your vision for the future is millions of Britons employed to do things that a computerised machine could do much better, and will be doing better and more cheaply in our foreign competitor's plants, requiring those British manufacturing jobs to be artificially propped up.

The point I was making is that ordinary people work in banks, ordinary people work in insurance, ordinary people attend public gardens, and ordinary people work in modern manufacturing jobs (which are requiring increasingly skilled people).
 
PMKeates said:
It's a serious question that you are not going to be able to provide an answer for, unless your vision for the future is millions of Britons employed to do things that a computerised machine could do much better, and will be doing better and more cheaply in our foreign competitor's plants, requiring those British manufacturing jobs to be artificially propped up.

The point I was making is that ordinary people work in banks, ordinary people work in insurance, ordinary people attend public gardens, and ordinary people work in modern manufacturing jobs (which are requiring increasingly skilled people).
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well the economy is not stable with the status quo, all the examples you give are minor service industries relying on other wealth creators. We need industries that take raw materials, add value and export at a profit.

Unfortunately the real future of britain is low skilled low paid industry as to do anything else would take a vast amount of research and development to get anywhere near the current industry standard.

Of course we could rely on inward investment but we are now competing with very cheap eastern europian countries.

Of course when the real public sector cuts trip in we will have a load more people to employ selling insurance and digging the garden.
 
Slam62 said:
We need industries that take raw materials, add value and export at a profit.
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Except that wouldn't work. We simply cannot compete with China/India/East Asia in general, because of the amount we pay workers, and the cost to transport raw materials here.

I remember watching an interview between Brian Cox and the Scrapheap challenge guy, BC basically said that presently the science, research, patents sector received two percent of GDP in funding, if it was doubled to 4% then they would contribute as much to the economy as the financial sector, if there was a proportionate link between funding and returns.
 
dante6491 said:
Except that wouldn't work. We simply cannot compete with China/India/East Asia in general, because of the amount we pay workers, and the cost to transport raw materials here.

I remember watching an interview between Brian Cox and the Scrapheap challenge guy, BC basically said that presently the science, research, patents sector received two percent of GDP in funding, if it was doubled to 4% then they would contribute as much to the economy as the financial sector, if there was a proportionate link between funding and returns.
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That may be true, but we have no choice, we have to compete. We are starting from a very poor position though.

Why, because we need to employ people and not everyone is a genius. It has already been demonstrated that the current value stream economy cannot produce sufficient wealth to pay for none productive jobs.

Unfortunately the available GDP funding has long since been spent.
 
PMKeates said:
It's a serious question that you are not going to be able to provide an answer for, unless your vision for the future is millions of Britons employed to do things that a computerised machine could do much better, and will be doing better and more cheaply in our foreign competitor's plants, requiring those British manufacturing jobs to be artificially propped up.

The point I was making is that ordinary people work in banks, ordinary people work in insurance, ordinary people attend public gardens, and ordinary people work in modern manufacturing jobs (which are requiring increasingly skilled people).
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Ok.

The country owes nearly a trillion pounds.
If the country relies on money that is only in the system now to run its public services and service its debt, what happens?

What generates the money to buy things in if nobody makes anything? where does the money come from? does the government just print it?

Japan faced this problem in the second world war.

As for in general why are exports suffering, minimum wage did not help in any way shape or form all it did was push the base cost up of every single item produced, transported and consumed within the uk, thereby rendering itself completely pointless to UK workers, while at the same time massively increasing the cost of everything that is produced and exported from the UK.
 
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dante6491 said:
Except that wouldn't work. We simply cannot compete with China/India/East Asia in general, because of the amount we pay workers, and the cost to transport raw materials here.

I remember watching an interview between Brian Cox and the Scrapheap challenge guy, BC basically said that presently the science, research, patents sector received two percent of GDP in funding, if it was doubled to 4% then they would contribute as much to the economy as the financial sector, if there was a proportionate link between funding and returns.
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Well China certainly doesn't compete on a level playing field with us. If we got rid of this ridiculous notion that free trade is always right and protected our industry against unfair competition we'd have a chance.

The problem is that we're breaking new ground as a post-industrial economy and no-one is quite sure what is going to happen. My concern is that everyone seems to be concentrating on producing "bright, young graduates" as the great new hope for this country. Well that's fine for them but what about the other 90% of the population who are merely mediocre or worse - do they just go on the scrap heap?

The worrying thing for me was summed up on the radio last week, and that is that if you look at a third world country like Nigeria, they have a similar number of doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs as any European nation. What they don't have, and why they are a third world country is industrial jobs for those who aren't clever enough to be the above. This is the terrifying vision I have of Britain in 20 years time.
 
robgmun said:
One thing i thought you'd like to see before you go to bed tonight

Eariler today i told you that Neil Andrews was tearing strips of A Labour MP over the crying girl yesterday, for good reason! Here it is:

http://bbc.co.uk/i/sc7nl/?t=50m26s
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I agree with what Neil Andrews has to say but he isn't let the Labour plonker answer, even if it's the usual wriggly non-answer. Had to stop it after a minute as I was getting annoyed at both of them :p
 
scorza said:
The worrying thing for me was summed up on the radio last week, and that is that if you look at a third world country like Nigeria, they have a similar number of doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs as any European nation. What they don't have, and why they are a third world country is industrial jobs for those who aren't clever enough to be the above. This is the terrifying vision I have of Britain in 20 years time.
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The way these jobs are leaving the country i would say 20 years time is a bit optimistic, the amount of people i know that have lost a job in industry (including me) is shocking. :(

And when it happen the government was no where to be seen despite having a snp councillor working next to me.
 
robgmun said:
One thing i thought you'd like to see before you go to bed tonight

Eariler today i told you that Neil Andrews was tearing strips of A Labour MP over the crying girl yesterday, for good reason! Here it is:

http://bbc.co.uk/i/sc7nl/?t=50m26s
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I don't particularly like Douglas Alexander, but his answers about introducing the minimum wage and so on seemed fairly reasonable. Andrew Neil's basic argument seemed to be that Labour have made a young girl cry. Fine, I feel a great deal of sympathy for that girl and her family but that's not really the basis of a solid argument. I understand he was making a wider point, it just seemed a touch cynical the way he kept on bringing the discussion back to upset girl.
 
Slam62 said:
this question is such a good example of what is wrong with this country. or are you taking the mickey?:confused:
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No, he's entirely right. We have a large manufacturing industry, but it doesn't provide jobs for 'ordinary people' because the best manufacturing is highly skilled and mostly mechanised. Unless you advocate doing things poorly and expensively simply to make jobs for people, because that doesn't actually work.

Slam62 said:
sorry, I have no idea what you are on about, although you appear to be happy to apply an arguement to one side but not to the other. Please at least apply a consistant process of comparison.
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Poverty should be an absolute, not a relative condition. The only people who live in true poverty in this country are those who choose to, or who have parents who waste the money elsewhere.
 
Haiku said:
Andrew Neil's basic argument seemed to be that Labour have made a young girl cry. Fine, I feel a great deal of sympathy for that girl and her family but that's not really the basis of a solid argument. I understand he was making a wider point, it just seemed a touch cynical the way he kept on bringing the discussion back to upset girl.
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Way to miss the point.
 
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