Westcountryman

Why? I don't care who provides my electricity, I'm more interested in the price and the quality of the service I'm getting.

I certainly agree that government contracts should ideally be awarded to British companies where possible. However, this can be problematic. Look at the current situation with Airbus and their contract with the Pentagon. Airbus won that contract fair and square (better product at a better price) but it looks like Boeing will be awarded the contract instead just because of pressure to "buy American" - meaning US taxpayers are getting an inferior product and Airbus loses out on crucial funding (which could put British workers out of jobs).

What car industry? I thought it died with Rover. Anyway, I have no problem with this. I don't care who owns the company, just that they produce a decent car at a decent price - you can always choose to 'buy British' if you want.

How can you possibly hope to compete with countries such as China on manufacturing, without abolishing minimum wage laws (for starters)?

If Britain was competitively placed to manufacture goods then this would already happen here - for example we still manufacture aircraft parts (Rolls Royce engines, Airbus parts etc) and I believe we're a world leader in computer chip (bluetooth, processors for small devices etc) and satellite design and manufacture among others.

We can never hope to compete with countries such as China on raw manufacturing ability, hence why the economy is moving increasingly towards services.

Sorry Kernow, but your approach reeks of Socialism.

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Internationalist

Spot on. It does not work.

kernow

I abhor Socialism! Socialism to me means, "I'll spend yours, not mine". Socialism to me says large uncontrollable Unions let by gobby meglomaniacs! Socialism to me means bearded left wing, "call me Brian," school teachers from the seventies! Socialism to me means left wing urban class warriors! So to accuse me of being a socialist is worse than punching me on the nose!
The most expensive way that a normal household can live (apart from eating out every day) is to never cook your own food, but instead always buy ready meals! Same for a Country , if you always buy what someone else produces and never produce anything yourself, you'll always be poor. Germany after WW1 was absolutely bankrupt, but one of the main reasons it got back on it's feet was,( forget Hitler for a minute), it grew from within! I never understand people when they say we can't compete! I ask why do we need to compete! If we were self sufficient we wouldn't have to buy anything from China , India, America or anybody else to live. Britain has got to start by looking after it's own and stop throwing money at the Worlds poor, most of which falls into the wrong hands.
Time to temporarily pull up the drawbridge!

BonnieDundee

I largely agree with you Alex.

Alot of this globalisation stuff is ********, there are some relative advantages due to resources and even culture but alot has simply to do with paying people less and keeping them in worse conditions than western workers.

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How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; build your own cabin and p*ss off front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey

Leopold Kohr.

Akria

Regardless of creed?
So you're going to alienate even the ones who are friendly to the UK?
And people claim that Iraq is breeding terrorists!

Why do we need a falling population, and why is self-sufficiency a good thing?
In my opinion self-sufficiency is undesirable, creating as it does an excuse to go into the isolationism that your proposals reek of.
Not to mention impossible. We're a nation of some 61 millions now; even getting rid of several million - always assuming there are that many illegals! - would leave us with too many people to support alone.

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The commonality of mankind:
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?

Akria

While it is perfectly possible to not become so as you said, self-sufficiency does rather give one an excuse to become isolationist, does it not?

As for interventionism, it might not have defused the bombs but it will certainly have weakened the blast that some will eventually produce!

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I am getting very tired of people not reading my posts properly.
Please do not reply to me unless you are sure you have not missed out the key points I am making and key words I am using.

http://real-democracy.co.uk | Admin and proud

The commonality of mankind:
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?

kernow

So in your opinion Britain should have a continuing rising population until our once green and pleasant Island is a complete concrete jungle, a bit like a poor mans Singapore? Relying totally on foreign Countries to feed us? If that is the case, then all I can say is your idea of utopia and mine are completely different!

Alex McKee

Is it desirable to be able to ensure that we have food, water, power & medicine? I think so.
Of course we can and absolutely should trade widely. I'm all for international free trade. I just don't think you have to have one or the other.

If and when we remove the burden of too many regulations and bizarre laws from our farmers, UK grown produce will become competitive with foreign imports.

Yep. I'm not against intervention, but we should look to war as a last resort.

Disagree. I'm not bothered by who owns the companies as long as we're actually producing water and energy here in the UK.

Cars are a luxury, not an essential. They are ideal imports - we can't produce them cost-effectively. The free market would kill of any remaining British car manufacturing but would produce thousands of new jobs as technical expertise and niche manufacturing would be very much in demand.

I disagree. Deregulate the market, stop incentivising laziness on the welfare state, reduce taxes on business and open the country up to international free trade and the market will find a balance between imported material and domestic products.

No. We don't need an excuse to become isolationist, if we so wished, and merely having the capacity to become isolationist doesn't mean we would do so.

There are enormous benefits to be had from freely trading wide and far.

Are you sure of that?
Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq didn't train terrorists. Iraq wasn't threatening to invade anyone. Iraq wasn't, at the beginning of the current war, actively persecuting it's population.

The whole pro-war argument now revolves around the idea that taking out Saddam Hussein was "the right thing to do" purely because he was a nasty, bad man that had reigned over horrific persecution. This is true, but if you argue that we should invade any country that has a regime that has a history of persecuting ethnic groups within it's jurisdiction then we'd very busy indeed.

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Internationalist

No, the better analogy is between working for a living and buying what you need from the shops (which is what most of us do now) or choosing to live a 'self-sufficient' lifestyle by growing your own food, making your own furniture and building your own household appliances. If we all tried self-sufficiency we would be very much poorer.

Modern economies are based upon the division of labour. People specialise because that makes economic sense and improves productivity. The international division of labour is a logical extension of that principle. It is far better that we concentrate on those goods and services that we can produce well and efficiently and then use the earnings from those to purchase other items cheaply from abroad.

Buying goods and services from abroad does not mean that we are giving money away. We benefit by purchasing those goods and services cheaply that might otherwise be more expensive to produce here. By working on other things instead (e.g., selling financial services to the rest of the world) we become more prosperous. Trade is mutually beneficial in a free market.

g hall

In theory nations that trade together freely tend not to fight each other and also tend toward democracy

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