UK Global trade discussion.

[GRALISTAIR]

Where would you start? I would increase fuel duty and make earnings over 250,000 pounds taxed at 60% and any banker or city bonus taxed at 125%

 

[ABB125]

Where would you start? I would increase fuel duty and make earnings over 250,000 pounds taxed at 60% and any banker or city bonus taxed at 125%

125%? Seems slightly counterintuitive to me; surely this would result in no bonuses being paid, ever, since the "bonus" would actually cost the recipient to receive?

 

[deltic]

The latest EU figures I can find relate to 2016. They show outside financial services 28% of UK output was produced by foreign firms compared to 25% in Germany, 22% in Spain and 16% in both France and Italy. So the UK is not much different to Germany but very different to France and Italy. The figure in Ireland, like most smaller countries, is much higher at 43%. While foreign companies have invested heavily in the UK so have UK firms invested heavily overseas.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

125%? Seems slightly counterintuitive to me; surely this would result in no bonuses being paid, ever, since the "bonus" would actually cost the recipient to receive?

Sorry I am still really peeved about the whole bankers etc bonus farce

 

[ABB125]

Sorry I am still really peeved about the whole bankers etc bonus farce

Fair enough, but I'm not convinced!

Nothing has really been sold in the last two or three years, because there is nothing left to sell. Well apart from the continuing looting of the public housing stock through right to buy.

The last major privatisation was the GPSS and the Royal Mail.

The reason why the wheels have fallen off government policy even before coronavirus was the lack of anything more to sell to pay for more largesse.

Having read the Wikipedia article, it seems ludicrous that the pipeline system was sold, going from the MoD making a (presumably small) profit every year to the MoD paying tens of millions each year to use their own pipelines! Things like this should never be sold off, although it's useless me moaning about it: what good will I be able to do?
I wonder, is the equivalent system in the USA (assuming they have one) also privatised?

 

[HSTEd]

I wonder, is the equivalent system in the USA (assuming they have one) also privatised?

I don't know if they have such a system, but given that the US Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of massive amounts of civilian infrastructure, I rather doubt it would be privatised

 

[najaB]

Sorry I am still really peeved about the whole bankers etc bonus farce

If you're referring to the 2008 Financial Crisis then don't blame the bankers. They were given a set of rules and told that they had the fiduciary duty to return the maximum return on the monies invested by the shareholders. In much the same way that I don't blame Amazon, Google, et. al. for their tax avoidance shenanigans - they are playing the game according to the rules that have been set. The problem is that successive governments have prioritised stock market indices over other, more meaningful, measures of the wealth and health of society.

We frogs can't blame the scorpions for being scorpions.

 

[ABB125]

I don't know if they have such a system, but given that the US Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of massive amounts of civilian infrastructure, I rather doubt it would be privatised

I have to agree: I can't imagine anything vital to the US military's operation would be entrusted to the private sector (although I'm happy to be proven wrong); and the USA is supposedly the most "privatise-y" country in the world!

 

[HSTEd]

They were given a set of rules and told that they had the judiciary duty to return the maximum return on the monies invested by the shareholders.

I think you mean fiduciary.

 

[najaB]

I think you mean fiduciary.

Yes, spell-check 'correction' fixed now.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

My father used to say that you can’t blame unions for doing their best in getting their snouts into the pigs trough either.

 

[py_megapixel]

I have to agree: I can't imagine anything vital to the US military's operation would be entrusted to the private sector (although I'm happy to be proven wrong)

Actually, the Department of Defense's computer system is a cloud-based system operated by Microsoft: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/technology/dod-jedi-contract.html

The Department of Defense on Friday awarded a $10 billion technology contract to Microsoft
The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, had set off a showdown among Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Google for the right to transform the military’s cloud computing systems. The acrimonious process involved intense lobbying efforts and legal challenges among the rivals.

The contract has an outsize importance because it is central to the Pentagon’s efforts to modernize its technology. Much of the military operates on 1980s and 1990s computer systems, and the Defense Department has spent billions of dollars trying to make them talk to one another.

Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10 Billion JEDI Contract, Thwarting Amazon (Published 2019)

Amazon was considered a front-runner for the cloud computing project before President Trump began criticizing the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos.

www.nytimes.com

 

[birchesgreen]

I've always thought the problem with British businesses is that they get built up by enterprising individuals but the next generations are more interested in the trappings of wealth, stepping up the social ladder and getting some titles and end up selling off the bothersome industry their ancestors built up either to the market or foreigners (the former using leading to the latter).

 

[GRALISTAIR]

I've always thought the problem with British businesses is that they get built up by enterprising individuals but the next generations are more interested in the trappings of wealth, stepping up the social ladder and getting some titles and end up selling off the bothersome industry their ancestors built up

There is an old Lancashire expression “Clogs to clogs in 3 generations”. Very apt.

 

[Senex]

I've always thought the problem with British businesses is that they get built up by enterprising individuals but the next generations are more interested in the trappings of wealth, stepping up the social ladder and getting some titles and end up selling off the bothersome industry their ancestors built up either to the market or foreigners (the former using leading to the latter).

Don't some people argue that exactly that accounts for the start of the British failure to keep ahead of other countries right back in the C19? Also the fact that the sons were too often educated to be gentlemen rather than follow on as real engineers, applied scientists etc. And of course no more living too close to the dirty factories—the country estate called. The end result was that we really don't have anything like the German Mittelstand companies, still firmly rooted in the regions, supporting the regions, drawing on regional banking, etc, rather than all being swallowed up by larger organisations run from a capital city.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Don't some people argue that exactly that accounts for the start of the British failure to keep ahead of other countries right back in the C19? Also the fact that the sons were too often educated to be gentlemen rather than follow on as real engineers, applied scientists etc. And of course no more living too close to the dirty factories—the country estate called. The end result was that we really don't have anything like the German Mittelstand companies, still firmly rooted in the regions, supporting the regions, drawing on regional banking, etc, rather than all being swallowed up by larger organisations run from a capital city.

Yes that's the argument I've gone by. I would also say the vast administration of the Empire and the appeal that brings for young men to work in other parts of the world, plus the giant institution that is "The City", all forms part of a neglect of industry in British society.

Even after 2008 it didn't sink in properly in the Cameronite philsophy we need to protect and grow manufacturing-it took something as drastic as Britain's withdrawal from the European Union for the political class to finally wise up to it.

 

[najaB]

...it took something as drastic as Britain's withdrawal from the European Union for the political class to finally wise up to it.

You're optimistic, thinking that that lot have the capacity to learn.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

You're optimistic, thinking that that lot have the capacity to learn.

The political class? You might be right there...

 

[HSTEd]

Well the EU referendum taught the likes of Cameron/Blair et al that when they thought they had won the argument over all these things in the 90s, they had not actually won that argument but people stopped talking about it because times were good.

When times stopped being good, this happened

Unfortunately they've not fully come to terms with this disconnect yet.