Cutter said:
Obviously a man who never spent much time in airports. You *never* got through security quickly. There were always tons of people waiting to be screened, and only 2 of the 12 security/scanning stations were ever manned.
I've spent plenty of time on flights, mostly domestic to Belfast, and London and also 5 trips to Amsterdam over the years. Airport security has changed, it used to be a lot quicker to get through. Not that it didn't take some time, maybe 2-5 minutes depending on the time of day and how busy departures was. Now its a good 30-45 minutes of queuing since the procedures are now much more excessive and time consuming - yet they are still only operating 2 out of 12 lanes. Highly annoying.
Cutter said:
Only partly true. Off-hand, Rolls Royce. Major UK owned manufacturer, second biggest aircraft engine producer in the world (after General Electric). If you're flying in a plane, chances are even its powered by a Rolls Royce engine. RR currently in the middle of a major investment programme into its UK manufacturing infrastructure. In the military sphere, they make engines for the Tornado, Typhoon, the reactors for the UK's nuclear subs. Makes major export earnings for the UK - typical engine sales & maintenance contract is in the tens of millions and up. Recent deal worth $800 million with Air China for engines for its new Dreamliner plane.
Thats one, now name another? Think of all the companies and industries which have been laying off staff, quite a lot recently. We're talking about multi billion pound industries which are required to maintain the trillions which flow through the country every year. Finance and banking is keeping things afloat in the city, due to "healthy" spending by debt-ridden consumers. It's not sustainable and it's certainly not a good way to run an economy. The outlook is doom and gloom.
A good example of our manufacturing gone bad is our car industry. We don't invest money, investers look for short term returns and to move onto something else. We've got short term investment vision compared to international markets (like Japan) do not mean people wish to stick around for a decade or so to return their gains. Thats the way it is here, we can't change that mindset - but we need to depend on more than inflated bricks and cement as a countries asset.
Cutter said:
As far as I know, we also make good export earnings from pharmaceutical drugs and weapons - are we not something like the second or third biggest arms producer/exporter in the world courtesy of BAe Systems? OK, weapons manufacture is maybe not something to trumpet too loudly, but what about civillian spin-offs from military research? Without war and the military, there'd be no penicillin, no jet engines, radar, satellites blablabla.
Its not all doom and gloom martz you potted-out old hippie
Is it any wonder these industries are making money? We, the tax payer, are working our arsed off to build weapons, tanks, bombs and other useful devices for getting your own way. The goverment spends the countries money on defense, by paying contractors and defense companies to develop this stuff. Go and read about Halliburton, LockHeed Martin and the Bush Administration. The budget for defense in the USA was $441.6 billlion in 2006. Would be nice if you or your family were shareholders of companies which automatically wonder contracts to spend this money eh?
And pharmaceuticals are a laugh anyway, if you want to manufacture them you need to pay a lot of money in royalties due to patents, before you make any profit selling them for excessive prices. Thats why developing countries can't produce their own medicines - since globalisation and abuse of Goverment international trade agreements allowed private companies to gain monoploies on developing countries. "If you don't agree to recognise international patent law on pharmaceuticals/drugs in your country then we'll setup a trade embrargo and make you even poorer. You'll pay £200 to import a bottle of pepsi" (or whatever it is the USA exports these days, apart from love).
So now life saving/changing drugs are imported into these third world/developing countries where they pay artifically high prices.
They could make their own version for just a few pence each rather than £pounds of course. But then they would end up paying the same price as importing since they would have to negotiate the rights to produce them with a wealthy rich western world corporation, and pay a royalty.
So yeah, if being annoyed by all the bullshit in the media, the bullshit from the politicials, and the waste of OUR money and energy - then I'm a hippy.
Otherwise, I guess it's three cheers to us, the paranoid, scared to death, media frenzy driven, bomb loving, goverment controlled population called the UK.
-- Signed - Grumpy Old Man.
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