OT: Kellingley pit shuts and causes leftist dilemma

[Indy Jess John]

Compensation for being made redundant. AKA Redundancy Pay

Jim

[michael adams]

And your car had a hood a trunk and fenders, and you regularly filled it with gas.

And ?

So was Jose Mourinho.

Maybe if you wrote to Roman Abramovich about this, you could save him a few bob as well.

michael adams

...

[Mike Lander]

TV drama and documentaries, pharmaceuticals, scientific research.

[Mike Lander]

Manufacturing is only a tiny subset of employment. Right down in the single digit percentage of the workforce now.

[critcher]

bill just f*ck off, it's not about the environment, these are families being destroyed by a capitalist system that they never became involved in or had any control over. Soon the governments and producers of this cheap energy will realise that they can increase their prices and wages and we will be in shit street. We cannot allow ourselves to be at the beck and call of other countries. We need to be self reliant on energy resources.

[critcher]

rich nation? some are most are not.

[Tim Watts]

Ok - as you clearly have the grasp of world economics:

If you have 2 zones: - yours which has a high value currency (salaries, cost of living, exchange rate)

and another which is low on all the same counts:

How do you prosper in your high value currency without leaching all your money to the low value economy and leaving yourself with higher levels of unemployment?

This is by no means saying all imports are bad, but if you have a high value currency, chances are you are importing more than is good for your overall economy (societal factors included).

[critcher]

Whenever he posts he hits the high spots

[critcher]

good again Bill, got em going eh

[Mike Lander]

The way the UK does it now. It has one of the lower unemployment rates.

[Norman Wells]

We have plenty of energy resources if we choose to use them. We have abundant riches in shale gas, wind energy, tidal energy and solar energy, not to mention nuclear energy if we obtain the fuel. And we're saving the coal for later.

[The Natural Philosopher]

generates a lot o0f foreign earnings though.

Service industry may contribute to GDP but it's a parasite

[Mike Lander]

Not for the UK for a long time now.

Everything is a parasite in that sense.

[Tim Watts]

I was with you until you said this:

OK - back with you again...

[Tim Watts]

1.7 million - well, it is better than the 3 million of the 90's.

I cannot help feeling there's a way that would improve on that though...

Looking at it from another POV:

Importing coal from Oz - OK, as their workers enjoy a good salary and safety.

Importing from certain other countries - dubious if we are riding on the back of slipshod safety and poor salaries.

For a specific example - I am *completely* against using Indian call centres - the customer (here) doesn't like it and it's a non specialist trainable skill that any of the willing unemployed in the UK could do - and one of those areas social engineering would be well in order IMO. eg promote the setting up of such ventures in areas with high unemployment.

I agree there are some things we cannot do and maybe should just give up on, but I think there are also some things we should draw the line and give preference to "our own".

[Mike Lander]

It's the rate that matters.

There aren't many other major first world counties that do much better.

Much better safety in fact with open cast coal mining.

Open cast coal mining is always much safer and much more healthy.

The problem is the much higher wages.

Yes, particularly with the military and judicial systems. Gets much more complicated with health care tho. It's far from clear to me why so many of the doctors are immigrants. Presumably they try harder but that doesn't explain why there aren't more Irish who still get that professional education for free there. Maybe they just don't allow enough of them to do that there.

[Tim Watts]

That is something that needs to be countered with some artificial disincentive - or some incentive to stay "local".

Yes - I have wondered that. Nurse's pay in the UK is pretty good once you are qualified and the progression is there to a very high level.

[Bill Wright]

But what they've don't so far to reduce green theft of our money is peanuts.

Yes because it's better to have jobs than unemployment. It's better to have thriving mining villages than ghost towns (try living round here). It's better to be independent of foreign energy imports.

Are we on about nudity again?

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Work for the BBC for a few weeks, get the push, and they give you megabucks.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Not really true, based on a quick think round of those I know.

Bill