Political Thoughts - the magazine

How can a post-industrial country such as the UK recreate its manufacturing industry?  In the past 30 years it is the media and services that have been the centre of the British industrial zeitgeist . This has been successful but has imbalanced the economy so that Disc Jockeys and Salesmen are valued more highly than scientists and engineers.  The creation of this media zeitgeist has been especially problematical because it is self promoting and DJs will call engineers "nerds" and "geeks" to emphasise their superiority.  It is interesting that in the 1950s, when the zeitgeist blew towards technology, DJs would have been regarded as ill educated windbags and real men of substance would have been scientists and engineers. What sort of zeitgeist and social environment is needed for manufacturing?  The life histories of great manufacturing entrepreneurs might provide a clue (all taken from Wikipedia): William Morris, the founder of Morris Cars, was born in 18...

The government tells us that we are all getting richer all the time but when I look at young families today they do not look much richer than young families 20 years ago.  Why does my experience disagree with the government?  The government use figures such as the Retail Price Index and Consumer Price Index to "adjust" past incomes in such a way that people in the past always look poorer.  Go back more than 20 years and these figures become surreal, for example the figures say that the average household now earns about twice as much in "real terms" as the average household in 1970. Is it really credible that the young couple of 1970 were half as rich as the young couple of today? Try imagining an average, modern young couple with two kids.  Like most couples in this position they are budgeting and have very little surplus money.  Now take away half their income so that they are as rich as we are told people were in 1970 - no, it cannot be easily done, they ...

A study commissioned by Chris Grayling, Minister of State for the Department of Work and Pensions, has just shown that 371,000 people on benefits come from abroad and about 180,000 of these are not British Citizens. See BBC Report: Migrants on work-related benefits study published . This data is not at all surprising because nearly half of all National Insurance registrations are to foreigners. Yes, half of the UK labour force of the future is foreign born.  It is hardly surprising that a small fraction of these end up on job-seekers allowance. From Parliamentary Questions 9th May 2008 Some newspapers are covering the 371,000 claimants figure as shocking (see Daily Telegraph: 370,000 migrants on dole .  It makes you weep to see the stupid journalists missing the real story which is that the population of the UK is being increased at a truly astounding rate and will be largely replaced over the coming century.  There are few, if any, examples in world history of ...