JackOriginally Posted by Jack_Caley
The pound has been devalued several times in the past and is presently less than half its post war value.
You are possibly correct on immigration, although not all immigrants are the dole scroungers portrayed in the Daily Press, much of British Industry and farming would not be able to operate without the aid of immigrant labour.
On subsidies this link is an interesting read.
http://www.fedfarm.org.nz/files/2005...experience.pdf
Regards
Stewart
I am fully aware that the pound has been devalued, I remember when you could get 4 US dollars to the pound.
I have read mo0st of your link it makes interesting reading, it actually reinforces my argument.
NZ is for instance a little bit like both Canada and Australia in that it can capitalise on natural resources. In NZs, case its main resource is agriculture with its climate advantage for instance. Agriculture is a single issue for a small population. Agricultures proportion of GDP is quoted but I did not see the percentage of exports.
My eldest son lives in Spain, he deals with many other Europeans and Russians. He hates the euro because Spain is locked in to it, and cannot return to the peseta and devalue to attract tourists. When you devalue the internal value of currency is unaffected(other than some more expensive import costs) but in Spain the tourist would get more value for his money. Hence one reason why NZ farmers have been able to tighten their belts and improve their efficiency.
In the case of the UK agricultures portion of the GDP is infinitesimal so devaluation would never be used as a tool to support a small industry which exported very little anyway.
Spain has been unable to manage its own economy, NZ took probably the intelligent approach- the only one.
The UK, situation is totally different, it is being overwhelmed by EU, unable to conduct its own affairs until it votes UKIP in and gets rid of the problem of immigration on top of being a country with little national resources and dependent on on imported energy.
To sum up UK is not the same as NZ and MAYBE needs a different approach, especially if we do not want to return the agriculture post after the repeal of the corn laws.
Just as a sideline a firm we are associated with employed a Polish worker. They had to send £298.00 a week to his five children in Poland!
Jack Caley
Comparing the value of a currency now with where it was 50 years ago is nearly pointless given the wider circumstances of a global economy not only that but Sterling was subjected to various artificial controls throughout the 20th century at the behest of the Americans so it is really only of academic interest. It does show however, that governments should refrain from messing around with monetary policy in such clumsy and direct ways.
It is popular to moan about the fact that Britain no longer exports tangible goods and that Thatcher shut the ship yards, aircraft industries and coal mines. This is actually quite true, however in the meantime, the UK altered its economy into a more global one and it is now highly services driven. It would therefore, be false to claim this country does not export anything. It certainly does, my knowledge is totally out of date but from memory last time I looked this country exported something like 700 billion quids worth of something, even though it was not International tractors, British Leyland trucks, Scottish Coal or Avro Vulcans. In addition, the British are rather good at attracting foreign investors (step forward Mr Tata) who are keen to continue building product in this country. The fact that an Indian businessman now owns a British brand and factory does not matter a jot, because whilst foreign businesses have been investing here, clever people in the City of London have been loaning businesses in other countries money, or selling them insurance or directly investing funds in businesses abroad at the behest of their clients who have money and who are keen to try to get it to make them more money than if it was sat in their current account earning them barely enough to keep up with inflation. Now again, I don't have a clue what this figure would amount to annually, but I would safely say it exceeds the value of our exports very easily.
Of course British manufacturing was always going to contract. The Cold war ended. There was no need for dozens of naval vessels, or battalions of armoured vehicles, or factories making bombers to deter the reds, government policy changed, the money stopped. The factories had nothing to do so they closed.
Car manufacture, like everything else, became more complex, and more expensive, partly driven by regulation (environmental and safety regulations are a classic) but also competition and consumer tastes changed. It is no suprise then that the UK now manufactures jet engines, and the wings for airbuses, but we don't actually churn out complete airbuses- to produce the whole item in this country would be rather difficult, not only would you struggle to find the workforce (bearing in mind we are now reaching about 70% employment out of a working population of about 30 million, but geographically it would be downright mental to bring all the components to the UK to assemble them when the bulk of the aircraft is made on the continent.
Contrast this situation with the far East, where you have a legion of people all seeking work, and who will accept vastly lower wages than any European can afford to, and it is no wonder the heavy industries are located there. The steel, aluminium and other materials are all made there, so it makes sense for people running on large amounts of this material to locate nearby.
The same is true in many other countries. Many European nations experienced a lot of industrial contraction, the US car industry experienced Armageddon on a scale which made the demise of the UK industry look piffling, partly because of protectionist government policy brought on by the big three, but also because of their immense labour unions. Not only that but they actively sought to stop the Japanese makers setting up shop over there- not so the UK, where Nissan and Honda were welcomed in with open arms, and of course, subsequently, they get taxed same as any UK business.
As for farming and the EU, it is clear that the EU are the least capable organisation on earth when it comes to regulating such a complex industry. As with most EU projects, they have demonstrated they are limited to reactionary movements and policy is so wrapped around the axle with bureaucracy that it is largely pointless. The EU has become a graveyard for gopher politicians many of whom were no good at all in their domestic roles. Neil Kinnock, is a classic example, a failed politician whose name no one remembers, but lo and behold where has that muppet got a job? And boy oh boy, some of these EU politicos are paid some serious money, the deputy EU president has never had a real job yet gets paid more money than President Obama, despite never having been elected through democratic means, would the pro-EU lobby please explain that logic to me?
And as Jack has illustrated, member state countries are now appreciably suffering by being part of this French and German construct which seeks to govern a continent in the same uniform way, irrespective of local issues or differing cultures. If you want to see some really angry characters who are upset with the EU, don't ask the Spanish or Italians, go to Cyprus, who basically had a load of money swiped directly from bank accounts by the EU commission! Bet the Russians aren't fond of Junker or Merkel!
Comparing the currencies from 50 years does exactly illustrate my point. It is a reflection of the power both economic and physical of a country. The possibility of a country to be able to devalue is an economic tool, as we said denied to the Spanish, Greeks Italians etc.
If selling a business to a foreign country matters not a jot, why do they buy? For love???
We have examples in all sorts of industries, green energy is a prime case in point. We allow them to create a business in this country, guarantee them a profit, allow extra tax relief and kid ourselves it is great to allow overseas investment?
Get real or have you forgotten how to run a business? Simple Margaret Thatcher home economics.
Jack Caley
Stewart, dont waste breathe on uworkformenow, he knows everything about every country on the planet.
You are dead right about the corn laws being put in place to keep the aristocracy in the style they had become accustomed to.
The trouble with uk land is that it is seldom owned for the purpose of farming, so its value does not react to a downturn. Therefore when the downturn comes, land is left idle rather being bought by a go ahead farmer to make a profit. That was true in 1880, 1930, and today if we exit the eu.
Jack, ask yourself honestly, does it really matter to this country who owns a business that operates within it's shores?
They will still be taxed on business activities which occur on UK soil, much to the chagrin of Google and Amazon as we recently saw.
The UK is not running a planned economy organised at the behest of the state- history has demonstrated very admirably that this does not work, even in the USSR, a country with a massive working population and more natural resources than the UK will ever have, they couldn't make it work. Highly protectionist measures adopted by the US didn't work either in the long run.
I don't understand your concern about foreign investment in this country. Are you saying you would prefer that Nissan, GM and Honda did not build factories here? You would prefer some British owned operation instead, we had those, and they failed. If anything we should feel flattered by the fact that foreign companies are so keen to spend their hard earned money (and accept the risks) of setting up shop in this country, as they employ British workers to churn out cars which are marketed worldwide. You ask why foreign companies want to invest here, of course it is to make money. Perhaps the UK offers access to capital, infrastructure and stability which they are unable to find elsewhere. We have a fairly large labour pool which is mostly well educated, and a good portion of this is of the skilled, hard to find sort. They also know that British people are hard working by and large, in contrast to the French who seek to reduce their national retirement age and who dreamt up the working time directive, all totally ignored by the UK of course.
The UK cannot try to become some kind of isolated free standing backwater, we are one of the most globalised economies on the world. History has clearly shown that countries who do not embrace free trade basically implode and this has been the case for hundreds of years.
Why do you think Napoleon complained we were a nation of shop keepers? How do you think we gained global eminence anyway? It was by spreading across the globe and establishing trade routes, kept and protected with English naval power.
It has become fashionable to knock Britain and convince ourselves we have everything wrong and that we are lazy, foolish and indolent. With all due respect, that must be ballox. If that was the case, then who in their right mind would want to invest money in this nation, to the tune of about 15 billion quid? Why not Germany, or France or Spain or Poland or Russia?
There is a good chance that right now, as I sit here, my house is running on French electricity, sucked up through a cable under the channel. In a few years time, I dare say it might even becoming from the two new reactors EDF are going to build. Does it matter a jot to me, as a consumer, who owns the company providing the product? If the product and price and place are right, no it does not. Products sold in this country to UK consumers attract normal business taxation, and that money ends up in the exchequer and is spent on behalf of British people. At the same time, the reverse is true. British businessmen, like Mr Dyson, will be spending money abroad trying to make money, he will be seeking new markets for sell his product, and of course, he will end up paying some tax on it somewhere. This is globalisation. To be global means you can achieve optimum stability. Instead of having all your eggs in one basket, you will not suffer so badly if the UK economy had a downturn, or if Germany did or anywhere else did. Risk is spread, capital is spread and opportunities are sought in a variety of locations. Such is the name of the game now. You can be totally certain that great British brand JCB is attempting to do exactly this. Their competitors already sell in a myriad of countries worldwide, and JCB will have to do this also, if they are not to be left behind.
Of course the other often overlooked benefit of all this is that a global economy, and a cobweb of trade and investment, is one thing which will actively prevent any kind of conflict and cause serious grief for aggressors. As Mr Putin is now finding.
As far as I am aware Google and Amazon are carrying on in their own sweet way. George Osborne has not(edit) been able to stop the outflow of funds. Why do you think Google and Amazon can offer cheap prices and undercut companies fully domiciled here.
You claim that it does not matter a jot who owns the companies. Millibands great cry is that wages and living standards are not good enough. Why?
Because of a devalued pound (too much borrowing) and expensive imports: energy , food etc. No profit from the cars we produce, manipulation of funds between companies with branches all over the world (remember my story of exports of steel to Spain?)
Nissan , Honda Toyota, etc did not build factories here for love, they built them to make money. In the end those profits will go out of the country. When you make feedingstuffs, do you just sell them at cost, or do you need the profits to survive and progress?
We are involved with a French owned company here, just up the road there is a wind farm German owned, probably taking £2 million out of the country.
Will Milliband ever be able to carry out his stupid promise of giving a good living wage to naive voters who drive their car to work every day using expensive imported fuel, purely because the pound can only buy oil with a 1.5 $ pound instead of 4$ pound? What about the cost of imported food for their sandwiches?
We cannot afford a good health service if we do not make any money to pay for it.
I am pleased you are not running the country, I hope you do not run a business because your arithmetic is not very good.
Jack Caley
Jack, I can tell you a lot about the Amazon business model because my father is involved in managing one of their partner companies who work with them, nothing but a large warehouse who move in excess of £100K of product a month.
The reason Amazon are so much cheaper is straight forward. They have no shops, no high street presence at all. All they have are numerous Depots. Stock is brought in crammed full inside Artic wagons, stored and then picked and dipatched, using only a handful of staff, and many of these depots Amazon don't even own or operate- other businesses do.
Is there any surprise then that the high street chains cannot compete? And the scary thing is, that of course, Amazon is a global market place. I have bought my wellies from the US on recommendation from relatives, and there is nothing to stop me buying from Amazon Japan, Australia, Germany, China, Brazil etc etc. Show me a high street chain that can do that?
Now back to who owns companies. Just because the owner of a company is British or not, makes absolutely no difference to the country at large. The profits they generate are theirs, they do not belong to the UK or anyone. Richard Branson, as much as I detest the sod, spends his money where he likes. A rather large amount of it is spent overseas buying islands and other nice things. Did the UK citizen benefit from him doing that? Nope. They did benefit of course from the taxation the exchequer relieved him of though. Just as they are now closing the loop which allowed Amazon and Google to get away with it. Mr Tata's companies operating here, will also be taxed. His profits however, do not belong to the UK, its government, or anyone else. I am confused how you assume that cars made here are done so with no profit on them? Does it matter to the UK how much margin Honda, or Nissan or anyone else makes on their cars when they are sold? Of course not, as citizens of the UK, we are only interested in how many UK citizens they employed designing, making and moving them, and how big our VAT/Sales tax swipe was when it was sold. Tell me then, you think it would have been better for the nation, if in 2011 we did NOT receive 15 billion quids worth of foreign investment in this country?
You cite green energy schemes as an example. It is pretty obvious green energy makes absolutely no sense in the grand scheme of things, however, it is a cheap way of getting electricity in the short term, compared to the long term and immense cost of investing tax payers cash in building nuclear reactors, which takes decades anyway.
You mentioned we now have to import so much energy from abroad. Well there is nothing unusual about this. Numerous countries are net energy importers. Our friend Blair decided to burn all the north sea gas in power plants and use it up, but he avoided having to make any nasty political decisions about burning more coal, oil or worse still, anything to do with nuclear power. As we run down our reserves of oil and gas, it is logical we will have to import energy somehow until we can do something else. Other countries are in similar positions, some have never had oil, gas or coal reserves.
You can complain legitimately about the level of debt and borrowing this country has. Absolutely agree. But then this is the legacy of that idiot Blair who convinced everyone they could be millionaires. Despite 15 years of nearly unprecedented economic growth he still managed to cock it up, and we should listen to the red millipede why exactly? When you drop interests rates as low as they did, and convinced every man jack to have a couple of 110% mortgages, and a plasma TV, foreign holiday and a new BMW every 3 years, are we surprised at the depth of the sh1t we are now in?
Osborne has done only what was possible in the political circumstances. Two things we can now be certain of: A it might be the downfall of the Conservatives politically in the next election. B whoever is holding that briefcase in the next parliament is going to have to turn the thumbscrews down on the country a whole lot more.
A quick note on Amazon. Up until July this year I ran an Internet retail business selling products from 3 well known and respected UK brands (not manufacturers, it was mostly from China / India.). You will have heard of all of them and probably bought and used their products. I went to the NEC trade fair and I was promised by 2 of them that the would never deal with Amazon as they were #$€¥. Within 3 months I see the products I am trying to sell at a decent margin on Amazon at 20% less than my trade price. So, the public can buy retail far cheaper than I can buy from the distributor as a trade customer of 12 years. I challenged them, they shrugged their shoulders and I sent in the DS01 to companies house as soon as I could. Pointless. I don't know what that means but I'm not wasting my time arguing with market forces like that.
I fully understand how it is Amazon and such can be cheaper, it is probably something to do with a thing called the internet, maybe you have heard of it. They can operate a lot cheaper and make more profit but on top of that they can operate even cheaper if they take those profits out the country and pay less tax.
As to ownership of the companies, it is extremely relevant. Have you heard of balance of payments? If the profit on anything goes abroad which is the object of the exercise the balance of payment suffers and the countries credit rating suffers hence a devalued pound and dearer imports.
Of course the ownership of the company makes a difference. Do you know how much the cars Nissan exports are sold at?
Are they sold at cost? Does the profit come in to this country? Why should our workers work like slaves just to give away the profits?
Why should consumers pay over the odds for green energy, Guaranteed profits just to be aid to a French or a German bank.
As I said your idea of running a business or a country is a bit different from mine.
Jack Caley
Jack, continue to be condescending if you like, but you aren't thinking holistically.
Ultimately it is no ones business, yours, mine, or that of the government what Nissan sell their cars for, how much margin they make and what the are exported for (if they are indeed exported). What the exchequer does have every right to know is their tax exposure on any and all UK business activities. This was the crux of the argument when they grilled Google and Amazon. These companies had UK business activities, were based abroad, yet due to probably corrupt or highly lax tax laws in Luxembourg and other places, they were not paying a lot of tax on their activities in the UK. These companies did not start killing the high street purely because they paid little or no corporation tax, they are murdering the high street because their business model is low cost and involves no retail middleman, it is a total game changer because the internet allows consumers to shop in any marketplace on planet earth and deal with any seller, regardless of their scale or buying power or how much they spend on marketing.
I don't understand why you are getting bent out of shape about Nissan or anyone else building a factory here and using the British labour force to do it. For starters, they are hardly slaves, I would bet they are highly skilled workers, very good at what they do and ultimately they would be paid a wage which reflects what the labour market believes them to be worth. In any event, it is cheaper for you and I to have people in jobs working for foreign companies than it is for us to employ them in the public sector, or worse, have them on unemployment benefits. Secondly, if there is excess production capacity in the UK to manufacture Nissans, we would be utterly insane not to take advantage of that fact and make them even if it means sending them abroad. You would prefer Nissan built a factory that only made cars designed for the British market? The Uk car market is tiny in comparison to the world market for cars, to do this would be a bit costly for Nissan, as you can appreciate the premises cars and manufactured in are not cheap to setup nor are the staff for them easy to find.
Even if, you had your wish and every company in the UK was owned by a Brit, their overall profit is still their concern and they are quite entitled to spend it wherever they like, it does not belong to you, or me, or the UK. The government is only entitled to their tax take, not their profits. How do you know Nissan are automatically going to squirrel their UK profits away and use them somewhere else? Maybe they will invest more money in the UK and improve production, or finance a design team or bring more products to market. Maybe they will employ more people, maybe they won't.
You must appreciate that this country can and does export a lot of stuff and it can and does invest a lot of money overseas. Why have they elected to use German or French companies to build wind farms? I have no idea. Maybe because they can do it cheaper or better than their UK competitors, in which case it would be mental to use the UK companies. Just as it would be economically backward for us to have continued using UK coal when it was drastically cheaper to import the exact same product from abroad.
But rich coming from a JUMF like you
Gentlemen can we get back on topic please because the preceding tripe is frankly irrelevant.
IMO loss of support would in the first instance see decimation to the supply industry followed by many developing and borrowed businesses going bust. Production in all supported sectors would fall initially with recovery either coming off the back of new working practices or worse case disappearing all together.
Prices and production would become highly volatile and in all probability farming would become even more concentrated in the hands of big players.
Goodbye to the small family farm.
Re: Farm subsidies if EU pullout
Please do not confuse condescension with superior business acumen!
It does matter a jot what Nissan sell their cars for!!! Actually if you look at the number of Cashquais produced you will by far the biggest percentage were sold abroad. I do not know but I would fully expect that they would be sold at cost. Therefore the profit on them goes out of the country with a reduced tax take.
I am sorry but you obviously have been taken in the same way our politicians seem to have been.
With regard to the production of wind turbines their cost of production is only part of the equation. The German wind farm up the road from here is probably taking £7 million a year out of the country and paying the farmer about £180,000 in rent.
Would it not have been better had it been financed by a British company in a British Bank?
Would that have been better for the balance of payments and peoples living standards.
Sorry, the main reason for welcoming foreign investment is because this country is broke and has to go to willie wonka and dig itself further in to the mire.
Jack Caley
My apologies Lalans, I would agree it a great deal of it was tripe, however I do not produce tripe
Maybe one of the justifications for all that tripe was the fact that people like Toyota and Nissan came here to get access to Europe
I also regret bitterly the end of the family farm, however Europe has helped slightly to keep the family farm but the huge SFP payments have totally distorted the rural farm economy and accelerated the development of bigger farms even if the economies of scale would already have done so.
Jack Caley
We will have to agree to disagree. In your book then, we should regulate against foreign companies owning any assets in this country and/or operating the like in this country. So good bye Nissan and Honda, and hello dole queue for thousands of British workers, because of your insular and protectionist economic policies.
Of course, such a course of action is also probably illegal under EU laws.
As for your wind turbines, if a foreign company could do it cheaper, it would be madness to use a British competitor solely because they are British.
Unfortunately you somehow fail to grasp the whole idea of globalisation, and would prefer the nation to try and operate a model which existed back in 1950 or something.
You will also tell us then that, as a farmer, you never bought any machinery or inputs produced abroad on the basis that you won't support workers in other countries. Of course, British banks and businesses do own and operate in other countries, where their activities will be taxed and profits disposed of as they see fit. Such is the joy of capitalism. It is not the business of citizens, consumers or tax payers to have any say in what a company does with their money or profits. This is not North Korea.
You cannot enjoy the benefits of global trade yet have a closed shop in your own country. Doesn't work that way.
As for SFP, the sooner it is gone the better. The markets for product will either change to reflect better margins and prices, or people would just give up producing the stuff. It is as simple as that. Think of all the rules and regulations involved with production agriculture so as to be able to claim payments which are allegedly un-coupled from production. Nonsense the lot of it.
I might be wrong but I don't think Jack was suggesting that but pointing out that foreign ownership may not be as rosy as some of us might believe?
Bring on the day, let us see the further decline of British Agriculture , just like after the Corn Laws. Still you will not have to sell to farmers!!
Actually I was not really talking about wind turbines being cheaper, the point I was making was that the guaranteed profit from the generators goes out of the country WITH tax allowance.
In any case over the next year or so Siemens are starting to build turbines here in Hull, probably so that they can add to the hundred or so turbines I can see as I look out to sea across our field. That particular amount of profit goes to Denmark who I pay tribute to in their entrepreneurial spirit in taking candies from a kid.
I drive a German car, we have French/Italian/American balers, Italian power harrows etc etc . I fully understand global trade but I do not like pickpockets taking money out of my back pocket so that Britain goes further down the swanney under a load of politicians who could not manage a p.....up in a brewery.
Jack Caley
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