The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[peterms]

I have to get on with some work, before I am replaced.  Will reply to you both later.

[Awol]

5 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I've seen a report quoting Chelem, who do economic analyses, which seems to have our 2014 export to Germany alone as 10% of our total.

Not my strong point though.

About 42-43% of our total exports go the EU at the moment, about 6% (figure I read) of all U.K. businesses export goods or services to countries in the EU - that obviously doesn't mean they only export to those countries.

Our trade deficit with the EU is about £80 billion per year.

That's maybe where you and Tony are getting crossed wires. 

[villaglint]

10 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Have we proposed building a wall between Watford and the North and then repatriating Nissan from Sunderland  ?

you may be right and there isn't enough discussion but without wishing to be endorsing Trump , cancelling a 1.6bn Ford car plant being built in Mexico and instead building it in America , doesn't strike me as a bad idea for an American company  

Just out of interest from what I've read that had nothing to do with Trump but was actually the result of a long run Union campaign which he's now taking credit for. Maybe wrong but there you go. 

[Awol]

6 minutes ago, peterms said:

I have to get on with some work, before I am replaced.  Will reply to you both later.

This message was brought to you by Peter's robot overlord. All hail Tron! 

[tonyh29]

3 minutes ago, villaglint said:

Just out of interest from what I've read that had nothing to do with Trump but was actually the result of a long run Union campaign which he's now taking credit for. Maybe wrong but there you go. 

didn't know that  , sounds like Trump though  

 

[StefanAVFC]

He has done the same for a Fiat/Chrysler plant. They came out and said he had nothing to do with it and it was planned last year.

[chrisp65]

INDY

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“Over the last couple of years we’ve seen small cars markedly decline. Every year we’re looking at our capacity. We’re looking at our forecast for demand. It became very clear that we didn’t need this plant.”

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he told Reuters there had been no “no quid pro quo” because there had been no negotiation with Mr Trump.

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Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Fields said he had noticed Mr Trump’s promise to make the US more competitive by lowering taxes and easing regulations. 

“This is a vote of confidence for President-elect Trump in some and of the policies he may be pursuing,”

So, from Ford CEO Mark Fields, Trump both was and wasn't  reason for the change of plan.

That's cleared that up.

[tonyh29]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

INDY

So, from Ford CEO Mark Fields, Trump both was and wasn't  reason for the change of plan.

That's cleared that up.

I can't vouch for how social media has taken this news but I thought it was being used as another example of why Trump is so bad  ..now it turns out not to even be his policy ?

even a few posts back someone said   "The idea of putting up trade barriers and repatriating car factories from Mexico to Trumpton "

maybe I'm mis-understanding the context in which it's being used , but I didn't take that as a ringing endorsement of either the policy or Trump  ?

[blandy]

3 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

I read somewhere that only 6% of UK businesses actually trade within the EU  ...are we putting too much emphasis on the number of companies flogging stuff to Europe ?   

 It might number 6% trading with other EU countries, but it's the scale of trade, not the number of businesses which is significant. Of course painters and decorators, paper shops, greengrocers, barbers, etc. etc. don't trade with the other EU nations. But Rolls Royce, Mini, Nissan, and multiple vast businesses do. The volume and value of trade is huge - >40% of all UK trade direct with the EU.

Going back to the small businesses - the painters and decorators, paper shops, greengrocers, barbers, etc. around (say) Rolls Royce in Derby or Crewe - well their business is dependent to a large degree on all the workers at RR.

If RR fortunes take a downturn, then so will all the "local" non EU businesses around their factories.

We live in a world where everything is inteconnected and inter-reliant. Trying to arbitrarily seperate it out like 94% don't have anything to do with EU trade is the sort of idiocy that the Leave people have been portraying as "nay bother , then" when the opposite is true.

SO to answer your question. No.

[Chindie]

Basically the point I was trying to make earlier.

[HanoiVillan]

On Trump (which I know is off-topic but I think it has cross-relevance to Brexit), it's worth remembering that companies have lots of incentives to announce they're onshoring and none whatsoever to announce they're offshoring. We cannot judge the effectiveness of Trump's policies by comparing piles of press releases. 

The same goes for Brexit. Only looking at aggregate data, over time, will we understand effects. 

[peterms]

7 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

you may be right and there isn't enough discussion but without wishing to be endorsing Trump , cancelling a 1.6bn Ford car plant being built in Mexico and instead building it in America , doesn't strike me as a bad idea for an American company  ...

There's a few reasons why it doesn't seem like a well-thought-out or sustainable policy.  I suppose that's in keeping with his image as impulsive, reactive and populist, so perhaps no surprise.  However:

The number of jobs  (I haven't checked) is likely to be small relative to the size of the investment, and smaller in the future as automation proceeds.  I imagine he's not going to try to stop companies from increasing productivity by substituting machinery for people in future years, so is this just a stunt to grab headlines for a day, without the longer-term anchor of job security for a community for generations that used to be the case in the heyday of the factories?

The quality of the jobs is likely to be poor.  There was a book many years ago called "Working for Ford" which detailed how shit the jobs were.  Reading more contemporary accounts of the effect of process review and mechanisation and the absence of worker power at Amazon makes me doubt things will be any better now.  It would have been better to find ways of generating more, and more pleasant and more sustainable jobs, in alternative fields. 

Firms like stability.  If they come to feel that long-term investment plans can be jeopardised by the brainfarts of a wibbling imbecile, they may decide to put bigger investment plans on hold, and take short-term decisions instead - not just the firms directly affected, but all the others watching.  It's not exactly the long-term productive partnership with industry that we are told is the defining feature of free market industrial strategy.

If he's so upset by Mexicans coming to the US, maybe it would be better to support the development of their economy rather than rip the heart out of a whole area in Mexico, which is how the decision has been presented.  Give them the improvement in material conditions that would reduce the need to emigrate.  Mexicans produce cheap cars, US workers do other jobs, probably better paid and more pleasant - everyone's a winner.  Instead, we have the zero-sum approach that has been remarked on as a feature of his limited mindset.

So it all feels a bit like it's just about showmanship and a headline, and not at all to do with thinking about how to restore sustainable prosperity to the midwest.

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fairly sure you were very vocal about how Thatcher closed the pits and imported cheaper coal from Russia and thus destroyed a UK industry ..not to mention the on cost of  paying benefits , retraining and of course the drop in tax revenues paid by workers   ..

The pits should have been closed.  The jobs were vile, dangerous, and likely to lead to long-term illness and premature death.  The product is responsible for vast, avoidable environmental damage.  What should have happened was an agreed programme of closure, and replacement with alternative and better jobs in other things, including sustainable green energy, production of better and more local food, and many other things. 

Instead, we saw the wrecking of communities as an act of class war by a crazed ideologue, deliberate destruction as an act of warped revenge on people who had dared defy her.  There's a very good reason why so many celebrated her death.

Russian, Chinese and other pits should be closed as well.  It seems the Chinese are embarking on the creation of many millions of jobs in alternative energy, which seems like a very good idea, and not before time.

[peterms]

8 hours ago, Awol said:

Peter, please sit down.

 

Ready?

 

We agree. 

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From the little I understand on the subject once AI can pass the Turing Test there will be an employment apocalypse, first of blue collar and then increasingly white collar jobs.

Basic income? I don't know but when 10% of the population has the productive capacity to meet 100% of global need we'll have to fundamentally change the way society is structured or its welcome to dystopia.

Will capital give up its privileged position willingly? No, but then mass has a quality all of its own and Surrey is not a defensible position - with apologies to Mark Blythe

Both blue and white collar together, I think.  It's nothing new.  I'm doing some work in Fife.  Flax and linen was once the biggest employer in Scotland, now there's nothing left of that industry.  Methil docks was the biggest coal exporter in Scotland, and today you can stand on the dock and be completely oblivious to that, apart from the interpretation board to let people know.  What's changed is that the rate of replacement of jobs lost from vanished industries has slowed, and the jobs are more likely to be lower skill, lower pay, less secure.

I don't think basic income is the answer to that.  It may have a place as part of a wider approach, but the notion that we allow employment to dwindle and instead pay people a pittance to sit at home is a non-starter, for me.  We need to think about the things that people get from work apart from money - things like purpose, companionship, self-respect.  Not all work, and the kind that doesn't provide that should be done away with where possible.  In the Jefes job creation scheme in Argentina, participants ranked their perceived valued outcomes from taking part in then programme.  Income was on the list, but was outranked by several other intangible benefits.  We should remember that, and try to structure work to meet those bigger needs.

But if we end up with a class of parasitic playboys and playgirls who have appropriated most of the benefits of technology while the rest get by on little, there will be trouble, as you say.  Even in Surrey.

[tonyh29]

37 minutes ago, peterms said:

If he's so upset by Mexicans coming to the US, maybe it would be better to support the development of their economy rather than rip the heart out of a whole area in Mexico

I've posted something similar before but in regards to our very own European Union. We impose huge tariffs on African food products meaning they can't sell them , coffee carries a 7.5% tariff meaning Germany buys the green coffee , roasts it and exports more coffee than africa ...   it's 30% on cocoa

many areas of Africa are in poverty and resulting in  Europe sending them millions in aid .

surely the win win would be to remove the protectionism of these tariffs , buy the African products and not have to send them millions in Aid ... a win win for everyone .. 

I read a report ( think it was Oxfam ) that said if Africa was allowed to increase its exports by a few % it would result in more increased revenue than all the combined Aid money sent to the continent 

but somehow it probably isn't in anyone's interest to address this ... 

 

for your overall reply though , it turns out that none of these car plant relocations was anything to do with Trump and already underway before he even thought about being President 

 

[peterms]

To add to that, "aid" tends to benefit the giver rather than the recipient (eg the number of contracts that western firms get, paid for by aid), it is demeaning, and it generates unfounded and unpleasant resentment among people who think they are being forced to be charitable to people they really don't have any time for.

A solution which enabled other countries to benefit from their own natural resources without the parasitic intervention of commodity firms and the paranoid anger of the great voting public, would be great.

This is to say we should move to a new relationship, not just cut off aid as though we were casting out an ungrateful lodger.  We might even achieve a relationship based on mutual exchange and respect, not this contrived narrative of donors and recipients.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

On 09/01/2017 at 17:56, tonyh29 said:

I'm still going to comment about the 89 days annual leave and I'm sure some posters are still going to hold me responsible when the polls predict a green party landslide in 2020 and instead May wins a second term

She'd have a job, she never won a first term. 

[peterms]

Going back to the AI job loss scenario, some interesting stuff here about how even jobs like cleaning hotel rooms could be outsourced to a different continent.

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...rapid advances in computing power and communication technology will make it economical for many more people to work remotely across borders. Soon, a worker in, say, Peru will be able to clean a hotel room in Manhattan without actually being there.

Telerobotics is the technology that overcomes the current need for physical presence in many jobs. These are robots that are controlled not by artificial intelligence but by remote intelligence ― a faraway human operating the robot. Remote intelligence has judgment and flexibility and thus will be far more disruptive than A.I., for both rich and poor nations, especially in the short term.

Examples already exist today in the form of telemedicine, whereby patients are diagnosed and sometimes treated remotely. One particularly striking example is telesurgery, whereby the patient and surgeon are separated by hundreds of miles. Drones are another example. Given how workers are expensive and robots are getting cheaper, it is just a matter of time before R.I. and telerobots replace many manual workers in high-wage nations...

 

[tonyh29]

Bank of England downgrade Brexit risk

Brexit is no longer the biggest risk to the UK financial system, the Bank of England Governor has declared, adding that the current strength of the economy implies it may soon have to upgrade its forecasts for the coming year.

Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee of MPs, Mark Carney said that the economy was growing more strongly than he or the rest of the Monetary Policy Committee had expected in the wake of the referendum. 

Pressed by committee chairman Andrew Tyrie on whether Brexit remains the biggest domestic risk to the financial system, as he warned before the vote, Mr Carney said: "Strictly speaking, the view of the committee is no", adding: "In the run up to the referendum, we felt it was the largest risk because there were things that could have happened which had financial stability implications.

[Chindie]

Still a risk, mind. I'd wager a fairly big one.

[darrenm]

People are just carrying on overspending. Ignoring the increasing debt. There's another 2007 coming, I can feel it in my bones.