BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
Comments
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TheBigBean wrote:There's enough data on ONS to do that, but I'm not volunteering. I think income inequality is a bit of a red herring, and wealth inequality is the issue. Still, some people would look at the graph and at Thatcher and talk about the glory days in the 70s.
Could social mobility or perceived social mobility be the issue. Some people argue grammar schools were better for this.
I believe USA is far more unequal but the belief in the American Dream stops social problems.
So is the solution to give people at least the perception, ideally the reality, that they can realise their ambitions.0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:TheBigBean wrote:There's enough data on ONS to do that, but I'm not volunteering. I think income inequality is a bit of a red herring, and wealth inequality is the issue. Still, some people would look at the graph and at Thatcher and talk about the glory days in the 70s.
Could social mobility or perceived social mobility be the issue. Some people argue grammar schools were better for this.
I believe USA is far more unequal but the belief in the American Dream stops social problems.
So is the solution to give people at least the perception, ideally the reality, that they can realise their ambitions.
I think the US has some fundamental differences. Culturally it is a nation that has self starter hard wired into it's DNA. From early settlers, to current immigrants and also those strong enough to overcome oppression. America is built on an ethos of go and make it happen. Obviously that's a generalisation but I believe it is very real.
Also, space, you can be low income in America but still have a house that is big enough for a comfortable existence. If you want to start a business, a lock up is affordable and costs are low. Poor in the UK can mean families living in bedsits. Creating opportunities is very costly.
We do have a fringe culture of idle benefits scroungers but they are a small minority. The right keep portraying all the poor as such as it helps to retain the status quo. Poverty in the UK is real and isn't based on jealousy. It's based on real difficulty getting by and having virtually no opportunity to make your own opportunities due to a high cost of living and doing business.
In what way is no government plan to revive industrial heartlands a sensible long term strategy. Just blaming those affected by industrial decline is every bit as pathetic as blaming the government for every bad thing that happens to you. The governments job is to provide a framework that facilitates prosperity for the entire country, not just those in Financial services that they feel an affinity with.0 -
morstar wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:TheBigBean wrote:There's enough data on ONS to do that, but I'm not volunteering. I think income inequality is a bit of a red herring, and wealth inequality is the issue. Still, some people would look at the graph and at Thatcher and talk about the glory days in the 70s.
Could social mobility or perceived social mobility be the issue. Some people argue grammar schools were better for this.
I believe USA is far more unequal but the belief in the American Dream stops social problems.
So is the solution to give people at least the perception, ideally the reality, that they can realise their ambitions.
I think the US has some fundamental differences. Culturally it is a nation that has self starter hard wired into it's DNA. From early settlers, to current immigrants and also those strong enough to overcome oppression. America is built on an ethos of go and make it happen. Obviously that's a generalisation but I believe it is very real.
Also, space, you can be low income in America but still have a house that is big enough for a comfortable existence. If you want to start a business, a lock up is affordable and costs are low. Poor in the UK can mean families living in bedsits. Creating opportunities is very costly.
We do have a fringe culture of idle benefits scroungers but they are a small minority. The right keep portraying all the poor as such as it helps to retain the status quo. Poverty in the UK is real and isn't based on jealousy. It's based on real difficulty getting by and having virtually no opportunity to make your own opportunities due to a high cost of living and doing business.
In what way is no government plan to revive industrial heartlands a sensible long term strategy. Just blaming those affected by industrial decline is every bit as pathetic as blaming the government for every bad thing that happens to you. The governments job is to provide a framework that facilitates prosperity for the entire country, not just those in Financial services that they feel an affinity with.
I believe that income/wealth disparity is far greater in the USA but that is irrelevant as we really need a country doing better than us to copy.
you need to stop blaming financial services - that is a world leading industry that we need to replicate not try and break up. We are also doing well in tech but again that is mainly London.
Industries have declined leaving depressed areas - what would you suggest doing? Could we look at increasing mobility of labour so that people move to where the jobs are?
Moving the private sector has proven to be very difficult but I see no reason why our parliament needs to be in London. I imagine by the time you had included all the hangers on that would be at least 100,000 jobs0 -
Not suggesting financial services should be broken up. I'm not espousing policies based on jealousy. I completely agree that we should try and replicate the success but in different industries. If nothing else, the all eggs in one basket is surely a long term strategic risk.
Government needs to find a mechanism to promote manufacturing growth in these areas and yes that may mean government intervention when the private sector doesn't. Seems the Eu was good at that this sort of thing and we're now out so Westminster will need to pick up the slack.
Yes people do need to be mobile but do you really think hundreds of thousands of poor northerners flooding the south east is going to work?
We need joined up policy decisions. Why HS2? I got from Wigan to London in under 2 hours by train 3 weeks ago. Will 20 mins quicker have any noticeable impact on the economy? No. And yet to travel between Liverpool and Leeds or Sheffield is a nightmare train journey. Why not invest in cross country rail which is terribly inefficient or South East rail where the trains are packed like sardine cans.
Education has already been mentioned, why the myopic focus on academia? What about trades and manufacturing skills.0 -
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morstar wrote:Not suggesting financial services should be broken up. I'm not espousing policies based on jealousy. I completely agree that we should try and replicate the success but in different industries. If nothing else, the all eggs in one basket is surely a long term strategic risk.
Government needs to find a mechanism to promote manufacturing growth in these areas and yes that may mean government intervention when the private sector doesn't. Seems the Eu was good at that this sort of thing and we're now out so Westminster will need to pick up the slack.
Yes people do need to be mobile but do you really think hundreds of thousands of poor northerners flooding the south east is going to work?
We need joined up policy decisions. Why HS2? I got from Wigan to London in under 2 hours by train 3 weeks ago. Will 20 mins quicker have any noticeable impact on the economy? No. And yet to travel between Liverpool and Leeds or Sheffield is a nightmare train journey. Why not invest in cross country rail which is terribly inefficient or South East rail where the trains are packed like sardine cans.
Education has already been mentioned, why the myopic focus on academia? What about trades and manufacturing skills.
I agree with Rick - why manufacturing? Most other countries with a strategy are going for knowledge based economies.
Anecdotal evidence suggests there are going to be a lot less Europeans working in the S.E. Both short and long term. Not necessarily aspirational jobs but everybody has to start somewhere. How do we encourage the young to move where the jobs are ?
I agree about HS2, and would scrap Trident,
Most people banging on about education are echoing your point about vocational training.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Out of interest, what's so great about manufacturing?
Over other industries?
Partly this:
Partly this:finchy wrote:The problem is the type of education. Not everyone is going to succeed in academic education (intelligence is partly nature, partly nurture, and nobody chooses their genes or the family environment into which they are born), we need decent technical education and then we need jobs for those people who do technical education to go into. We've got that for construction/trades, but with the decline in manufacturing, there are fewer opportunities for people from poorer backgrounds who don't shine academically to better themselves.
Partly because engineering, science and technology are the main drivers of improved living standards throughout the world and in the future will be equally important in ensuring that we idiotic humans don't completely destroy the Earth's ecosystems in our neverending quest to consume more. The UK should be playing a major part in that.
Partly because it's dead embarrassing that a country with our heritage is reduced to dependence on other countries for power generation, trains, buses, ships (ships FFS, we're an island, we should be able to build our own ships!), etc., even though we are still capable of producing some really cool technology.0 -
Right. Let's tackle a myth.
UK is more than capable of building decent ships, trains, buses, power stations etc. What the UK can't do is build those in an economically viable way, because, in short, we all already earn too much.
Rather than trying to go back to a lower value-added economy, surely the UK should, as it has been, move to a higher value-added economy?
The UK's competitive advantage isn't in manufacturing. It's in having a literate, educated workforce.
Surely the focus shouldn't be on trying to get a bunch of factories producing widgets, but on educated the workforce so they can do high value add work like serves and high-end tech.
Where the UK is successful it is exactly those areas. Why can't the UK keep focusing on those areas?
High end automotive industries, aerospace, professional services (accountancies, lawyers, bankers). Those who are losers in globalisation shouldn't put up the barriers to trade. They should get the necessary investment & training to be more competitive.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Right. Let's tackle a myth.
UK is more than capable of building decent ships, trains, buses, power stations etc. What the UK can't do is build those in an economically viable way, because, in short, we all already earn too much.
Yes, that's why we're importing all that stuff from 3rd world countries like Finland, Germany, Sweden and France.Rick Chasey wrote:Rather than trying to go back to a lower value-added economy, surely the UK should, as it has been, move to a higher value-added economy?
Did you look at the difference in wages between manufacturing and the average?Rick Chasey wrote:The UK's competitive advantage isn't in manufacturing. It's in having a literate, educated workforce.
Surely the focus shouldn't be on trying to get a bunch of factories producing widgets, but on educated the workforce so they can do high value add work like serves and high-end tech.
But not everybody is going to succeed in that sort of education, like I have said. Service industries are good for people who do well academically, but not everyone is going to do well academically.Rick Chasey wrote:Where the UK is successful it is exactly those areas. Why can't the UK keep focusing on those areas?
High end automotive industries, aerospace, professional services (accountancies, lawyers, bankers). Those who fell are losers in globalisation shouldn't put up the barriers to trade. They should get the necessary investment & training to be more competitive.
The first 2 are examples of manufacturing. We can have the services AND manufacturing sectors, there's nothing stopping us.0 -
The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant.
Agreed, but I wasn't really suggesting that we should be competing with the likes of China and India for low-skill manufacturing, more that we should be competing with the rest of the developed world.0 -
I didn't think you were.finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant.
Agreed, but I wasn't really suggesting that we should be competing with the likes of China and India for low-skill manufacturing, more that we should be competing with the rest of the developed world.
Although Rick does have a point and one thing about modern economies is specialisation. If we are better at exporting services then fine let's do that. Likewise if for example Germany is better at engineering say than let them do that. And we trade what we do for what we need.
My own experience in manufacturing is that goods (in my case technology sector) are becoming increasingly commoditized even where these are relatively high tech. Services (and to a lesser extent parts and consumables) related to the hardware where we make the bulk of our profit. This is the way things are going and is a risk for manufacturing based western economies.
In my mind, a pound earned from services is worth the same as a pound earned from manufacturing."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I'd always advocate high quality manufacturing over low quality but... even with low end manufacturing, do we really want to be totally dependent on low wage economies. You may have noticed that China has become a world superpower and is no longer such a low wage economy. In a few years, when goods are no longer so cheap (prices already increase faster than inflation) we won't find the products so attractive but we'll be a captive market. Also it is quite possible to produce low value items more cost effectively than importing from the FE.
My employer produces some plastic items cheaper than can be imported and my previous employer was producing footwear only a few cents higher (1-2%) more than the Far East.
Why manufacturing? Because being a 100% service economy means that you have no self reliance. Manufacturing is also work that many people are best suited to. Why not see that as a valuable commodity that can be part of a diverse economy? Works in Germany and China.
Not forgetting, what if FS do bugger off to the middle east.0 -
So how do we make ourselves better as a manufacturing base?0
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Stevo 666 wrote:
I didn't think you were.finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant.
Agreed, but I wasn't really suggesting that we should be competing with the likes of China and India for low-skill manufacturing, more that we should be competing with the rest of the developed world.
Although Rick does have a point and one thing about modern economies is specialisation. If we are better at exporting services then fine let's do that. Likewise if for example Germany is better at engineering say than let them do that. And we trade what we do for what we need.
My own experience in manufacturing is that goods (in my case technology sector) are becoming increasingly commoditized even where these are relatively high tech. Services (and to a lesser extent parts and consumables) related to the hardware where we make the bulk of our profit. This is the way things are going and is a risk for manufacturing based western economies.
In my mind, a pound earned from services is worth the same as a pound earned from manufacturing.
Like I say, where are all the jobs going to come from in the services industry that or of a similar quality to the ones in manufacturing for people who don't do brilliantly at school?
Also, why can't we be as good as Germany (or any other country) at engineering? We've got everything we need to be just that. We're one of the world's best performing nations in science, we have some fantastic very hi-tech industries (our space industry, for example), why not have the more commercial engineering companies performing at the same level?0 -
Surrey Commuter wrote:So how do we make ourselves better as a manufacturing base?
More money on R&D, changing attitudes towards technical education would be a good place to start.0 -
Nobody is advocating scrapping the manufacturing sector...it's more about relative sizes of each sector. We have a bigger FS sector than Grrmany, they have more manufacturing. Not necessarily a problem.morstar wrote:I'd always advocate high quality manufacturing over low quality but... even with low end manufacturing, do we really want to be totally dependent on low wage economies. You may have noticed that China has become a world superpower and is no longer such a low wage economy. In a few years, when goods are no longer so cheap (prices already increase faster than inflation) we won't find the products so attractive but we'll be a captive market. Also it is quite possible to produce low value items more cost effectively than importing from the FE.
My employer produces some plastic items cheaper than can be imported and my previous employer was producing footwear only a few cents higher (1-2%) more than the Far East.
Why manufacturing? Because being a 100% service economy means that you have no self reliance. Manufacturing is also work that many people are best suited to. Why not see that as a valuable commodity that can be part of a diverse economy? Works in Germany and China.
Not forgetting, what if FS do bugger off to the middle east.
As for reliance on, read trade with. Like I said, specialize and trade. They havethings we want and vice versa. This is not war where we have to be totally self sufficient as you cant import anything.
And as for industries 'buggering off', well a fair bit of manufacturing already has gone East people continue to see FS somehow as more likely to do so."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
A lot of assumptions there. How do you get to us being worse than any other country at engineering. Or that services jobs for less academic folk are automatically worse than manufacturing jobs? Also not sure why the focus on engineering over other manufacturimg areas?finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:
I didn't think you were.finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant.
Agreed, but I wasn't really suggesting that we should be competing with the likes of China and India for low-skill manufacturing, more that we should be competing with the rest of the developed world.
Although Rick does have a point and one thing about modern economies is specialisation. If we are better at exporting services then fine let's do that. Likewise if for example Germany is better at engineering say than let them do that. And we trade what we do for what we need.
My own experience in manufacturing is that goods (in my case technology sector) are becoming increasingly commoditized even where these are relatively high tech. Services (and to a lesser extent parts and consumables) related to the hardware where we make the bulk of our profit. This is the way things are going and is a risk for manufacturing based western economies.
In my mind, a pound earned from services is worth the same as a pound earned from manufacturing.
Like I say, where are all the jobs going to come from in the services industry that or of a similar quality to the ones in manufacturing for people who don't do brilliantly at school?
Also, why can't we be as good as Germany (or any other country) at engineering? We've got everything we need to be just that. We're one of the world's best performing nations in science, we have some fantastic very hi-tech industries (our space industry, for example), why not have the more commercial engineering companies performing at the same level?"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
From a manufacturing vs buying perspective, we are talking about total cost of acquisition here. As a purchasing manager, if I can buy an item with a landed cost of £0.90 from the far east but £1.00 manufactured in house, then on the surface I have a good reason to outsource. What if quality is now poor and I find that some of the labour used to produce the item in house is still required as the shift pattern still runs with fixed cost base etc. My total cost of acquisition now stands at similar or possibly even higher level than before. That is a very real world occurrence at a company level. At a national level, does buying all our manufactured goods elsewhere at lower cost whilst putting people out of work not increase the total cost of acquisition in a similar way? Not for one second second saying the government should support all manufacturers but, the private sector doesn't need to consider that cost at a national level but a government should. That does mean government support for some industry where it is our long term national interests.
This is exactly what the Chinese government does. It has allowed free market competition within a framework that supports the national interest. The government invests when needed and influences exchange rates etc. Conversely, we simply follow the markets which are driven by short term trends. A powerful tool for accumulating wealth and an important part of a diverse economy but not a tool for generating wealth.
What should we do? Educate differently, invest in training and incentivise private companies to manufacture where the skills are. Surely better to see money spent in the likes of Teesside in the form of investment rather than welfare.
Ultimately, everything is cyclical and there will come a time when domestic manufacture returns to prominence. You do realise global shipping can only ever get more expensive in the mid-long term.
The assumption that we'll always be a powerful consumer buying from poorer nations at affordable levels is a dangerous one. What happens to steel prices when Chinas dumping produces a global monopoly?0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:A lot of assumptions there. How do you get to us being worse than any other country at engineering.
You seem to be suggesting it. Although the use of the conditional is sometimes a bit ambiguous in English...Stevo 666 wrote:Likewise if for example Germany is better at engineering say than let them do that.Stevo 666 wrote:Or that services jobs for less academic folk are automatically worse than manufacturing jobs?
They aren't automatically worse, but if you're working in manufacturing, you can build up a pretty good set of skills even if you don't shine at school. I'm not saying that these opportunities don't exist in the services sector, but having done several service jobs myself, I can see that it can be a real low-wage trap.Stevo 666 wrote:Also not sure why the focus on engineering over other manufacturing areas?
It's at the top of my mind because I've been revising some of my old engineering studies today.0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:
A lot of assumptions there. How do you get to us being worse than any other country at engineering. Or that services jobs for less academic folk are automatically worse than manufacturing jobs? Also not sure why the focus on engineering over other manufacturimg areas?finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:
I didn't think you were.finchy wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:The higher average wages in manufacturing are a bit of a truism becuase the lower end, low margin manufacturing where costs are critical have tended to move to cheaper offshore locations, leaving the higher value add stuff here. Clearly many services jobs cannot be offshored in the same way where you need to be physically here to render the service.
That said, London seems to have the opposite fact pattern with the high value add services such as FS and media.
You also need to look at profitability of companies as well as the wages they pay, that is also relevant.
Agreed, but I wasn't really suggesting that we should be competing with the likes of China and India for low-skill manufacturing, more that we should be competing with the rest of the developed world.
Although Rick does have a point and one thing about modern economies is specialisation. If we are better at exporting services then fine let's do that. Likewise if for example Germany is better at engineering say than let them do that. And we trade what we do for what we need.
My own experience in manufacturing is that goods (in my case technology sector) are becoming increasingly commoditized even where these are relatively high tech. Services (and to a lesser extent parts and consumables) related to the hardware where we make the bulk of our profit. This is the way things are going and is a risk for manufacturing based western economies.
In my mind, a pound earned from services is worth the same as a pound earned from manufacturing.
Like I say, where are all the jobs going to come from in the services industry that or of a similar quality to the ones in manufacturing for people who don't do brilliantly at school?
Also, why can't we be as good as Germany (or any other country) at engineering? We've got everything we need to be just that. We're one of the world's best performing nations in science, we have some fantastic very hi-tech industries (our space industry, for example), why not have the more commercial engineering companies performing at the same level?
Look at how few global companies the UK has compared to others in the sector, it reflects long term policy going back decades. Our automotive companies where sh1t were until overseas management took over, hence Jaguar and Mini are thriving brand names now. Nuclear power, are we now not buying that off the French and Chinese? Electronics...ARM is at the forefront but they don't make anything as such, they license designs. Looking forward...wind turbines..any UK firms to be found there? Electric cars? As a nation we are well behind the curve and it's unlikely it will change anytime soon without radical government policy.0 -
verylonglegs wrote:
Look at how few global companies the UK has compared to others in the sector, it reflects long term policy going back decades. Our automotive companies where sh1t were until overseas management took over, hence Jaguar and Mini are thriving brand names now. Nuclear power, are we now not buying that off the French and Chinese? Electronics...ARM is at the forefront but they don't make anything as such, they license designs. Looking forward...wind turbines..any UK firms to be found there? Electric cars? As a nation we are well behind the curve and it's unlikely it will change anytime soon without radical government policy.
You need to look further into the future - we're good at space stuff, so once humans start to colonise other solar systems, we'll be quids in.0 -
I have one comment about manufacturing. People are suggesting that some people are better suited to it and that's probably true.
However the nature of manufacturing is changing - I go to one or other of the Jaguar plants in the UK for work at least monthly and the actual manufacturing work is almost entirely done by robots (because this is the only way to make it cost competitive). This is only going to get more prevalent.
Most of the so-called "manufacturing" jobs at these places then are basically either in keeping the robots happy (no different to a technical job in the service industry) or in driving forklifts round (no different to a retail or logistics job).
The point I'm making is that I'm not convinced that modern high tech manufacturing really provides jobs that have demands drastically different from a lot of jobs in other sectors. And the hands on element is going to continue getting less necessary.0 -
I think its a realistic concern, the "future of work" is something that economists have been struggling with right back to Charles Handys ¨The Age of unreason¨- a great read, btw
The key point about manufacturing is in its value-added throughput ("you take steel and make it more valuable") cf financial services (where you take something intrinsically worth very little and hope someone has a contradicting value to you), which means you are creating real long term value in a relatively fixed location, hence the beneficial long term effects of having plant and supply chains to a local area. You may well have robots doing all the work, but those robots are painted, the food for the staff, the innumerable widgets, pipes, plus technical skills, which are much harder to uproot and replace than many service jobs and Financial Services where the only real attraction to London is that "Mrs Investment Banker likes the schools and the sushi". Economists call it "firm specific assets" and the lack it in the UK cf other continental powerhouses is a key cause of excessive business cyclicity and, ultimately, wealth inequality associated with "bad work", (much as I hate to quote Will Hutton)Fitter....healthier....more productive.....0 -
So let's applaud the fact that without much seed money Cameron managed to set up a flourishing tech hub. This combined with the City has made us the dominant player in Fintech which is a major driver of job creation.
We are good at inventing things but less good at exploiting inventions. How could we get better at this? I know imperial college has an incubation unit - should we be doing this more and better. Manchester Uni is a world leader in graphemes but is not looking good to exploit it commercially.
Why do so few british companies grow past being small enterprises compared to Germany. Could it be due to tax incentives and inheritance tax?
Are the best entrepreneurs and money going into bricks and mortar? Osborne started clamping down on the tax advantages of but to let. If they never existed would people have sought more productive ways to make their fortunes. As it was they just took the easiest route.
I do not think there is one problem or one solution but for too long we have not tried.0 -
Manchester is looking at commercial uses of graphenes isn't it?
There's a big science/tech innovation park near to Manchester uni which seems to be doing well (I know this because a friend has a "startup" there doing something to do with biotechnology and big data which I don't understand in the slightest). Place seems buzzing.
One thing I noticed for Jaguar is that their engine park is in a special enterprise zone. I think this is something local authorities can implement (?) which designates an area to have lower business rates etc. thus making it more attractive for businesses. They should make sure smaller businesses get access to that as well and that we're not rolling out the red carpet for big businesses and forgetting smaller companies.0 -
bobmcstuff wrote:Manchester is looking at commercial uses of graphenes isn't it?
There's a big science/tech innovation park near to Manchester uni which seems to be doing well (I know this because a friend has a "startup" there doing something to do with biotechnology and big data which I don't understand in the slightest). Place seems buzzing.
One thing I noticed for Jaguar is that their engine park is in a special enterprise zone. I think this is something local authorities can implement (?) which designates an area to have lower business rates etc. thus making it more attractive for businesses. They should make sure smaller businesses get access to that as well and that we're not rolling out the red carpet for big businesses and forgetting smaller companies.
It is but I read somewhere that it is in danger of losing its lead.
Good to hear about the tech park - maybe we are getting better at linking boffins with the business/money men0 -
Can you show some facts to support the assertion in your first sentence? Not sure I have ever seen any.Surrey Commuter wrote:Why do so few british companies grow past being small enterprises compared to Germany. Could it be due to tax incentives and inheritance tax?
As for the second sentence, unlikely even the first is true. Not aware of any major incentives for small German companies that make the fiscal position more benign than the UK."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:
Can you show some facts to support the assertion in your first sentence? Not sure I have ever seen any.Surrey Commuter wrote:Why do so few british companies grow past being small enterprises compared to Germany. Could it be due to tax incentives and inheritance tax?
As for the second sentence, unlikely even the first is true. Not aware of any major incentives for small German companies that make the fiscal position more benign than the UK.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... an-lessons
I read recently there is pressure to change inheritance tax which could put this economic miracle at risk0 -
Cant see any stats in there but no idea why Grrman IHT makes a difference. Rules are different but it is still a cost. And as mentioned, UK IHT is largely avoidable.Surrey Commuter wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:
Can you show some facts to support the assertion in your first sentence? Not sure I have ever seen any.Surrey Commuter wrote:Why do so few british companies grow past being small enterprises compared to Germany. Could it be due to tax incentives and inheritance tax?
As for the second sentence, unlikely even the first is true. Not aware of any major incentives for small German companies that make the fiscal position more benign than the UK.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/ ... an-lessons
I read recently there is pressure to change inheritance tax which could put this economic miracle at risk"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0
