Re: General Election 8th June : Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:28 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

If you have been a director as long as you say then you would understand that the finances are not a bottomless pit and difficult choices sometimes have to be made. It easy in Jeremy's world - just give everyone what they want but you like I know that simply isn't possible in the real world.

Of course choices have to be made BUT, it's fundamentally wrong to effectively force a wage freeze (a reduction in real terms) on people that carry out services on our behalf, which is what all public servants do, whether they are teachers, nurses, care staff, road sweepers etc, etc.

The point is, and I do know that there isnt a bottomless pit that, you cannot suppress the wages of these people indefinitely, it's not right.
It's akin to your boss or, you, if you are the Chief Exec where you work, pumping up his salary year on year and giving his workers the same.
Whatever happened to the "we're in this together, when the austerity measures were first announced.
I'm not advocating double figure percentage increases but, IF we want decent public services, we cant keep squeezing them indefinitely.

Re: General Election 8th June : Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:19 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

I think you don't understand productivity - productivity isn't an increase in revenue its a way of doing the same with less resource or doing more with the same resource. This country has one of the lowest productivity rates in the EU perhaps if we increased our productivity the brakes would be released - just a thought?

Why is productivity so low? The main reason is due to excessive debt and BoE/government desperation to keep interest rates low. This keeps zombie companies alive which tie up resources that in theory could be more efficiently used if they went bust and new ones took their place. I think I read recently that there are something like 96,000 companies which could not cope with even a 0.25 per cent in interest rates on their loans.

Then there are the capitalists beloved zero hours contracts and part time working. Lots of employment in terms of jobs but no real efficiency.

Other factors include the fact that to do the simplest of tasks that 10 years ago would take say one minute (e.g. Speaking to a company / HMRC / etc to resolve a simple matter) will now take hours, days or weeks due to email, lack of customer care (but moronic 'customer services'), lack of common sense and inability to do anything / be allowed to do anything other than read from a script, automated telephone systems with wasteful recorded messages, etc. In short US business school crap. It may work in McDonalds but it doesn't work in lots of fields.

Times are about too change though in my view. The UK economy looks set for a huge shock. The building industry has slowed (traditionally the sign of a recession coming), the dominant services sector is slowing, inflation exceeds wages growth, we have the 4th highest level of household debt in the world, the property market is slowing, the retail sector is slowing and showing the potential for major collapses, US interest rates are going up and expected to be up to 3 per cent within a year which means the pound continues to fall against the dollar and will create further inflation, Brexit will put pressure on further, BoE will soon need to raise rates to stop the pound falling but that will put thousands of zombie businesses under with huge job losses, households will struggle to pay their huge debts and the ramifications of that are clear. I predict that this next year or at a push 18 months we'll think that we never had it do good as during the 7 years of austerity.

When all those poor people lose their jobs productivity will inevitably rise but will it really help people?

Re: General Election 8th June : Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:33 pm  

People talk of Corbyn's magic money tree but we currently live in a bizarre world where taxpayers money is used to subsidise individual and large companies. A magic money tree for the few, not the many. A sort of reverse Robin Hood. In essence the economics of the mad house. E.g. utilities, railways etc - subsidise profits and bills of foreigners. Getting rid of counciil houses - instead of the public getting money back via rents we have a huge bill in housing benefit not a penny of which goes to the people who need it but ends up in the pockets of private landlords (a number of major ones being Tory MPs and party donors). Then there is the NHS and care. One small care provider I know of put £3M into a tax avoidance scheme for the directors one year - not bad on a turnover of just £12m. A charity / public sector provider would work on a no profit basis. So is the private provider more efficient? Of course not. It is just not providing care - when the principal cost of care is wages and they throughout all providers are at or near the NMW then the only way that 25 per cent net (not gross) profit can be made is by providing less than 75 per cent of the minimum care needed.

This state of affairs is truly shocking and is unsustainable. People need to stand up and be counted to challenge it.

Re: General Election 8th June : Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:42 pm  

The analysis above is spot on. I've always thought 'Atlas shrugged' was Dally's bible
I'd also add that 2008 was a great opportunity to let the banks fail and completely reform the banking system and re-balance the economy. I would've gone as far as to distribute the money used to bail out the banks to every household in the UK on the condition that they use it to pay their debts. If they have no debt then they're free to spend that money in the economy. We're past the point of no return though, and we're teetering on the edge of a cliff, and we've done nothing to try and rectify this, in fact, we've taken steps to make the problems worse.

Re: General Election 8th June : Sat Jun 17, 2017 6:33 am  

Charlie Sheen wrote:

The analysis above is spot on. I've always thought 'Atlas shrugged' was Dally's bible
I'd also add that 2008 was a great opportunity to let the banks fail and completely reform the banking system and re-balance the economy. I would've gone as far as to distribute the money used to bail out the banks to every household in the UK on the condition that they use it to pay their debts. If they have no debt then they're free to spend that money in the economy. We're past the point of no return though, and we're teetering on the edge of a cliff, and we've done nothing to try and rectify this, in fact, we've taken steps to make the problems worse.

If you had let the banks fail how would you supported those businesses that either had large deposits or needed the overdraft/loan to function if you had given all the money to the non business customers?

Re: General Election 8th June : Sat Jun 17, 2017 6:49 am  

Dally wrote:

Why is productivity so low? The main reason is due to excessive debt and BoE/government desperation to keep interest rates low. This keeps zombie companies alive which tie up resources that in theory could be more efficiently used if they went bust and new ones took their place. I think I read recently that there are something like 96,000 companies which could not cope with even a 0.25 per cent in interest rates on their loans.

Then there are the capitalists beloved zero hours contracts and part time working. Lots of employment in terms of jobs but no real efficiency.

Other factors include the fact that to do the simplest of tasks that 10 years ago would take say one minute (e.g. Speaking to a company / HMRC / etc to resolve a simple matter) will now take hours, days or weeks due to email, lack of customer care (but moronic 'customer services'), lack of common sense and inability to do anything / be allowed to do anything other than read from a script, automated telephone systems with wasteful recorded messages, etc. In short US business school crap. It may work in McDonalds but it doesn't work in lots of fields.

Times are about too change though in my view. The UK economy looks set for a huge shock. The building industry has slowed (traditionally the sign of a recession coming), the dominant services sector is slowing, inflation exceeds wages growth, we have the 4th highest level of household debt in the world, the property market is slowing, the retail sector is slowing and showing the potential for major collapses, US interest rates are going up and expected to be up to 3 per cent within a year which means the pound continues to fall against the dollar and will create further inflation, Brexit will put pressure on further, BoE will soon need to raise rates to stop the pound falling but that will put thousands of zombie businesses under with huge job losses, households will struggle to pay their huge debts and the ramifications of that are clear. I predict that this next year or at a push 18 months we'll think that we never had it do good as during the 7 years of austerity.

When all those poor people lose their jobs productivity will inevitably rise but will it really help people?

IMO productivity is low for three reasons: General resistance to change, zero Kaizen culture and a lack of capital investment.

We see where all the above are embraced we can deliver world class performance e.g. car production where our factories are on a par or better than the best in the world.

On the housing it begs the question what did the councils do with all the money they received from the houses they sold and what had they been doing with all the millions they must have been making from owning all those houses they rented out.

The housing market would be much stronger if the ability to borrow especially for younger people was achievable asking a young couple to put up £15k as a deposit is asking too much. Builders aren't building because the demand isn't there - why is that because the bottom rung of the ladder isn't getting replenished with new buyers.

Re: General Election 8th June : Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:25 am  

The building sector is suffering because it's overpriced and poor quality, I've looked at New Build houses and the workmanship (if you can call it that) is shoddy.

Re: General Election 8th June : Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:26 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

IMO productivity is low for three reasons: General resistance to change, zero Kaizen culture and a lack of capital investment.

We see where all the above are embraced we can deliver world class performance e.g. car production where our factories are on a par or better than the best in the world.

On the housing it begs the question what did the councils do with all the money they received from the houses they sold and what had they been doing with all the millions they must have been making from owning all those houses they rented out.

The housing market would be much stronger if the ability to borrow especially for younger people was achievable asking a young couple to put up £15k as a deposit is asking too much. Builders aren't building because the demand isn't there - why is that because the bottom rung of the ladder isn't getting replenished with new buyers.

Normally a consumer-led recovery (as we have more or less had since the 2008 crisis) is followed by increased business investment which makes a recovery sustainable. This has not happened this time and that is another reason the UK economy looks to be heading for trouble.

Lack of investment is partly due to uncertainty, a changing world were tangible assets are less important than intangibles but mainly because the leaders of major companies (that so called world-class talent pool, that must be paid a lot) are useless. They prefer to return capital to shareholders and achieve easy targets for their bonuses than take a risk or have a strategic vision. A study in the US has shown that those companies that have not returned funds to shareholders but reinvested are on average vastly outperforming those who did (the latter often receiving plaudits from the City and Wall Steet). The whole economic system is broken and has been hijacked by the fast buck mentality. It needs re-engineering.

On a separate point, the future looks bleaker for the many as the winner takes all economy progresses and AI comes on stream too. We are heading for a modern version of the mass proletariat and mill-owner / pit-owner model. This time though it will be the ultra-wealthy few and a mass of care workers, bar men, waiters, etc. as middle class office jobs go under AI and we are left just with those jobs that require more brain-power such as cleaning, serving and caring.

Re: General Election 8th June : Sat Jun 17, 2017 8:41 am  

Partly the issue of lack of investment is the banks unwillingness to lend. How many companies SME's have seen their overdraft replaced by ID facilities as the banks continue to de-risk.

I think most CEOs have a desire to stay in the job as long as possible - that means selling a strategic vision - yes there is a need for investors to get a return but good shareholders understand the cyclical nature of business the fact that greedy fund managers don't is an issue.

Banks want to sell you services not money.

Re: General Election 8th June : Wed Jun 21, 2017 9:16 pm  

As you may recall I have been a long-term critic of CEO and the bonus culture saying they / it cause loss of value all round. Seems from this article this evening that somebody has done a study that shows just that: http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anth ... 69946.html

As you may recall I have been a long-term critic of CEO and the bonus culture saying they / it cause loss of value all round. Seems from this article this evening that somebody has done a study that shows just that: http://www.standard.co.uk/business/anth ... 69946.html