Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is shady about them? Are they criminals?
If you consider tanking the UK economy to the tune of hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds, then yes, absolutely.
How could they possibly do that?
Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
231–240 of 344 posts
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#232This graphic[1] show how insane the European electricity market regulation has been for both France and the UK: going from electricity prices on par with the US to 2-3 times the price in less than a decade ! [1]: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7SNeG/full.png
If you only look at the price, then you don't get the full picture.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#233Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#234why was this flagged ?
there is no poor energy rich country. with the U.K having expensive energy it means they're slowly becoming a poor country. it already feels poor as it is. But this will accelerate the rate
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it seems obscene to spend all that money in so small an area Greater London has a population nearly three times that of Wales. So the bang-for-buck in this small area is much greater. I completely agree that we under-invest in areas like Wales. But that doesn't mean that under-investing in the most productive part of the country is a good idea.
> most productive part of the country is a good idea. In what sense is London productive? What are the products?
In the sense of labour productivity, measured in output per hour[1]. The products could be anything, but I'd guess they're primarily services like finance, technology, media etc.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity...
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The UK had found a profitable niche as the transatlantic hub of finance and commerce, and threw it out the window in a fit of nativist pique over the wrong languages being spoken on street corners. But we’ve imported millions of people that speak different languages since 2015 , why hasn’t line gone up?
I think this is sarcasm, but just to spell it out: this is a causation/correlation fallacy. Immigration is a result of global trade, not its cause. Brexit killed the trade part without actually doing anything about immigration policy.
The incredibly stupid part of all this is that the conservative government insisted on wrecking the trade side because reducing immigration was deemed more important, and then entirely voluntarily issued a lot of work permits.
(without even getting into the more obligatory areas of immigration like refugees and marriages)
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#237Weird how Western Europe stagnated after 1990, only Germany get some more “gas” for growth thanks to CEE and cheap energy. now it seems that importing tens of millions of low skilled refugees and workers with high social benefits is killing any innovation while taxing middle class and all high skilled Europeans prefer to move to US or even east Asia. Which makes whole industry lag behinds and UK is probably biggest e…
Europe failed to keep its bureaucracy at bay. There were times in the 1990s when people like the Dutch commissioner Frits Bolkenstein sincerely tried to liberalize and open the internal market. But at least since Brexit, possibly earlier, the EU has made a turn towards protectionism and closedness (at least economically; as you mention, it is way, way easier to ship people from Africa into the EU than bananas), a Fre…
The British voted for Brexit to enjoy poorer standards.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/...
Good luck with removing "red tape".
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
But at ground level it seems to get less done, less well. Just look at the dreadful state of repair of the average British town compared to comparable French towns.
Housing state of repair and a country's manufacturing sector aren't much to do with each other. Like, at all.
Not at all? Someone has to manufacture the parts and materials and surely they could be in the same country. Having to buy those things from another country, especially now that the UK is out of the EU is surely a more complicated thing than buying them in the country. So surely there must be some connection.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#239The main reason Britain is failing is it wiped out its industrial base. Without that, it cant build anything effectively.
The UK's manufacturing sector is comparable to France's in size.
Ah you're right. Fair. I thought France was in between UK and Germany, but actually its comparable. Germany being much higher.
Re: Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Housing state of repair and a country's manufacturing sector aren't much to do with each other. Like, at all.
Not at all? Someone has to manufacture the parts and materials and surely they could be in the same country. Having to buy those things from another country, especially now that the UK is out of the EU is surely a more complicated thing than buying them in the country. So surely there must be some connection.
That was what I was implying. Not sure if its accurate, just a gut feeling atm.