The 50+ Blog

Now, as we are about to find out just how bad things are, I’m getting increasingly frustrated by economists and the like poring over their numbers. You can analyse to your heart’s content but something a little more meaningful than that is what’s required.

Getting the deficit down is essential, obviously, but building for the future is equally as important. For example, those businesses that come through the recession will do so for very specific reasons, one of which is diversity, the Country should take note. How can you apply that statement to a country? Take a touch of isolationism for a start.

ALL countries should have control of their own basic resources such as utilities. It should NOT be possible for another country to run utilities here. The majority of food production should be local and everyone should support local manufacturing. I’ve heard all the statements, I know it’s cheaper to manufacture in China, but it’s a short-term fix being bad for the individual countries and bad for the environment.

I have no problem with importing products we can’t manufacture locally (although that’s pretty much anything these days) but we should be able to manufacture basic products ourselves. And, to make it competitive, we’d use local labour who we currently pay through the benefits system so the costs would be minimised. I would also subtly tax foreign products that were sold where local equivalents were available.

I’ve heard all the arguments against that idea too. In my opinion, we in the UK are too soft, too willing to ‘go with the flow’ and too ready to put our faith in risky products such as financial services. The growing economies are doing so because they make things, the contracting economies buy too much from someone else, it’s that simple.

We place far too much emphasis on the esoteric and much too little on the practical but at the end of the day someone has to be able to use a hammer if you want the nail knocked in!

Tags: benefit, manufacturing, uk economy