rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

For example, is it really true that free trade is a good thing? Especially if you are in a western country whose workforce are going to be undercut by developing economies? At what point does the unemployment, cutting of real wages and inequalities become more of an issue than the cheaper products?

I addressed this point in The Discontented, because I think it's very important.

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back. We need imports: we are not self sufficient in food or fuel. Not are we self sufficient in the fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphates or potassium) to grow food, should we so wish.

Assume for a second there were no ill effects from protecting our domestic industries. We would still get poorer in this world, because as China and India grow, they will take a greater and greater share of the world's oil, natural gas, and the like. In this best case scenario, we'll get poorer because the cost of importing raw materials would rise.

But this too rosy. Attempting to protect - say - Port Talbot may make us more self sufficient in steel. (Although, of course, we still need to import the coal and the iron ore to make the steel.) But it would be at the expense of making British car makers pay more for their steel. Does that work?

Switzerland has some of the most expensive labour in the world. Yet it runs a visible goods trade surplus. Germany's labour is also now more expensive than ours, and it too runs a surplus.

These countries have set up their educational systems to produce people with the right skills. We have not. (The great irony is that we spend our lives worrying about grammar schools, when we already offer pretty good education to the top 10% of students today. It's the bottom 50% we utterly fail.) I hope that Mrs May and her team will not be so distracted by Brexit they fail to make the changes to our education and benefits system that our country so desperately needs.

jonny83 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Jeremy Corbyn - The Ryan Lochte of British politics.

I have to say it's hilarious and it couldn't happen to a better person. Serves him right for going on about privatizing the railways all the time. If he didn't it wouldn't be such a big issue.

Casino_Royale said:

JosiasJessop said:

Casino_Royale said:

JosiasJessop said:

Casino_Royale said:

Mortimer said:

Casino_Royale said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Virgin Manchester to Euston, first class, is the best train journey in the country.

It is the AV of the railway system.

Best train journey is probably the Caledonian Sleeper, and waking up in the Highlands.

I've done that as far as Edinburgh. My problem was that I only got to sleep around Carlisle....

My level of excitement approaching a sleeper train exceeds that of a six year old boy on Christmas Eve.

I sleep ok with the rhythm. They provide decent pillows and duvets now and you just need to make sure the cabin is properly dimmed. Waking up to the views and breakfast in bed is awesome.

To sleep, my wife and I will also be aided by knocking back a few whiskeys in the restaurant car.

How tall are you? They're not really made for the taller gentleman.

6'

I've always wanted to do the sleeper - the nearest I've got was a sleeping compartment on an old sleeper carriage at a preserved railway. Darned uncomfortable and not long enough for my 6'2" frame.

It's always put me off using the sleeper services. If you're comfortable at 6', perhaps I should persuade Mrs J to drop the little 'un off with my parents and make a pilgrimage to Fort Bill.

Do the Sleeper, do the Sleeper, do the Sleeper..

Best thing ever. Check out website of the man in seat 61 for more.

Morris_Dancer said:

Meanwhile in safe space land, the way to tackle a fictional pay gap is to force fathers to have paternity leave:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37164297

That article might be the most stupid I've ever seen from the media.

It's more stupid than when Richard Bilton [BBC reporter] asked a Greek fireman "Is it dangerous?" [referring to a forest fire].

ThreeQuidder said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

SimonStClare said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Surely the real point is why was he sitting on the floor not standing up? Who does that?

Indeed - Elton John is about the same age and he's Still Standing.

Sorry, I'll get my own coat...

I've been told he only stands when the train is in junction.

The train wasn't furnished with enough seats?

rcs1000 said:

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back.

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

I think free trade was indeed a good thing (at least for us) when we had exactly the sort of monopoly that you are talking about. The problem is we went from there to here taking along an extremely simplistic concept of comparative advantage on the way. The default assumption of our political class is still informed by this, hence American politicians pushing so hard for unpopular policies like NAFTA and TTIP. I just question whether these default assumptions are indeed good.

To take your Port Talbot example retaining a steel industry in this country retains a skill base here, it reduces imports, it makes materials more readily available should local producers want a particular product and can be said to support our manufacturing base generally. Is this worth a bit of money?

The answer is I think unclear for the reasons you state and the knock on effects are somewhat unpredictable but the answers mainstream economics offer us are naïve and uninformative.

Re Port Talbot. Does it meaningfully reduce imports? You still need to buy coal from abroad and iron ore. In any case, I suspect mini-mills in the UK, attached to cheap CCGTs, are still going to outcompete PT in the medium term.

But I think the important bit is that there are high labour cost countries that have minimal unemployment, and which have vibrant manufacturing bases.

They didn't achieve this through protectionism. When you implement protectionism, what you get is industrialists bribing government ministers in return for tariffs for their particular industry. That does not end well.

Tissue_Price said:

Blimey, Janan's cut to the chase here:
https://twitter.com/JananGanesh/status/768116250836807680

FrancisUrquhart said:

Jeremy Corbyn - The Ryan Lochte of British politics.

MP_SE said:

Ooooo. I have heard the most interesting piece of gossip. Well known former MP caught in bed with married senior public sector employee who is a household name.

PlatoSaid said:

Darren McCaffrey
BRACE. BRACE. Told statement from Team Corbyn coming shortly. #traingate

Sandpit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Darren McCaffrey
BRACE. BRACE. Told statement from Team Corbyn coming shortly. #traingate

LOL! Jeremy and Seumas don't understand silly season do they? The only thing they can do now by making a statement, is to keep this in the news for a few more days. Just ignore it and it goes away soon enough.

nunu said:

MP_SE said:

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

For example, is it really true that free trade is a good thing? Especially if you are in a western country whose workforce are going to be undercut by developing economies? At what point does the unemployment, cutting of real wages and inequalities become more of an issue than the cheaper products?

I addressed this point in The Discontented, because I think it's very important.

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back. We need imports: we are not self sufficient in food or fuel. Not are we self sufficient in the fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphates or potassium) to grow food, should we so wish.

Assume for a second there were no ill effects from protecting our domestic industries. We would still get poorer in this world, because as China and India grow, they will take a greater and greater share of the world's oil, natural gas, and the like. In this best case scenario, we'll get poorer because the cost of importing raw materials would rise.

But this too rosy. Attempting to protect - say - Port Talbot may make us more self sufficient in steel. (Although, of course, we still need to import the coal and the iron ore to make the steel.) But it would be at the expense of making British car makers pay more for their steel. Does that work?

Switzerland has some of the most expensive labour in the world. Yet it runs a visible goods trade surplus. Germany's labour is also now more expensive than ours, and it too runs a surplus.

These countries have set up their educational systems to produce people with the right skills. We have not. (The great irony is that we spend our lives worrying about grammar schools, when we already offer pretty good education to the top 10% of students today. It's the bottom 50% we utterly fail.) I hope that Mrs May and her team will not be so distracted by Brexit they fail to make the changes to our education and benefits system that our country so desperately needs.

Sirius Minerals are doing some interesting things in Yorkshire.

If that mine ever produces significant amounts of fertiliser in the middle of a national park I'll eat Vince Cables hat.

rcs1000 said:

nunu said:

MP_SE said:

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

For example, is it really true that free trade is a good thing? Especially if you are in a western country whose workforce are going to be undercut by developing economies? At what point does the unemployment, cutting of real wages and inequalities become more of an issue than the cheaper products?

I addressed this point in The Discontented, because I think it's very important.

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back. We need imports: we are not self sufficient in food or fuel. Not are we self sufficient in the fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphates or potassium) to grow food, should we so wish.

Assume for a second there were no ill effects from protecting our domestic industries. We would still get poorer in this world, because as China and India grow, they will take a greater and greater share of the world's oil, natural gas, and the like. In this best case scenario, we'll get poorer because the cost of importing raw materials would rise.

But this too rosy. Attempting to protect - say - Port Talbot may make us more self sufficient in steel. (Although, of course, we still need to import the coal and the iron ore to make the steel.) But it would be at the expense of making British car makers pay more for their steel. Does that work?

Switzerland has some of the most expensive labour in the world. Yet it runs a visible goods trade surplus. Germany's labour is also now more expensive than ours, and it too runs a surplus.

These countries have set up their educational systems to produce people with the right skills. We have not. (The great irony is that we spend our lives worrying about grammar schools, when we already offer pretty good education to the top 10% of students today. It's the bottom 50% we utterly fail.) I hope that Mrs May and her team will not be so distracted by Brexit they fail to make the changes to our education and benefits system that our country so desperately needs.

Sirius Minerals are doing some interesting things in Yorkshire.

If that mine ever produces significant amounts of fertiliser in the middle of a national park I'll eat Vince Cables hat.

The stock market disagrees with you: Sirius Minerals has a billion pound market capitalisation.

MP_SE said:

Ooooo. I have heard the most interesting piece of gossip. Well known former MP caught in bed with married senior public sector employee who is a household name.

rcs1000 said:

Paul_Bedfordshire said:

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

I think free trade was indeed a good thing (at least for us) when we had exactly the sort of monopoly that you are talking about. The problem is we went from there to here taking along an extremely simplistic concept of comparative advantage on the way. The default assumption of our political class is still informed by this, hence American politicians pushing so hard for unpopular policies like NAFTA and TTIP. I just question whether these default assumptions are indeed good.

To take your Port Talbot example retaining a steel industry in this country retains a skill base here, it reduces imports, it makes materials more readily available should local producers want a particular product and can be said to support our manufacturing base generally. Is this worth a bit of money?

The answer is I think unclear for the reasons you state and the knock on effects are somewhat unpredictable but the answers mainstream economics offer us are naïve and uninformative.

Re Port Talbot. Does it meaningfully reduce imports? You still need to buy coal from abroad and iron ore. In any case, I suspect mini-mills in the UK, attached to cheap CCGTs, are still going to outcompete PT in the medium term.

But I think the important bit is that there are high labour cost countries that have minimal unemployment, and which have vibrant manufacturing bases.

They didn't achieve this through protectionism. When you implement protectionism, what you get is industrialists bribing government ministers in return for tariffs for their particular industry. That does not end well.

Or you get industrialists bribing commissioners to introduce regulatory directives that put you at an advantage vs your smaller competitiors who being smaller are hit much harder by the cost of compliance.

Could you give me an example?

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

nunu said:

MP_SE said:

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

For example, is it really true that free trade is a good thing? Especially if you are in a western country whose workforce are going to be undercut by developing economies? At what point does the unemployment, cutting of real wages and inequalities become more of an issue than the cheaper products?

I addressed this point in The Discontented, because I think it's very important.

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back. We need imports: we are not self sufficient in food or fuel. Not are we self sufficient in the fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphates or potassium) to grow food, should we so wish.

Assume for a second there were no ill effects from protecting our domestic industries. We would still get poorer in this world, because as China and India grow, they will take a greater and greater share of the world's oil, natural gas, and the like. In this best case scenario, we'll get poorer because the cost of importing raw materials would rise.

But this too rosy. Attempting to protect - say - Port Talbot may make us more self sufficient in steel. (Although, of course, we still need to import the coal and the iron ore to make the steel.) But it would be at the expense of making British car makers pay more for their steel. Does that work?

Switzerland has some of the most expensive labour in the world. Yet it runs a visible goods trade surplus. Germany's labour is also now more expensive than ours, and it too runs a surplus.

These countries have set up their educational systems to produce people with the right skills. We have not. (The great irony is that we spend our lives worrying about grammar schools, when we already offer pretty good education to the top 10% of students today. It's the bottom 50% we utterly fail.) I hope that Mrs May and her team will not be so distracted by Brexit they fail to make the changes to our education and benefits system that our country so desperately needs.

Sirius Minerals are doing some interesting things in Yorkshire.

If that mine ever produces significant amounts of fertiliser in the middle of a national park I'll eat Vince Cables hat.

The stock market disagrees with you: Sirius Minerals has a billion pound market capitalisation.

Nearly half as valuable as Powa Technologies then...

Sandpit said:

https://twitter.com/beaubodor/status/767844590326059012

CarlottaVance said:

SeanT said:

latest traingate press release from Labour

https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/768117352458096640

The weird thing is that this is also, clearly, a lie - as the CCTV footage shows. It's like they haven't even watched the vids. Bizarre.

The CCTV also has the geographical coordinates of where the train was when the footage of Corbyn walking past the empty seats was taken.....

51 deg 35' 35.0 N and 0 deg 06' 59.0W is just by the Alexandra Palace - well before Peterborough - so this 'seats became available after Peterborough' is just, well, horsefeathers....

rcs1000 said:

nunu said:

MP_SE said:

rcs1000 said:

DavidL said:

For example, is it really true that free trade is a good thing? Especially if you are in a western country whose workforce are going to be undercut by developing economies? At what point does the unemployment, cutting of real wages and inequalities become more of an issue than the cheaper products?

I addressed this point in The Discontented, because I think it's very important.

We - in the West - were rich because we had a monopoly on manufacturing. There was this magic we could do, that those in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, could not. They competed to send us commodities. We sent back manufactured goods in return.

That monopoly is now gone.

It will never come back. We need imports: we are not self sufficient in food or fuel. Not are we self sufficient in the fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphates or potassium) to grow food, should we so wish.

Assume for a second there were no ill effects from protecting our domestic industries. We would still get poorer in this world, because as China and India grow, they will take a greater and greater share of the world's oil, natural gas, and the like. In this best case scenario, we'll get poorer because the cost of importing raw materials would rise.

But this too rosy. Attempting to protect - say - Port Talbot may make us more self sufficient in steel. (Although, of course, we still need to import the coal and the iron ore to make the steel.) But it would be at the expense of making British car makers pay more for their steel. Does that work?

Switzerland has some of the most expensive labour in the world. Yet it runs a visible goods trade surplus. Germany's labour is also now more expensive than ours, and it too runs a surplus.

These countries have set up their educational systems to produce people with the right skills. We have not. (The great irony is that we spend our lives worrying about grammar schools, when we already offer pretty good education to the top 10% of students today. It's the bottom 50% we utterly fail.) I hope that Mrs May and her team will not be so distracted by Brexit they fail to make the changes to our education and benefits system that our country so desperately needs.

Sirius Minerals are doing some interesting things in Yorkshire.

If that mine ever produces significant amounts of fertiliser in the middle of a national park I'll eat Vince Cables hat.

The stock market disagrees with you: Sirius Minerals has a billion pound market capitalisation.

oxfordsimon said:

MP_SE said:

Ooooo. I have heard the most interesting piece of gossip. Well known former MP caught in bed with married senior public sector employee who is a household name.

That is just cruel... spill (in private ofc) please!

RobD said:

MP_SE said:

Ooooo. I have heard the most interesting piece of gossip. Well known former MP caught in bed with married senior public sector employee who is a household name.

MP_SE, are you an MP in the SE?

FrancisUrquhart said:

CarlottaVance said:

SeanT said:

latest traingate press release from Labour

https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/768117352458096640

The weird thing is that this is also, clearly, a lie - as the CCTV footage shows. It's like they haven't even watched the vids. Bizarre.

The CCTV also has the geographical coordinates of where the train was when the footage of Corbyn walking past the empty seats was taken.....

51 deg 35' 35.0 N and 0 deg 06' 59.0W is just by the Alexandra Palace - well before Peterborough - so this 'seats became available after Peterborough' is just, well, horsefeathers....

But that data could have been faked ;-)

If Virgin really want to bury him, they just have to tweet out an infographic showing this.

NEW THREAD NEW THREAD

MarkHopkins said:

JosiasJessop said:

Sandpit said:

https://twitter.com/beaubodor/status/767844590326059012

That's a beautifully atmospheric picture. Anybody know any details?

Reverse image search at google gives:

Irritating Gentleman - Berthold Woltze

HurstLlama said:

Back to trains: How is that the railways in Europe are so much cheaper than those here?

This afternoon I picked my son up from Gatwick; he flew back from Rome after spending a month inter-railing around Europe. Though he had an inter-rail ticket some of those who from time to time were travelling with didn't and, if they were American, not have the skills of the internet to sort out the best deals and routes.

For example, it is he tells me, perfectly possible, without pre-booking, to do the four-hour journey from Munich to Prague for 36 Euros. The trick it would seem is to buy a ticket from Munich to the first stop over the border and get off, then buy a ticket from there to Prague.