A Ram for All Seasons

There's nothing wrong with shares and dividends. I myself am a shareholder. In fact, I was even daft enough to invest in bank shares pre-2008, and look what happened there.

That was true up until 2008. Productivity increased by about 2% per annum until the financial crisis, but it has only averaged 0.3% since then. I used to work for a well-known manufacturer of fine china tableware in Stoke-on-Trent. They had sponging machines that were driven by an electric motor and a bicycle wheel! When they had a puncture, the production line would have to be shut down until somebody was found with a repair kit and a pump. No wonder the company went bankrupt in 2009, but the iconic British brand is still going and most of their products are now made in Indonesia apart from the really posh expensive stuff. Companies like Villeroy & Boch in Germany are still able to manufacture high-quality pottery profitably in spite of the higher costs there, and one of the reasons is that they are prepared to invest in decent machinery. It was the same story at Austin Rover at Longbridge, where the production line was ancient and more or less dropping to bits before it was finally shut down and sold off to China. British industry is obsessed with short-term cost-cutting and paying excessive dividends to shareholders instead of investing in the future. You can't blame that on the unions or the EU.

The German government decided to build a big office block in Bonn right next to the River Rhine when Bonn was still the capital. The foundations were designed as a concrete pontoon which would simply float in the event of flooding, and the sheer weight of the building on top would prevent it from rising up and causing any structural damage. However, the Rhine broke its banks while they were still building the foundations, the project was cancelled and they had to write off 300 million marks. The best solution is not to start building on the floodplain in the first place.

Other European countries seem to have coped much better.

We would have been much better off investing our money (or other people's money) in something productive rather than spaffing it up the wall on currency speculation, sub-prime mortgages and financial derivatives. The result has been that wage earners are now 68p a week better off than they were in 2008, while their outgoings have soared. This was not dictated by economics. Rather, it was caused by one small set of vested interests triumphing over the greater good.

Arguments about money with my missus never go well either

Inspired by Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag

Nobody is going to get rich from making each other cups of coffee, cutting each others hair and flipping each other burgers.

Forty years of free market ideology has seen Britain deindustrialise more than any other advanced economy. Britain is the only country in the G7 where manufacturing is less than 10% of GDP. And we are talking about now in 2020 when the unions have been broken for donkeys years. And Brexit will lead to more deindustrialisation.

No, it's becuse Margaret Thatcher decided long ago that Britain should become a nation of hedge fund managers and bank clerks instead of people who make things, even passports.

What Priti Patel has not yet explicitly said is that if Britain is going to be able to compete with China and India on the world market, then Britons will have to get used to having a Chinese or Indian standard of living. They have always said that people will be be worse off initially after Brexit until things pick up again.

I presume you've already applied for your pay cut?

Exactly. I'll even give you a like for that comment.

No, there are a lot of opinions stated as opinions, which causes some posters to look for an excuse to get their knickers in a twist so that they can deflect attention away from the argument and move it onto the personal level.

Cummings actively went out to look for "wierdos and misfits", and that's exactly what he's got. Corbyn is a paragon of reason and normality compared to the shower who inhabit the backrooms of power in No.10 Downing Street. I can't explain it either. Ramage is just a prat.