What's amazing in the aftermath of the Thatcher government is that the Old Etonians have taken control again as though she never existed and yet they use her memory to oppress the plebs much more than they were pre-Thatcher. Shows the "Establishment" is much more adaptive and intelligent than the leaders of the Labour "movement".

This is partially true (though some of the changes that Thatcher made cannot be undone). It's a very sad state of affairs too.

For adaptive and intelligent substitute devious and lying.

marrying a millionaire helped

You are not making any sense. Rolls Royce doesn't have comparable competitors in Germany, France and Italy making aero engines in terms of the value they add to manufacturing economy. Therefore in order for these countries to be ahead of ours on output they have to get it from other sources of manufacturing. And you have to have your head buried deep in the sand not to see this is plainly true given they are, as I pointed out, much stronger in other areas such as rolling stock manufacture.



No it shows you don't know what the term "gross value added" means.

It is a measure of revenue that takes into account subsidies and wages. It is NOT a measure of actual physical output. That is why this:

"(Britain is) 9th in terms of manufacturing output (value added) at $231 billion, behind the USA, China, Japan, Germany, Italy and France."

Doesn't contradict what you quoted which was this:

"108th in terms of manufacturing output as a share of gross value added (11%), marginally ahead of France but behind most major developed countries."

Because they are different statistics. In terms of output we ARE behind Germany, Italy and France because that is what the first one of those two stats tells you.

BBC R1 pull the song.

Wrong decision. It's there on merit, whatever your view on Mrs T. The great Lady herself would not have agreed with this decision.

the value you add is the value you add. that's it. why are you insisting on cherry picking what should and shouldn't be included. so what if we don't manufacture as much rolling stock as them?

this statement is clearly crap.

in fact, the only thing your stats show, is how the labour party destroyed british industry.

I am sure you understood the meaning. BMW and VW are German owned companies and so any outposts here such as Mini are always at risk of losing out to German domestic concerns. The state of Lower Saxony owns something like 12% of VW and despite the "Volkswagon Law" being declared illegal the share ownership structure is such it isn't going to be taken over by a foreign company or dismantled.

In France Renault (which is associated with Nissan) was built up by the French government rather than allowed to go bust as our domestically owned car manufacturing base was. Companies like VW and Renault are German and French in an economic sense far more than any company in the UK involved in large scale volume manufacture is British these days.

So while companies like Nissan and Toyota contribute to our manufacturing output the fact they are foreign owned can't be shrugged off as just merely the product of globalisation because countries such as France, Germany (and Italy with Fiat) view the domestic ownership of such industries as important pillars of their economies.

but here's the thing, this thread has several posts about how thatcher destroyed uk industry. yet you link to a piece that proves otherwise.
in 1970, we were ranked 5th, by 1980 down to 7th yet by 1990 up to 6th and by 2000, 5th and now we're 9th. there's only one party who's destroyed british industry. and it certainly wasn't thatcher.

then there's manufacturing as a % of world total.

1979 3.9%
1990 4.3%
as you can see, the bitch killed it stone dead.

1997 4.3%
2010 2.3%

whereas new labour worked wonders.

why do people keep peddling the lie she destroyed british industry?

Me cherry picking stats? That is hilarious.

One measure is a measure of actual output. On that measure we rank 9th. Behind Germany, France and Italy. Fact.

The other is a measure of revenue not output and not "value add" as you put it but "gross value add" which you clearly still do not understand. It is NOT a measure of output.

What is funny though is even with the latter statistic you are clinging to the fact we are slightly ahead of France in something that doesn't measure output.

If I built widgets and sold them for £100K and paid myself £20K and my costs were £10K but you built widgets and sold them for £100K but paid yourself £25K with costs of £10K I would have the better gross value add figures. We would however have the same manufacturing output. If you built a couple of different different things instead of widgets and built more of them in value added terms (not gross value added terms) than I did with my widgets you would have a greater manufacturing base than me. The fact I may still end up ahead in gross value added terms would not alter the fact your had a bigger manufacturing industry to me.

This is what lies behind the figures whereby we are behind the French in terms of output but ahead on net revenue. Just. In the other cases we are behind Germany and Italy on both measures which you seemingly want to ignore



Given who owns large chunks of our manufacturing industry compares to who owns the French, German and Italian industries no it isn't.

The bottom line is out manufacturing output has fallen since the 70's from 5th to 9th and contrary to popular belief it isn't just in comparison to emerging economies such as China but against comparable European ones.

Any chance you could provide some links to where all these figures come from that you quote

Because people vote labour because their parents did and not for what their policies are - therefore everything non labour is evil.

Because they get confused between real facts and quotes from spitting image - here's a clue, Spitting image was a fictional satirical comedy, not a documentary.

Because they choose to ignore the 6 months prior to the 1979 election where the country was at the mercy of the unions to the extent that you wen't to bed not knowing if there's be water the next day, or gas/electricity to heat homes in the winter ...or worse unions holding Callaghan to ransom to the extend that bodies didn't get buried
. And remember there was no striking on principal ...it was just greedy s after more of our taxes.

Applies to all political parties.

Which is what the problem is with football supporter style politics.