Unfortunatly all those benefits you mention also bring into this country people who cost the country money

China's economy grew 8% in the last quarter.
They are buying everything on the planet and they have infaltion....its going to get more expensive for us....get used to it.

While we are banging on about prices and the recession in the West, the rest of the world is getting on with it and becoming richer every day.

Be afraid - we have to compete, or die.

And the people who work are paying for these benefits through excessive taxing. That doesn't sound like free to me.

All we want is simples ,work to live ,not live to work.

Just filled up with diesel on the M40 at Warwick services £1.40/litre!!!!!

Just been on the radio that the government may not increase the duty on fuel in April. Oh yeh pull the other one.

Could be an indication that the cost of diesel is going to keep rising anyway so they'll get there money through taxes anyway.

They wont need to if the basic price goes high enough.

damn

I must learn how to type with two fingers

Flippin eck Keith it'll tek me a pon full to get theer

Those that work , yes , but many come because of the benefits available for those that don't , IMO of course

Almost impossible to compete any more , I have just comissioned an Aluminium extrusion from China through a British stockholder

If I get it from Britain there would be a £ 600 die cost and the end product would be 30 percent more expensive , with a 5 week lead time to produce the sample and then similar to end product

If I get it from Spain/Portugal the die cost is £ 300 and the end product would be 20 percent more expensive with a similar lead time

I placed the order from China 14 working days ago and the sample is on my desk at work now , at no cost and I will sign it off and the end product will be available to me inside 8 to 10 weeks at the lower cost

Unfortunatly it is a no brainer for me and no doubt many others , what the answer is , I just don't know , the damage has already been done

Just double check everything out Steve, a certain Car company bought 10,000 standard stillages (metal bins) from China because they were cheaper, we spent 6 months reinforcing them because of the poor quality of steel they'd used, they were cracking around the top when stacked on top of one another.

That said, we did the same with the daughters prom dress a couple of years ago, shopped around the North west prices were £300 + for the ones she wanted and up to three months wait, a friend told us about a company in China, we picked the style of the dress, colour etc, they emailed us a body image we filled in every dimensions possible and emailed it back, a couple of weeks later we had email telling us our dress was in production, a week after that we had a photo showing it almost complete, after about 6-8wks it arrived.
Fitted perfectly and looked great.

Cost £75 postage and £15 for the dress.

I already get some extrusion from China , I dont go direct as I would have to pay up front , I use a stockholder , so any quality problems would be theirs