Bl**dy Tories

[la_marquise]

Today's veto has really depressed me. Not the detail, but because of the triumphalist Little Englandism that it has brought crawling out of the woodwork. We need Europe to secure our long-term future. This isn't about 'sovereignty', it's about kow-towing to Big Capital and it's needs. The US won't support us even if we wanted it to (and opinions vary on that). I am sick and tired of the triumph of prejudice.
Off into the Word Mines to carve out some more Red Fantasy. A bas les aristos!

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The traditional, and even most of the newer, manufacturing and extractive industries have been pretty much gutted.

Hello? Planet reality calling ...?

Actually, we manufacture and export more stuff now than we did in the 1970s, though it doesn't seem that way. We're one of the biggest car manufacturers in Europe, although the factories are all foreign-owned. Space industry turns over £6 billion a year. We're a colossus in the computer games sector and we make and export tons of specialized stuff. We're a major industrial force in wind turbines. And so on.

...

However, while manufacturing has dropped overall to around 20% of the economy (bet you thought it had fallen further), employment in manufacturing is down around 90% over the past three decades, largely due to efficiency improvements. And the smokestack industries -- coal, steel -- that ran on inefficient pre war plant (often pre WW1, not WW2) is a small highly efficient specialized rump of its former stature. It really doesn't take that many people to supervise and operate a heavily automated car factory with industrial robots.

(And meanwhile, the narrative that our future lies in financial services and all that iron-bending stuff is obsolete gets embedded in our national consciousness so that it gets hard to convince kids to make stuff instead of studying "business". And the pound is maintained as a strong currency because it's useful for arbitrage despite it crippling our export sector. And Thatcher's heirs still hate everyone who lives north of Nottingham.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Further north than Watford Gap services, if you ask me (person from Coventry, here. Remember Coventry: used to be a prosperous place, gutted by 5 decades of neglect by all parties?). They make an exception for the pretty bits of Northants -- so</> pretty, darling, and room for the children's ponies -- but kick Northampton in the teeth. And everywhere else is completely off their radar.
Home rule for Mercia, says I.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Folks hereabouts are in favour of Scottish independence.

I think a better idea would be to expel the City of London and Westminster from the United kingdom.