Exactly what we do not need....

21 August 2013

... teaching children how to strike, how to protest and how businessmen are 'the enemy'....

That is what the Union UNITE want schools to do along with the teaching unions.

Utter bonkers - the Mail calls it brainwashing and that is exactly what it is and it serves no useful purpose at all except to push a certain left wing agenda.

We need to encourage children to take an interest in current affairs and key issues. We need to encourage and teach them to debate these things from different angles. We certainly do not need the kind of social engineering advocated by these union dinosaurs.

What is most dangerous about this agenda is to portray a 'them and us' attitude with businessmen and businesses as being the enemy. We need to encourage an interest in business and boost the kind of entrepreneurial spirit on which our quality of life ultimately depends. Businesses are what create all of the wealth we have, all of the public services depend on the success of British businesses so ultimately all our jobs and futures depend on business success. Damage business and we are all damaged.

When business suffers, we all suffer - surely that lesson should have got through even to these thick-headed Unions by now.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398541/Unions-plan-brainwash-schoolchildren-Unite-produces-public-protest-video-lessons.html

Guest 710 wrote:
What is it that is 'exactly' what we don't need?

It strikes me that there are many who pepper their arguments with, "them and us" phrases and colour these characterisations of the "thems" as 'the enemy'. I hear nothing here that calls for the doing-away of such partisan phrases.
The Mail can call this whatever it likes, such is unlikely to matter to anybody except the Mail. Apart from perhaps those who use this newspaper as an adjunct to their own efforts at brainwashing.

"We need to encourage and teach..." If ever there was any drive to encourage debate, we don't get that here.

Do businesses ever need people, real, honest to goodness people? As leaders, workforce, customer base?

We 'need' carbohydrates every bit as much as we need businesses, but to thrive we really do need a balanced diet. Not the Feast-n-Fast, approach favoured of old.

I notice that even the selective quotations from those in the field of education were not as worked-up about this as the manic-Mail-mini-minded.

Oh, and. Businesses do not 'create', wealth or anything else.
Guest 655 wrote:
Your attitude is that which creates this country's financial problems.

You need to get into the real world Tom - of course only successful businesses create our wealth. Yes, even you have everything you have only as a result of successful businesses.

If you do not like that then why not go and live in one of those socialist paradises where there is no business - North Korea perhaps.

Or China - woops, that won't work - China is now a booming capitalist economy, booming only because it turned away from your kind of socialism and embraced capitalism and business. In fact Chinese businesses have a much lower state burden to carry than we have here and that is one good reason for them booming.
Guest 710 wrote:
"one good reason for them booming" is that workers in our domestic economy were put out of work.

The people of China do not simply have 'a' job, they have our jobs.

The 'people' of China, and their ever-so-successful businesses, did not create the wealth they now enjoy, they were given it, by people like you Barry.

And anyway, I think I'll stay put, and 'create' the country and the economy in my own likeness. That's Democracy for you.
Guest 655 wrote:
That is competition, you hate competition but that is essential for a free economy, free trade and more prosperity.

The 'pay-off' are lower priced goods in the shops as a result.

Protecting jobs by damaging the free market does not work - look at protectionist countries and you can see how that creates unemployment.

Accept that economies change and evolve.

Because of a free economy we have employment at record high levels.

China is itself evolving and facing the same problems as more developed economies. They are seeing their labour costs rise and some regions even have labour shortages.

Locking our door, protecting British jobs ultimately destroys those very jobs and feeds inflation.

Accept change and you can profit from it - everyone does so.

Your recipe is a recipe for poverty.
Guest 710 wrote:
We have 'employment' at record levels only because the records have been sexed-up and their meaning devalued.

The "pay-off" is not having the wages to spend on these cheaper and more shoddy foreign produced goods.

'Competition'? What competition? Utilities? Railways? Groceries?

A race to the bottom is still a race.

There is no such thing in operation at the present time as a 'Free Market'. Like 'Employment' it is just a word.
Guest 714 wrote:
Tom, I'm very interested to hear how you intend to "create" the economy to your likeness.

You completely tie yourself in knots Tom.
Guest 710 wrote:
David, you are welcome to your opinion.
Guest 714 wrote:
Thank you.

My point being, if businesses don't create wealth, people like Barry have given businesses to China and you are staying here to create an economy............

I'm simply taking what you've said Tom, its confusing to say the least.
Guest 655 wrote:
Tom is very confused David.

He would love to have a country in which we have to subscribe to whatever the government says is good for us. In which we all have to look to government largess for an income. One in which individual enterprise is discouraged or even outlawed, in which we are not allowed to work in a way of our own choosing, to take risk and enjoy the fruits of those risks or the consequences of them going wrong.

Basically he would like a country and economy like North Korea or the old Communist Albanian economy. An equality of misery is what Tom wants to see.
Guest 710 wrote:
If confusion there be, it arises because even though you have both had it your own way for over thirty years, we are where we are, and you wish us to keep at it.

I don't think so.
Guest 655 wrote:
eeer no Tom - we are looking for change, a lot of change. I am certainly not happy with the status quo and have often blogged at the changes I want to see.

The problem is the changes I want and the economy need, as a long way from what you seem to want.....

That said what do you want, what kind of society. You often pour scorn, you often deride businesses and business people. You sneer at aspiration.

So what actually do you believe?

No, I am not asking for more of that 'airy fairy' unintelligible stuff you write that no-one understands and often politely ignore.

In simple plain language, step up and tell people what you believe on the forum.

I would not mind betting that you are some old trot.

Or, perhaps an old 'red' mourning at the demise of the Soviet Union....