The UKs place in the world

Pocari Sweat

All this aside, although very few countries probably being able to get close to France in the next few decades to come, the UK will probably catch up a little and still be in the top 7 to 10 in the world.

The comparison between UK and Ireland now and over the decade ?

Well as a manufacturer, historically and to date, the UK were always into all the big manufacturing and industry that Ireland have not quite come close to.

The UK has had a recently rubbish, but overall large place in the world vehicle production market - Ford's Bridgend, Dagenham and Speke car plants, Vauxhall Opel, SE London, Rover, Mini, Birmingham, Lotus, TVR, Rolls Royce and a host of much smaller specialists. Ireland had Morris Minor plant in Cork once.

Ship building in Glasgow, Belfast and smaller yards around the UK. Ireland have only built small craft as far as I know.

Aerospace both military and domestic have been major exports by the UK and still are. British Aerospace, major, major company. Building both latest fighter jets and main contenders in passenger jet market and the like with Euro cooperation. Shorts factory in Belfast, fairly long going concern.
Joint production of the fastest airliner Concorde with France also.

Ireland again I don't know of any big aircraft production.

UK as you know big players in nuclear, also previously steel, coal etc. Big in gas, now importimg more, big in pharmaceuticals, up there with the US.

Ireland, nuclear - no, steel, coal, gas? Maybe pharmaceutical - Elan and medical instrument technology but not much serious, major production or big industry like the UK.

mike65

Pocari Sweat

Horses for courses, the French also have an deeply rooted underclass and rotting suburbs. They strike for fun and many of Frances (and Germanys) young and ambitious business tyros are in fact moving to London to escape the 'statism' mentioned earlier.

Writing off a country on the basis of cuisine and weather is a bit lame after al if one applied those criteria to Ireland...

The French are so good they managed to kill up to 20,000 elderly and sick a few summers ago.

The UKs place in the world is stable and steady enough and I don't stare at the ceiling in the dark wondering were it all went wrong.

Mike.

Pocari Sweat

fly_agaric wrote:

No, the trick is you have to produce, make, or do something useful, that people want. That hasn't stopped being true today. The UK manufactures almost nothing now, useful or otherwise. However much services and financial jiggery-pokery try to fill that yawning gap left by the shrinking primary and secondary sectors, I don't think they can.


Well Fly, best think you read my last post.

Pocari Sweat

mike65 wrote:

Pocari Sweat

Horses for courses, the French also have an deeply rooted underclass and rotting suburbs. They strike for fun and many of Frances (and Germanys) young and ambitious business tyros are in fact moving to London to escape the 'statism' mentioned earlier.

Writing off a country on the basis of cuisine and weather is a bit lame after al if one applied those criteria to Ireland...

The French are so good they managed to kill up to 20,000 elderly and sick a few summers ago.

The UKs place in the world is stable and steady enough and I don't stare at the ceiling in the dark wondering were it all went wrong.

Mike.

I sort of agree there Mike. Weather and food in Ireland = grey skies and cabbage and ham. Not good.

But equally the yorkshire pud and fish and chips were a bit lame until the asians perfected the UK cuisine and is now some of the finest stuff ye can eat, god I miss a proper vindaloo.

Also, France has its share of slums, but England, Scotland, N. Ireland probably Wales too have some pretty foul no go estates, JC.

Pocari Sweat

mike65 wrote:

The French are so good they managed to kill up to 20,000 elderly and sick a few summers ago.

Mike.

Yeh, the heatwave, I remember, that is some serious, serious ***te. That ranks beyond some of the worst disasters I remember.

I was waffling on in another thread about how small a fart the Chernobyl debacle was compared to the gas leak at Bhopal in India by Union Carbide.

Nine civilians died collectively in all countries affected by Chernobyl over 20 years compared to an immediate 10,000 in Bhopal and now nearer 20,000 as one of mans worst, cock ups.

But 20,000 elderly in France because of a heatwave, that is a bit of a natural disaster but also a lot of blame too on French Gov.

I know 56 people were officially counted dead as the cause of Chernobyl but 47 workers were thrown close to the exposed reactor core by mad communist government of the time, reason it happened in first place.

Only nine civilians are officially listed dead in 20 years, by thyroid cancers most next door in Belarus.

fly_agaric

Pocari Sweat wrote:

Well Fly, best think you read my last post.

Yeah, saying the UK makes nothing is a big exaggeration, and I think I was a bit pessimistic above.

However, the thread is about the UK's status as an important world power.
I wasn't making any comparisons with Ireland. Ireland never was a big power, never will be. It is just (now) a rich country with a high GDP per capita.
The comparison should be between the UK in the past and the UK now, or maybe between the UK and the other powerful countries in the world. I don't think the continued decline in industry and manufacturing in the UK is good for a country that wants to be a big power.
More bad news yesterday about yet another bit of the UK's manufacturing industry withering on the vine...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4992398.stm

Pocari Sweat

Yeh cant disagree with ye there fly.


Bit of a mix at the mo with the UK, bit of decline in parts and big surge to go all out nuclear again though.

अधिनायक

fly_agaric wrote:

No, the trick is you have to produce, make, or do something useful, that people want. ...However much services and financial jiggery-pokery try to fill that yawning gap left by the shrinking primary and secondary sectors, I don't think they can.

Financial service are useful. That's why people pay money for them. Exchange rate hedges are useful, swaps are useful, re-insurance is useful.

You wouldn't say that the software industry is just technical jiggery-pokery, if you didn't understand the technical side of it.

I think there was an idea in the past that developed countries needed heavy industries because they provided lots of jobs for the uneducated masses. There was also a feeling that the things they made were more real because you could touch them. And you can't move a shipyard as easily as you can shift an office overseas.

There were far fewer internationally traded services in the past. We have discovered that contrary to the beliefs of middle class socialists, in fact working class people can go to college and become well paid knowledge workers and that when a shipyard closes down it's far more painful than a software company relocating. First you get massive public cash injection to save the yellow-pack jobs, followed by massive rusting brownfield sites.

I think some people on this thread are secretly hoping that the UK does slide further from its empire days so that they get their comeuppance for 800 years of blah blah. I'd like to see them prosper and their currency stay strong because I get a lot of my income from them as I'm sure many Irish people do. There's something pathetic about hating people who barely know you exist on the basis of the sins of their ancestors.

DublinWriter

Pocari Sweat wrote:

fly_agaric wrote:

No, the trick is you have to produce, make, or do something useful, that people want. That hasn't stopped being true today. The UK manufactures almost nothing now, useful or otherwise. However much services and financial jiggery-pokery try to fill that yawning gap left by the shrinking primary and secondary sectors, I don't think they can.

That's a pretty weak statement considering the Celtic Tiger was kick-started with the foundation of the IFSC.

Manufacturing is dead and the service industry is where it's at now for the West.

The same thing is happening to Ireland that started happening to the UK 10 years ago. Last year our own internal ecomony (total internal spending) started becoming greater than the value of our own external exports.

I'm no economist, but the UK itself follows the greater trend of what is happening in the USA. They were the great consumers of the 80's and 90's, but the are slowly reaping the 'rewards' of having such a skewed balance of trade.

fly_agaric

You wouldn't say that the software industry is just technical jiggery-pokery, if you didn't understand the technical side of it.

Sorry if I hit a nerve there.

First you get massive public cash injection to save the yellow-pack jobs

Manufacturing-related jobs are "yellow-pack" jobs.
And you object somewhat to my labelling of moving virtual money around rapidly from place to place to make more virtual money as "financial jiggery-pokery"? I wonder what sector of the economy you work in...

Why do developing countries such as Brazil, India, and China want to train so many scientists and engineers? Why are they so keen to boost the scale and the technical capabilities of their home-grown industries [even employing the ultimate evil of protectionist policies if need be] when manufacturing and industry is so obviously a dead-duck?

After all, they only creating "yellow-pack" jobs and all these plants will be the brownfield wastelands of the future. Crazy people!

Or maybe not. I was just looking at a list of the biggest and wealthiest companies. Alot of them are banks and financial services providers as you may expect but an awful lot of them make things too.

http://www.forbes.com/2004/03/24/04f2000land.html

I don't see many of the more modern companies that go light on manufacturing and concentrate on an almost intangible brand/idea (Apple [762], M$ [31], Nike [356]) near the top of the list yet.

I think some people on this thread are secretly hoping that the UK does slide further from its empire days so that they get their comeuppance for 800 years of blah blah. I'd like to see them prosper and their currency stay strong because I get a lot of my income from them as I'm sure many Irish people do. There's something pathetic about hating people who barely know you exist on the basis of the sins of their ancestors.

Not me. I honestly hope the UK does well in the decades to come. A UK decreasing in power and wealth and riven by ethnic strife is not good for Ireland or the rest of Europe.
Not to mention the fact that they might try to foist NI on us if they can't afford it.:)

DublinWriter wrote:

That's a pretty weak statement considering the Celtic Tiger was kick-started with the foundation of the IFSC.

Once again, Ireland is not and will never be (or want to be) a big power in the world. The UK is. I am assuming it wants to keep its current position as one and I think it can ill afford to lose much more of its manufacturing industry if it wants to achieve that.

अधिनायक

fly_agaric wrote:

Why do developing countries such as Brazil, India, and China want to train so many scientists and engineers? Why are they so keen to boost the scale and the technical capabilities of their home-grown industries [even employing the ultimate evil of protectionist policies if need be] when manufacturing and industry is so obviously a dead-duck?

What does this paragraph mean? That these countries want to move up the value chain from assembly to design? That they want their companies to be more successful? I don't disagree with either of these points. Do you think we should look to Brazil and China for tips on how to run an economy? You do know that the word 'developing' is a euphemism.

I was just looking at a list of the biggest and wealthiest companies. Alot of them are banks and financial services providers as you may expect but an awful lot of them make things too.

The high value activities are in pre and post production. I think you know this already. Even a company that is nominally in the oil or electronics sectors makes its cash from the design, discovery, marketing or distribution of said product and leaves the dirty work to some overseas unfortunates.

Not me. I honestly hope the UK does well in the decades to come. A UK decreasing in power and wealth and riven by ethnic strife is not good for Ireland or the rest of Europe.
Not to mention the fact that they might try to foist NI on us if they can't afford it.:)

Well we're agreed there. Paying for NI is their punishment. Hahahha.

Once again, Ireland is not and will never be (or want to be) a big power in the world. The UK is. I am assuming it wants to keep its current position as one and I think it can ill afford to lose much more of its manufacturing industry if it wants to achieve that.

There is no money in screwing toothpaste caps on toothpaste tubes.

fly_agaric

अधिनाय&#2325 wrote:

What does this paragraph mean? That these countries want to move up the value chain from assembly to design? That they want their companies to be more successful?

They want their own companies to innovate and be successful, to manufacture first for the locals and then for export.

They don't want to accept foriegn companies doing manufacturing in the country and keeping a tight control on the invention/design parts of things [locking off their expertise from the country they build their plants in].

Why can they not move up the "value chain" by educating a large fraction of their workers and still keep the manufacturing?

It worked this way when the US and the UK were building themselves into great powers.

Maybe my views are old-fashioned. I find it very hard to see the invention and design bit as something that can be so completely divorced from the manufacturing end of things.
Sales and distribution yes - but invention and design???

I find it hard to see how a country can be a great power in the old-fashioned way of ability to wage war and economically dominate others if it relies on the factories of other countries to produce goods for it.

DublinWriter

fly_agaric wrote:

Why can they not move up the "value chain" by educating a large fraction of their workers and still keep the manufacturing?

The UK's attitute to third level education is a very good indicator of how they think as a nation regarding the 'knowledge economy'.

There's a lot of debate in the UK media at the moment on how to make undergrads pay their tutition fees. Currently UK students are coming out of their primary degree with anything up to 10K Sterling in debt just on tuition fees alone.

The UK doesn't consider their graduates to the greater society any good - the debate over there is about the best mechanism to make them pay. It's all about making students pay presuming that they'll end up on the career ladder in the private sector.

Whereas in Ireland, we embraced the concept of free third level education just as the UK were dumping the idea, and look at our economy now.

The UK doesn't seem to grasp that education is the key to competitiveness and treats it as a personal, rather than social embetterment.

fly_agaric wrote:

I find it hard to see how a country can be a great power in the old-fashioned way of ability to wage war and economically dominate others if it relies on the factories of other countries to produce goods for it.

Look at it this way. What do IBM produce these days? Very little, they don't even make PC's anymore.

However, IBM as a corporation probably hold the largest amount of patients and licence their technology to hundreds of companies. Their R&D campus facilities across North America and Europe employ tens of thousands, whlie they farm out the limited manufacturing they do Eastern Europe and the Far East.

I remember hearing management guru Tom Peters speak about this about ten years ago. He said it made him really angry when people went on about there being no real economy 'unless real men were loading steel ingots into a forge and making machines in a big factory'.

I think we're lucky in the ROI that the Industrial Revolution passed us over and we could basically start with a blank sheet of paper without memories of 'glorious factories' and an 'industrial empire'.

Sand

The UK doesn't seem to grasp that education is the key to competitiveness and treats it as a personal, rather than social embetterment.

Depends on the education though doesnt it? Some doss arts courses arent economically useful (yeah, yeah - maybe culturally but not economically). Science, Languages (to a degree anyway) & Business related courses are. Governments should subsidise the useful, but shouldnt get trapped into subsidising everything just because someone thought up a course about it.

zuma

Sand wrote:

Depends on the education though doesnt it? Some doss arts courses arent economically useful (yeah, yeah - maybe culturally but not economically). Science, Languages (to a degree anyway) & Business related courses are. Governments should subsidise the useful, but shouldnt get trapped into subsidising everything just because someone thought up a course about it.

Aheemmmm....dont forget about Engineering!!!

DublinWriter

Sand wrote:

Depends on the education though doesnt it? Some doss arts courses arent economically useful (yeah, yeah - maybe culturally but not economically

Yeah yeah. It's all about the mighty dollar isn't it?

What do you think your second level teachers of English, French, Art, Drama, Music, Irish, German, Spanish got their primary degree in?

Science? No, arts.

bk

DublinWriter wrote:

Look at it this way. What do IBM produce these days? Very little, they don't even make PC's anymore.

However, IBM as a corporation probably hold the largest amount of patients and licence their technology to hundreds of companies. Their R&D campus facilities across North America and Europe employ tens of thousands, whlie they farm out the limited manufacturing they do Eastern Europe and the Far East.

Very good point, IBM has the largest number of patients of any company in the world, in just 13 years they produced 31,000 patents and last year alone they produced another 3000 US patents.

I know for a fact that all IBM employees are encouraged to produce patents and get big bonus for each patent they produce.

A major issue for the US is ensuring that Chine and the rest of the developing world respect those patents, as the US knows that that is where the real money is.

Sand

Yeah yeah. It's all about the mighty dollar isn't it?

What do you think your second level teachers of English, French, Art, Drama, Music, Irish, German, Spanish got their primary degree in?

Science? No, arts.

Actually thats not a given. All you require is a degree in a cirriculum related subject, and possibly a higher diploma in education. After that you can teach any subject at the discretion of the school employing you. I didnt study Art, Drama or Music - even if I had, it would only have allowed me to further those studies in 3rd Level so I could aspire to teach the same shagging course to 2nd Levels. Well, beats Supermacs I guess but no real benefit to the economy.

As for English, French, German & Spanish - Languages are useful to a degree. English is the international language these days anyway, but its good to ensure the basic literacy in it isnt lost to the hordes of "txt spk".

And to answer your first question, seeing as you were talking about economic power and how it relates to education - Yes, its all about the mighty dollar/euro/sterling as appropriate. Subsidising 3rd Level courses in World Cup History, with modules on such topics like "At The Death Winners!" doesnt produce a justifiable return on the subsidy, and the same goes for a lot of arts courses. The government needs to spend *our* money wisely, not pissing it away on paying for little daddykins darlings doing the "uni thing" for a few years in a doss course.

The UK should subsidise education, yes. But it shouldnt subsidise all courses without discretion. Ireland already fell into that trap and it will be harder to reform it now.

DublinWriter

bk wrote:

A major issue for the US is ensuring that Chine and the rest of the developing world respect those patents, as the US knows that that is where the real money is.

Which is why the US is all pallsey with China since it committed to joining the WTO in 2002 and has been currently working to obtain full membership.

When was the last time you heard Bush bang on about China's 'evil regeime' and their appalling human-rights record?

Blackleaf

darkman2 wrote:

H

The commonwealth, that proud institution, a remnant of the empire has turned into a complete joke. The vast majority of the countries in its ranks can only be described as despotic states.

Don't be stupid. Most members of the Commonwealth, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, the Caribbean nations, are democracies.

The British though thought it was great, the rest of the world felt it was childish.

Yeah - that's why we had the support of the United Nations.

Considering the Falklands belonged to Britain BEFORE Argentina even existed and they have NEVER been Argentinian, I think Britain had a right to defend them where Argetina invaded them.

Now take the French and Germans for example - two countries far bigger then the UK who had the guts to deny the Americans their support

Britain is the second-biggest EU Member State. It has a larger economy and population than France.

Britain will also overtake Germany to become Europe's largest economy within the next 20-25 years.

They didn't support the War in Iraq as they had made plenty of nice little money-making deals with Saddam - also, their militaries aren't capable of such a thing.

It is no coincidence that Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff are among the most deprived cities in Europe, the money inevitably was centralised in Southeast England.

Rubbish. More money is spent, per person, on Health, Education and Transport in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than in England.

Ireland of course is proving to the regions of the UK that economic arguments against independence are completely false.

Ireland only became rich because it has ridden the EU Gravy Train. And that's thanks, in part, to Britain which, after Germany, is the second biggest contributor to the EU budget.

Blackleaf

clown bag wrote:

At the moment they're just another state of the U.S. in all but name.

I'd rather be a US state than an EU state. At least we'd be part of a democracy - and one whose economy and population are both growing.

If anything, Ireland is just a stooge of Belgium - which is pretty embarrassing.

Blackleaf

darkman2 wrote:

Thats a good point there about being 'the worlds moderator' however as you say it looks like that fell flat on its face. In terms of the EEC, it is often convienently forgotten by the British when they target the EU for their ills, that they were, in fact a poor country when they entered it. I reckon it has benefitted them so much that pulling out is impossible. Theyd lose access to markets and would be on their own.

When Britain joined the EU in 1973, we were the 2nd or 3rd richest country in Europe.

By 1997, we were around the 3rd or 4th poorest.

Blackleaf

darkman2 wrote:

Theyd lose access to markets and would be on their own.

As Europhiles like to think, Britain is NOT dependent on trade with the EU.

Britain is the most global and outward-looking EU country and it trades with the world, unlike other EU nations who are notoriously more inward-looking, provincial and tend to trade just amongst themselves.

---

How 'dependent' is the UK
on exports to 'Europe'?

1999


The British think they're in the EU for trade. That's what they were told in 1972 and 1975 and that's what they're still being told today. But in all likelihood 90 per cent of the British economy is NOT involved in exports to the EU.

25 years after the UK joined the then EEC, how "dependent" is she, economically, on the other 14 member states of the EU?

"Dependency" depends on how much and what the UK produces and how much and what she sells overseas.

First, what she produces. The British economy (like those of other developed industrial countries) is now, broadly, an "Eighty/Twenty" economy: 80 per cent services and 20 per cent manufacturing. This is true whether measured by GDP or by numbers of people employed.

Within the 80 per cent of British output accounted for by services, some are non-tradeable and not open to international competition, or not much: health, education, hairdressing, dry-cleaning and so on. Other services are tradeable internationally: films, music, literature, engineering consultancy, financial services, air transport.

The 20 per cent of British output which is classified as "manufacturing" produces goods or merchandise - most of it internationally tradeable.

When it comes to exports, the UK sells abroad more "invisibles" - services and financial receipts - than "visibles" or goods. Thus, to discuss British exports only in terms of goods is literally to ignore more than half of British exports, including the export earnings of the City of London and the music business, to mention just two of the UK's world-beating industries.

Thus, the proper definition of "exports" is exports of goods plus exports of commercial services plus "income" - the latter being shorthand for fees, royalties, dividends and interest received from overseas.

In 1998, the UK's worldwide exports as defined above amounted to £335 billion. In that same year the output of the British economy (its GDP or Gross Domestic Product) was £844 billion. The conventional way of measuring a country's export dependency worldwide is to divide exports by GDP, which, for the UK in 1998, gives a percentage of 40 per cent.

The other 14 EU countries bought 48 per cent of our worldwide exports in 1998 - less than half. Expressed as a percentage of UK GDP, exports to EU '14' worked out at 19 per cent.

However, recorded British exports to EU '14' are overstated, because of two quite separate effects.

The first, the Rotterdam-Antwerp Effect, relates to exports of goods and commercial services to Holland and Belgium. About two thirds of these pass through the two biggest ports in Europe, Rotterdam in Holland and Antwerp in Belgium, on their way somewhere else - some to other EU countries, the rest outside the EU.

The second, the Netherlands Distortion, relates to Income.

This often flows through Dutch "brass-plate" holding companies which offer tax advantages. As a result, much of the investment and income flows recorded in the British statistics as going to or coming from Holland in fact go to or come from somewhere else, very often outside the EU altogether.

The magnitudes of these two separate distortions can only be guessed at, but they are substantial. Once they are taken into account, a reasonable estimate of the real proportion of British EU-bound exports to GDP would be around 15 per cent.

And that, of course, means that the proportion of the British economy NOT involved in exports to the EU '14' is 85 per cent.

But even this 15/85 split probably exaggerates the real net "dependency" of the British economy on exports to the EU. This is because Britain imports approximately as much as she exports; and much of those imports are re-exported. Much of British exports to the EU consist of re-exports of imports from the EU. So, if the EU were ever to threaten to discriminate against British exports to the EU (which, incidentally, would be illegal under WTO rules), it would be cutting off its own nose to spite its face: a drop in UK exports to the EU would boomerang and cause a drop in EU exports to the UK.

Once account is taken of the import content of exports it is likely that the net "dependency" of the UK on exports to the EU ‘14’ is even less than 15 per cent – say 10 per cent. That, in turn, means that the proportion of the British economy NOT "dependent" on the EU is no less than 90 per cent.


1998: Breakdown of Recorded UK Exports

£ billion ..........Goods ...Services ...Income ...Total .....%

To EU '14' ........96......... 21 ..........45 .........162 .....48
To non-EU....... 68 .........39 ..........66 .........173 .....52
To World .........164........ 60 .........111 .........335.... 100


http://globalbritain.org/BOO/HowDependant.htm

Blackleaf

Considering it included the warcrime inflicted on the Belgrano, that was no great acheivement

It's a warcrime to sink an ENEMY vessel in a war?

What are you on?

I'm also sure the Argies hit British vessels.

What it also a warcrime sinking German U-Boats?

Remember that in 1982, Argentina was a dictatorship. 300,000 Argies were killed under that dictatorship and many of their bodies have never been found.

Blackleaf

How so? Industry and manufacturing is still in decline. So much so that services, finance, construction and property speculation [feg building houses on farmland which it is no longer economical to grow crops on] now drive the UK economy.

Most Western economies are now mostly consisting of services.

But Britain has a larger manufacturing sector than France and the United States -

Italy
industry: 28.8%
services: 69.1% (2005 est.)

---

Germany
industry: 28.6%
services: 70.3% (2005 est.)

---

Britain
industry: 26%
services: 72.9% (2005 est.)

---

France
industry: 24.4%
services: 71.5% (1999)

---

United States
industry: 20.7%
services: 78.3% (2005 est.)

Source: CIA World Factbook

Blackleaf

fly_agaric wrote:

Bar the unprecedented - no way in hell IMO.:)

Britain looks set to pass Germany as No. 1 economy in Europe

William Hanley, Financial Post



The Sun is starting to set on Germany's relatively brief position of being Europe's number 1 economic power - it has been there since 1959 when it overtook Britain.

LONDON - Britain, dismissed as the "sick man of Europe" in the 1970s, is on course to surpass Germany as the continent's biggest economy in about 20 years, achieving a remarkable 50-year turnaround. And while the British can wave the flag in advance of this seemingly surprising turn of events, it must also be said that Britain is going to become No. 1 in Europe largely by default.

Sure, Britain's productivity gain is currently running at an annual rate of 2% versus Germany's anemic 1%. But a report by Christopher Smallwood, Barclays Bank's chief economic advisor, notes that Germany is also losing the demographic race. Though its population and economy are now a third larger than Britain's, the economic output gap will narrow inexorably as Germany's working-age population shrinks by 20% during the next 25 years to 44 million from 56 million while Britain's RISES slightly.

Britain lost its No. 1 European economic ranking all the way back in 1959, when Germany's "economic miracle" pulled the country out of the ashes of the Second World War. Britain edged ahead of France as the continent's second-biggest economy in 2000. And it has also edged ahead of Germany on a per-capita gross domestic product basis, with the average Briton producing US$30,200 annually versus US$29,200 in Germany.

Smallwood attributes much of Britain's economic outperformance to the structural changes forced through in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government -- a feat Germany and France are struggling to emulate. He says the Germans will eventually succeed in making the needed changes to the welfare state, but the drop in its working-age population will consign it to a lesser economic role in Europe.

www.fcpp.org . . .

World's largest economies 2020

US - $16.4 trillion
China - £7.1 trillion
Japan - $5.2 trillion
Germany - $2.5 trillion
Britain - $2.3 trillion
India - $2.1 trillion

according to Goldman Sachs.

Then soon after, she'll overtake Germany. A few years after that, Britain will be the only European nation still in the G7.

Frederico

Rant! Splutter! But Europe.. And we're the biggest.. and we beat the Argies.. Gasp! Rah Rah Hurrah! and!..


UK's place in the world, small island off France.

DublinWriter

Blackleaf wrote:

It's a warcrime to sink an ENEMY vessel in a war?

You must be about 12 if you don't remember the controversy about this as the Belgrano was sailing 'AWAY FROM' the 'BRITISH EXCLUSION BOX'.

Thatchter was beaten up by several-fellow Brits about this action on phone-in on a daytime time TV show.

There are well defined rules of engagement.

zuma

Blackleaf wrote:

Don't be stupid. Most members of the Commonwealth, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, the Caribbean nations, are democracies.

Commonwealth has over 50 members and the majority are utter sh!t holes!

Blackleaf wrote:

Yeah - that's why we had the support of the United Nations.

Only because Thatcher said she would NUKE Argentina!!!

Blackleaf wrote:

Considering the Falklands belonged to Britain BEFORE Argentina even existed and they have NEVER been Argentinian, I think Britain had a right to defend them where Argetina invaded them.

Someone did the history of the Falklands previously and it appears that both France and Spain had claimed those Islands ever before Britain.

Blackleaf wrote:

Britain is the second-biggest EU Member State. It has a larger economy and population than France.

Only by a VERY small amount....I think it has a population/economy ~1% bigger than France

Blackleaf wrote:

Britain will also overtake Germany to become Europe's largest economy within the next 20-25 years.

Germany will shrink for certain but France will have a population of ~75 million by 2020 far larger than the UK(not Britain!) and it will be number one and not the UK.

Blackleaf wrote:

Ireland only became rich because it has ridden the EU Gravy Train. And that's thanks, in part, to Britain which, after Germany, is the second biggest contributor to the EU budget.

Britain/UK has a rebate on monies not spent on it and as such contribues a lot but get back most of that in the rebate.
German taxes have contributed a hell of a lot more to Ireland than british Taxes.



I was going to go down through each of Blackleaf's posts but I think Ive answered most of his points in this one.....quality over quantity

zuma

Blackleaf wrote:

I'd rather be a US state than an EU state. At least we'd be part of a democracy - and one whose economy and population are both growing.

If anything, Ireland is just a stooge of Belgium - which is pretty embarrassing.

You are clearly ultra British so why should you care about Ireland and why are you posting in an Irish forum anyway.