La-la land.

[Workingman]

It has been announced that manufacturing is down and the £ is down, all of which means that the balance of payments gap will get bigger and we will get relatively poorer. The answer from the La-la landers: build an airport, build a railway line, build more houses, or print more money.

The problem with building stuff is that it only shuffles the available money around within the economy... and it is expensive. Well, it depends upon who is in charge of the abacus. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) want measures to build 100,000 new homes at a cost of £30bn. Meanwhile the CBI says we should spend £2.2bn on "high-growth areas" and that some of it should be used to build 50,000 new affordable homes. Now I am no mathematical genius, but one, or both, of those figures must we way out!

Not that it matters, building does not grow the economy - manufacturing does. In the first instance it produces things for us to buy, meaning that we do not have to import so much. In the second, if we make the right things, we can export them for others to buy. We cannot export houses or airports or roads, and we cannot continue to rely on services.

[cromwell]

Quite agree WM. But as the exporting of British manufacturing jobs started in the 1970's it is going to take some doing to get those millions of jobs back, especially as trade barriers have been deliberately dismantled.
The housebuilding scam makes my blood boil.
A couple of years ago I had a holiday in a place called Beadnell, on the Northumberland coast. A lady there told me that 93% of the houses in the village were holiday lets! In the winter it's a ghost village. In any pretty, desirable resort you will probably find the same thing. Why build houses that are going to be empty for 9 months a year? Why allow them to be built? I want to introduce a military junta and firing squads when stuff like this comes to mind.
100,000 houses? Who for? Romanians, Bulgarians, Turks?
How about all the houses that are currently standing empty in this country? How about the spaces above shops that could be made into flats? How about converting some empty shops in High Streets into homes?
Because developers wouldn't make as much money, that's why, and that's all.

We need an anti-politics party in this country; something to show our contempt for politicans.

[cromwell]

I just remembered - when I was at uni in Manchester during the 1970's, there were a lot of foreign students there.
Many seemed to be from Singapore and Malaysia, maybe also Indonesia.
Those boys weren't there to learn about the novels of Jane Austen, no sirree.
They were there to learn engineering. Civil engineering, mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering - you name it, but always engineering.
So the relocation of manufacturing industries was planned by someone a long time ago.

[Fugitive]

Not straying too far from the topic but you've mentioned empty spaces above shops Cromwell. If those spaces were developed thousands of homes could be provided and rather good ones as these are in high streets with shops and services, schools and transport links. I had empty space above my shop in Wandsworth and developed and renovated the space into three self contained one bed flats. At the time London councils were offering interest free loans to help make these spaces residential by lending for the basics like plumbing, electricty, sound proofing and towards fire precautions. They gave me a year before I had to start paying the loan back giving me time to get all the work done. The councils wanted the high streets to be living communities rather than all that empty space going to waste. I had to borrow the bulk of the money from the bank to do it but the council interest free loan really was a huge financial help for a small developer like me.

Walk along any high street and look up and see all those unlived in and unloved spaces above the shops.

[cromwell]

Not straying too far from the topic but you've mentioned empty spaces above shops Cromwell. If those spaces were developed thousands of homes could be provided and rather good ones as these are in high streets with shops and services, schools and transport links.

Exactly Fugi!
Plus, you are keeping town centres alive instead of the empty places some are in the evening, plus you are bringing customers to the doorsteps of the shops; no need to get the car out or take the bus, you are already there.