WHAT CRISIS?
Everyone, europhiles and eurosceptics
alike, seems pleased with the 244 billion pounds of inward investment
made last year.
There are real benefits for us
in terms of jobs and company taxation, but companies that invest
244 billion in something also expect to benefit. They're not
doing it for fun, they're not doing it for charity. They expect
to profit - they
expect a return of 244 billion... and then some.
Inward investment is a loan.
We are congratulating ourselves on being the proud recipients
of £244 billion debt.
I suppose those from some Commonwealth
countries might see it as poetic justice. The British Empire
spent the best part of the last couple of hundred years offering
"inward investment" to poor nations. Creating highly
productive plantation, mining and manufacturing operations -
and today they are as poor as ever - how puzzling!
We have always had inward investment
of some sort in Britain, but of late, we seem to have come to
rely on it - somehow it's supposed to make up for the decimation
of British industry by the Thatcher Government. A process that
has obviously not helped our balance of payments.
The balance of payments for last
year recorded a deficit of £11 billion - around 1.2% of
GDP. To put this in perspective, balance of payments deficit
in 1976 was nearly a third less at 0.8% of GDP.
This was the time of the Harold Wilson
government. If you're too young to remember that, here are a
few keywords:
Balance
of Payments Crisis
International Oil Crisis
Collapse of sterling
And what crisis do we have today
with even worse
balance of payments figures? They are of a size that the media
dare not mention it as a yearly figure - it has to be monthly
or quarterly. The
annual TRADE DEFICIT has reached over £30 billion - but, it seems, there is no crisis.
I tell a lie. There is the crisis of the strong
pound. At least that's
what it say's in the newspapers. With balance of payments in
mind, I would have thought that a strong pound was something
to be thankful for.
How can we survive this imbalance
without either getting poorer or being forced into political
union with Europe? For that appears to me to be the game plan
of the europhiles. To drive the economy to the point where we
must join a Federal Europe to offset the deficit against the
surplus of other states - or face ruin.
Inward investment
will drive us towards the Euro
and towards a Federal Europe, not away from it.
What we need
is the political will to invest in ourselves! But both politicians and the "ruling
elite" have been reluctant to follow this path - why?
More rants on inward investment
in March section of Jims Attic.

LABOUR'S
EUROSCEPTIC
Something you don't hear
a lot of are the views of Labour's eurosceptics - wonder why?
In Blair's Labour,
an MP is eurosceptic even if they support caution over timing
of joining the Euro - like MP Gordon Brown.
So Labour MPs
that favour withdrawal just don't exist do they?. One of these
'non-persons' is M.P. Austin Mitchell. He has his own web site
- it's called www.austinmitchell.co.uk - catchy, eh?
He has a section
on it called Austin's Daily Dollop, where he gives us his daily
thoughts - it was last updated in March... But he has been busy.
He gave a brilliant speech in the House of Commons on 15th June
this year - as you might have guessed - it wasn't widely reported.
It's not on his website, but the full text is available at Hansard. Go there NOW.
Then there are
his regular letters to the Governor of the Bank of England. Sadly,
none have been leaked to the press.

OVERHEARD...
Tony, this Personality Disorder
Bill, is it true they will be able to lock up people who haven't
done anything?
Yes Alice, but only if they might
do something terrible... like vote against the Euro in the referendum.
Does that mean all those poor
care in the community patients will have to go back in to secure
units?
Don't be worry my dear child,
we're not barbarians. Of course we will continue to release deranged
offenders back into society.
But Tony, that doesn't make sense
- releasing people who have done something and putting away people
who have done nothing!
Oh Alice, you silly girl. The
sense is in the detail.
It's true,
I tell you!

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