The Lemon Fool

vrdiver wrote:In March, the Guardian published* a piece titled "UK manufacturing sector registers worst performance in years"

From the article:
Britain’s factories suffered a decline in growth of domestic orders in February which, coupled with a second month of falling exports, saw them register their worst performance in almost three years.

(my bold)

Today, Digitallook publishes** "UK manufacturing activity spikes to three-year high"

from the article: "this was the manufacturing sector's ninth month of expansion in a row"


Lies, damned lies and statistics comes to mind, but what's really going on?

vrdiver wrote:In March, the Guardian published* a piece titled "UK manufacturing sector registers worst performance in years"

From the article:
Britain’s factories suffered a decline in growth of domestic orders in February which, coupled with a second month of falling exports, saw them register their worst performance in almost three years.

(my bold)

Today, Digitallook publishes** "UK manufacturing activity spikes to three-year high"

from the article: "this was the manufacturing sector's ninth month of expansion in a row"


Lies, damned lies and statistics comes to mind, but what's really going on?

GJHarney wrote:One of the issues in the past year has been the exchange rates, but I got confused with this aspect so here is a question that I has been puzzling me for a while. Obviously a 'weak' pound helps exports at the border as the goods/materials become cheaper for overseas buyers. However, as many manufacturers need to import raw materials there is then obviously a problem in that these become more expensive with a 'weak' pound which drives up manufacturing costs (which at some point must be passed on to the buyers). So while I know that this dichotomy will be very different in different manufacturing sectors, across the British economy as a whole is there a situation where a 'weak' pound is definitely a benefit to exports overall, or not?

dspp wrote:There is also a short term effect and a long term effect. Short term a net importer (which UK is) with a negative balance of trade should be worse off due to a devalued currency. Then the local economy ought to restructure over the longer term to substitute those imports. Then the local economy ought to adapt to increase exports as it becomes more competitive. One ought to end up with a better balance of trade. This is the classical explanation.

The problem in the UK has historically been a) politicians keep spending any windfall gains that ought to facilitate restructuring, and b) the City sector is so large (relative to the rest) that it can whipsaw currency & interest rates around faster than the economy can restructure. Both these means the risk inherent in investing in sectors such as manufacturing in UK is greater than the risk inherent in investing in the corresponding project in Germany. So at a macro level Germany specialises in manufacturing and UK specialises in financial services over fairly lengthy periods. The decline in UK manufacturing for these reasons goes back to at least the 1920s imho.

regards, dspp

Nimrod103 wrote:Some of what you write may be true, but there has been (since the 1920s) a widely held condescending view of British manufacturing among the academics, artists and opinion formers. .... No wonder British industrialists give up or move abroad.

Nimrod103 wrote:
... NHS, a model of healthcare which no other country has copied.

GJHarney wrote:

Nimrod103 wrote:
... NHS, a model of healthcare which no other country has copied.

You are factually incorrect.

Nimrod103 wrote:

GJHarney wrote:

Nimrod103 wrote:
... NHS, a model of healthcare which no other country has copied.

You are factually incorrect.

Which countries have copied it?
This article says nobody has:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-t ... -mtgmkt5bd

GJHarney wrote:

Nimrod103 wrote:

GJHarney wrote:
You are factually incorrect.

Which countries have copied it?
This article says nobody has:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-t ... -mtgmkt5bd

I can't read the article without signing up, which given it is Murdoch owned ain't going to happen! Regardless, there are a number of countries, both in Europe and around the world, who have 100% government taxation funded public healthcare systems similar to the NHS (from memory there are broadly four healthcare models, the NHS fits into one of them and is not unique although it does have some historical peculiarities). The Bismark/Prussian insurance model is more common, but nevertheless 100% government public healthcare systems like the NHS both exist elsewhere, and like the NHS also hold their own in terms of healthcare outcomes based on per £/$ per head of population spent on them. It is for a different thread, but the issue with the NHS is that it has one of the lowest government spends per head of population than just about any other European or other developed nation and only its economies of scale have, so far, saved it from collapse as a result of this now chronic under investment.

robbelg wrote:It would be helpful if you named some of them.

Countries using the Beveridge plan or variations on it include its birthplace Great Britain, Spain, most of Scandinavia and New Zealand. Hong Kong still has its own Beveridge-style health care, because the populace simply refused to give it up when the Chinese took over that former British colony in 1997. Cuba represents the extreme application of the Beveridge approach; it is probably the world’s purest example of total government control.