Many years ago, in the mid nineteen-sixties, I started work. It was then that I first heard the term, ‘The Brain Drain’ and, indeed, within a year or so my then boss did indeed shut his factory and either gave-up trying or cleared-off abroad. I was out of work – but it wasn’t then so hard to find a bit more. But wherever I worked since the same thing has happened. All of my ex-employers have, ‘disappeared’. No one bothered. Many folk at the time said, “Good riddance.”
To say that every ‘brain’ cleared-off is perhaps overstating, but, as I look around these days, I’m not so sure. It’s not just the sheer lack of ordinary, bread-and-butter jobs either, it’s the blatant stupidity that seems to abound that causes even more brains to drain quietly away. Who (in their right mind) would employ anyone, lately, knowing the price of that persons future pension cost? Who would even contemplate the sheer impossibilty of creating ‘pension funds’ that magically grow in order to feed millions as they retire – often quite young.
Yet public-sector pensions will cost us all £18,000,000,000.00p this tax-year not including local government pensions!
All this cash, that we don’t have, given to people that won’t be doing anything to actually earn it. (To negate such money actually negates about double if the admin. and interest fees are considered – it’s all borrowed per temp)
A scenario allowed to happen by ‘brains’ that haven’t drained away. Is that any wonder? Who would want them? – at any Price – let alone the Price they get these days.
Sadly, the British modus operandi has been adopted, over the years, by most european countries and, hey presto! they too are in exactly the same, (or worse in one or two cases) boat. Many ‘private’ businesses in GB, solely reliant on public-sector contracting, and duped into believing that the borrow and spend modus was infinite, now find, as inevitable ‘cut-backs’ in public funding abound, that their once lucrative ‘hobby-jobs’ have no real business credence. You cannot, in the real business world, force people to fund a business – and your Price isn’t what you need, it’s what you can get away with bearing in mind the competition!
So, amid the debt chaos and stupidity that is now rife in this neck of the global woods, I look out at a (totally still!) wind-farm on the nearby hills and smile.
Oh what it could have been like had they all not gone!
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I have to smile at the hordes (oh yes) of newspaper columnists (Should I say ‘bloggers’? They seem to like the trendy, ‘amatuer’ image these days) that ask, “Where have all the factories gorn?” “Why don’t we in GB make Rolls-Royces?” “Why is there no work for folk?”
(And people think The Brain Drain a figment!)(And we DO actually make Rolls-Royces in GB – well, more or less – very well too!)
Of course to actually answer these questions all manner of verbal analysis and dissection is employed (?). Some bloggers earn positive fortunes waffling on such subjects daily.
The truth is: They haven’t a clue.
And I, as a trendy amateur blogger doing this for nowt; a business-person quite able not only to answer the questions above, but also, to some extent, to address them….
…am certainly NOT going to tell you!
For less at any rate!
A view shared, it seems, by the chairman of the office for budget responsibilty.
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Plans cooked-up by the last government to change over to digital radio are to go ahead, meaning that umpteen motorists will have to fork-out about £300 (or more – you read it here!) apiece to have suitable radios fitted to their cars.
Again the ‘quality’ of ‘brains’ left here is highlighted. Watching folk trying to make a Profit while running a car (and now its apparently vital? radio) has long been a source of mirth and merriment to some of us – wouldn’t even know how to switch a car-radio on!