Economic growth?

I wrote in my previous posting that I was going to spell out what should be done to improve our economy, I have decided after a little thought that that sounds a bit arrogant. I am sure like me, no one likes a big head and I do not want to come across like that, so I am sorry. I did want to write down here what I feel could be done to improve the situation and as I am not some sort of expert these thoughts are based upon my personal feelings.

I do believe that something needs to change, I am sure even the most ardent Union member would agree, I suppose we would disagree with how we should bring change. So I want to quickly write down here what I think.

The simple fact is, are economy is in a mess and something needs to be done, we have a benefits system which is way out of control and too many people are claiming many different benefits. I have written about this before in a previous posting this month and I called it 'benefit scroungers', so if you want to see what I think about that, look at this posting.

I believe we need to invest in manufacturing, particularly in our defence industry, unlike most of our manufacturing our defence industry has continued to do very well. BAE Systems is now the second largest defence company in the world, in 2009 sales totalled £22.4Billion. CEO Mike Turner has said that BAE would quit the UK if defence spending went below a certain level, with the defence cuts that have been announced this week I believe that level has been reached. The simple truth is BAE contributes 100's million's of pounds every year in taxes and employs tens of thousands of people. If this company left it would be a disaster for our economy and for many people.

The Government has announced cuts in the public sector and we have the usual people shouting and screaming about huge job losses. It is reckoned that there will be 500,000 job losses in the public sector and this may well happen. One of the important things that shouldn't happen is front line services being reduced. Over the past 13 years Labour created a huge bureaucratic monster, wages in the public sector increased at a ridiculous rate and we now have many people doing non jobs. Our public sector bodies are overflowing with 'Equality and Diversity managers' and I must be honest one of the first things I would do would be to get rid of these hideous political posts. I would go even further and make it illegal to employ anyone as an Equality manager. I believe, and so would most people that the chief executives of councils are paid too much, I would force these people to take a massive pay cut. Some people might think that a bit harsh, but I wander if many of our council heads went for a job in the private sector would a private employer employ them, and then pay them such inflated wages?

One of the things our Government has continued to do is waste money on Green energy, over the next 10 years the Government has committed to spending about £200 billion on this very dubious policy. One of the things that concerns me is that over the next 10 years as the Government spends our money on building many 1000's of wind turbines we are going to be left with no real coherent energy policy and no energy. Wind turbines by there very nature do not produce energy all the time, so we need to rely on energy from elsewhere. If we do not build power stations we will see our energy costs rise, that isn't just for the domestic consumer but also for business as well. As you can imagine if costs rise for business they will just pass that onto the consumer, so we will be losing out twice.

I have mentioned immigration many times and I don't want to sound boring, but I just want to say this. There are 2.5 million people unemployed in this country, the Government have announced cuts in the public sector that could add 500,000 to the unemployment register. The Government are reviewing our benefits system and they reckon they will take 1.5 million people off incapacity benefits, this is a total of 4.5 million unemployed. Why on earth are we allowing more people into the UK to do work that many people in this country could do!!

Our Net contribution to the EU is £8.3 billion this year and next year it is going to increase to £10.3 billion, that seems totally ridiculous at this time.

There are many things that bother me, and what is happening to our country really concerns me. Our economy is in a mess and needs to change, unfortunately I do not believe we are going about it the right way.