The Tories

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by garinda

Don't worry, like in The Emperor's New Clothes, we all see it.

It looks very dashing, and that big blue feather really sets if off a treat.

Yellow hats old son yellow hats

[jaysay]

Originally Posted by garinda

Ah a photo of some lads down the youth club

[DaveinGermany]

Originally Posted by cmonstanley

anybody who brought in the national minimum wage did the working class a favour

Is that it ? Every time a debate comes along your stock reply is the above Labour & the minimum wage, nothing else, is that all you're magnificent Labour party (of bygone times) has to offer ? If they're so outstanding there must be other attributes you can crow about surely ?

On top of that this present coalition has agreed to a raise in the levels of said minimum wage thereby benefiting more than an estimated 890,000 people.

National Minimum Wage Increases

[Lucysgirl]

There's none so blind as the millions of Brits over the last few decades who preferred to buy cheaper inferior foreign goods. Because they're inferior, we've become a throw-away society and we've thrown away our neighbours manufacturing jobs. Not only have we imported cheap goods we've imported take away cafe owners, NHS workers, builders, etc. and we even imported a couple of Scots to be our Prime Ministers for over a decade.

[Margaret Pilkington]

It has been difficult to buy British made goods for quite a while now.
When it was possible to buy british made domestic equipment......that is what I would choose.(but you don't buy a fridge or a washer every week...my current machines are both over 10 years old)

I throw nothing away unless it is beyond usefulness or repair(as you might guess I am one of the 'after the war babies').

Everything, but everything, today seems to be manufactured in China.
We exported jobs when we sent machinery made by Howard and Bulloughs abroad many years ago....no-one thought of the knock on effect of doing that.......big companies had export departments with the prime aim of securing buyers overseas.
We have lost our manufacturing base....and if we hadn't, we would not be able to compete with the prices of goods made in countries where the labour is cheap....well unless imported goods carried a swingeing import tax.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

It has been difficult to buy British made goods for quite a while now.
When it was possible to buy british made domestic equipment......that is what I would choose.
Everything, but everything, today seems to be manufactured in China.
We exported jobs when we sent machinery made by Howard and Bulloughs abroad many years ago....no-one thought of the knock on effect of doing that.......big companies had export departments with the prime aim of securing buyers overseas.
We have lost our manufacturing base....and if we hadn't, we would not be able to compete with the prices of goods made in countries where the labour is cheap....well unless imported goods carried a swingeing import tax.

The sad effect of Globalisation...it's the same all over. If you go to Venice and want to buy some Murano glass as a souvenir, most of the small pieces are industrially made in China and imported into Italy -so much for hand-crafted Italian glass-wear traditionally going back centuries. Cremona (where I live) is a world center of excellence for the production of hand-made violins -at the Stradivarius International School for Violin Making in town, over half the students are Chinese or Koreans who then go back to their countries and apply the techniques they've learned to mass production -under-cutting the costs of what is made here so only the very top musicians can now afford a violin made here.
Cheap'n'cheerful has become a by-word for many but I still go by my Grand-mother's maxim which was to always buy the best quality you can afford and above all only to buy what you need and when you have saved up to buy it..

[mobertol]

Saw "Giddy-un" Osborne on the telly this morning and found what he had to say to be quite re-assuring about the reduction af the UK national debt -but then i may be being swayed by my liking for tall, dark men with "posh" accents...

[Margaret Pilkington]

I think your Grandmother's maxims were the by-words of my growing up.....'never cut what can be untied'......'re-use everything'(rag rugs were made from old clothes, vests were used as polishing cloths, or floor cloths....leftover food was made into stews casseroles, puddings, orange peel was used to light the fire.......potato peelings went into the pig bin)
These are the habits that I grew up with and cannot discard.......anyway, they make sound sense.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

I think your Grandmother's maxims were the by-words of my growing up.....'never cut what can be untied'......'re-use everything'(rag rugs were made from old clothes, vests were used as polishing cloths, or floor cloths....leftover food was made into stews casseroles, puddings, orange peel was used to light the fire.......potato peelings went into the pig bin)
These are the habits that I grew up with and cannot discard.......anyway, they make sound sense.

Same here -I never throw away a crust of bread -make it into breadcrumbs, croutons and all manner of things! You wouldn't believe my mum was her mother's daughter as she doesn't have the same mentality -i've been trying to teach her over the last few years and now when she's about to whizz something she thinks twice and can be heard to say "our Dianne'd make a meal out of this!"
I also comb the hedgerows
-I believe a Tory politician, in the not to distant past, once suggested the unemployed do this....

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

I think your Grandmother's maxims were the by-words of my growing up.....'never cut what can be untied'......'re-use everything'(rag rugs were made from old clothes, vests were used as polishing cloths, or floor cloths....leftover food was made into stews casseroles, puddings, orange peel was used to light the fire.......potato peelings went into the pig bin)
These are the habits that I grew up with and cannot discard.......anyway, they make sound sense.

Instead of putting the peelings in the pig bin, why not put them in that huge trough they have in Westminster.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by Eric

Instead of putting the peelings in the pig bin, why not put them in that huge trough they have in Westminster.

Pigs might fly.

Those swine will only eat the finest cherries.

[Eric]

Originally Posted by mobertol

The sad effect of Globalisation...it's the same all over. If you go to Venice and want to buy some Murano glass as a souvenir, most of the small pieces are industrially made in China and imported into Italy -so much for hand-crafted Italian glass-wear traditionally going back centuries. Cremona (where I live) is a world center of excellence for the production of hand-made violins -at the Stradivarius International School for Violin Making in town, over half the students are Chinese or Koreans who then go back to their countries and apply the techniques they've learned to mass production -under-cutting the costs of what is made here so only the very top musicians can now afford a violin made here.
Cheap'n'cheerful has become a by-word for many but I still go by my Grand-mother's maxim which was to always buy the best quality you can afford and above all only to buy what you need and when you have saved up to buy it..

Don't know too much about glassware .... apart from the fact that it holds alcoholic beverages But the violin thing ... there is no reason that others, say the Italians even, do what the Asians do. It's not as if it is some evil plot on the part of the inscrutable Chinese. If Italian entrepreneurs got off their asses, it could be done in Italy. I mean, the Italians make great ships, cars, and, especially motorcycles ... they have the skills; those skills are just lying idle. I remember a line from a Pink Floyd song: "If it wasn't for the nips being so good at building ships, the yards would still be open on the Clyde", or something like that (as you know, when possible, I prefer to use my memory instead of Google) I don't really agree with it. The skills of Clydeside were every bit as good as those of the Japs.

Talking of those wonderful folks who brought us Pearl Harbor, many over here buy Japanese automobiles. However, they are made in Canada, by Canadian workers. And because Japanese companies don't treat workers like sh ..., ok, poo, there are no labour disruptions at their plants. At the time the US economy took a dump, and their auto makers were laying off Canadian workers, Toyota opened a couple of new plants in Ontario.

Oh, and both my vehicles are GM products ... yet both were made in Canada.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by garinda

Pigs might fly.

Those swine will only eat the finest cherries.

[Margaret Pilkington]

We don't have pig bins now, but we did when Grandma was alive.......and the chap who kept the pigs made sure that she got a couple of hocks and some bacon when the pig was fat enough to be sent to piggy heaven.

[Eric]

Originally Posted by garinda

Pigs might fly.

Those swine will only eat the finest cherries.

Virgins beware