The top issues facing the UK include economic strain, immigration concerns, and healthcare pressures, according to recent public tracking data from YouGov.
High national debt, low productivity growth, and heavy debt-servicing costs constrain government spending on public services.
High inflation rates, rising rents, and increasing everyday costs continue to impact household budgets
We’re pretty much aware of that, along with a deep concern about our “usual” political classes not seeming overly interested yet alone capable of doing much about it!
Indeed, whoever the politicians in other countries in the union are, they’re not exactly making much headway explaining how things would be better, and how they would achieve progress by devolving power.
No doubt the USA, like most other countries, have their own issues too. 
So that’s my opinion Lincs, what would you do?
It’s one thing criticising somebody else’s opinion if you don’t post one yourself…
I’m not the one who is responsible for the countries workers or economy, but it just seems that having all our stuff made abroad leaves all of our workers without anything to do other than in the service industries, clerical and medical where we are importing foreign workers. Why?
The unions have done a good job over the years, I’m not denying that.
But in my opinion they have gone too far and priced us out of jobs, but that’s not the only reason there are no manufacturing jobs. The limitations and requirement placed on British industry by net zero and the cost of energy have also added to the burden of any company trying to be competitive on a world market.
Obviously if there was a ready and simple answer I’d have slapped a copyright on it and made millions.
However there are things I’d avoid. State funded efforts to create uncompetitive manufacturing of overly expensive products in old industries would be one. Continuing to indirectly fund the profits of companies through weak employment regulation and allowing low pay would be another I’d not want.
Its interesting to observe how new businesses can stem from things. Two examples. Dundee Uni was for years the only place to learn computer game design & build. New game companies came out of that - and gaming is now bigger than movies globally. Then when Nokia collapsed lots of tech knowledable Finns set up their own businesses - quite a few are successful. So education is a good thing.
You and me both Lincs.
I’ve never said that education is not the right way to go about teaching young people, however, you can have too much of a good thing, and like it or not, some people are born to be practical and work with their skills and hands. Fortunately Britain has over the years, been blessed with more than their share of skilled workers, passing their skills on to the next generation and most of it wasn’t done in some university but by hands on the job and learning from the older experienced people.
I speak from experience Lincs, I’ve seen many things during my time as a mechanical and electrical engineer.
One particular story was of a bloke I knew who could neither read nor write but give him a broken radio (valve) and he would have it working in no time. Quite extraordinary.
In later life I worked as a self employed courier occasionally doing multi-drop deliveries.
I could manage perhaps 40 drops per day (on a good day) John was doing in excess of 60 drops per day. I rode with him once to see how he did it. He was also dyslexic and spent very little time at school as a boy but his map reading was amazing (no sat nav in those days) and had put together a perfect route for making fast deliveries.
There are lots of stories and people like this in South Yorkshire (probably all over the country) and they are not being used to their full potential these days and I think university is the wrong place for them to waste the most important years of their lives.
As a matter of interest, Farage thinks along the same lines hence my reasons to vote for the Reform party.
Perhaps there are still jobs for the intuitive worker - but I doubt there are many. Perhaps learning from an experienced worker is valid in some work but it has many shortcomings as a development approach - little scope for innovation and improvement, risk of passing on errors or inefficiencies, only as good as the person learning from. There are good reasons its not relied on these days.
But the bigger issue is the nature of jobs and work in the future, even the near future. Jobs are changing and there are roles today that didn’t exist yesterday. How does learning from Joe who has worked here for years help with that? This changing and developing of jobs (and the skills, behaviours and knowledge they need) demands different education and training than you went through.
That is why failed in business clueless populists like Farage are not to be trusted with the future of the country. He aims to appeal with nostalgia based messages that fail to be basis of making the country better … unless we want to go backwards.
It’s those with greedy fatcat mentalities like yourself that are part of the problem. 
I’d want considerably more than that to vote for that little toad
Cutting back on illegal entrants and scrapping net zero for another two Helen.
Agree, and so does one of Australia’s greatest PMs
It’s all well and good having decent pay and working conditions if you have some work for the workers to do…
This is of course the dismal claim by the rich who want to get richer at the expense of everyone else. It is the race to the bottom economic philosophy. It claims that to compete the UK needs to remove regulation, cut pay and remove safety nets. Remember this was part of the thinking behind Brexit - the old Singapore on Thames plan. This is the Reform economic plan. Easier to sack people, fewer regulations, reduce taxes for rich people and companies.
I am genuinely saddened when people who are not in the ‘already rich want to get richer’ category buy into such guff. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.
No it’s not Lincs, the proof of the pudding etc…
What has happened to shipbuilding, steel production, the fishing industry, the coal mining industry, engineering, energy production from proper manned and British built power stations, farming, vehicle manufacturing, white goods and electrical items manufacturing, pottery production, in fact everything we use in the UK comes from somewhere else except a few basics. So where are the jobs now that conditions and pay have exceeded expectation?
Investors, bankers and number crunchers don’t actually make jobs for the great unwashed, and they don’t produce anything to export. So the best thing to do, is to move to some foreign country where the weather is kind and the living is easy…Wait a minute… 
I suspect that we are not discussing the same thing. You are looking back. I am looking forward. But the root of what you proposing is that to compete the UK workers have to accept lower pay, less secure jobs, fewer paid benefits, etc. That is dismal.
You then cite work in the finance sector (bankers, etc.) and claim they do not male jobs. Yet 2.5 million Brits work in this sector. If you mean professional & business services when you refer to number crunchers then you are talking about 5 million British workers. Sorry, what were saying about not creating jobs?
Then you mention white goods, pottery and other products. If today a new factory was created down the road then how many would work there? Probably a few dozen. It would be automated and perhaps even running without any lights on.
You seem to be wishing for a time long gone and jobs long gone. There are jobs if you’ve the right skills & knowledge. Ironically the sectors you’ve dismissed actually offer some of the best pay.
Worse, you have fully bought into the Farage & Rees-Mogg lie that the UK needs to become more competitive and that means lower pay, less secure jobs, fewer benefits. This is a lie as its inappropriate for a first world country like the UK. Walking back worker rights and levels of pay is not the way forward. It will certainly suit those that want to see company profits go up without making expensive investments.
Then even worse, you dismiss education beyond school. It will only be people who continue to learn and graft to get those further qualifications that will be suitable for the higher paid work in the sectors that are not metal bashing or simple assembly. They can’t learn from Len or Maureen who have been hitting things with a hammer or screwdriver for decades because the future jobs don’t involve a hammer or screwdriver.
So go and vote for the party that wants to shaft ordinary people if you want, in the same way that you voted for a Brexit that was only ever going to make the UK worse off. Others can see through the con that is Farage.
You would not need to “want considerably more that that” you would automatically get more for being “On the Team” 
To be honest I thought that was what Brexit was aiming for, cheap labour to revive British industry as a low cost manufacturer and exporter.
No!! its globalization 
Is it really just down to globalisation?
Globalisation is the growing interdependence of different countries on trade and investments. In practice this has meant wealthty / costly countries sourcing products or components from less wealthy & lower cost countries. For the wealthy countries this has greatly contributed to curbing inflation. A washing machine in 1970 was over a thousand pounds in today’s money and was a far simpler, less reliable product.
In the meantime manufacturing is still a major sector in the UK economy.
So how does that reduce wages and reduce employment security? These things come about because large employers have sought low skilled workers (delivery centres, fast food, shops, taxi services, hospitality, cleaning services). These are not sectors driven by globalisation.
Oh, and the other thing that has caused lower wages and poorer employment contracts is the weakening of the trade unions. There is significantly less push back on employers forcing workers to accept worse contracts.
Oh, and which party wishes to allow companies to sack workers and then re-hire at lower pay? Guess.
International outsourcing, starts at component level, then sub assemblies, then finishes at finished product, no more factory = no more workers, it ain’t johnny foreigners fault, we sold out, no market no sale
Clue “International” or global if you like!!
Yet there is still manufacturing in the UK. But not low cost products.
More significantly, if the UK had followed the keep sourcing components and sub-assemblies locally, and keep final assembly in the UK then all these businesses would be making increasingly expensive and uncompetitive products. Exports would immediately halt. The government would have to block or tarrif competitor imports to keep these factories open. In the meantime we all get to pay much more for most likely below quality / features of competitor products.
Even then, the volumes would drop and production would shrink. After a few years and after many lay-offs, the inevitable closures would follow. Most likely the UK company would also fold. No more factories, no more workers - except 5-10 years later than if production had moved to a lower cost location. But this time the company itself also disappears. Clue is in the stark reality of markets.
Look up ‘US television production tarrifs’ and the protracted death of TV manufacturing ending in 1988. They were still making expensive, clunking, huge TV sets. Dreaming of protecting local manufacturing in the face of lower cost, more innovative competition is not the same as it being feasible.
