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- Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 10:50 pm
Thu Apr 07, 2016 1:00 am
Peiriannydd wrote:dave wrote:I do think sometimes what is the point of living in Wales!
No nuclear power station, lagoon, steel, circuit of wales, whats left?
It's not just Wales! England can't seem to get Hinky Point sorted out without the French. They've lost more of their steel production than us. They're not even interested in a tidal barrage on their side of the Severn. There's just no serious interest in anything but banking.
I think an American friend of mine summed Britain up quite well, when he said London was a first-class world city attached to a 3rd-world country. Now I know there are a lot problem areas in the US, but there's an element of truth to that statement.
Oh come on that's really quite melodramatic. London does dominate the UK in a way few other relatively large countries are dominated by one city. I can think of only France to be honest. But rUK is far from a 3rd world country. The average Yorkshireman or Welshman is considerably better off in real terms than 30 years ago, and far better off than the average citizen of Ghana, India or China (although, strictly speaking the latter would be second world, I guess). Adjusting for the cost of living and accounting for transfer income, the median Welsh household has about 93% of the median UK household, and the median London household something like 105%. (London has rather a lot more rich individuals though, of course - comparisons of the 80th or 90th percentiles would be very different!).
And its clearly not the case that policymakers care only about banking. They really would like a broader based economy - if only because it meant a broader tax base!. A bit of a myth has grown up that the banks continue to be massively favoured. At least in terms of tax, that is not true: the banks (or more correctly their customers, employees and shareholders) are being asked to pay rather a lot more in tax than most other sectors of the economy now: restrictions on loss carry forwards, higher rates of corporation tax, bank levy on domestic balance sheets. Not saying that's bad, but its not recognised by a sizeable swathe of people who just can't seem to get their head around that the banks had to be propped up not to save the bankers, but to save the depositors, and the broader economy. Bankers actually saw pretty hefty job losses and pay cuts.
And I'm not really sure what you think on this issue. On the one hand you seem to think its a travesty there are problems with these big schemes. And on the other that the government would be foolish to financially underwrite them (or at least this one). The reason they are asking for government backing, whether in the form of loan guarantees or guaranteed prices is because either they involve risks that are too big for the private sector, or are more generally economically unviable. It then becomes a question of whether the social, environmental etc benefits make the implicit or explicit subsidy of government backing worthwhile.
And in nuclear, the reason to involve the French is because they have much more experience of nuclear power - generating something like 80% of electricity from it, compared to maybe 15-20% here (in mostly older plants).
because I remember her saying this also...