Cycling UK Forum

Nearholmer wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 1:00pm

Action needed by entrepreneurs and innovators that create wealth that can get taxed to pay for the pensions health and welfare we all need at some time or another.

All true, and as I said a few posts back, the best we can expect of politicians is that they do things to create a climate/environment that makes that more, rather than less, likely, and at the moment I don’t believe they are. I honestly think that the actions of government over the past decade or more have undermined, not improved, our chances of prosperity.

Something else to bear in mind though is that truly groundbreaking innovations, what amount to new technologies or major advances of technology, are very rare, so although having an environment which encourages them is vital, that alone won’t guarantee bread on the table in the near term, or indeed for the future; it maximises probability, but doesn’t guarantee.

To put bread on the table, we also need to be producing things using already available technology, and to be doing that we need to be part of a trading bloc with a market-size that matches modern production methods and the ways of multinational corporations, and to have an education system to underpin that, instead of trying to operate from outside of a large bloc-market, on the back of a distinctly flakey education system.

Final thought for the moment: we must be careful not to get stuck in a sort of Victorian paradigm of what “making things” means, a mental picture of big physical objects emerging from a factory with tall chimneys. “Making things” can also mean software-based systems (which is why HMG periodically gets interested in the positive side of AI, for instance), biotech, pharmaceuticals etc., and oddly enough it can also mean educating foreigners in return for a fee (which the UK is actually pretty good at, despite neglecting its own).

Jdsk wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 4:53pm

reohn2 wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 4:42pm

Cowsham wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 12:51pm The older ic cars had bigger engines the choices of new cars we were presented with had tiny engines beating themselves to death with Turbo chargers driving electric motors to propel the thing. Some of these small engines have cam belts running in the oil inside the engine! It just all sounds daft from an engineering POV but I maybe proved wrong with time they may prove reliable enough. I've been wrong before about reliability of stuff ( amstrad vcr's was one time ) but not often.

Which cars were these?
I'm unaware of any cars with cambelts running in oil inside the engine,I am aware of chaindriven cams though.

Known as "wet belts" or "belts in oil".

https://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/se ... /cam-belts
https://garagewire.co.uk/news/company/d ... ent-guide/
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/askhj/answ ... ch-engine-

Jonathan

Cowsham wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 12:51pm The older ic cars had bigger engines the choices of new cars we were presented with had tiny engines beating themselves to death with Turbo chargers driving electric motors to propel the thing. Some of these small engines have cam belts running in the oil inside the engine! It just all sounds daft from an engineering POV but I maybe proved wrong with time they may prove reliable enough. I've been wrong before about reliability of stuff ( amstrad vcr's was one time ) but not often.

al_yrpal wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 12:09pm

pwa wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 10:00am Even the Ford engine plant, just a few miles from here, upped sticks a few years ago. The workforce were skilled and had a record of producing the goods. The jobs were well paid and seemingly secure, until close to the end. battery manufacturing! Game, set and match?

Sorry you are wrong. The folk in the Ford factory were not mostly skilled people, just skilled in their capacity of a cam belt installer or a head bolt tightener. Thats not the sort of jobs we need.
We need jobs where Engineers innovate, technicians make ideas workable and skilled craftsmen do their stuff building prototypes and tools for manufacture. We dont need Ford or Sony, they will go where politicians weild the largest carrots. There was an attitude in S Wales - " why dont THEY build more factories here." Not the right noises at all. Its what WE are going to do that matters. Employ technology, create and develop product ideas and become expert in services to sell. Are we just going to be 'me too' people or are we going to create and offer unique products protected by patents advanced technology and sheer quality? Politicians have no idea about such stuff and government agencies tend to be staffed by clapped out non achievers IME. They are of no help, peripheral people, a waste of time.

A lot of political useless flim flam here that aint gonna help. Action needed by entrepreneurs and innovators that create wealth that can get taxed to pay for the pensions health and welfare we all need at some time or another.

Al

simonineaston wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 11:26am

Oh she turned things around alright, look where it led us!

I was a steward in the confederation of health service employees back in the '80s and thus not Maggie's biggest fan... however in fairness to her, I think she would be appalled if she could see how things have turned out, ironically largely as a consequence of her ideologies. I think all she ever really wanted to do was empower the ordinary family. Turns out she and those who followed, inc Blair, failed to see the full & presumably unintended consequences of deregulation.
Where we go from here, I cannot imagine. Until we regain a united sense of purpose, we'll stay in a fairly nasty, sticky place. Its increasingly likely the next gov. will be Labour and they have their work cut out for them, what with the public's many expectations an' all.

LancsGirl wrote: ↑9 Apr 2024, 7:58pm ...... My choice was fairly easy, the old one was going to scrap, so I had to get something.

simonineaston wrote: ↑10 Apr 2024, 9:38am With respect, folks can seem to be stuck thinking of the old left v right, Tory party v Socialism, blue v red dichotomy. Things have changed. It's not like that anymore.
For good or ill, the whole political landscape is now dominated by the principles of neoliberalism. Has been for forty years. Labour abandoned clause 4 in 1995... anyone who still thinks of Labour as sitting on the left of a hypothetical fulcrum and the Tories to the right is doing themselves a disservice.
Hence the yawning inequalities, a growing sense of injustice and the desperate turn to angry populist ideas. Until this is all worked through and a viable alternative appears, nothing will change.

Carlton green wrote: ↑7 Apr 2024, 9:35am

reohn2 wrote: ↑7 Apr 2024, 9:22am

wheelyhappy99 wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 11:04pm

Bear in mind that the vast majority of new cars registered in the UK are not, in fact, bought. They are on PCP contracts, the cost of which is the depreciation plus interest. At the end of the (3 year?) contract the person who's driven it has been parked on doesn't own a wheel nut.

That's about the sum of it,if they can afford the monthly payments that's all that concerns them,it's like renting a house to live in for many.

To an extent I think that typifies a strain of thought that runs through society and has done so for decades. No long term planning or responsibility: manage today; enjoy today; and so what of tomorrow.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 11:58pm IMO, one of the things that makes this country feel so unpleasant at the moment is that people feel everything to be precarious, insecure, about to spin-off in a direction that makes their life worse, and that cuts differently for different people.

There are plenty of people who have well-paid jobs, and are actually comfortably off in a material sense, who can raise the loan to buy a £600k house and afford the PCPs on two cars to park outside it, but they feel that it could all be whipped away by some combination of climate change, the fragility of the economy, or by those who aren’t well-off demanding that they cough-up more of their share in the form of higher taxes, and they fear for their children’s futures.

There is a sizeable minority who are convinced that the country is about to be overrun by hordes of foreigners and turned into a sharia theocracy (There are! I know it’s mad, but people genuinely fear it!)

There is another sizeable minority who absolutely hate the idea of racial and/or gender equality, because they realise that if non-white people and/or women are no longer bottom of the pile, then they will be - their last vestige of self-esteem, that which comes from lording it over someone worse off than them, will be gone. And, of course, women and non-white people know that any semblance of equality that they have now is at peril.

There are many people who fear that the public services they value or rely upon are about to finally crumble before their eyes.

Many youngsters (which now means well into the 40s) can’t see a secure path into their futures because of very high housing costs, and the insecurity and/or low wages of employment open to them (and this goes even for many with good academic qualifications).

The threat of war seems more proximate than it’s been for decades.

Truth is no longer a fixed thing, but subject to naked manipulation, and everyone knows it.

If you can find me a person in this country who feels genuinely secure in every respect, their future not threatened in any way, from the richest to the poorest, of any age, race, creed, social background, or whatever, up to and including The King, I’ll be very surprised indeed.

The thing to bear in mind is that every 10% of society is faced by its own set of demons, with maybe climate change and war playing the role of meta-demons for everyone.

None of which is an answer to how long it might take to turn the ship, but it might point to some things to do to steady it before yanking the rudder over …… give enough people back some senses of security, remove enough of the fear for enough of the population, and it might be possible to do more.

wheelyhappy99 wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 11:04pm

I struggle with the concept it is lack of money, going off the cars they drive, they must have an abundance of cash,

Bear in mind that the vast majority of new cars registered in the UK are not, in fact, bought. They are on PCP contracts, the cost of which is the depreciation plus interest. At the end of the (3 year?) contract the person who's driven it has been parked on doesn't own a wheel nut.

Carlton green wrote: ↑6 Apr 2024, 11:05am

reohn2 wrote: ↑4 Apr 2024, 5:14pm Who are they?

They are all around us together with folk who are not “they”. Society is increasingly polarised.

I don’t live in a wealthy area yet some new three bedroom eco houses in the local ‘country side’ have recently sold for well over £600k. It’s a total puzzle to me who would buy them but someone has the completely silly money involved.

toontra wrote: ↑2 Apr 2024, 4:23pm

al_yrpal wrote: ↑2 Apr 2024, 3:45pm With the forthcoming election in mind what beneficial and fairer policies do folk expect from the incoming labour government?

Al

Sadly - not much. Their inheritance from the last 14 years will be dire, and Starmer/Reeves seem extremely reluctant to do anything radical. Having said that, they couldn't possibly do worse than the Tories.