Birmingham bankrupt

[Ghandi's Flip Flops]

Get them creating nuclear fusion energy?

No other industry doesn’t close down to save a workforce.

UK Defence spending & projects actually tick a lot of boxes for various social and economic reasons.
1. For instance bae sell more to the yanks (approx 50% sales) compared to the UK government (20%) followed by the Saudis and aussies (10% each), so are considered a main uk exporter.
2. A lot of their main UK manufacturing plants are located in deprived areas. I.e the newcastle plant just received a massive contract to replace ammunition sent to Ukraine.
3. Highly skilled, decently paid jobs and training. Other than say NHS, nowhere else covers the scope or magnitude.
Etc

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

UK Defence spending & projects actually tick a lot of boxes for various social and economic reasons.
1. For instance bae sell more to the yanks (approx 50% sales) compared to the UK government (20%) followed by the Saudis and aussies (10% each), so are considered a main uk exporter.
2. A lot of their main UK manufacturing plants are located in deprived areas. I.e the newcastle plant just received a massive contract to replace ammunition sent to Ukraine.
3. Highly skilled, decently paid jobs and training. Other than say NHS, nowhere else covers the scope or magnitude.
Etc

Ultimately, the country is in a huge financial mess. This won’t be the last council to fall given the lack of funding and lack of investment over a large period of time.

How else can we create a large fund to pay for the services, education etc that need hundreds of billions of pounds of investment?

My way is binning trident and HS2.

What would yours be?

 

[Vic]

MAD is a thing.
We need to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent.
You can argue what shape that should take or how much money we should be spending on it but we cannot disarm ourselves.
It leaves us open to the leverage of friends and foes alike.

So why do we not want Iran to have an independent nuclear deterrent?

On the face of it, they should be more worried about a nuclear attack from Israel than we are from anyone.

 

[Vic]

Like what?

Those figures are based over the lifetime of the replacement (50 years), and include wages and associated costs of everyone involved.

Get rid of Trident replacement and you'll effectively consign thousands of highly skilled jobs and condemn places like Barrow to the dustbin.
What you gonna replace those decently paid jobs (and tax take) with. A few new sure-starts and a load of tik-tok start up grants ain't gonna cut it.

Just for comparison, back in the dark days when the Bae shipyard site was hanging on by a thread, it had approx 2500 people on site. That figure is over 11000 now and rising. That Bae site alone took on over 700 young people last year (including apprentices & graduate training). The Barrow area used to be considered one of the most deprived areas in the UK, whereas now the average wage is £2000 over the national average.

Add in the astute replacement program (which is only viable on the back of Trident replacement program) and that Bae site has an full order book into the 2050's. And this is only part of what social aspect benefits the Trident replacement brings.

So if Trident costs £100bn, that's a job creation scheme costing £9m a job?

 

[Vic]

How long would that take? 10, 20 years?
What would you do with all the lost jobs and tax take in the meantime?

Lost jobs? You just said they've created 8,500 new ones - apparently all with the requisite skills.

 

[Vic]

Anyway, remembering the thread topic: which is the worse risk for Birmingham? Nuclear devastation if we don't have nuclear weapons, or routine Tory devastation from not having the local services we need?

 

[Ghandi's Flip Flops]

So if Trident costs £100bn, that's a job creation scheme costing £9m a job?

Err, only if the Bae shipyard in barrow was the only place those jobs were created.
Throw in all the extra service and supply jobs created within the area (estimates range from 3 to 10 extra jobs per every on site job) to service the site.
Then add in the other half dozen bae sites around the country also working on Trident replacement.
Then add in main suppliers like Babcocks etc and their suppliers.
Then add in places like the sub bases up in Scotland etc,

And this adds up to thousands covering numerous communities.

All these jobs and tax take for probably 10% or less of the annual defence budget which at the moment is 2.1% of GDP

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Anyway, remembering the thread topic: which is the worse risk for Birmingham? Nuclear devastation if we don't have nuclear weapons, or routine Tory devastation from not having the local services we need?

Do all these nuclear fanatics work in the arms industry or did they just suffer the unfortunate circumstance of having to grow up next to Spaghetti junction?

 

[MouldensChippy]

Anyway, remembering the thread topic: which is the worse risk for Birmingham? Nuclear devastation if we don't have nuclear weapons, or routine Tory devastation from not having the local services we need?

If you'd had a listen to Jeremy Vine earlier you'd have heard the Labour MP for Edgbaston saying that it was complete financial incompetence, and mismanagement on the council's side. Interesting to find that Unison think the same.

A councillor from the local (enemy, just for you) Tory group then expanded the story. That this is the second ruling against them, and not from the original court decisions. Despite warnings that this exact thing would happen they apparently created a new pay scale for the bin people in 2017 to deal with a strike. They opened themselves to further equality claims, all brought on by themselves, and their short term thinking.

 

[Vic]

Err, only if the Bae shipyard in barrow was the only place those jobs were created.
Throw in all the extra service and supply jobs created within the area (estimates range from 3 to 10 extra jobs per every on site job) to service the site.
Then add in the other half dozen bae sites around the country also working on Trident replacement.
Then add in main suppliers like Babcocks etc and their suppliers.
Then add in places like the sub bases up in Scotland etc,

And this adds up to thousands covering numerous communities.

All these jobs and tax take for probably 10% or less of the annual defence budget which at the moment is 2.1% of GDP

If that's a good way to spend £100bn, why wasn't it a good way to spend £100bn on council services over the last 13 years? (A rough estimate of the loss of government grants to councils.)