The UK bet its future on being open to trade generations ago, and this has intensified as the UK's economy has been engineered into a focus on services rather than manufacturing; so when supply chains are disrupted prices rise & supplies are constrained.
The US/Israeli attack(s) on Iran are now having a wide range of disruptive effects as we know, but the latest to be identified as a potential problem is medicines.... that might be pretty serious!
@ChrisMayLA6 Without causing arguments....
My memory of this is that it wasn't just an economic push toward less manufacturing. It was also a green push, away from our previous 'Dirty Old Man of Europe' gig.
Whether any of it was correct is kind of moot now.
Our politics runs on short term-ist philosophies. Expect a short term, not thought through, ultimately wrong 'solution'.
Hmmm.... I'm going to say the shift away from manufacturing preceded the green push, but it may well have latterly played a role?
Why do I remember everyone wearing CND badges long before Thatcher and Reagan then?
I think you're conflating two political moves; my parents took me (aged two) on an Aldermaston march so fo course you're right that precedes much de-industrialisation, but CND was not arguing for a the diminution of dirty industries it was focussed on nuclear weapons (and by extension nuclear power)... the green agenda around emissions is of a later vintage - after all Rachel Carson only wrote Silent Spring in 1962....
@ChrisMayLA6 I completely understand what you are saying, and agree with you.
I'm not a well educated man, AND my understanding is that the CND badge said GREEN (what we call green now). I'm fairly sure they were explicit in saving the planet. :))
I mean seriously, most of that movement are in the green party now. Green party nuclear policy is almost certainly legacy CND.
I'm not disagreeing with that at all.
I just think both sides are responsible for manufacturing decline.
@ChrisMayLA6 I do want to add that manufacturing literally anything is dirty, often wasteful, certainly environmentally damaging.
I don't think a decline in manufacturing is a bad thing at all. I think the exporting of the associated environmental and ecological mess is the problem these days.
I don't want more choice. I just want nicer things. - Edina Monsoon
I understand and I am angry about it all too. But we are here now. How can we go forward when we can't even agree that bees are worth saving or people deserve peace?
I'm at the point where I want concrete change.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Dar
Jen