[Alan Fry]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Sorry, Alan, but that statement is a content-free soundbite, imho, along the lines of "Education, education, education" - it sounds as if it means something, but there is no substance behind it.

At least Blair inceased spending and standards in Education

---------- Post added at 09:51 ---------- Previous post was at 09:48 ----------

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

There's no way for any government, of any colour, to be able to suddenly magic up a whole economy consisting only of well paid interesting jobs. It is a sad fact that most people do not have and can never acquire the skills to handle say architecture, computer programming, game design, brain surgeon or any number of challenging occupations and so will always be doing the boring mundane jobs that keep the country running.

We can't do without those jobs either: Baldrick the dung gatherer was an important man in his time, though bady paid, just as the trainee that dishes up your Big Mac or the guy painting the white stripes down your street.

In a global economy there will also be a tendency to level down the pay in most jobs towards the rates that are paid in say China. When those places become too expensive there's still the huge untapped cheap labour resovior in Africa.

You can't pull up the drawbridge and try to be insulated from the rest of the world. In that way you go (relatively) backwards like NK or Burmah. Russia has finally realised this but only now has stopped making Lada's based on a 60's Fiat design.

I don't really care to much about the job itself, only that it has a decent wage so that I can have a decent lifestyle

What I am calling for is global labour and wage (along with pension) standards so that no one is exploted and we all get a high standard of living even if it ends up in resulting in a global government