Just as a warning, Siemens made a big investment in a site in the North East to make microchips, it only stayed open a few months and was then mothballed when the market collapsed.

So, on the face of it great news, but it should not be seen as a solution to the regions problems on it's own.

I think the Private sector would work very well in isolation, they are the ones that actually generate the wealth, the ones that actually manufacture things to sell to the rest of the world, not the millions of paper shuffling rubber desk johnny bureaucrats that produce nothing and are payed for out of private sector taxes.

And now we have a chancellor who is on record as saying that we should have followed the Irish economic model.




Affordable is such a relative term. For instance, who knows what we'd be able to afford if we hadn't thrown mountains of cash at the good old private sector to stop it from collapsing under the weight of it's own greed and stupidity.

Sorry - [ione particular arm[/i of the private sector.

Then you don't understand how economies work. Or countries for that matter.

We ran out of money I'm afraid - it generally happens one way or another under that particular regime. Credit seemed so trendy - the private sector banks offering it and the Government in deep debt before the banks crashed. The Government failed in its duty to adequately regulate the banks who of course behaved disgracefully. And yes - it is one particular section of the private sector - unless of course you think those of us in areas such as manufacturing were also selling complex fraudulent 'investment vehicles'.

Great to see some positive job news for the region following the huge number of redundancies over the last two years.

Government debt before the crash was nothing out of the ordinary and broadly similar to what we had under the previous Tory administration.


No argument on either of those points. Looks like we'll be going down the same path again as well.


When people use sweeping generalisations such as the 'public sector' I feel obliged to fall in line.



And the banks weren't the only part of the private sector to benefit from the money thrown at them.

I think that will be the case, The Hornsea array wind farm is currently waiting approval as part of the round 3 offshore wind programme, round 3 is for massive windfarms (1000's of turbines ) to be placed strategically around the u.k, Siemens are part of a collaboration who are the stakeholders in the hornsea array, therefore Hull would be an ideal base to ship turbine parts directly from the port to the construction site, i would imagine pen will be put to paper and plans for this manufacturing facility given the go ahead only if the round 3 wind farms are granted approval, a wind farm that size would require 100's of service technicians which would be recruited from the area i presume, ( based on siemens recruitment policy for they're other wind farms) going by other offshore windfarms i have seen around the u.k there will be 100's if not thousands of indirect jobs created if Hull is used as the base for the construction programme for the hornsea array.

caveat to the discussion

Kosh would have a Liberal Democrat government, so his grasp on reality is questionable.

carry on

Kosh has run out of parties to vote for.



Which leaves me with a problem at the next election as my principles won't let me abstain.

Then you're in the same place as me, realised none of them actually know what to do, so long as they pull their £65k a year salary (+whatever) then they don't give a flying one about the rest of us.

I spent the early part of last week arguing with "New" MP's and Whitehall employee's, first time I have walked away from work, they simply have no idea what is really going on day to day.

I wish Brewsters Millions would come true "None of the above"...........

For those who reckon that this is only coming about through massive taxpayer-funded subsidies, you are probably correct - as far as the short-term is concerned.

Fossil fuel energy resources are finite, they will run out in the long term but more importantly, they will get massively more expensive in the short term. We have squandered the wealth of oil & gas in the North Sea, so we are now net importers and as such, are subject to the market forces that will see fossil fuel prices continue to rise.

Many new & novel technologies require some form of government intervention. I'm old enough to remember the argument against the introduction of unleaded gasoline ("we'll need a separate pump on EVERY forecourt"icon_wink.gif. I can also remember the massive programme of refitting every gas cooker, gas fire and gas boiler, so that we could switch from the noxious town gas to cleaner-burning natural gas. All of this happened without the consumer having to pay a penny at point of supply. It was paid through duty reductions and government spending & subsidies. So please don't tell me the private sector would handle the job, they'd just look for the cheapest option every time.

And for the deniers of anthropological climate-change - "go fook yourselves".

Great news for the region.

and dont forget the russians are looking at potentially huge untapped areas of the frozen north as sources of fossil fuels - if this happens they could have almost as much of a say in the pricing of fuel as the middle east, and could end up holding a lot of countries to ransom over fuel prices. any energy sources we can provide ourselves will help us in the long term

Despite a period of strong economic growth, and a decent start by Brown as chancellor the spend more than you earn drug eventually caught hold. Deficits were revised upwards year upon year as the economy slowed while the borrowing and spending increased. The deficit was worse than when Labour called in the IMF in 1976.

[url=http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/gordon-browns-poisoned-chalice.aspxIt was all going wrong well before the crash.[/url

We should have been building new a new wave of nuclear power stations long since. Another failure of the previous regime. As for the purporters of, as you put it, - anthropological climate change -, they've fooked themselves on regular occasions and delivering poor and inaccurate science has not helped their cause one iota.

And what about the subsidies for nuclear, care to even attempt to put a figure on them?

Then we get to the decommissioning, something else that has been heavily subsidised, with costs buried. Unfortunately the legacy remains. A local nuclear plant has just finished a fifteen year decommissioning, the doors were locked in December. The grandchildren of the last bloke out will be old men before the site is considered safe enough for demolition, never mind redevelopment.

What poor and inaccurate science are you deniers claiming now?

Reducing the amount of energy we consume as a nation should be the priority. Given the technolgies that are out there even a lot of modern housing and commercial structures are still very inefficient, older buildings are terrible.
As it stands Wind Power is going to have such a minor effect on the energy requirement it is a joke. When you consider that many have to be switched off due to high winds because there are no storage facilities for the extra electricty and the companies that own these 'Switched off' windmills get paid huge amounts to do so (£13,000 an hour for ONE was one report)

The cost of producing energy is a fairly calculable thing, of course there are costs many years down the line for nuclear but this still works out much cheaper than wind energy. Ranges from twice as cheap to 30% at the very low end.
Still we have the natural resources around the UK to enable relative CO2 free energy production but it appears that the funding for wave energy is massively underwhelming.
Also grants to enable energy production in the home are pretty much worthless or non existant now so no incentive, various methods could be included in every new home built but governments wont force it as they lose out on taxes.

We're doooomed...lol

This will be massive for this area, OK not the 10k jobs as predicted but you look at the bigger picture and it will bring at least half that amount.

Hopefully force the hand on the Castle st upgrade amingst other things and bring further investement to the area

There are a handful of MPs who know what they're doing or are at least doing their best with the right motivations. Unfortunately none of these will end up anywhere near ministerial posts, let alone PM. Our political system sucks.

My last hope was that we might make a go of a coalition government, as I'm a fan of consensus politics. Looks like we can't even manage that. I'm more depressed for my kids than myself TBH as there's no sign of the downward trend reversing or even stabilising.

interesting observation, I don't see much real evidence of a downward trend in my day to day dealings with things, other than the general educational standards and behaviour of people, but that isn't economic.

when you say "downward trend", what do you mean?

Really?!

Please explain how.

I think the standard of politicians is dropping. Too many of them with no clue and no real life experience or relevant skills. There is also an increasing failure of the media to hold these people to account and ask hard questions.

I'm willing to admit that might be 'grumpy old bugger' syndrome kicking in, mind.

I believe there are signs. The construction industry, which I believe, is one of the good tangible monitors of economies. I work as a consultant with many of the large design firms in the UK and generally things are a lot better than they were a year ago, without doubt. Were companies were making redundancies, many are now having to scramble to recruit staff due to skill shortfalls due to the increase in workload. I train said staff, and at the moment I'm run off my feet. Thats my little world, but from my perspective things are not as bleak as the media make out.

It is certainly true to say that the public sector cuts are tempering that "recovery", as Manchester City Council has just shown, but do believe that the industry is now stable at least (i.e. enough work to sustain its current overall size), if not recovering.

ah right, I thought you meant a downward trend in economic terms, not in terms of the quality of politicians.

I wholeheartedly agree, 20/30 years ago politicians were in it for mush more alturistic reasons (as well as feathering their own nests) but very few were in it for ego or self publication, now they are all pretty much the same, many are lifetime politicians or civil servants who have little or no real experience of the arenas in which they are operating/legislating.

It's no better at Local Authoruty level either.

I probably should have been clearer. I was thinking more of the general state of politics and the social infrastructure - particularly education - rather than economics. My own company is having probably our best year ever, and we've been around for more than 30 years.

As I said to Standee, it might just be me developing into a typically grumpy and disillusioned bloke with his 50th birthday closing in, but I'm pretty depressed about the UK right now. In particular we've made a right mess of our education system and seem intent on making things worse. That doesn't bode well for the future IMO.