Fantasy Island

by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1845296052
• ISBN13: 9781845296056
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Constable & Robinson
• Length: 256 Pages

Customer Reviews

Superb study of the failings of finance capitalism

Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor, and Dan Atkinson, the Mail on Sunday's economics editor, have written a scathing account of the capitalist class's future for Britain. We would have no manufacturing industry, so no services. They cynically note that our so-called growth areas are all talk - barristers (like Blair and Darling), management consultants, spin doctors, PR men, speculators, deal-makers and brokers. Britain has become a giant offshore hedge fund churning speculators' money, a giant tax haven for the world's super-rich, with four million of us now working `in service', as many as under Victoria. This is no future for a self-respecting people. The City of London does not work for Britain. It costs 5.3% to raise investment funds in Britain, result, 1% of world R & D in engineering and electronics. In Japan, the cost of borrowing to invest is 1.1%, and they have 47% of world R & D in engineering and electronics. Over half of Britain's R & D money is spent in pharmaceuticals and aerospace, which the government has funded for decades, through the NHS and the Ministry of Defence. Elliott and Atkinson show how the Labour government has got transport wrong. Between 1997 and 2005, the cost of motoring fell by 6%, but bus fares rose by 16% and rail fares by 7%. No wonder that between 1980 and 2002 road traffic increased by 73%. Net immigration was 248,300 in 2004-5. Yet unemployment is 4.5 million, so why do we need to import workers? Employers like immigrant labour because it helps to depress wages: as Brown's new Trade Minister, Sir Digby Jones, says, "We have a tight labour market in the UK and yet wage inflation has not been a problem. Immigrants are doing the work for less." Elliott and Atkinson recommend, "Rebuilding the manufacturing base requires support for strategic industries and, whisper it quietly, the sort of selective protectionism that would be feasible only if our relationship with the European Union were to be radically recast - at present, such assistance would fall foul of EU rules." They conclude that we must end our `obeisance to globalisation, free trade and unbridled market forces'. And we must ditch the fantasies which hold us back.