CerysHughes
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Is full employment in western economies a thing of the past?
Yes. Unless you have lowest average wage in the world, you can have something to resemble full employment if there is a high level of protectionalism.I agree with you AlunH re: high paid public sector jobs.
We also seem to see a similar problem in parts of london, that are hugely affluent, but perhaps too much so and consequently live in their own self made prisons and consequently don’t recycle any of their cash into the local community which makes the local area more poor thereby reinforcing their need for security and to live in a self made prison..
There are pointers to entrepreneuriship in wrexham, however, I think Wrexham is far behind places like Chester that have 3 d printers, fablab type places, etc.
There is a healthy set up level, from my observing point It seems to becoming from two main areas, those who have been redundant and have taken the plunge to follow their dream and the New Entreprise Scheme. But this is my experience, I’m not the all seeing eye of wrexham, I’m likely to be too caught in my own world to notice other areas of growth.
extremist independents:
How many independents have there been? and how many of them have been extremists?
@Mrs Crewe 19824 wrote:
Nice to see some grass roots standing rather than just the big parties and the loony parties. Having said that, it is very important to really understand what ‘independent’ means in this context. Some extremists have stood under the banner independent to hide what they really stood for. I am not suggesting that Mr Wynn is an extremist, I just hope that rather than voting in anger against the normal parties people really investigate what they are voting for.
before we hit godwin’s law, just like to say I don’t think Mr Wynn is an extremist.
Have to say. I don’t think the majority of the people who will vote for Ian Lucas know what they are voting for (and from my perspective) nor does he, same with the other parties.
@Ferret 19819 wrote:
I’m confused. Are you saying it’s a bad thing that we have a tax office because we have to fund public sector jobs? Or a bad thing that public sector spending is being reduced by shifting libraries etc to the third sector? And didn’t we become too reliant on all the low grade Japanese jobs that Sidney Tongue brought? Most of which are now gone.
Good set of questions.
A high paid job is a good thing, a low paid job is a mediocre thing, no job is a bad thing and a lack of planning is a terrible thing..
So if a high paid job is to go there needs to be something in place to counter that. That doesn’t happen in a day but in terms of years and years of planning and responisble foresight.
The council was happy for the public sector to take more than its fair share of the economy and grew fat by being lazy and procrastinating the issue of trying to redress the balance for a rainy day.
The tax office jobs is a good example having somehow been a shock to wrexham even though it was on the cards ever since the 2010 election (Osbourne did say lots of job losses coming in the public sector.) The council has not planned for this… five years on.
The council is shifting to the third sector and in some cases exploiting volunteers by fear, but has not planned how these job losses will be absorbed into the economy.
low grade and some not so low grade japanese jobs were only here because of tarrifs that changed after GATT and to a smaller degree European harmonisation… There was no planning to stimulate jobs and entreprenuership and its not just japanese jobs but companies like air products going also. There is likely to be another drop soon caused by TTIP.
I’d like to add that the council did look at replacing the low grade factory jobs with low grade retail jobs, but didn’t plan for one minute about the internet, the impact on the local SMEs or contingency planning.
When I mean the council, I mean the councillors not the employees.
That’s two independent candidates this time around.
I’m hope your manifesto will be more coherent that the other one.
Good luck.
@CarolThomas 19804 wrote:
What’s wrong with having volunteers doing things in their community – it is free choice
Anyone who volunteers for a good cause is an excellent human being and deserves only credit.
A worry during this period of austerity is that some of these volunteers may be exploited by the council as being a vehicle to third sector privatisation of council facilities/services.
e.g.
The libraries becoming a trust under the premise of being a charitable trust means the council can save 70k costs of busienss ratesHowever in the future, they may say, we’can’t afford to run the libraries for as many hours as we did last year, make a few staff redundant and threaten all libraries will be shut on wednesday afternoons. Then later suggest perhaps we could run wednesday afternoons with volunteers.
This may sound far fetched, but look at some of the local community centres and one of the leisure centres, it’s already happened within the last 12 months.
A job gone in a public sector centre means another 20k lost from being recycled into Wrexham’s economy. All fine of course, if there is a plan to replace that job and more jobs in the private sector.
The town centre itself is more than ever reliant on the public sector. e.g. Coleg Cambria, student accomodation.
The problem is there is no planning for the private sector especially local SMEs. Some unscrupelous landlords (and I include the council in this) seem to think that the reduction in business rates means that they can charge more rent rather than less before the beginning of the great recession. The office space now available in the town centre is quite shocking especially when you think how much has also been turned in to student accomodation.
Also of concern is the growth in the third sector which relies heavily on volunteers.
Hopefully, difficult to explain in 144 characters though.
Important, when you think one third of people don’t know the difference between the House of Lords and the House of Commons never mind nearly one in five think GDP is either the same as GPS or a food additive. Shocking Stats About Voters Revealed In New Poll
@JRW 19775 wrote:
I would largely agree with a lot of the comments on here.However the role of the individual Councillor has been reduced to virtually a mere interested onlooker since the Councils adopted the so called “Cabinet” system.The said “Cabinets” are little more than an elective dictatorship.
I think well overdue that we bring back the Committee system back to Councils.It would also bring back a little power and thus motivation to the individual Councillor.
I agree, sadly there doesn’t seem to be a political party in wales that wants that rewind.
