Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
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I suspect a major factor responsible for the decline in bike shop income is the increased reliability of the basic bikes. Most tyres have Kevlar or puncture guard fitted new, chain, pedals, hubs, brake pads last for several thousand miles.
The shops are forced into relying on sale of bike accessories: helmets, glasses, gloves, hi-vis, winter clothing etc. Many customers may wander into their shops, look at the accessories, even try them and afterwards, buy from Amazon and Ebay.
You just described your self, and the irony is, you are too blinkered to see it.
You are just brassed off because your gamble with other peoples futures is falling apart, and still have this childish belief that somehow the political pillocks you admire will work miracles and somehow make it work.
If anyone needs to grow up, it's you.
Actually I didn't say it was the original pln of all the Tories, but it certainly was of the pro leave loonies, and now for the majority of them the opportunity Brexit presents for them to do just that is far too tempting for them to pass up.
"So OG stop this class war crap. If anything your fantasy "Mill Owners" would want EU membership and free movement of people because it opens up a vast reservoir of hard working, better trained & vastly cheaper labour from Europe. Why wouldn't the "Tyrannic Mill Owner" want that? They do, so that is why your argument falls apart under the briefest of scrutiny."
Who said anything a "Class War" I said we have been taken over by Corporate Power remember?
And your argument collapses on the simple point that wages here will fall well below those on the Continent, and who needs workers anyway.
Just exactly what "Tyrannic Mills" still exist for anybody to work in?
And the reason this class want out is to protect their offshore tax swindles.
If you imagine there is peace between those at the top and those at the bottom then you must be mad, it has never been worse. and Brexit is the fuse that will cause trouble.
Nice try however tillson
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So presumably you still want a return to the great labour years of 1946..but don't forget many folk who know about history think he was worst priminister in history.
Comments on Attlee...
" not only that, he made rationing stricter, adding bread rationing in 1946 and potato rationing in 1947. He even went into the 1950 and 1951 general elections promising to ration and starve the British people indefinitely. Luckily Churchill won in 1951 and used the wonders of capitalism to remove rationing."
Quoted from HL Bruce. History of Uk politics..
But what do you want OG ? A return to extreme left and rationing ?? Be careful what you wish for. You are such an expert at misreading what isn't said between lines of my post. I have never voted Tory,dont read Daily Mail ,unlike you.
And BTW I,m not cheesed off at all. Whatever happens, leave or stay..as long as whichever it is is the desire of majority. I do believe in democracy and see it as admirable all our votes are equal. You don't agree with that, but then again neither did Labour of old with their reliance on Union block voting.
Its you that's p!ssed off with everything. Not me.
The only issue that annoys me is that you and your kind ( Tom) have destroyed whatever chance Labour had of getting power with all your inflammatory insulting rhetoric. People just dont want it . Yes, they nay not approve of May and Tories but are genuinely frightened of the consequences of your thinking ( well lack of it actually)
People dont want to listen to Angry voices ; read BS from 90 years ago or be lectured to by pseudo socialists with millions in bank. You are obviously taken in by all the BS.
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Churchill was much more like Attlee's government than most realise, as this quote shows:
Churchill was convinced of need for government intervention in social and economic areas.-"Big Government" (from this link )
Not much like Cameron's Conservative "big society, small government", more like Attlee's socialist policy.
And he was unpopular for insisting on maintaining Gaitskell's prescription charges when he didn't need to, another support for Labour policy.
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He still relied on capitalism to get country something like on its feet, and taking into account Churchills unpopularity in many quarters and fact he,d been war leader with a reputation of being rather a hawk it says much of Labour:s unpopularity at that time.( and how people realised Labour wasn't working)
Attlee also mid spent much of the Marshall Plan benefits. Hardly a brilliant successful office when extra rationing had to be brought in. Now , personally,I,m not of opinion it was such a bad government but wanted to point out things were not all rosy as Tom and,OG like to make out about that time in history. It was a difficult time and any government would have had to make unpopular decisions. Holding it up as a shining light in our political history is as usual plain wrong from Tom and OG.
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Exactly. This is why we have/are sailing blindly into such a divided society. Just because one side of the House of Commons is "wrong", doesn't mean the other is "right" Good old Fox News used to claim to be "fair and balanced". You can balance a see saw perfectly with a turd on each end.
I think it was mostly that the country was quite evenly divided between Tory and Labour, the election results for successive governments back then being close as they are recently, and as the Brexit vote was.
It makes this country always very difficult to govern, and a reason why I want to have proportional representation as the only way to bring some peace through better representation.
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Will it ever happen ? Both parties have their own brand of "corruption" which also requires eradication, an impossible task.
Totally agree with that but many are putting the blame of our division on Brexit. Its much deeper than that and Brexit can neither fix it or exacerbate it, either way.
And you are right, neither side of HoC are actually capable of governing country. Tories have proved it over past 2 years and,Labour have done so with their policies and inability to even perform as Shadow cabinet in anything like a commendable way. Cometh the hour,cometh the man ( with a party) He is keeping well away.!
Wow, I was at EuroBike the other year and I wasn't aware that the improvement from 2016 to 2017 in the reliability and performance of basic bikes was going to be the reason that suddenly almost 1/3 of sales were wiped from the UK. I'll have to have a word with the component brands and find out what they did to cause this sudden fall in demand from 1 year to the next.
Earlier you were blaming the new phenomenon called the internet, and now you're blaming reliability, I think you might be clutching at straws
and as I keep saying... the stuff on Amazon and ebay is still being sold by a bike shop!!! Just not THE local one, but it will be SOMEONE's local one.
Is a diversionary ** sandwich that has become a target to focus discontent on a multiple of factors. Those with any sense are currently "tightening" their belts, those without, are getting deeper in debt, and life rolls on.
I imagine that (the sharp drop after the brexit referendum) has to do with the value of the Pound. The article in bikebiz does not compare the value of these yearly 2016/2017 sales.
My view of the long term decline of the number of 'proper' bike shops (unlike mine, we only sell and service our own imported bikes) that I put at 6% year on year is due to online purchases and improvement in reliability of low cost bikes.
Too right....but that process started a good while before Brexit. Markets have been stagnant for years. ( not sure but I believe FTSE has seen its longest stagnation since it started . Unfortunately the down turn that was heading our way will be blamed on Brexit and may well be exagerated by it. There have been very worrying economic signals for a good few years.
Indeed, definitely since 1950 at least. The major trouble is we've never fully replaced the manufactured exports that we lost over more than 30 years. A secondary problem is that we also lost worldwide commerce that we've only partially replaced with Services. And selling business and public assets to other countries has exported profits.
The resulting deficits we've annually compensated for with an ever increasing national debt.
It's like being in a car with a stuck open accelerator and no brakes. In the end we'll hit a wall if we don't find a way to stop.
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We have increasingly become a slave to consumerism, a product used to be something you could see and touch. Now a product is a finance deal, a mobile phone tariff, an insurance policy and so on. Our engineering skill base is depleted. You cannot re-skill a country overnight. Someone with strength needs to say "a new day starts here", problem is, where does the money come from ?
Third rate companies like Group 4, Stagecoach, Carillion etc have been allowed to thrive unchecked. Group 4 do TV license checks. Why ?
I agree and its a similar situation with the environment. We all know what should be done, but can't or wont. Look at the farce with plastic bags.
Kids are sick of me saying world has gone mad.. Must be an age thing...we,re all doomed.
Its as tho we know we are destroying chances of both our economic and actual survival but its simply inevitable..or we make it so.Do we have choices ? Can world survive without rampant consumerism ?
My grandfather worked as a self employed gardener. He worked a small area of loyal clients, did a good job and carried everything he needed on an old roadster bicycle. Move on fifty years and only a 4 x 4 crew cab truck is suitable for the same job, yet I regularly see a guy in his twenties, bike and trailer, doing the same as my grandad, and I think there is hope. Bet his margins are good as well.
The last modern enterprise sold by the UK was Arm holdings to the Japanese.This was just post referendum. In time I suspect this will be seen as a watershed moment.. when the UK gave up any leadership position it had in Engineering. Arm in a real sense was the crown jewel... The guts powering the entire global mobile phone market.
However the consumerism thing has been there a long time, the magic ingredient is credit. With credit that which is logically impossible to buy, can be afforded. Without credit things have to be saved up for... And cooler council might prevail.