You get what you pay for!!

[PC2017]

l bet people in the third world think the streets are literally paved with gold here

Aye the haves and have nots, the divide will deepen.

middle classes

As for the middle class spending a tad too much on imports is a tad finger pointy imo if people wish to be angry that's fair, but this "blame assigning" & "in fighting", poor against middle class to name a one without causing to much contention, really needs to be prevented at all cost. If anyone wants to blame someone a good place to start would be Jerome Powell or the western Oligarchs.

 

[lightning]

l'm not sure what "middle class" means these days.
lf it's to do with wealth, many will have become "middle class" because of the massive rise in house prices !!

 

[StuartsProjects]

Admittedly if you look at who has done the most damage to the economy it is the middle classes who typically import the most cars and have the most holidays and send a huge part of their wages outside the country which has led to huge problems

But we are all 'guilty' of sending large amouts of money out of the UK, even the less well off in UK society;

Mobile Phones.
Electronics in cars.
Most all other electronic stuff we stuff our homes with.
Ebikes, batteries, motors etc.

Remember a few months back, when the current Government was so keen on the 'Global Economy' (sending money out of the UK was OK, what could possibly go wrong ?) that they shut down a large gas storage site off the East coast of UK as clearly with 'reliable' supplies from 'Europe' (meaning Russia) the storage facility was just not needed, buy supplies from 'Europe' instead.

My Brompton (origionally non electric) is I think made of mostly UK manufactured parts, is there an eBike equivalent ?

 

[AndyBike]

l would say that any ebike under £1,000 is better off rigid (no suspension)

I'd agree with that unless you have access to a high end short travel fork. Maybe a Marzocchi Z2 or something along those lines.

I'm more about self build, but not self build the motor/electrics etc, more self build the actual components that make a bike a quality bike.
Cheap bikes are a cobble together of cheap and nasty parts, almost always the bottom of the range and not built for longevity.

 

[lightning]

l think self build is the way to go if you can do it.

The "suspension fork" on the ebike l tried was just two springs in the tubes and was worse than nothing

Well, as in, my ebike with no front suspension rides better.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

Aye the haves and have nots, the divide will deepen.




As for the middle class spending a tad too much on imports is a tad finger pointy imo if people wish to be angry that's fair, but this "blame assigning" & "in fighting", poor against middle class to name a one without causing to much contention, really needs to be prevented at all cost. If anyone wants to blame someone a good place to start would be Jerome Powell or the western Oligarchs.

I guess middle class is a bit old school to be honest what I really meant was middle income the people with a large amount of disposable income and there are millions of them. I think oligarchs have often based their tax es in the UK to avoid higher taxes elsewhere so that is free money to the UK economy. The big issue is the huge trade inbalance and the biggest purchase people make after their house is their car and this is the easiest thing to point to for doing huge damage to our economy. We then transfer sterling in large amounts to other countries to buy their goods and end up borrowing sterling back with interest to prop our own economy up and of course destroy our own industries in the process which often go to the wall or are bought with that sterling we have exported.

Ultimately we should never borrow, we have no right to borrow expecting later generations to pay for it. If we never borrowed and didn't sell assets we would have been forced out of the EU in the eighties and people would have had an understanding of that damage being caused. You can't expect to live to a high standard without industry and commercial activity to pay for it.

It's a horrible lesson that will hit us when international banks lose confidence in the UK and they stop loaning us more money and sterling drops in value considerably.

It is definitely the middle income people that have caused the damage, every statistic I have seen shows that they have the most money to export its as simple as that. There aren't enough rich people to do as much damage and poor people spend a lot more of the money on utilities and essentials and typically buy s/hand cars etc. It's not about pointing the finger so much as knowing whose behaviour has to be adjusted. You have to understand the problem before you can correct it. That is not to say there aren't a huge number of middle income people who are hugely positive to our economy its just the bulk of damage is coming from people of that type of income. More sales taxation of expensive imported vehicles so people buy them less frequently is a simple approach of adjusting the economy and less taxation on factories and agriculture in order to make them more productive and more competitive are fairly simple policies. There is nothing that can't be tackled with good policies. After WW2 we had some fantastic politicians who focused on manufacturing and paying back the huge debts of WW2. You could say their policies were simple but they were very effective.