The first point is bollocks
The second point is probably true, but the third is just stupid, a large business is almost always going to be able to offer lower costs than several smaller companies.

Other than that, it's a Tory PM making statements entirely in line with Tory ideology. Quelle suprise?
(Bazongaloid, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 8:54, 1 reply, 15 years ago)

I love this part:
"I know some people are disdainful about [selling Britain to the world]," he said.

"They see me loading up a plane with businesspeople and say: 'That's not statesmanship, that's salesmanship'. I say this: attack all you want, but do you think the Germans and the French and the Americans are all sitting at home waiting for business to fall into their lap?"

He loaded a fucking plane with arms dealers and took them to Egypt.
(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 7 Mar 2011, 8:56, Reply)

Good place to take them I'd have thought.

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 8:57, Reply)

s'true
I'm slightly torn about the "defence" industry. On one hand, making things designed expressly to kill people isn't very nice, but on the other, people are always going to want to buy weapons and therefore we might as well get a piece of the pie.

What I'm not convinced about though is if these arms companies actually benefit the UK economy overall as they get a lot of their money from government contracts, so it's not really new money.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 9:02, Reply)

I can't help but think
if some bunch of nutcases want to machine-gun their own citizens or whatever they're hardly going to write the idea off if we refuse to sell them our guns.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 9:03, Reply)

I just thought it was a very interesting way of putting it.

(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 7 Mar 2011, 9:06, Reply)

They're not actually much use to the economy
the reason they're so loved by governments around the world is that it ring fences a load of highly skilled labour in the country which they don't want to lose.
The problem is their cost/benefit is a lot worse now than when you were hiring mainly machinists and skilled welders.
(PsychoChomp, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 9:10, Reply)

You've pretty much summed it up there
not a nice business, but it does bring in money, if not quite as much as we would like
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 9:36, Reply)