UK business is too lazy and fat says Liam Fox

[jamesbrown]

linky?

He needs a hinge more than a link.

[sasguru]

The quicker you feck orf, the better off you will be. How's your golden ticket to Portugal going?

Waiting for Brexit to happen so I can buy on the Golden Visa scheme as a non EU national.
Seems it might be a long wait though ...

[sasguru]

linky?

Sorry Threadeds machine broke down ...

[davetza]

Don't believe everything you read in the paper. What he actually said was

https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828...uk-exports-gap

This country is not the free trading nation that it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations. And when I look at a country built on free trade, as an outward-looking, forward-looking nation, and I look today at the proportion of British businesses that export beyond our border – what is it? 80 per cent? 60 per cent? 11 per cent.
What is the point of us reshaping global trade, what is the point of us going out and looking for new markets for the United Kingdom, if we don’t have the exporters to fill those markets? We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty. Companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon. We’ve got to be saying to them: if you want to share in the prosperity of our country, you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country.”
“We’ve made a fundamental shift in British policy. Up until the change of government, the policy was to get as much foreign direct investment into the United Kingdom as possible, but to largely ignore overseas direct investment elsewhere. And that’s a problem because it’s great the year we get the foreign investment and we get jobs created, but every year after that all their income flows that go to their parent companies or their parent countries are outward flows in our current account. Unless we have counterbalancing overseas development, overseas investment, we are unable to get those income flows to counterbalance that.

I'm not sure there is anything in there is that contentious.

[sasguru]

Don't believe everything you read in the paper. What he actually said was

https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828...uk-exports-gap

This country is not the free trading nation that it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations. And when I look at a country built on free trade, as an outward-looking, forward-looking nation, and I look today at the proportion of British businesses that export beyond our border – what is it? 80 per cent? 60 per cent? 11 per cent.
What is the point of us reshaping global trade, what is the point of us going out and looking for new markets for the United Kingdom, if we don’t have the exporters to fill those markets? We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty. Companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon. We’ve got to be saying to them: if you want to share in the prosperity of our country, you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country.”
“We’ve made a fundamental shift in British policy. Up until the change of government, the policy was to get as much foreign direct investment into the United Kingdom as possible, but to largely ignore overseas direct investment elsewhere. And that’s a problem because it’s great the year we get the foreign investment and we get jobs created, but every year after that all their income flows that go to their parent companies or their parent countries are outward flows in our current account. Unless we have counterbalancing overseas development, overseas investment, we are unable to get those income flows to counterbalance that.

I'm not sure there is anything in there is that contentious.

It's all bollux. Especially coming from a proven corrupt, expenses fiddling politician who wouldn't know what business is if it bit him on the bum.
What is the total pish about exporting being a fooking "duty"? Are we becoming Soviet? Business is there to make money, the fact that the UK is a services oriented economy with little to sell abroad is entirely due to Tory policy in the 80s.

[DodgyAgent]

It's all bollux. Especially coming from a proven corrupt, expenses fiddling politician who wouldn't know what business is if it bit him on the bum.
What is the total pish about exporting being a fooking "duty"? Are we becoming Soviet? Business is there to make money, the fact that the UK is a services oriented economy with little to sell abroad is entirely due to Tory policy in the 80s.

[shaunbhoy]

It's all bollux. Especially coming from a proven corrupt, expenses fiddling politician who wouldn't know what business is if it bit him on the bum.
What is the total pish about exporting being a fooking "duty"? Are we becoming Soviet? Business is there to make money, the fact that the UK is a services oriented economy with little to sell abroad is entirely due to Tory policy in the 80s.

[sasguru]

Yeah you lazy golf playing businessman.
Why don't you export more?

[sasguru]

This about sums up it up:

Liam Fox confirms that Britain now has a nationalist government | Coffee House

What a repellent piece of work is that nonentity Liam Fox.

[eek]

It's all bollux. Especially coming from a proven corrupt, expenses fiddling politician who wouldn't know what business is if it bit him on the bum.
What is the total pish about exporting being a fooking "duty"? Are we becoming Soviet? Business is there to make money, the fact that the UK is a services oriented economy with little to sell abroad is entirely due to Tory policy in the 80s.

This is what I couldn't get about the argument. Golf is supposedly a very good networking opportunity - and networking = sales.

And the purpose of my business is to make money for me. If and when I have enough money or get fed up I walk away and do something else instead...