I thought everything was going so well...

[Fungus]

sorry to piss on your parade milan but unless businesses have the flexibility to fire and pick and choose their employees they wont work efficiently. Either you have flexible labour laws or (as in France) you have no jobs.

Yup.

Just to repeat what you are saying, flexibility allows companies to take risks, and expand when the going is good, without fear that come the bad times, they'll be saddled with unsackable workers. I've heard of some French companies moving to Kent to avoid the restrictive French bureacracy and regulations.

Isn't France a basket case relatively speaking?

And hasn't Japan relaxed its employment laws in the last few years and hasn't that helped the economy to pick up?

Fungus.

[Fungus]

Hmmm. Agree in theory but cannot help noticing that they still have a substantial French owned car industry and Citreon-Peugot is very profitable too. There must be a few things they are doing right.

Wasn't our car industry destroyed by the unions in the 70's and 80's and by the lack of investment?

[vetran]

partly

our car industry was destroyed by people such as Red Robbo.

However we did encourage inward investment during the Maggie / Major years, that is now running for the hills.

[mcquiggd]

Interesting little story tonight on Channel 4 about Estonia and its new 'e economy' - and flat 23% tax rate for everyone including businesses. Its gone high tech overnight and neighbouring countries are complaining its unfair that it has a realistic tax system.

Sigh.

[threaded]

Anyways, is it not true that Britain now produces more cars than it did in the 1970s?