"Tim Lamb" wrote in message
...
In message , Andy Hall aka
Matt writes
On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:09:21 +0000 (GMT), John Cartmell
wrote:

In article , Andy Hall akak
Matt wrote:
My idea of reasonable people are those that won't allow parasites to
determine how much they pay for basic necessities.

That's cloud cuckoo land. The market determines the prices - being
people's willingness to pay. Always has and always will.

Except that I described a system that was determined another way and you
rejected that as bad in favour of 'the market'.


I'm not rejecting anything. I'm simply observing that ultimately the
market determines what happens.

That has to be true.

It is? The point is that in some areas the market is rigged not free. Yet
some fools still babble on it being totally free.

Just look at London docks (my youth:-),

Too small for large ships and always were too small. The Large Victoria
docks were white elephants designed to employ people in the depression when
under construction. Massive docks that large ships could not reach. Very
silly. London was bound to fail. Liverpool has access to far larger ships
yet some the docks there could not cope with increased size. In 1963
Felixstowe was a fishing village yet governments promoted the place to kill
establish seaports, and now it is the larges port in the UK, in tonnage
anyhow. It is fast moving containers only so this gives a warped view of
size, while established ports handle mixed, different more labour intensive
cargos. The largest ports complex is the Mersey from Seaforth to
Manchester: Liverpool, Birkenhead, Garston, Eastham and the Manchester ship
canal, which is a 35 mile long linear port with docks and lay-by off it.

Felixstowe was promoted by the Tories as a way of killing unions and their
hatred of the north of England. Felixstowe is a scab port. They invested
billions in a port nowhere near industry, when existing port capacity near
industry was more than enough. The Homes Counties yet again beat the dirty
North. Market forces had nothing to do with the decline of the existying
large ports, except maybe in London

car production, coal mining and probably others I can't remember.

Coal Mining? Thatcher killed that off in a Home Counties v North of
England.

An expanding operation probably benefits from a strong union organisation.

Unions actually help them especially in H&S.

Management is simplified. In an environment where employment is shrinking,
job protection ends in destroying the protected jobs.