Roger:
Yes, I'm aware of the outsourcing of jobs from South Wales in all sorts of ways. Clothing, vacuum cleaners, you name it - the big employers here are going. You won't see the price of anything coming down, though. When Phil Nike outsourced the production of his trainers, the price didn't go down one cent. Profits were well up, of course.
I may have worded the original post a little clumsily - it's not all 'crap' as in rubbish certainly. After all, they've got our technology for producing them now, something they insist upon and on which Germany has recently started pushing back.
Diversifying is fine, but unless we make things, as in adding value to something, we're not generating any real wealth for the ourselves and the country. We need to make the things we use, we can't generate wealth for the UK by selling each other things, cutting each others' hair, or passing bits of paper with figures around (which is at least one of the less harmful things they do in the financial services industry).
By training staff over in India to do back office jobs, or China, Vietnam etc. to toil in production sweatshops, we're cutting our own throats. What do you suggest we diversify into, if not manufacturing, that can provide a healthy income for the country?
The main reason China is seeing a decline in markets is because a sizeable proportion here and the US etc. doesn't have a job anymore, because the manufacturing base is decimated several times over.
I would suggest import tariffs, but avoiding Chinese goods as a priority would be a good start for us as individuals, wherever possible.
