UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by rayiner on Sunday November 20, 2022 @11:17PM (#33688700)

Manufacturing employment is declined due to lots of factors: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2020.00054...

> UK manufacturing employment fell especially steeply in the early 1980s during a recession triggered by a high exchange rate and high interest rates. The job losses during these years were documented in particular by Townsend (1983) and Fothergill and Guy (1991) and the process of deindustrialization more generally by Martin and Rowthorn (1986). The recession of the early 1990s added further major job losses (Gudgin, 1995). Thereafter, manufacturing output largely stagnated and manufacturing employment continued to slide even though the UK economy as a whole enjoyed 15 years of sustained economic growth.

What’s notable about New Labour was how manufacturing job losses continued even during a long period of sustained economic growth. Finance and knowledge sectors grew while manufacturing sectors declined.

Moreover, as to China specifically, the UK had little trade with China until 2000: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53468925.amp

Likewise immigration really got turbocharged under New Labour: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32162123

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Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by tptacek on Sunday November 20, 2022 @11:50PM (#33688914)

Can you support the argument that China somehow deindustrialized the UK, starting in the 2000s? The story of the UK's deindustrialization was discussed well before that, wasn't it? The working class in the UK probably doesn't much care where their jobs are offshored to.

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Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by idlewords on Monday November 21, 2022 @11:53AM (#33694752)

For the decline of industry under Labour, see graphs here: https://fullfact.org/economy/did-labour-decimate-manufacturi... Manufacturing was 18% of UK output at the start of Blair's term in office, and 10% when he left in 2010. You can also search for story after story about factory closures following the 1998 Asian financial crisis, which decimated the north of England.

When evaluating Blair's impact it's also important to look at regional shifts, with money and jobs becoming more and more concentrated around London at the expense of the periphery. You can argue about the causes of these shifts, but their existence is not in question.

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Re:UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of fo... by tptacek on Monday November 21, 2022 @10:31PM (#33701440)

I can't add anything to this that your link doesn't get into. I think my only position in this thread is that Rayiner's earlier argument, claiming that Blair "gutted the country" by reducing industrial capacity, is a little too pat. I think? the article you have here would agree with that! (Particularly interesting, from a nerdy perspective, is the way the increase in service sector output messes with the Blair-era stats.) I defer entirely to this article; even if it's not perfect, it's more perfect than anything I can say.

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