Posted By The Editor On March 29, 2010 @ 1:48 pm In Article, Mike Robinson
On the 22nd of February, the Register, a UK technology website, published an article [1] entitled “The Myth Of Britain’s Manufacturing Decline.” What, I wondered, could a publication that focusses on IT and finds “amusing” positions [2] to place Playmobil plastic characters know about British Manufacturing? As I read the article, I realised the answer is, nothing.
The author makes one fundamental mistake. Its not his fault – its the same mistake just about every modern economic commentator makes when discussing economy – to assume that economic value and monetary value are the same thing.
The author of the Register article begins with a graph (below). [3]
The author of The Register article wrote:
That’s from something called the Index of Production and it’s a chart of the value of manufacturing output in the UK since just after WWII. It’s an index and 100 is defined as the level of output in 2005. As you can see we produce some two and a half times what we did in the 40s, when absolutely everyone, to hear the stories told, was gainfully employed making whippet flanges. So at first glance it would seem to be untrue that we actually produce less than we used to …
The first and most obvious thing is to point out that the Index isn’t measuring how much we make: it’s measuring the value of what we make …
This is, of course, the only thing we should be interested in: increasing the value of what is produced means that there’s more value to be shared among all of us doing the producing.
Well, no, actually. What it means is that there’s more cash to go into the pockets of shareholders and board members.
He goes on:
Alongside this, it is also gobsmackingly obvious that fewer people are employed in manufacturing than in the past. But we’ve got rising production and fewer workers: this is what is known technically in economic circles as a ‘good thing’.
Again, no, it isn’t. First of all, how many fewer people are employed today than in the past? What skills have we lost as a result of that reduction in the productive workforce? The author doesn’t discuss these questions.
The sad truth is that British manufacturing has been decimated, particularly in the last 30 years or so. Britain used to have a steel industry. We used to produce our own energy. We used to use these capabilities to produce ships, cars, military hardware, aircraft, bridges and a host of other products we could be proud of. Its all gone, and for someone to throw up a graph and an article to suggest that its all ok because our collapsed manufacturing industry is actually resulting on more £££ is disengenuous at best.
You may be asking why this has happened? The normal answer is, globalisation. But globalisation is not an accident. One of its cornerstones is the Lima Declaration.
The Lima Declaration
The full title of this treaty is “Lima Declaration And Plan Of Action On Industrial Development And Co-Operation. The treaty was signed in 1975 at a convention of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, in Lima, Peru. The treaty is an international agreement to wind down national manufacturing in developed nations, and transfer that manufacturing capability to developing nations.
This treaty sets the policy which has, over 30 years, encouraged corporations to build themselves into globalist multinationals. It only benefits these corporations and their international bankers.
A key clause states …
recognising the urgent need to bring about the establishment of a new international economic order based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence and co-operation, as has been expressed in the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, in order to transform the present structure of economic relations.
Interdependence is the end of Independence
The term interdependence is newspeak coined by the Club Of Rome. According to The Club of Rome, we face a set of interlocking global problems, such as over population, food shortages, non-renewable resource depletion, environmental degradation, etc. With the use of absurd, exponentially based computer models, the complete unravelling of society and perhaps the biosphere was predicted. The only solution capable of adverting global catastrophe, according to the Club of Rome, is the development of an organic society.
Although it is frequently denied, it should be obvious that the idea of interdependence and independence are mutually exclusive. Any nation that has to rely on another for something it needs, must, at least, acknowledge limits to its own independence.
Interdependence is Totalitarian
One of my favourite people of the 20th Century is Bertrand Russell. Those who know me will recognise just how much sarcasm is dripping from that sentence.
My favourite Russell book is his 1952 “The Impact Of Science On Society.” This book should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand the agenda we are all witnessing today.
Russell had quite a lot to say about the organic society in that book:
The most obvious and inescapable effect of scientific technique is that it makes society more organic, in the sense of increasing the interdependence of its various parts …
Totalitarianism has a theory as well as a practice. As a practice, it means that a certain group, having by one means or another seized the apparatus of power, especially armaments and police, proceed to exploit their advantageous position to the utmost, by regulating everything in the way that gives them the maximum of control over others. But as a theory it is something different: it is the doctrine that the State, or the nation, or the community is capable of a good different from that of individual and not consisting of anything that individuals think or feel. This doctrine was especially advocated by Hegal, who glorified the State, and thought that a community should be as organic as possible. In an organic community, he thought, excellence would reside in the whole. An individual is an organism, and we do not think that his separate parts have separate goods: if he has a pain in his great toe it is he that suffers, not specially the great toe. So, in an organic society, good and evil will belong to the whole rather than the parts. This is the theoretical form of totalitarianism …
In concrete fact, when it is pretended that the State has a good different from that of the citizens, what is really meant is that the good of the government or of the ruling class is more important than that of other people. Such a view can have no basis except in arbitrary power …
More important than these metaphysical speculations is the question whether a scientific dictatorship, such as we have been considering, can be stable, or is more likely to be stable than a democracy …
I do not believe that dictatorship Is a lasting form of scientific society – unless (but this proviso is important) it can become world-wide.
Its interesting to observe the pleasant sounding words used to sell totalitarianism to us – “organic”, “holistic”, “differentiated”, “harmonious”, “interdependent”, “balanced” and “sustainable”.
What about manufacturing?
So if the Lima Declaration is about the establishment of global totalitarianism, what does it say about manufacturing?
Resolution 27 – developed countries such as the UK should expand imports from developing countries
Resolution 28 – Requires that developing countries increase their Industrial growth by more than the 8% recommended in earlier United Nations meetings and increase their exports by 350% by year 2000.
Resolution 35 – developed countries such as the UK should transfer technical, financial, and capital goods to developing countries to accomplish resolution 28 above.
So the question is, what effect is this having?
Earlier I asked, how many fewer people are employed in manufacturing today than in the past? Well, in 1995, 16% of UK jobs were in manufacturing. In 2007, that had dropped to 10%. That’s before the present recession. Just to be clear, these previously skilled people are either retired, unemployed, or doing pointless non-productive service jobs, adding nothing to our real economy.
Contrary to the article in the Register, therefore, manufacturing is in continual decline and has been since 1975 at least. The same can be said for farming, fishing, energy production and a host of other areas of basic economic infrastructure. This nation is no longer independent. It is fully interdependent; an insignificant cog in the great totalitarian wheel.
Any suggestion that everything is good and rosy because from a monetary perspective the illusion of growth exists is not only delusional, it’s missing the key point – unless we reverse acts of Treason such as the Lima Declaration, as a nation, we’re finished.
Article printed from The UK Column: http://www.ukcolumn.org
URL to article: http://www.ukcolumn.org/2010/03/29/the-lima-declaration-foundation-of-globalisation/
URLs in this post:
[1] published an article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/22/manufacturing_figures/
[2] finds “amusing” positions: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Wrap/playmobil/
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