General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Britain is/was a manufacturing country, we take in raw materials, and make goods out of them, and then export them to the rest of the world, that was Britain earned it's living, along with exploiting countries we had absorbed/occupied into the British Empire, but when the world 'caught up' with Britain in manufacturing, and when the cheaper foreign imports were beginning to bite, and British manufacturing needed to 'adapt' to survive, with modernisation of equipment and working practises, more automation, and a smaller work force etc, the unions would not agree, and they went on strike if a firm tried to modernise it's production systems, so Britain fell even further behind Europe and the rest of the world, at the end of the 1970s Britain was looked on as the 'sick man of Europe' a 'basket case' and it was folk like you, Whupsy and your sodding unions which had caused it