What happened to the UK’s oil money compared with how Norway spent its income.

Current Norway Population: 5.35 Million
Current UK Population: 66.65 million

Norway proven oil reserves (in 2017) – 6,611 million barrels
UK proven oil reserves (in 2017) – 2,564 million barrels

So, in short, they have roughly 33 times more oil per head than we do.

It’s also been well managed in fairness, but that’s the basic maths behind why Norway has seen such benefits.

Calling someone who installs your washing machine an ‘engineer’ is devaluing the term, but software engineering isn’t.

I can understand why an Engineer might get the hump at someone else calling themselves the same thing. But there are many types of engineering, does one similarly object to Gas Engineers or Chemical Engineers? It’s not the “engineer” bit that’s protected, if you were to call yourself a Chartered Software Engineer then an objection would be warranted – it’s the “chartered” bit you’re undermining / devaluing, not the “engineer” bit. The Engineering Council don’t have the monopoly on engineering titles.

slightly OT but Chartered IT Professional is in no way equivalent to any other protected chartered engineer title, it’s just not the same level. I really wish there was an equivalent, but I’m not sure there ever can be, there’s just no proscribed, best way to do things and it changes so fast. Also the level of rigour and professionalism (and statutory backup) required just doesn’t exist amongst most software engineers. There’s no support in industry either, testing and proper documentation is practically the first thing that gets cut as soon as a project has any kind of difficulty, that’s not something you can get away with in civil engineering…

It’s also been well managed in fairness, but that’s the basic maths behind why Norway has seen such benefits.

But the basic idea was totally different. Norway took the money and used it for the good of the population; whereas we ended up giving it away to rich people didn’t we?

If we had invested in improved manufacture then we could make goods as cheaply and as well as Korea / Germany.

Could we? I’m not so sure. Most countries specialise in certain things, rather than make everything. We specialise in stuff that you can’t buy in Curry’s; whereas Korea for example does. Why would we even want to take them on? You do well in business by finding a niche. The far East found theirs, we found ours (services).

The protected equivalent is “Chartered IT Professional” and is regulated by the BCS.

Not in Germany it isn’t.

Engineers of all kinds, and yes, that includes IT, as the original post about this made clear, come under the remit of the same body. The more professional regard for engineers in key fields in Germany is highly relevant to this thread.

slightly OT but Chartered IT Professional is in no way equivalent to any other protected chartered engineer title, it’s just not the same level.

Agreed. In the UK. Germany does things very differently.

If we had invested in improved manufacture then we could make goods as cheaply and as well as Korea / Germany.

It’s all relative. I had an interview in the early 90s at a place that made control valves. They were investing in new machinery to make more product and with less labour.
Their parent company had recently set up factories in former Eastern Bloc countries and weee shopping the old machinery there as labour was cheaper.

Germany (West) was on the front line from 1945 to 1989. It security was guaranteed by NATO/the 3 Western noooclear powers – Imagine the defence spending and German national politics if we had rolled the NATO boarder back to France (well, the disputed bit of France/Germany)?

An interesting side note is that the Marshall plan was the second plan – the first one was developed by the US (by a Ruski spy) and it basically hoofed the Germans in the slats.

The discussion re Engineers is, er, terribly British. The problem lies some way “up” the food chain – British workers underperform because they are poorly educated, inadequately trained and woefully managed.

Someone made the point:
“Germans seem to accept that if you want nice things you have to pay taxes.”

For Britain, that becomes:
“Britains seem to accept that if you want nice things someone else has to pay taxes.”
The myth of the wealth creators…

To my view, the fundamental nature of Britain seems more “individualistic” or possibly selfish.

The Germans seem to “get” that these days “everything” is almost literally connected. (How many Germans live in ‘shared’ apartment buildings vs occupier owned houses? What would the comparative UK figures be?).

Britain still thinks everyone is a metaphorical island, everyone lives on an island, is supplied from “an” island and we need nothing beyond the shores of the literal or metaphorical island.

How’s that PPE manufacturing coming along? Dyson made them ventilators in his factory in Small Heath yet?

Britain is vain and fragile – it’s trying to recreate a comfort blanket past that never actually existed. Germany looks to the present and the future because the past was, er, a bit wiffy.

Oh, there’s plenty of rose tinted looking back on the past, and people with an isolationist attitude, in Germany as well… just not about 40% of the population, more like 20%. And the rest of the country don’t pander to them in quite the same way we do here.

I think you’re all overthinking this and missing the most obvious answer

They have better beer

Britain is vain and fragile – it’s trying to recreate a comfort blanket past that never actually existed.

This. So much this…

I was in France the day after the Brexit result was announced and the quote from a wise old French pharmacist was ‘The trouble with Britain is that they never stopped fighting the second world war’.

We’ve spent so long looking back, mythologising, reminiscing and basking in the fading light while Europe got on with stuff.

UK companies on the other hand are always looking to do things better, in fact that’s the majority of the management effort.

ROFPMSLMAO

Number one phrase heard within British Industry, you said “let’s do this better”, our survey said:

Number one phrase heard within British Industry, you said “let’s do this better”, our survey said:

Read the post. They are always TRYING to do things better, which means they end up changing things all the time, **** it up and making it much worse. I even gave an example.

Could be horribly wrong about this but I’m pretty sure that France, German etc were let off repayments on this aid while Britain ended up paying every penny back.

Marshall was not paid back, we spent our allocation on projecting power (nukes and other hardware) and attempting to retain the Empire. That went well didn’t it?

Read the post. They are always TRYING to do things better, which means they end up changing things all the time, **** it up and making it much worse. I even gave an example.

So rather than trying to do something and produce measurable results they go for a scattergun approach of throwing shit and seeing what sticks with a workforce digging their heels in in the background because that’s the way it’s always been done.

They don’t really try, that’s my point. They dictate from on high, say one thing then do another because KPIs tell them to. It’s just more sigma six teen titans scrum management bollocks, same shit wrapped up in indecipherable nonsense that only those who are so far up their own arse they could be confused for Ouroboros’ unfortunate sibling can pretend to understand it. Meanwhile the workers do the same thing they always have because they know fine and well the new way will be flung out next time the weather changes.

If they really wanted to change they would engage with the workforce. But they don’t, they just want to make the right noises and short term gains that will fall flat by the time they’ve moved upwards or sideways.

When the Reichsmark was ditched for the Deutschmark, industry got a 1:1 exchange rate but ordinary citizens got 4:1.
People had been unable to spend their salaries during the war so had large amounts of savings. Effectively the ordinary German punter paid for the economic miracle by handing all their cash over to industry.

This. You should read The Shortest History of Germany or at least the post 1930 bits. Very readable and changed my preconceptions of Germany, Poland, Russia, Roman Empire etc, etc. I always thought Hitler was a Bavarian Catholic.

[strong]boxelder[/strong] wrote:

I always thought Hitler was a Bavarian Catholic

Nah, he was an Austrian whose father was the illegitimate child of a Jewish Aristocrat. Maybe.

Germany is not stifled by the UK over-concentration of resources, population, industry, investment in London and the South East to the expense of the Midlands and North – this has created a lopsided economy. Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich are all have a high performing economies compared with Berlin.

The unions see the benefits of collaborating with management and vice versa – in the UK management actively try to have non-unionised workplaces and some unions seem mired in 1970’s antagonistic behaviour, and past governments have been complicit in trying (successfully) to reduce the influence of unions.

German states also have shares in some of the larger companies – the state of Lower Saxony has a 20% voting share in VW. This makes it difficult for the corporate sales, mergers and acquisitions, and often later asset stripping, we have seen in some of our larger companies.

German Mittelstand, which form the largest sector of the economy, have a specific bank to finance any investment needed – in the UK we rely on the main banks, and their dubious practices and short term profit focus, for such investment – see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/driving-growth/secrets-growth-power-of-germany-mittelstand/

I also think that at the end of the war all German servicemen were demobilised fairly quickly and would then move into work in the rejuvenating their industries with the support of US finance, whereas I believe the UK maintained many of its forces personnel for many years after the war, thus many of the young adults who could have been inspiring and resourcing our own industries were still in the armed forces and not being economically productive.

Germany (like Japan) wasn’t allowed to re-arm so capital was reinvested in production rather than ‘waste expenditure’ (in that arms are neither a consumer or capital item) and that meant relatively fast capital accumulation in the context of having to start from new. Whilst other countries were pouring money into the Cold War and rebuilding old industries, Germany was experiencing rapid economic growth and improved standards of living.
Stable trading conditions were helped in the west in that arms expenditure offsets the tendency towards crises of over-accumulation and hence we had the long boom and this in turn created a stable environment for Germany and Japan to grow and prosper.
The Ed Act of 1870 was introduced to try to catch up with Germany’s educated workers. In Britain the attitude has tended to be expensively educate the elite and it’s quite good if the plebs are manipulable and semi-literate (and expendable). So a government needs a good team of psychologists, advertising practitioners, BSers and a few placemen in the media simply to get across the right message but at least we are top of the division in the fatalities league.

Egalitarian society, no stupid monarchy or private schools or silly first past the post .

It’s amazing how many people think the mere presence of a monarchy is a drag on the UK. It’s not that; it’s the inequality and presence of an upper tier of society who have all the power and influence. This isn’t the Queen. It’s even worse in the USA for example. We could get rid of the Queen tomorrow and it would do nothing for inequality in the UK.

….and protestant.

They did have a ‘superior class’ though, or those who thought they were – Prussians, who pretty much caused every war Germany has been involved in for centuries.

How’s that PPE manufacturing coming along?

We’re making loads of the stuff. Trouble is NHS procurement is a byzantine process and by the time someone in charge deigns to contact the manufacturer (if they bother) it has been sold overseas.

I can understand why an Engineer might get the hump at someone else calling themselves the same thing. But there are many types of engineering, does one similarly object to Gas Engineers or Chemical Engineers? It’s not the “engineer” bit that’s protected, if you were to call yourself a Chartered Software Engineer then an objection would be warranted – it’s the “chartered” bit you’re undermining / devaluing, not the “engineer” bit. The Engineering Council don’t have the monopoly on engineering titles.

That’s the point, in a lot of the world they do.

Even “Chartered Engineer” in this country is a step down from the equivalents elsewhere. an American colleague compared “Professional Engineer” which is their equivalent to going back to untiversity and doing another masters, ours is just a 2000 word application and an interview with a panel.

But the basic idea was totally different. Norway took the money and used it for the good of the population; whereas we ended up giving it away to rich people didn’t we?

Not entirely, the government takes big chunk of the value of each barrel that comes out the ground, and does levy windfall taxes on the producers if the price rises significantly during their licences.

The difference is we’ve just had 40 years of slightly lower taxes than perhaps we would otherwise have had. Norway has higher taxes, a smaller population and even more oil.

I’ve lived in Germany for the last 20 years. Germany’s strengths lie with the devolved power and consensus government. At every level there is a lot of discussion – and grass roots democracy e.g housing associations, unions. So globally beneficial solutions are normally found.

I’ve worked in project with Germans, French, Chinese, Us, Koreans, Italians… however the best technically are always Brits. Although there are always administative and payment issues!

The initial question was likely triggered by Covid – my feeling is that Germany has done a reasonable job, and i trust that they have a plan to control it going forward. Germany has done OK – but really not as well as others, i.e south Korea etc

Honestly the UK government (or maybe just the UK) has absolutley botched the response. An island, non Shengen and had 2/3 weeks to see what happened in Italy/Spain, allowing international sporting events. Also pretty much everything in the UK is centralised so there can be no excuses. Even now no masks and no entry tracing at airports. … Look at the clapping on Westminster bridge with the Police.

The Uk really really has to think about what went wrong – and do something quick. Do you trust this lot to finish up on Brexit!