When Mrs Thatcher and her government, voted in by a mass of working people, decided to fundamentally change our economy from a goods-based one to so-called service-based economy she/they threw the baby out with the bathwater; goods based industries were unsupported.
Service-based industries can be defined as financial services, hospitality, retail, health, human services, information technology and education. Hospitality is notoriously low-paid; retail, in the way we knew it, is dying; health is struggling with its cost base and lack of highly trained operatives; human services can be an extremely low-paid area if not exploitative; we buy in a lot of our highly paid information technologists and education is spurned by large numbers of older voters, who currently hold sway, while the young do their best to acquire it.
Financial Services, which was always intended to be the driver of this change is 6.9% of our economy with 49% of that generated in London. The UK financial services are the seventh-largest in the OECD in 2018 by its proportion of national economic output.
With all the changes we have seen in our lifetime. The lack of support in the areas where the traditional goods based industry was cut off at the feet, the concentration on London, the lack of jobs for the just below the middle-income earners likely to grow into the lack of jobs for middle-income earners altogether, how do you see the UK, economically, in, say, 10 or 20 years time. Who will thrive in this brave new world and who will work hard to survive?
Yes thanks Grandad43 for the facts on Amazon working practices, to offset the erroneous info posted by growstuff.
I use Amazon frequently, and why not, they are providing employment as well as a very convenient shopping experience.
Erroneous? Check it out for yourself lemongrove! How dare you call me a liar! You really are a very rude person.
Amazon robots:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox05Bks2Q3s
You seem to be a bit out of date Grandad.
It would be so good to have an intelligent conversation on GN without one poster called the "Sneering Sisters".
And another one of Amazon robots:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm0toTbg8J4
growstuff, you speak of wishing to have "intelligent conversations" on this forum in your posts of 11:05 and 11:08 today, but within those posts, you resort to name-calling and inaccuracies in references to what others have posted in regard to yourself.
However, to return to the topic of the thread, I will not continue to "trade YouTube video content of Amazon activities as that will get us no further than of present. Therefore perhaps we can look at some straightforward facts in regard to your claimed robotization of Amazons distribution centres.
Amazon employed approximately 27,500 people in the UK at the end of 2018. Of those 6,500 employed in its corporate divisions, that meaning more than 20,000 people work in its 17 distribution centres, bulk handling warehouses, and delivery operations in the UK. Amazon announced that it was expecting to recruit a further two thousand five hundred employees during 2019, but whether that figure has been recruited has not been confirmed as yet.
Therefore with over a thousand persons being employed in each of Amazons distribution centres, I believe that fact in itself brings credence to the argument that those operations were not highly robotized.
There is without doubt mechanization of the bulk handling of product from the order assembly areas to the vehicle loading banks, but the assembly of individual orders is carried out manually by employees known as pickers (or fulfilment Associates to use Amazons own jargon), and it is those and the employees that load the racking that walk on average more than fifteen miles during the course of an eight-hour shift.
After all, what else would those on average one thousand employees per distribution centre be doing if not picking those individual customer orders?
Below is a link to Amazon's statement on the opening of its distribution centre in Avonmouth, Bristol last year:-
www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/first-look-inside-huge-new-2806422
Further information on employment roles within Amazon's operations in the UK is also available here:-
www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2019/07/03/amazon-plans-to-hire-2000-extra-uk-staff-and-bring-total-uk-workforce-to-29500/
growstuff I will not trade insults with you.Grandad43 has provided plenty of factual information on Amazon.
I have to note, Grandad, that if you look at the photo gallery associated with the story you linked to, no.7 shows the robots in the background; the same ones as shown in action in growstuff's link posted at 11.13.
Of course, we don't know how many of the existing distribution centres in the UK have robots. Some are quite old.
Nor do we know what conditions are like in centres belonging to other companies.
MaizieD in regard to your post @20:57 today, as I stated in my above posts mechanization or robotics are used in many distribution centres in the movement of product between assembly areas and loading docks etc. The robotics shown in the Amazon videos are carrying out the above function.
However, because of the variation in handling of product by way of size, fragility, composition and in many cases racking access, those tasks are still carried out in the vast majority of cases by human resources. In that, it is still the circumstance that the human brain is nonetheless the finest resource available for tasks that continually very on a rapid and constant basis.
No doubt technology will improve so that on a gradual basis ever more complex and varied tasks will fall within the range of robotic technology, but with many tasks in assembly, transport and distribution that is not the situation at this point in time, or for now, in the foreseeable future.
As a side note, our own company has been heavily involved in setting up safety regimes surrounding the use of robotic technology in distribution centres. In that, it is our experience that very heavy safety disciplines have to be applied surrounding such mobile technology as such equipment can hold far higher dangers to persons working in the proximity of such equipment as compared to working alongside other humans.
When we carried out our first risk assessments with such equipment none of us involved would have ever thought that would be the case.
As humans, we never stop learning through experience, even when technology is looking to replace us and through that the gaining of that experience. ?
I think we have plenty of evidence to show that AI an robotics have already changed the world of work both in stripping skills out of jobs, e.g., contract writing AI diminishing the skills needed by middle-income solicitors, and adding to the skills needed, e.g., high level surgery by doctors.
Technological unemployment is a reality and inequality and technological unemployment are very closely related. If we are looking at the future I would have thought we need to look at the overall way our economy can deal with this. Currently, the labour market is the main way that we share out economic prosperity in society: most people’s jobs are their only income. If those jobs are to continue disappearing do we need to look at how we may see this in the future? Will the vastly wealthy corporations gain more political power? Do we except the creation of an under-class and if not how do we prevent it happening? Does our views of what constitutes "work" and how it is rewarded have to change?
None of this is that far in the future and I wonder what you think the answers could be.
Amazon are advertising "tours" of their distribution centres?
They are, and someone I know was talking about it, and 'jokingly' said that it would make her feel better to go and look at people on zero hours/minimum wage.
I was appalled - she was a shop assistant when she worked, so not a captain of industry herself, for what that's worth. It reminded me of the tours of London's East End that gave rise to the term 'slumming it'. Horrible.
Mechanisation has surely always been with us from the invention of a spade through the Industrial Revolution to today. I recently saw a snapshot on a TV programme of the Ford factory in Dagenham, employing, if I remember correctly, 45,000 in its heyday and just 3,000 today; but now it assembles more cars. It is an on-going process which every generation since at least 1760 had had to contend with, endure and enjoy in different measure.
In my lifetime, secretarial work, communications, banking and retailing have already changed beyond recognition. Military operations are conducted by robots. The list goes on.
Still, we have employment higher than ever. Of course, our population is higher than ever and people will question what type of jobs now have but that is not new.
Change and adapting to change is part of life assuming, of course, the planet still supports life.
We may have higher unemployment Cunco but is that spreading the wealth or creating an underclass? Of course, change and adaption are part of progression but not always a good part for a large number which could include you, me and offspring.
Are you suggesting we should just accept what happens? Even in your rather "laissez-faire" view of progress, you question if we will still have a planet that will support life. Perhaps that is exactly where some of the new jobs will come from - ensuring that we do?
That should have read "we may have higher EMployment."
Still, we have employment higher than ever.
'Employment' based on anyone working one hour per fortnight being counted as 'employed'. The excuse used for this weasel accounting is that it is an internationally recognised measure. Which it is, I've researched this in the past.
But one hour per fortnight will not be sufficient to support one person, let alone a family and I doubt that any sane person would recognise it as 'employment' at all.
Like him or not- he understands the issues well - and those who think nirvana will be achieved this year maybe should listen
www.facebook.com/
The is no solution to the Irish Border, no solution for Gibraltar, and so many other issues- and if we refuse to align, we will not be able to export to EU, our biggest market.
One Brexit MEP even had the stupidity to complain the other day, that soon we won't be represented in Brussels 
I don't suggest 'progress' is easy. Change is a challenge and a challenge can be daunting. I was just try to point out that mechanisation and all aspects of the computer revolution are not new. Once a new invention is made, the ramifications can be enormous as in the Industrial Revolution and, more recently, the invention of computers. Once a significant pebble is dropped in the pond, the ripples or waves are difficult to predict and probably impossible to control.
Underclasses exist and perhaps were prevalent in a large city like London in and before Victorian times. Since that time, attitudes have changed becoming more socially liberal and supportive. We may hope they will remain and become more effective but, if the challenge to the planet proves as severe as some predict, who knows how people will react? The challenge of meeting the needs and expectations of 7+ bn people (up from just 1.6 bn in 1900) may be too much.
To meet that challenge, we may actually need artificial intelligence.
When I replied to GracesGranMK3 I was unaware of the previous 2 comments.
Maise; I haven't researched the employment figures so I can't say what percentage are jobs that deliver a 'living wage'. It is certainly a point to bear in mind.
Jura2 I don't know if your comment was a side-swipe at me (hardly looking for Nirvana!) or some other 'him'. In any case, I did not think this was an overtly Brexit thread and I don't propose to make it one.
MaizieD Apologies for misspelling your name. It was sloppy of me.
It has been stated in this thread that mechanisation has been in the British economy since the industrial revolution which is very true. In that, the working population has had to adapt to meet change throughout many years as technology closed many avenues of employment, but at the same time opened up others.
By example to the above, the invention of the internal combustion engine brought to an end many thousands of lines of employment such as Farriers, Smiths, wheelwrights etc. However, the internal combustion engine brought forward many thousands of jobs in car production and all the service industries that sprang up to support the running of those vehicles.
Today we are witnessing artificial intelligence and robotics once again bringing about large-scale employment loses in traditional industries. However, once again we see new industries opening up that have the ability to "soak up" the job losses brought about by technological development in oldrer Industries.
In the above the question has become, I feel, one of does the working population in Britain still retain the adaptability that is necessary to engage in and seek employment in those new industries.
The recycling industry has opened up in the last decade and now offer employment to many thousands who are prepaid to work in what is often a dirty unattractive occupation that frequently involves long unsocial hours and weekend working. Therefore, is the person made redundant as a sales assistant from one of the now readily closing department stores, be prepared to accept an offer of employment in Britains now ever-expanding recycling industry.
From my experience of engaging in the recycling and environment industries for workplace safety reasons, it would seem that many of Britains working population are not prepared to work in such places. The most common complaint I hear from managers in recycling centres is that they cannot recruit the numbers of staff they require, and that restricts the growth of the industry.
Sadly, in what has been described as Britains second Industrial Revolution the United Kingdom workforce does not seem to contain the adaptability that it held in Britains first industrial revolution, at least not at this point in time.
Cunco ''Jura2 I don't know if your comment was a side-swipe at me (hardly looking for Nirvana!) or some other 'him'. In any case, I did not think this was an overtly Brexit thread and I don't propose to make it one.''
'him' is George Osborne.
I think that as far as the UK is concerned, the 'new economic order' is tied very very closely to the effect of Brexit- like it or not.
It's not always whether the person is prepared to do the work, although they may feel very resentful if the change is what they perceive as a downward one, the challenge can also be whether they are skilled in that area or able to acquire the skills. This is where the government can help to smooth the path of change if they decide to do so.
I also think investment by owners can be an issue. UK management has grown used to a cheap and malleable workforce. During the industrial revolution that is exactly what the owners depended on. When we look back we are horrified at the work conditions. I thought rag picking went out in Dickens time and that we were now advanced enough to make machines that can do it.
Farming industries in the East of England have said very clearly that if they can't access cheap and reliable labour from Eastern Europe to pick fruit and veg, and work the fields- their only choice would become automation. Totally Brexit related.
And they have struggled to access that Labour this year.
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