Our loss

The sight of the Flying Scotsman steaming across the 'Ribblehead Viaduct' brought tears of emotion as one reflected how we have thrown away our past glory. This lump of machinery is a living example of the skills that used to exist and have been allowed to decay in a few decades as we lost our senses and took the easy route, like a hopeless gambler in the banking  casino.
From motor cars to railway locomotion, from cloth to porcelain someone decided that our hard won skills were of no value, rather a flutter on the movement of the price of a currency was where our future lay.
It has always been the case that interim generations absorb defeat and create new opportunities. But as one who grew up used to seeing a map of the world, covered in red signifying our influence, who on his travels saw the heavy machinery made in the workshops and factories based across this small island, who could travel through the cities and see the architecture repeated, city after city a footprint of our achievement across the world it's hard to listen to the politicians praising our last and only commercial enterprise, the retail shops who supply this consumer mad society. It's like watching a mouse on a wheel rushing nowhere. Where do we get the cash to spend on products we have to import if we don't export and gain earnings ourselves.
Borrowing on near to zero interest rates can only last until the rates go up and we see how really bankrupt we are.
The opportunity to borrow to invest in educating our youngsters in skills for jobs so that we could complete the orders for tasks that are needed world wide. If we as a nation had taken the opportunity to modernise our working environment and taught management the value in their company lay in the skills and the interface between shop floor and the executive. If we had understood that the human wastage which goes on generation after generation is not only scandalous but erodes the fabric of our nation into a two tier affair where the better off lampoon the poor with TV programs depicting Benefit Recipients as cretins.