Globalisation and free trade creating jobs

In the Daily Telegraph on Saturday was a report that Hornby Group, manufacturer of model trains, Scalextric slot car sets, Corgi model cars and Airfix model planes, has enjoyed substantial growth thanks to outsourcing much production to China.

Yes I can hear the moans from the left "our jobs gone to foreign folk in China". In fact when current CEO Frank Martin joined it employed 120 people in its UK premises in Margate, now it employs 150 - and that is following shifting manufacturing to China. Why?

When he joined it had sales of £24m p.a. with pre-tax profits of an abysmal £1.4m. Now sales are £56m with profits of £8m. Part of it is the combination of Thomas the Tank Engine and Harry Potter reviving interest in model trains, but more importantly outsourcing allowed production costs to be lowered substantially - so more could be invested in new products.

"Before the move to China, there might have been one new model locomotive every three years. We are now introducing to the UK on average four new locos every year and the same applies to Scalextric, where there might have been one new car introduced each year and we are now introducing between 12 and 15 new cars each year."

So you see design staff have trebled, and more products mean more sales. In addition, lower production costs allow for more detailed and authentic designs to be produced at prices consumers are willing to buy.

So better products, jobs in a poor country and more (better paying) jobs in the UK. Isn't the free market oppressive? Read the full story here.

The spin of smear.

Idiot Savant should know better than to put words into someone's mouth by claiming "Former National Party leader Don Brash wishes he'd been more radical and autocratic during his time in Parliament."
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The article he quotes from never says the word autocratic. It does say "stamping his authority", which is about announcing policy over the heads of his colleagues, not being politically autocratic. That's the realm of the left and the conservative right, which he is hardly a member of.
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After all, autocracy is part of the leftwing project of higher taxes for the more successful, state subsidised and protected monopolies of healthcare and education, and regulating what people can do with their own property.
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Since when is less government more autocracy, unless you think the warm bosom of the state run by the people for the people is not autocratic. Honestly, who can think Brash would be as autocratic as Helen Clark, who has run indisputably been in charge since 1999?

Matt McCarten's mindless musings

Lindsay Mitchell and Cactus Kate have both written well on this, we should remember what Matt McCarten's great political achievement has been - the virtual demise of the Alliance. During his reign the Alliance lost the Greens, and then lost its modest personality cult of a leader (his party is still in Parliament, in the form of him).

He thinks laissez-faire capitalism is this "Its ideology is quite simple: we're all essentially greedy and we should be free to make as much money as we can. If we exploit others in the process - well, that's just the free market at work." It isn't that we are all essentially greedy as much as we should be free to do as we wish, as long as we don't initiate force or fraud against others. You see Matt approves of state violence, he thinks it is ok to steal, defraud, and spend other people's money against their will. However you might wonder why he still matters?

Why has Amnesty forgotten North Korea?

Amnesty rightfully calls on governments to address the worst human rights crises, though I question when it says "There is a growing demand from people for justice, freedom and equality" as to what the hell "equality" is. Creating equality can damn people more than letting things be.

It lists countries where it is clearly has the highest concern - China, Myanmar, Russia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iraq and the territory of Gaza.

However, what of North Korea? The only country that imprisons children as political prisoners, that runs the entire country as a prison - that condemns entire families when one speaks out of line. It is an Orwellian horror, but no it first mentions China - yes a place with many concerns, but which has also improved considerably over recent years. North Korea hasn't. It mentions the USA, and as much as modest torture by a Western liberal democracy is unacceptable, it is light years away from North Korea. Russia is getting worse again, which is a genuine cause for concern. It raises the issue of EU complicity with rendition.

This is all small fry compared to Zimbabwe, which itself is small fry compared to Darfur- perhaps the only instance comparable in scale to the North Korean prison state horror.

Amnesty says nothing, although deep in its website it does note North Korea. The Green Party remains absolutely silent about it, like it remains silent about human right abuses in Vietnam, but jumps on the China/Tibet bandwagon because it is popular - even though abuses of freedom and individual rights in China look like a holiday compared to North Korea, but are similar to Vietnam.

So how about it? Who the hell is going to stand up against the child torturing slave state run from Pyongyang? I'm convinced Amnesty doesn't support it, I'm also convinced the Greens don't, so why don't they bother? The more this is publicised, condemned and outrage is expressed, the sooner this will stop.

Labour to let Kedgley damage NZ trade policy

Sue Kedgley, hysterical hyperbolist, according to the Greens "is attending the High Level World Food Security Conference in Rome next week, as a member of the New Zealand delegation."

She is paying her own way, but by what measure does she have the right to be a member of the official delegation? Especially since she will be talking in a way that sabotages and undermines New Zealand's long standing (and bipartisan between Labour and National) call for the liberalisation of trade in agricultural commodities. New Zealand has argued for many years at the WTO that trade in food should be free from export subsidies (like manufactured products), free from trade distorting subsidies and free from non-tariff barriers to trade (that are not genuinely about biosecurity), with tariffs on food imports being capped and negotiated downwards.

Now Kedgley is going to mouth off nonsense like "We need to challenge the doctrine of free trade and accept that people's right to food, to be free from hunger, must have priority over an ideological fixation on allowing market forces to prevail at all costs."

For starters, there is no free trade in food, secondly why DO we need to challenge it? How do you guarantee this fictional "right to food", proposing a global social welfare scheme are you? How do you propose food production increase unless prices increase to encourage it? How about the boondoggle of subsidised biofuels, which Labour is continuing with, the Greens are supporting and which is contributing towards higher food costs worldwide? Diddling with the market doing wonders there isn't it? Thought of attacking the EU, USA and Japan for grossly distorting agricultural subsidies and protectionism which has stifled agricultural production in other countries?

No - you're a vapid idiot.

SO why the hell has Labour let this banal control freak loose on the world when she says "I expect there will be intense debate between the free trade marketeers and those who believe the free trade agenda is one of the causes of the present crises"

Yes New Zealand is the free trade promoter, and by no stretch of the imagination can anyone outside the manufactured propaganda laden hysteria of Kedgley can honestly assert free trade is to blame for higher food prices - because it simply doesn't exist in food.

Kedgley is a vapid control freak who has for years sought to ban what she hates, make us do what she likes, make us pay for what she thinks is good for us and tax what she doesn't like. She distorts, peddles hysterical unscientific nonsense again and again, and has been the snake oil merchant for opposing genetic engineering, and concern about "safe food".

This woman shouldn't be let near any conferences claiming to be speaking on behalf of New Zealand. At best her views are economic nonsense, and as shallow as the rhetoric in her press releases, at worst she will provide succuour to the agricultural protectionists in Brussels, Washington, Tokyo and Paris who want to continue undermining world trade in food, world food production and currently strip around 1-2% GDP growth p.a. from the NZ economy.

So why is Labour letting an anti-free trade nutcase argue against government trade policy at an international forum?