The era of industrial Britain, where a large section of our workforce provided cheap labour in factories and processing goods, is over.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In short, industrialism is over.
Our workforce is very co-operative, very flexible, easy to work with and one of the big selling points. The idea that Britain is still back in the labour market of the '70s is utterly bizarre.
When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.
If you step back and look at technology from every era, it has displaced jobs but also created a lot of jobs.
Two hundred years ago, industrialisation ruined the labour force. In the modern age, especially in the West or America, people who are 'efficient,' who can bracket their emotions off, tend to win. But at what cost to the rest of us?
There were a lot of manufacturing jobs lost over a long period of time and particularly after - during the Great Recession. We've had some recovery in manufacturing employment as the economy's recovered.
For those unfortunate enough to experience it, long-term unemployment - now, as in the 1930s - is a tragedy. And, for society as a whole, there is the danger that the productive capacity of a significant portion of the labour force will be impaired.
There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.
Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.
To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.