Eliane Glaser
-
Spoke of how the big
corporations and the government (‘elites’ as she puts it) are displaying
apparent vulnerability in such a way that we do not notice what their
true agendas are.
The government is
making cuts to education and in other public sector bodies. Glaser argues that
the money it is trying to save in this way already exists in the hands of 0.1%
of Britain’s population – the richest people.
I felt her examples
were quite one sided – very ‘left wing’ with not much holistic overview.
Later during the
group talk there was a general agreement that her arguments were one sided. She
gave an impression that she had not informed us of different aspects regarding
the subjects she had brought up.
She made me wonder
how much of a culprit to this phenomenon am I. This is because I realised that
until she made these comments I was seriously convinced that both elites
mentioned previously are indeed losing their power.
Evan Davis-
Started off by
proclaiming that Britain’s greatest contribution to the world is the factory.
Davis’s talk focused around the attempt to understand and explain how developed
countries make their money.
Despite the UK’s
apparent lack of imported goods it is still considered as one of the world’s
strongest economies. The lifestyle it’s citizens (especially Londoners) is very
high, so how is this high level maintained?
His argument is that
after a while, affluent countries discover that they don’t have to physically
make all that they design (‘outsource’ mentality). The physical production is
the moved to other countries (Japan in the past, now China) whilst the intellectual
property remains ‘in-house’ to become the affluent country’s export.
Davis pointed out
that amongst other services, higher education is one of the UK’s most successful
export.
His argument was
very well structured, this was made particularly apparent in comparison to the
first speaker’s.
