Greed Britain..?18 3 30 (19) 25 1 31

As a young fellow you could still think of Britain as being Great Britain. If for no other reason than because the first maps of the world I saw at that time were still largely coloured red for the British Empire, though of course the Empire's days in my childhood were numbered... After WW ll the former colonies and British Possessions increasingly wanted to secede: 1947 saw India leave then in 1948 Palestine was wrenched from the British by the Israelis. Thereafter huge swathes of Africa departed, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, etc., etc., etc...

Meanwhile Britain continued to spend up to of 12% of GDP on defence, continued to build aircraft like the Avro Jump Jet made as the Hawker Siddeley Harrier which distinguished itself in the Falkland's War of 1982, and saw armed conflict in many parts of the world as I was growing up: Korea in the early 1950s, Cyprus into the 1960s, Suez, a right royal disaster that was in 1956...

When I was a University student in 1968-1969 and 1970-1971 during Optional Studies we had a United Nations Fellow come to give us a talks about Britain's place in the world and it was pointed out that a major role was demanded of the Brits by the Soviet Union for example as one of the victors in WW ll... At the time I recalled how Britain was being left behind economically by countries like West Germany and Japan who weren't permitted to rearm as the so-called vanquished of WW ll, when I guess these peoples were happy not to be saddled with huge expenses to feed these war machines?

Throughout much of the period I review we saw once Great British Industry go to the wall: in the 70s the motor car industries from excessive demands by trade unionists. Shipping, as Britain lost much of its capacity to build ships in the years Jack Jones won a dispute for the Dockers Union to get jobs for life for his men in the port of Liverpool, only for the Stevedoring Companies not to hire any more people for the next 20 years to the extent the youngest Docker in employment in Liverpool was 47 years old, whilst the port of Felixstowe thrived with non-unionised labour...

For me personally though Greed Britain had arrived big time by the 1980s when the company that bought the company I started working for in 1975 was taken over in 1986, which had begun the 1980s as a £40 million company to end the decade having grown to £1000 million. Their policy was to grow 50% pa: 25% by so-called organic growth and 25% by acquisition. When they bought the company that employed me for £15 million, straight away it was said to be worth £20 million and so there was a £5 million profit for starters, and so on... 

By the end of 1987 however they, the new owners, were not doing so well and so to meet their annual budget they summarily dismissed 20 people including a Marketing Manager they had only taken on at the start of 1987 and sadly a guy called Richard D who as Personnel Manager, since before the takeover, got the task of making the unfortunate people redundant, and finally being dismissed himself, so desperate were the new owners to meet their budget there was no thought given to what is reasonable humane behaviour anymore! 

How can I be so bitter about these events you may like to ask when I would have to come clean and admit my name was also on that same list, as one of the 20 due for the chop?

Yeah I was an employee of 13 years standing and had just completed the best job I ever did for the company: also the biggest task the new owners had given to me to do 2 years before to re-establish the quality of one of the product lines which had figured in the reason the company was vulnerable to take-over in the first place. That they were unsuccessful owes as much to good luck as to good fortune because the task they gave me brought me into contact with all their customers for the products in question and not only that but put me in contact with their manufacturing facilities as well, so that it was the greater knowledge I possessed that I was subsequently persuaded to leave for: resigning my post on the very day they would otherwise have made me redundant. 

The Customer’s country I moved to wasn’t so greedy then, and possessed a more humane way of doing business, though I would have to say that it too would appear to becoming greedier as time goes by..? Happy Easter everyone as I hope the world can one day reverse the trend to people being ever greedier for money. That's if it is going to survive well into the future..?