It’s all a sign of the times, I fear. After all, economics really isn’t much use for political spin but psychology and political theory are. How long will it be before one of the newer universities includes a module on: Lying effectively, in the political studies vocational course intended for aspiring politicians? Dr Goebbels was a philosopher, not an economist. I really believe there are politicians in high places now who think that if they decide the political case for the Euro or burgeoning fiscal deficits or whatever is all that counts then that is the end of the matter as downstream economic implications are merely incidental. “All that matters is victory or defeat. If we conquer, the business world will be fully indemnified. We must not reckon profit and loss according to the book, but only according to political needs. There must be no calculation of cost. I require that you do all that you can and to prove that part of the national fortune is in your hands. Whether new investment can be written off in every case is a matter of indifference.” - quoted in John Hiden: Republican and Fascist Germany (1996), p. 128, from speech in 1936 by Goering, economics minister in the Third Reich.

Psychology and political theory aren’t much use to companies when it comes to “Make or Buy” decisions or anticipating the outcomes from reducing/increasing barriers to trade and capital mobility coupled with declining/increasing costs of transport and communications. Nor on the commercial merits in corporate strategies of concentrating on core competences versus spreading risk - think Marconi.

Not sure I’ve much to add to what’s been said on the implications of population ageing in Europe. There are the debates on the fiscal sustainability of state pay-as-you-go pensions versus funded pensions. I go along with the official rhetoric about extending opportunities for retirees to work longer. The trouble is that with some exceptions new EU employment rights tend to discourage employers from offering part-time jobs. Indeed, I suspect that was one of the undisclosed intentions wished on governments by trade unions, which don’t really like part-timers. In the “west” - unlike the “east” - we also have an increasingly youth-focused culture. As Kenneth Clarke likes to remind anyone who listens, Konrad Adenauer first became Chancellor in West Germany in 1949 when he was 73 and continued in that capacity until he was 87. As his term in office coincided with the German economic miracle, perhaps there is something to be said for age over inexperience.

I think I can hear the very distant sound of chickens clucking on their way home.

Bob, a parrallel does occur to me here with the energy depletion debate. We don’t have to run out of energy, there is nothing pre-determined. There may be a new technology just about to come on line (BTW the Chinese may be working quite seriously on alternative energies, they have a direct interest) there may be, but we have no guarantee.

The same goes for the jobs market. There may be relief in sight, just around the corner - there are a lot of technological factors we can’t forsee, but we don’t know, and there is no guarantee.

BTW II: in 1801 Britain had a major population explosion lying just out in front. Today we face declining and ageing populations. It is the confluence of these two, high-end outsourcing and ageing, which get me scratching my head. This, I think, is the unravelling K should be worring about.

You’re absolutely right, Edward, about medical support services going online but after reflecting, the potential was there with the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Australia, started back in 1928.

Patients in the outback would radio in to discuss symptoms with the doctor over the air and he would fly out to a local airstrip if the symptoms sounded sufficiently serious and incapacitating for him to make a home visit. Otherwise, it was advice by radio and prescriptions dispensed by post. Lower cost and more dependable telecommunications means that more diagnostic services can be performed remotely and patients can now fly out to see the doctor instead of the other way round. From what I’ve read, a few are now suggesting the possibility of remote surgery to avoid all the flying about. A patient could visit a local clinic and go on the operating table there for a robot guided by a remotely located specialist surgeon to do the difficult bits of an operation. A step further on and the robots would have artificial intelligence thereby reducing the need for expert human intervention . . .

Since clever computers can now beat even the best grand masters at chess that looks to be technically feasible and I suppose would represent an ultimate realisation of that adage for the Info Age: Think Global, Act Local.

The fundamental is that reducing barriers to trade and capital mobility, coupled with declining transport and communications costs, are changing market opportunities and we need to think through the implications pretty sharply and soon. Some high-end services can be readily sourced online from remote, lower-cost suppliers and part of that sub-set will be. What’s more, I can’t think of anyway of stopping that absent governmental controls on Internet traffic, a thought which has already occurred to some with power.

As you know, I’m none too inclined to award laurels to Tony Blair - and still less to IDS - but Blair was right about the priority of: Education, Education, Education. In the last resort, the value and quality of the services we can individually put on the job market depends on the skills and knowledge we have individually gained and can apply. The jobs most vulnerable to online transfer will tend to be those routine, low-skill jobs in all the call centres set up with government assistance in areas of high unemployment. The irony is that on the October official unemployment stats, London now has the highest unemployment rate of all the standard UK regions. Mind you, those campaigning to move some of the remaining 20% of civil service jobs out of London won’t mention that - nor that London taxpayers are contributing about ?20bn more a year to government reveneus over government spending in London.

Britain’s first census was held in 1801 - the year Pitt resigned as prime minister in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. Suppose some outstanding demographer had said then that Britain’s population would treble over the next hundred years, as it did. A likely question in the Commons would have been: But what employment will there be for all those extra souls? That would have been difficult to answer - there were no railways then, nor steam ships made of iron and steel, hardly a chemicals industry and certainly no gas, electricity, telephones, motor cars or aeroplanes - and there wasn’t much effective medicine either beyond vaccination and a few herbal remedies, like foxglove leaves for digitalis. Doubtless, some loon would have called for a National Plan.

C - Thank you for your explanation about Dell, all of which must account for how a company, founded only in 1984, came to have the leading share of the global PC market by 2001 and is currently ranked 33 by market capitalisation in the BusinessWeek Global 1000 for 2003: http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2003/0328_global1000.pdf

Obviously not Bob. But in an evolutionary sense we are moving towards information. This was the point of all the ‘weightless economy” stuff that was so popular in the late 90’s - every year the US GDP weighs less. The labour intensive part of services stays. This is my point. But since this labour becomes relatively expensive, there is a pressure to find tech solutions to outsource.

Take medicine. Soon we are told we will all have a card with our genome data. Question is, do we need to sit face to face with a doctor to get it read? The NHS is already getting into this slowly. My son tells me in Manchester some aspect of blood sample analysis is already done in India. All the radiography analysis work can go. He even makes the point that the NHS have been discussing outsourcing waiting lists to France: a much better bet might be to Eastern Europe. Invest in hospitals, fly the patentients in an out, and give them the op for a fraction of the cost. I’m only half joking. The Indians are trying to interest US health insurers in doing this.

Another point: the non-EU part of Eastern Europe is absolutely crawling with underworked scientists. The Indian president’s visit to Bulgaria last week is an indication of this. They are anticipating so much work that they may find bottlenecks in some areas, so they are looking to ’secondary outsource’ themselves.

Now, even if it seems so, this is not meant to be an alarmist rant. It is a wake up call. I am not advocating protectionism. I am not saying everyone’s jobs are going tomorrow. But there will be important consequences. The reason for the move is price. The reason for the price differential: they have been so desperately poor, and the world so extremely unequal. Now the proverbial s*** is finally hitting the fan. There is going to be a correction.

Why can’t people see this? I have a feeling it’s because of a collective ’soft racism’. The third world countries tend not to believe it, because they’re so accustomed to the OECD crowd being better. The have a kind of inferiority feeling. The left can’t see it, because capitalism HAS to condemn these countries to being poor, that’s the reason for being on the left, someone needs your help. If they could do it alone this wouldn’t work. And the right can’t see it because they’re patriotic (or worse outright racist) and can’t believe that all these yellow, brown and black people can ever present a threat. So there you are. Nobody sees it coming.

I’m not getting involved in this too much, but the Dell argument does have a point: EU and US companies can ‘hollow down’ to being Nike-style branding outfits. And don’t forget, with the artwork and image coming from China. Until Fons brought it home to me I’d entirely forgotten, but hasn’t anyone else noticed: Chinese art seems to be the ‘next big thing’.

Finally, don’t be complacent on the ‘US only’ factor. The US may well have employment problems internally, but their corporations will be lean, mean and hungry. So just watch this space. I may not be working here next week!

Technology company just expresses in which field of business the company works, not were it expertise lies