No quick end to impact of recession
RECESSION ending? The progressive damage that is being done to the economy is beyond belief.
My company has been built up over 40 years from a four-man start-up and is now a world-leading niche manufacturer supplying equipment to the process industries. Most profits having been ploughed back, it has financial reserves that are the envy of every predator that approaches, yet steps have been put in place to guarantee continuity and control.
The financial debacle caused most process industries to halt uncommitted expenditure, resulting in orders falling off a cliff. Our workers accepted short-time working or 20%-30% pay cuts so redundancies and the loss of invaluable skills could be avoided.
I could strip assets and live very well on the proceeds for my remaining years. Instead, I live frugally and squander about £20,000 a month to subsidise what I consider is a national asset. I expect recovery to be slow, so irreplaceable firms will continue to go under for reasons outside their control.
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Lyndon Bates Sale, Manchester
FSA must put up or shut up shop
IF the Financial Services Authority has neither the will nor wherewithal to impose control of greedy incompetent bankers from plundering further the taxpayers' coffers with obscene bonuses, then it deserves to be closed down forthwith.
Bill Newham Worsley, Manchester
Transport: London is spoilt for choice
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SO a whole consortium of the great and good thinks London "needs a rail and Tube upgrade" (Business Letters, last week).
Maybe, but not until the rest of the country gets a rail service that is half as good as what already exists in the capital.
Tim Mickleburgh Grimsby, Humberside
America has kept shale on standby
YOUR article on America's oil and gas shale reserves (Energy and Environment, last week) was far from a revelation to me.
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I recall being part of a lecture in my early university days in which an extremely erudite and knowledgable don described how America possessed the largest deposits of oil and gas shales in the world.
A strategic decision taken well before American "isolationism" dictated that they would happily import oil from other countries, knowing that those reserves were finite. Thereafter, America would exploit its own resources locked in the shale.
The lecture was given in 1966.
Stuart Hall South Bank, York
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