"Boom or Bust", page-8

Someone mentioned earlier:

"Why do most people not get to enjoy the boom, but we are all affected by the bust".

As a former factory manager, I saw a lot of this thinking.

Company was doing well, so the unions held a gun to our head, demanding 6, 8, 10% per annum increases, and we paid them because we couldn't afford to not supply the market.

Then when things turned bad? The company shut down our factories due to costs being out of control and moved manufacturing offshore.

Did the employees have tidy little nest eggs as a result of the bumper, well above cpi pay increases?

No: their kids were in private instead of public schools and they were living in houses they now couldn't afford the mortgage for. Their discretionary spending account was in the negative due to trading up from a nice camping holiday to a trip to Europe.

We quite often overly enjoy the boom period, but the real killer is we don't plan for the bust, and when it comes it is crippling.

Sad to see so many jobs offshore, but the bed we are in is the bed we made.

Anyway, enough sadness, bring on the drilling, for which I AM WELL PREPARED FOR due to my well organised saving and redundancy payment!