"Eastern Europe is where it's happening now"

[emubill]

Just listening to a programme on bbc1(i think) saying that eastern europe is the place to be. Alot of film making now happening in Lithuania - £10 per day for extras - skilled labour 25% that of the uk.
Any other opportunities out there?

nige

[Cornish Steve]

Just listening to a programme on bbc1(i think) saying that eastern europe is the place to be. Alot of film making now happening in Lithuania - £10 per day for extras - skilled labour 25% that of the uk.
Any other opportunities out there?

nige

Reducing our operating expenses and pumping more money into their economies so that they can buy more of our products so that our companies can hire more skilled people. Why are we so afraid of offshoring? Britain has always thrived on free trade.

[bwglaw]

Just listening to a programme on bbc1(i think) saying that eastern europe is the place to be. Alot of film making now happening in Lithuania - £10 per day for extras - skilled labour 25% that of the uk.
Any other opportunities out there?

nige

I am currently in the Republic of Georgia for a while working on a project. Labour here is cheap. I am having a brand-new apartment fitted out to a high standard for $13000, including all materials. Expensive by Georgian standards!

I am also here on another project developing business here.

[MinuWeb]

There are still good opportunities in all the former soviet states and eastern europe. I have been in Estonia now for several years and have seen alot of changes, especially as they try to catch up with the rest of europe. However salaries are low which encourages alot of companies to move their production over here /average salary here is about £275 / month with highly skilled people such as doctor / lawyers earning about £600 - 700 / month.

If you want to find opportunites in these countries the only way to do it is to live in one for a while, learn as much as you can about the people, the culture and the laws, chat to lots of others who have started businesses their, find out what problems they faced, normally huge amounts of red tape, long delays and unreliability will be the main areas of complaint.

[creospace]

I'm a British expat in Latvia, lots of opportunities here many of which I don’t have the funds to take advantage of. Labour price about the same as above.

But as VS says it's essential to learn the culture and business practices if you want to get along. One of the best ways to meet contacts is to teach English as a foreign language with a good school and you get to meet all sorts of important people!

Gary

[multilingual]

Hi all.

We concentrate on supplying language solutions for companies and individuals, concentrating primarily on the East European languages.

My wife is a Russian lawyer with an MA in linguistics, so the vast majority of our work tends to be legal, financial and business documents for the Russian sector. This is a huge market as the Russian language is still widely used in the former Soviet states.

It is a growing market, and there are lots of opportunities for those who get in there early. However, there is also quite a lot of 'wait and see' going on, especially in places like the Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as they still quite unstable.

We translate a lot of feasibilty studies for UK companies, and we also do an enormous amount of legal contracts relating to joint venture agreements. unfortunately, we also handle a lot of court translations for joint ventures that have gone pear-shaped.

We can help anyone who wants to look into the matter further, just drop me a PM and we can have a chat about what you want to achieve.

My advice would be: Look at any venture as a long term commitment and don't invest more than you can afford to lose. Make sure you get good legal help before you go in and, of course, get all your paperwork translated by someone who knows what they are doing.

JB

[Enigma121]

Reducing our operating expenses and pumping more money into their economies so that they can buy more of our products so that our companies can hire more skilled people. Why are we so afraid of offshoring? Britain has always thrived on free trade.

Britain also used to have a manufacturing industry. We used to employ millions of British people to produce the things that British people needed. Now all that is gone.

What is our main industry now? Gatherers of work for other countries?

I don't agree that we need to push more business abroad. We should be finding work that people here can be doing first.

[multilingual]

You can't really alter the natural course of an economic cycle, whether you like it or not.

All nations start out with primary industies being dominant, (farming/mining) and move on to secondry industries being the driving force (manufacturing), and finally end up with tertiery industry being the main core (services)

Different countries are at different stages of this chain, and we (along with the USA and many other developed nations) have a service based economy, where as Eastern Europe is still a primary/manufacturing based economy.

We can't compete with them without sending this country backwards I am afraid.

Many people moan about the loss of the mining industry, but RJB near to us have trouble recruiting workers.

30 years ago, people were happy to work in mines, on farms and in steelworks to earn a wage. Now farmers can't find any staff because no-one wants to do the job any more. It's easier to find a cushy job in a shop. Who wants to work 80 hours a week breaking their backs bagging potatoes in a freezing cold shed?

So Eastern European workers come here to fill the gaps. Nocton farms in Lincolnshire have over 100 Polish staff and they are just one of over a dozen I could mention. Construction is another example of an industry that is heavily dependant in migrant workers.

Economic cycles, can't do much about it.

Just need to be in a position to benefit from it.

JB

[Jayne]

Well said Jonathan.

It shouldn't matter where people work, or who they are or what they do. People in the Uk should be thinking, how could I use this to my advantage to improve UK businesses.

I can see why the Farmers use people from abroad, we too find it hard to get staff. The ones we have moan about UK conditions, ie pay, holidays etc and how the goverment should give them more hand outs for their kids. People from abroad just get on with the job and work hard.

Business is a big, world wide circle, what goes around, comes around :D

Another of Grans sayings..like it, or lump it! :D

Jayne

[Cornish Steve]

Reducing our operating expenses and pumping more money into their economies so that they can buy more of our products so that our companies can hire more skilled people. Why are we so afraid of offshoring? Britain has always thrived on free trade.

Britain also used to have a manufacturing industry. We used to employ millions of British people to produce the things that British people needed. Now all that is gone.

What is our main industry now? Gatherers of work for other countries?

I don't agree that we need to push more business abroad. We should be finding work that people here can be doing first.

I wondered who would take the bait. :)

For sure, free trade means change. It meant dramatic change in the 19th century. It meant change in the 20th century, and some industries are no more. On the other hand, Britain now leads the world in some fast-growing, high-technology industries. That would never have happened if we had thrown up trade barriers around our borders and tried to do everything ourselves.

It's the government's job to encourage and accommodate change, so that regions of the country that are affected by shutdowns have the opportunity to grow in other ways. As business leaders and entrepreneurs, we should be putting our efforts into markets that are profitable, exciting, and that take advantage of British skills and education - and finding new markets for those things overseas. Why not exchange low-paying and monotonous jobs for exciting and creative ones?

Cornwall is a good example of a region that has lost its industries. Fishing has been wiped out by European and Russian factory ships; the last mine shut down a few years ago; farm ownership is slowly moving out of the county. Should the government subsidise the fishermen and miners so they can keep working at a loss? Or should the government make Cornwall a centre of excellence for emerging technologies (e.g., the Cornish School of Software Engineering)? To its shame, it has done neither. As a result, people like me had little option but to leave.

We can't fight inevitable change, but we can use it to our advantage.

[emubill]

Some great comments - thanks folks.
I originate from Sheffield and during hols from college used to deliver soft drinks around yorkshire at the hieght of the miners strike and the closure of the steel mills in sheffield. At the time my dad lost his job in the mills, friends and neighbours lost jobs down the pit. Brother fought brother on the picket lines and to this day the scars are still there.
However, dad always said the mills and the pits were no place for his family and none of us ended up there. Sheffield is now being re-generated and my adopted home has overcome ths loss of the fishing fleet.
Unemployment is low, so much so that the largest employer in grimsby Youngs Seafood - who I work part-time for - had to go to Poland to recruit. The young men and women who came over are a credit to their nation. They are always on time, do not have days off sick, work hard at whatever job you ask them to do and are polite and even dare i say it grateful for the opportunity. Most of them will work here for a year or so then go back to Poland to go to university having earned enough to see them through.
It has been my pleasure to work with them.
It also goes to show that where opportunities exist someone will always take up the challenge to convert opportunity into success.

Nige

[Enigma121]

I wondered who would take the bait. :)

For sure, free trade means change. It meant dramatic change in the 19th century. It meant change in the 20th century, and some industries are no more. On the other hand, Britain now leads the world in some fast-growing, high-technology industries. That would never have happened if we had thrown up trade barriers around our borders and tried to do everything ourselves.

It's the government's job to encourage and accommodate change, so that regions of the country that are affected by shutdowns have the opportunity to grow in other ways. As business leaders and entrepreneurs, we should be putting our efforts into markets that are profitable, exciting, and that take advantage of British skills and education - and finding new markets for those things overseas. Why not exchange low-paying and monotonous jobs for exciting and creative ones?

Cornwall is a good example of a region that has lost its industries. Fishing has been wiped out by European and Russian factory ships; the last mine shut down a few years ago; farm ownership is slowly moving out of the county. Should the government subsidise the fishermen and miners so they can keep working at a loss? Or should the government make Cornwall a centre of excellence for emerging technologies (e.g., the Cornish School of Software Engineering)? To its shame, it has done neither. As a result, people like me had little option but to leave.

We can't fight inevitable change, but we can use it to our advantage.

I'm in danger of breaking my own rule on staying away from politics here.

To use some of your own arguments here. We aren't just giving away "hard labour" work any more. Our approach a so laxed that we are giving away ALL our work including the nice office jobs, high tech industries, software development, call centres etc. etc. We are becoming work "trafficers" for Eastern Europe, China and the Indian subcontinent.

I'm firmly with the centre of excellence approach, subsidies don't work. We MUST develop, concentrate skills and put British people and British firms first or we will suffer economic collapse in a few years time.

We are in serious danger of reaching the point where we don't actually do anything but claim benefit or make plans to emigrate from Britain.

Rant over.