kick start british industry
Discussion
Why don't we British follow the example set by the French and only buy cars built in their own country.
Go to France and 90% of cars on the roads are - Renault,citroen or peugeot. Next time anyone wants to buy a new car, ask the salesman where the car was built, if abroad explain you only want to purchase a vehicle built in this country.There is a reasonable choice about.
Nissan Micra + Qashqai- Sunderland
Honda Civic + CR-V- Swindon
Lotus - Hethel, Norfolk
Bentley Arnage – Crewe
Toyota Avensis + Auris - Burnaston
Jaguar XF - Castle Bromwich
Land Rover Freelander - Solihull
Mini Cooper + one- Oxford
Morgan – Malvern Link, Worcestershire
Aston Martin DB9 - Gaydon, Warwick
even Spyker - comming soon.
from 2012 the new Vauxhall astra
Caterham / westfield and probably more
It is going to be a long time before the message gets through but by not buying new cars built abroad more cars will have to be built here, and if you want a wider choice just buy second hand for a few years.
peter
Go to France and 90% of cars on the roads are - Renault,citroen or peugeot. Next time anyone wants to buy a new car, ask the salesman where the car was built, if abroad explain you only want to purchase a vehicle built in this country.There is a reasonable choice about.
Nissan Micra + Qashqai- Sunderland
Honda Civic + CR-V- Swindon
Lotus - Hethel, Norfolk
Bentley Arnage – Crewe
Toyota Avensis + Auris - Burnaston
Jaguar XF - Castle Bromwich
Land Rover Freelander - Solihull
Mini Cooper + one- Oxford
Morgan – Malvern Link, Worcestershire
Aston Martin DB9 - Gaydon, Warwick
even Spyker - comming soon.
from 2012 the new Vauxhall astra
Caterham / westfield and probably more
It is going to be a long time before the message gets through but by not buying new cars built abroad more cars will have to be built here, and if you want a wider choice just buy second hand for a few years.
peter
I read a superb article the other day written by someone who Digga senior rates highly, Richard Sharp (he was chief economist at JCB, way back when the old man was UK excavator sales manager) which focussed on the decline of the West Midlands in terms of world industry.
Clearly the Midlands was quite literally the epicentre of the industrial revolution. One could argue that, in the absence of teh Uk leading the way someone, somehwere else may have done, but they didn;t and right up until WW2, the UK lead the way.
Successive London centric governments may have paved the way for a very successful (despite people's ire against bankers) financial and service sector, but at the cost of employment and other sectors of the economy. Out transport system is crap and, likening the UK to a workplace where everyone's shoe laces are tied together, it's no wonder we struggle to fulfil our potential. The waste, each day, of billions of pounds worth of vehicles, goods, services, tradespeople, professionals, all doing nothing more than sitting, picking their noses in traqffic queues is maddening.
Clearly the Midlands was quite literally the epicentre of the industrial revolution. One could argue that, in the absence of teh Uk leading the way someone, somehwere else may have done, but they didn;t and right up until WW2, the UK lead the way.
Richard Sharp of Sharp Practice said:
a relative decline from about 1945 onwards, although this did not become apparent for almost two decades... The West Midlands may have been the centre for tranposrtation networks, but what needs to be remembered is that geogrpahically it is furthest from UK ports. London has now become the centre of transportation... the West Midlands a forgotten region. It now costs more to move goods from the West Midlands to port than from the port to the Far East. Note also that the cost of labour has become a relatively small proprtion of the totla cost of manufacture; the overall cost of transport outweighs it in importance...
UK investment in infrastructure runs at 50% of the levels uin the rest of Europe (1.3% of GDP). To raise the UK to the European average equates to roughly £14 billion per year... (but) it is easliy shown that this will pay for itself.. the return on infrastructure investment is 25% per year for the economy as a whole and lasts between 20 and 40 years.
Personally, I do prefer to buy British and generally (see garge details) have done. These days, IMHO, British built is as good as (if not in some cases better than) buying a British brand. As the OP points out, it is possible to buy from any number of (very repuatable) manufacturers who produce in the UK.UK investment in infrastructure runs at 50% of the levels uin the rest of Europe (1.3% of GDP). To raise the UK to the European average equates to roughly £14 billion per year... (but) it is easliy shown that this will pay for itself.. the return on infrastructure investment is 25% per year for the economy as a whole and lasts between 20 and 40 years.
Successive London centric governments may have paved the way for a very successful (despite people's ire against bankers) financial and service sector, but at the cost of employment and other sectors of the economy. Out transport system is crap and, likening the UK to a workplace where everyone's shoe laces are tied together, it's no wonder we struggle to fulfil our potential. The waste, each day, of billions of pounds worth of vehicles, goods, services, tradespeople, professionals, all doing nothing more than sitting, picking their noses in traqffic queues is maddening.
Worthy though the sentiment of "buy British" is, why does it have to be coupled with the suggestion that Britain no longer has and manufacturing????
We've had the unions, the tabloids and a whole bunch of other people with an axe to grind or an agenda to push telling us for years that Britain's manufacturing sector has been destroyed, and many of these will point to France as an example for us to emulate.
Answer me this. If the French are so bloody good at supporting French manufacturing, how come we manufacture more than they do? According to the UN, the French manufacturing sector produced goods valued at $306Bn in 2008, compared with the UK which produced goods valued at $323Bn.
The only two large developed nations with significantly higher manufacturing output per capita than the UK are Germany and Japan, and it's not exactly doing the Japanese any favours looking at the state their economy is in!
The UK, France, Italy and the US all have broadly similar output per capita once fluctuations in relative currency values are taken into account, and China us running at roughly 20% of that.
By all means encourage British manufacturing, but please can we stop the traditional British malaise of talking what's there into the ground by pretending we've already f
ked up the manufacturing industry we've got??? Despite what the unions & tabloids would have us believe, we've got the 6th largest manufacturing sector in the World, and it's cloud cuckoo land to think that we're ever going to return to an industrial landscape of millions of men heading in through giant factory gates any more unless we want to start getting competitive with the likes of the Chinese from a cost of labour perspective.
Kermit power said:
Worthy though the sentiment of "buy British" is, why does it have to be coupled with the suggestion that Britain no longer has and manufacturing????
We've had the unions, the tabloids and a whole bunch of other people with an axe to grind or an agenda to push telling us for years that Britain's manufacturing sector has been destroyed, and many of these will point to France as an example for us to emulate.
Answer me this. If the French are so bloody good at supporting French manufacturing, how come we manufacture more than they do? According to the UN, the French manufacturing sector produced goods valued at $306Bn in 2008, compared with the UK which produced goods valued at $323Bn.
The only two large developed nations with significantly higher manufacturing output per capita than the UK are Germany and Japan, and it's not exactly doing the Japanese any favours looking at the state their economy is in!
The UK, France, Italy and the US all have broadly similar output per capita once fluctuations in relative currency values are taken into account, and China us running at roughly 20% of that.
By all means encourage British manufacturing, but please can we stop the traditional British malaise of talking what's there into the ground by pretending we've already f
ked up the manufacturing industry we've got??? Despite what the unions & tabloids would have us believe, we've got the 6th largest manufacturing sector in the World, and it's cloud cuckoo land to think that we're ever going to return to an industrial landscape of millions of men heading in through giant factory gates any more unless we want to start getting competitive with the likes of the Chinese from a cost of labour perspective.
Digga said:
Fine, but just think how much better and more productice the whole of the UK - industries and regions - would be, were it that one thing were fixed; transport.
Oh I completely agree! Just because things aren't a complete disaster, it doesn't mean they can't be greatly improved. My concern is that people start - consciously or unconsciously - to think that there's no point investing in infrastructure for manufacturing because manufacturing is already dead. You wouldn't give someone a heart transplant if they'd had their head cut off, would you!Digga said:
Out transport system is crap and, likening the UK to a workplace where everyone's shoe laces are tied together, it's no wonder we struggle to fulfil our potential. The waste, each day, of billions of pounds worth of vehicles, goods, services, tradespeople, professionals, all doing nothing more than sitting, picking their noses in traqffic queues is maddening.
I agree, but the NIMBYs don't want a motorway at the end oftheir garden.
Of course, it is a fallacy that new motorway build goes past
the end of anyone's garden, but that's what the NIMBYs perceive.
I'd also like to make the point that the UK has one of the
worst motorway networks in Europe. Thousands of miles of
new motorway would have to be built to get to the Euro
*average*, never mind an above average network.
Much more on http://www.abd.org.uk/green_and_pleasant_land.htm
Kermit power said:
Digga said:
Fine, but just think how much better and more productice the whole of the UK - industries and regions - would be, were it that one thing were fixed; transport.
Oh I completely agree! Just because things aren't a complete disaster, it doesn't mean they can't be greatly improved. My concern is that people start - consciously or unconsciously - to think that there's no point investing in infrastructure for manufacturing because manufacturing is already dead. You wouldn't give someone a heart transplant if they'd had their head cut off, would you!I understand that Nissan's Sunderland works exhibit exceptional productivity. So yes, I know UK manufacturing can and deos work, but it's potential is being wasted.
Forget all the nonsense government handout schemes and systems - just sort the transport network. Imagine if a sales rep from Kent could plan - with relative certainty - a journey to, say Birmingham and that it would not take him over four hours. Imagine if you had a factory that was just outside of the feasible 'just in time delivery' radius for a major customer, but suddenly, with an improvment in transport links, that barrier was removed. The possibilities are endless.
Tranport and congestion is, in many ways, the most widespread form of 'red tape'. Successive governments could have tackled it, but none has, bowing to eco-idiots (who fail to realise that traffic moving at a more constant speed is hugely more efficient than stop-start and that a good many car drviers would choose public transport, were it more viable) and squandering our money on any number of idiotic plans - many of them unapologetically London centric - instead.
Edited by Digga on Wednesday 9th December 10:56
Digga said:
Successive governments could have tackled it, but none has, bowing to eco-idiots (who fail to realise that traffic moving at a more constant speed is hugely more efficient than stop-start and that a good many car drviers would choose public transport, were it more viable) and squandering our money on any number of idiotic plans - many of them unapologetically London centric - instead.
It seems to be that the government have forgotten that the vocal minority still only have one vote each. What about the mjority? Probably silent because we're all too busy at work to pay our green taxes.Edited by Digga on Wednesday 9th December 10:56
crofty1984 said:
Digga said:
Successive governments could have tackled it, but none has, bowing to eco-idiots (who fail to realise that traffic moving at a more constant speed is hugely more efficient than stop-start and that a good many car drviers would choose public transport, were it more viable) and squandering our money on any number of idiotic plans - many of them unapologetically London centric - instead.
It seems to be that the government have forgotten that the vocal minority still only have one vote each. What about the mjority? Probably silent because we're all too busy at work to pay our green taxes.Edited by Digga on Wednesday 9th December 10:56
shirt said:
can we stop having these threads please? complete waste of time and a load of balls.
Perhaps you can start this trend by posting some alternatives? 
Moving swiftly on
to quote today's news:The UK's trade deficit with the rest of the world widened in October 2009.
Imports rose more than exports, an unexpected move given the weakness of the pound, which makes foreign-made goods more expensive in the UK.
The deficit in goods and services was £3.2bn compared with £3.1bn in September, the Office for National Statistics said.
The deficit on trade in goods grew by £0.2bn to £7.1bn in October, the largest deficit since January.
Excluding oil, the volume of imports was 4.3% higher in October than September. Exports were 3.8% higher.
So looks like we are making plenty for ourselves then, but rest of world, even given £ weakness, isn't so keen?
Kermit power said:
Worthy though the sentiment of "buy British" is, why does it have to be coupled with the suggestion that Britain no longer has and manufacturing????
We've had the unions, the tabloids and a whole bunch of other people with an axe to grind or an agenda to push telling us for years that Britain's manufacturing sector has been destroyed, and many of these will point to France as an example for us to emulate.
Answer me this. If the French are so bloody good at supporting French manufacturing, how come we manufacture more than they do? According to the UN, the French manufacturing sector produced goods valued at $306Bn in 2008, compared with the UK which produced goods valued at $323Bn.
The only two large developed nations with significantly higher manufacturing output per capita than the UK are Germany and Japan, and it's not exactly doing the Japanese any favours looking at the state their economy is in!
The UK, France, Italy and the US all have broadly similar output per capita once fluctuations in relative currency values are taken into account, and China us running at roughly 20% of that.
By all means encourage British manufacturing, but please can we stop the traditional British malaise of talking what's there into the ground by pretending we've already f
ked up the manufacturing industry we've got??? Despite what the unions & tabloids would have us believe, we've got the 6th largest manufacturing sector in the World, and it's cloud cuckoo land to think that we're ever going to return to an industrial landscape of millions of men heading in through giant factory gates any more unless we want to start getting competitive with the likes of the Chinese from a cost of labour perspective.
So although Britain is becoming an automated production line for certains brands of car, the true skill behind producing the tools and parts to do this is been lost which is why people point out that industry is dying out. And from personal experience, I would say the lack of decent engineering colleges are a big reason for that as the "centre for excellence" I went to had staff who knew less than me and I was an apprentice
Kermit power said:
Worthy though the sentiment of "buy British" is, why does it have to be coupled with the suggestion that Britain no longer has and manufacturing????
We've had the unions, the tabloids and a whole bunch of other people with an axe to grind or an agenda to push telling us for years that Britain's manufacturing sector has been destroyed, and many of these will point to France as an example for us to emulate.
Answer me this. If the French are so bloody good at supporting French manufacturing, how come we manufacture more than they do? According to the UN, the French manufacturing sector produced goods valued at $306Bn in 2008, compared with the UK which produced goods valued at $323Bn.
The only two large developed nations with significantly higher manufacturing output per capita than the UK are Germany and Japan, and it's not exactly doing the Japanese any favours looking at the state their economy is in!
The UK, France, Italy and the US all have broadly similar output per capita once fluctuations in relative currency values are taken into account, and China us running at roughly 20% of that.
By all means encourage British manufacturing, but please can we stop the traditional British malaise of talking what's there into the ground by pretending we've already f
ked up the manufacturing industry we've got??? Despite what the unions & tabloids would have us believe, we've got the 6th largest manufacturing sector in the World, and it's cloud cuckoo land to think that we're ever going to return to an industrial landscape of millions of men heading in through giant factory gates any more unless we want to start getting competitive with the likes of the Chinese from a cost of labour perspective.
The people in charge don't want you to be British, successful and proud, they want you to be European, diverse and other buzzwords too!
Anyway.....
The only future UK has in doing anything is mining, when there is external pressure to get the job done (from abroad). Probably staffed by poles (which isn't a bad thing).
When our country has been kicked into the weeds, our government will be happy, knowing they have substituted nationalistic arrogance with blind communitarian compliance, comrades.
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