Manufacturers in GB

Bit worrying. listening to Andrew Marr show and a lady from Oxford uni is talking about a vaccine beind made there..unfortunately GB has no facility to make large volumes if it works....this has also been the case for masks. gowns gloves in fact most PPE.the health minister admitted yesterday that were waiting for a shipment from Turkey...
Question...when this is all over should we look at more GB based manufacture...also this would create jobs in the recession that is being forecast...yes it costs more but look at us waiting for Turkey to get us out of the sh*te

 

Manufacturing in the UK has been run down since the Thatcher years by successive governments Tory and Labour. The thinking has been that we should concentrate on service industries such as finance in the City of London. Unfortunately stockbrokers aren't very good at making face masks.....

 

I've been going on for years how important it is to keep our own industries going for strategic reasons.

If we ever have to go to war we'll be relying on China for the steel to make bullets & tanks. It's absolute madness we spend a fortune on nuclear weapons, but don't consider the strategic importance of not totally relying on imports.

 

Remember we relied on the U.S for tanks and bullets in ww2.Its great having every thing stacked away for a rainy day but its just not possible.

 

we used this argument time and time again when they were shutting our pits,its ridiculous that we are so reliant on foreign countries for our manufacturing

 

Those nuclear weapons have kept us safe for 50 years, if we didn't have them hidden out at sea the Russians wouldn't think twice about invading us if it took their fancy.
They have 12,950 MBT's (Main Battle Tanks)
We have just 227, with the lack of manufacturing facilities, and the rundown of the armed forces in conventional weaponry it's more important than ever that we have a viable deterrent
The US I do not think would come to our aid this time
The steelworks are mostly closed
The coal mines have gone, a sustainable energy source in harsh times, we have no widescale industrial powerhouse to draw on.
We do not have the capability to wage a major war

And in any case, Hancock will demand 3 quotes for each bullet purchased and it will be delivered late

 

I'm sure when our steelworks close due to the vast subsidies that the Chinese give to their producers we'll see the cost skyrocket. I'd say we can't afford not to support it. Why all of a sudden is it not possible? Same thing with 5G, we have huge telecoms companies that could do this & not compromise national security.

 

Why would the health secretary be buying bullets?

 

And that’s the reason why brexit is a fcukking horrific idea. Without services we are fcukkednif they head into mainland Europe.

We have neglected our manufacturing sectors for the best part of 40 years.

 

Indeed. You only have to look at every other European major country (not so much Spain & Greece) & they have protected their basic industries & infrastructure. We've just let it wither & die, or sold it off to other nations. We are totally screwed. Even the City won't be the same after Brexit. The ghost of Margaret Thatcher is biting us in the ass, with a venomous pair of false teeth.

 

Imagine if we still had SR Gents.
The sewing machines would be whirring away after being 'comandeered' for the manufacture of ppe.
Unfortunately around 20 years ago Marks and Spencer moved production away from such factories and opened new one's in Sri Lanka and Romania.
SR Gent succumbed shortly after.

 

I’ve read this several times and I can’t work out whether it’s sarcasm.

 

Where is the WI when you need them .

All the rhubarb jam that could be made in the Rothwell area .

Instead of dumping it .

 

So true

 

Ar, but people wouldn't be able to buy a frock for £5 or jeans for a tenner if SR Gents were still making them. It's amazing how cheap stuff can become when it's made by kids in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

 

Having Huawei or anyone other Asian supplier of 5G is only a security issue if you are not using end-to-end encryption. And nobody should be using that these days. As long as you have redundant routes so it can't just be turned off it is a very minor issue (and not different to having Cisco or Palo Alto gear that the US have mandated has to have security backdoors for law enforcement).

Longer ago than that. Gents was mainly producing in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and China (via Hong Kong) in 2000 when I worked there. M&S screwed Gents into the ground by insisting that the terms of the contract changed so they paid less out every six months.

 

The country under thatcher sold it's soul.
Eg
A utility company

Shareholder Type of investor Country Proportion held (%)
Government of Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund Singapore 34
Corsair Capital Investment fund US 30
Deutsche Bank Bank Germany 23
New South Wales public sector superannuation schemes Pension fund Australia 13

 

Take the coal industry. We churned out coal as cheap if not cheaper than other countries. ( Some European.) Yes it was subsidised. But far less than nuclear power. And the countries coal industries we were competing against were.
1 using child labour.
2 Were heavily subsidised by their own governments. (Still are)
Very few of any manufacturing industries can compete with the far east. Lots of not most of the stuff we buy (I include myself in this.) Comes with a far east manufacturer on the label. Be it clothing electrical goods.
Eg Dragos den. I've lost the count of the number of times the Dragons say. " I've got manufactures in the far east that will halve or reduce to 25% your production costs."
Why. Cos they don't pay any attention to the guidelines Western Europe set for their workers. This has somehow got to be turned around. The far east has to get more into human rights like the rest of us. If the sweat shops didn't exist we could compete more.
Also we have to renationalise. Key industries if and when we can afford to. Profits poured back into them. Not into already foreign mega rich companies/people's pockets.
For you that say it'll never happen. Living in a dream world. MAKE IT HAPPEN. Your pessimism and negativity is what is wrong. Your ancestors fought for a better world.. Stop being pussies. Or we'll be back at square one.

 

There are a lot of factual errors in this post. Plus why on earth would Russia or any other country wish to invade the UK in the 21st Century, you English need to get over yourselves and your sense of self importance. The post I think, is about our lack of preparedness for major incidents,global pandemics,lack of industrial manufacturing.

 

I think this thread has the right argument but placing blame solely on Thatcher and Conservative ideology at the time of her ..ahem... 'reign' and subsequent policies since, misses the main point which IMHO is Globalisation!! It is a fact that sacrificed everything and everyone not connected to commerce and the 'City' which she foolishly regarded as the 'Holy Grail' for the UK's future prosperity which sealed UK manufacturing's fate.

Whilst it is also true , the UK had a laisse faire attitude when it came to outsourcing we must not forget that the overwhelming majority of cases where jobs were lost and industrial manufacturing transferred abroad with the inevitable loss of jobs came from the private sector and large multinational Corporates. Whilst the majority of people in the UK private sector work for small medium sized companies, most, particularly in engineering e.g. car parts, were closely allied to foreign owned companies.
People blame the Governments for not doing more to help those businesses, However, with the rise of the TIger economies with their poor Safety laws when it comes to both workers conditions and building regulations combined with low wages,lack of human rights, no tto mention heavy State subsidies, it was inevitable that companies in the Western World would go for the short term gain to maximise profits. There is little Governments can do unilaterally to compete without making a country's output uncompetitive in a Global market and so trashing the economy.
The UK is/was not alone. The U.S. and many other countries followed suit. The same happened during the Tech revolution when countless private and Public sector Contact Centres moved , initially to places like India, and then 'followed the money' moving where labour was cheapest.
The problem is, the UK Government (regardless of whoever is in office) are expected to be ethical and protect the workforce with legislation like subsidies, incentives to industry (using taxpayers money ). Unfortunately, it is, by and large, those same workers who, as customers prefer to buy the cheapest goods and don't care where they come from. In fact, as wages decline due to lack of competitiveness, it is a self fulfilling prophesy that people continue to buy cheap. Years ago in the '70's there was a huge 'Buy British' campaign which largely failed due in part to the fact British often meant 'crap' compared to what was being produced abroad in other countries. For example, remember BL vs Datsun. I do. Datsuns were cheaper, better spec and far more reliable. It was the time of industrial strife and our productivity and GDP per capita was (and still is) low. Much of the blame can be attached to poor management practises due to many senior roles being filled by people from 'the right background' and knew 'the right people' rather than a meritocracy.
Outsourcing in many instances where it is a largely domestic market may lower labour costs but it also means a reduced customer base (the unemployed do not make good customers), a fact that seems to escape many businesses.
What is the answer? I have no idea. If you got this far in this diatribe , my first point was that blaming a single entity like Govt is simplistic as there are many complex issues. A second point is that the World economy, even before Covid19, is well and truly fu*ked