Buying British?

[maby]

The problem with this argument is that most people won't even pay extra for quality let alone being bothered who made something. This country is not short of jobs for those that want one and are willing to try to get one. Unemployment was no better when we were manufacturing things.

Personally I think the best thing we could do for the economy is reintroduce student grants. The money will come from unemployment benefits and the unemployed who are "genuinely looking for work" can go and do the part time jobs the students are currently doing. If there genuinely are no jobs available, how come so many people are supporting themselves while at Uni? BTW, I don't accept "there aren't any jobs where I live" as an excuse. I have moved many times for work and improved career prospects and it was easy!

That assumes that you give people the option. As I've said before here, we should impose import duties on goods equal to the cost saving of having them manufactured abroad. Apple (for example) can address that in two ways - they can either make the goods here, or they can pay the Chinese workers European wages. I'm betting they will choose the former. Free trade is grossly overrated.

 

[WestWittering]

They sell 2,000,000 iPads a week. Plus iPhones, iMacs, iPods, keyboards, Apple TV & all the other stuff. They employ 500,000 people in China. By your sums Lusty they would need 2,000,000 people just to keep up with the iPads.

 

[WestWittering]

That assumes that you give people the option. As I've said before here, we should impose import duties on goods equal to the cost saving of having them manufactured abroad. Apple (for example) can address that in two ways - they can either make the goods here, or they can pay the Chinese workers European wages. I'm betting they will choose the former. Free trade is grossly overrated.

We used to have Ant-dumping duties levied on China when they reached their quotas, mainly for clothing, in the early 80's and it was 100s of %. That was when we dealt with Brussels.

I agree with you - they should re-introduce a quota & duties. Not to protect bad UK companies from going bust, but to give the good ones a level playing field to play on, increase basic wages to a decent wage & re-introduce apprenticeships & training and to grow.

 

[King Penguin]

BL wasnt "hopeless" Thats nonsense - the cars always were better than anything from France or Italy and not much behind the Germans. What killed them was lack of support from the UK car buyers who unlike their French and Italians oppos didnt support home industry.

.

Off topic I know, but don't forget the unions involvement and the c**p Italian steel BL purchased in the mid to late 70s through to the early 80s!

 

[lustyd]

On further digging, it seems that the Foxconn staff are earning around £3 per hour which is set to nearly double in the next year so I will be changing sides in this debate. I still don't think our economy needs manufacturing jobs, and I still think there are plenty of jobs to go around, but given the smaller difference in wages than I thought there's no reason other than the British not wanting factory work that we shouldn't do lower level manufacturing for minimum wage. Of course, all of the raw materials will need importing, and our national grid can't cope with increased demad, but all of that could and should be sorted with the right attitude from government.

 

[Blueboatman]

I have a British bicycle( my third Brompton). Voted one of the top 100 uk companies to work for I believe.
I have an older Rustler saili g yacht. They have an apprenticeship scheme and investment in high tech molding too. Again, quite highly regarded. As I have worked with my hands all my life it was quite easy for me to see what went on on the shop floor.
That Yves bloke designed my computer, possibly my phone, certainly my music device
Friends go deep sea diving off china cos the Chinese can't quite get it right...another Brit success.
I don't do clever foreign investment or emerging markets, I don't buy pos cheap imports ' to tide me over', endless bloody ikea lifestyle short choicing, I don't buy foreign houses or offshore whatever's..
How many on this very forum can actually say the same? Really ?

 

[maby]

On further digging, it seems that the Foxconn staff are earning around £3 per hour which is set to nearly double in the next year so I will be changing sides in this debate. I still don't think our economy needs manufacturing jobs, and I still think there are plenty of jobs to go around, but given the smaller difference in wages than I thought there's no reason other than the British not wanting factory work that we shouldn't do lower level manufacturing for minimum wage. Of course, all of the raw materials will need importing, and our national grid can't cope with increased demad, but all of that could and should be sorted with the right attitude from government.

Exactly! But I still believe we need manufacturing jobs back. Service industry jobs do not contribute to balancing the trade gap - manufacturing does. We need to dramatically reduce the amount of money we ship to the third world to do jobs that we could be doing here. The solution to unemployment is not to simply employ even more people to spend ridiculous amounts of time making each cup of coffee that we buy for two or three pounds a pop! I've had three course meals cooked for me that seemed to take less manpower than the last cup of coffee I bought in Starbucks!

 

[halcyon]

Off topic I know, but don't forget the unions involvement and the c**p Italian steel BL purchased in the mid to late 70s through to the early 80s!

I read it was Russian steel, obtained via a deal done by the UK government, taking steel to clear some Russian debts, plus at the time we had a lot of National steel strikes, so typical no win situation.

 

[halcyon]

On further digging, it seems that the Foxconn staff are earning around £3 per hour which is set to nearly double in the next year so I will be changing sides in this debate. I still don't think our economy needs manufacturing jobs, and I still think there are plenty of jobs to go around, but given the smaller difference in wages than I thought there's no reason other than the British not wanting factory work that we shouldn't do lower level manufacturing for minimum wage. Of course, all of the raw materials will need importing, and our national grid can't cope with increased demad, but all of that could and should be sorted with the right attitude from government.

Low wages and manufacturing do not have to go together. Low wages and low productivity go together, as high wages and high productivity go together.

For instance back in 1960's Rubery Owen made bolts, take a 3" x 1/2" UNC what labour is involved, load 1ton coil of steel bar into machine and press start button, machine starts making blank bolts at 3,500 a hour on it's own 5 minutes. The blank bolts are then fed into a thread roller that threads 3,500 a hour. Worse case is to pay a person to feed the thread roller, so 60 minutes + 5 minutes + 5 minutes ( movement ) =70 minutes, or 1 bolt = 0.02 minutes labour. Pay say £8 / hour, = 13.3 pence / minute x 0.02 = 0.25 pence a bolt + material. If you hopper feed the thread roller, you are down to 10 minutes labour @ 13.3 x 0.003 = 0.04 pence + material.

If you make a lot of an item labour rates have little impact, overheads, capital costs do, as they multiply the labour cost by considerable factor.

So we need to make a lot of marine goods to be viable, so how do we get into a world market again ?

Brian

 

[WestWittering]

So we need to make a lot of marine goods to be viable, so how do we get into a world market again ?

Brian

Make fewer, but better quality. Don't follow the herd - set the standard! The playing field is so un-level in the UK, we need to stand apart. Other posters have mentioned quality British products such as Barton, Brompton, I have an old Pashley, and an older Westerly - and virtually all of Floras blocks & winches are original.

It does surprise me with fashion for Union Flag everything, from prints to cushions, rugs & posters, why haven't British manufacturers proudly stuck the Union Flag on their products? All of this interior design (mostly) tat, made in China with our flag used as the design. The irony!!


Di

 

[Nicholas123]

The problem with this argument is that most people won't even pay extra for quality let alone being bothered who made something. This country is not short of jobs for those that want one and are willing to try to get one. Unemployment was no better when we were manufacturing things.

Personally I think the best thing we could do for the economy is reintroduce student grants. The money will come from unemployment benefits and the unemployed who are "genuinely looking for work" can go and do the part time jobs the students are currently doing. If there genuinely are no jobs available, how come so many people are supporting themselves while at Uni? BTW, I don't accept "there aren't any jobs where I live" as an excuse. I have moved many times for work and improved career prospects and it was easy!

Complete & utter nonsense.

 

[prv]

The problem with this argument is that most people won't even pay extra for quality let alone being bothered who made something. This country is not short of jobs for those that want one and are willing to try to get one. Unemployment was no better when we were manufacturing things.

Personally I think the best thing we could do for the economy is reintroduce student grants. The money will come from unemployment benefits and the unemployed who are "genuinely looking for work" can go and do the part time jobs the students are currently doing. If there genuinely are no jobs available, how come so many people are supporting themselves while at Uni? BTW, I don't accept "there aren't any jobs where I live" as an excuse. I have moved many times for work and improved career prospects and it was easy!

Complete & utter nonsense.

There are quite a number of separate points in Dave's post. Do you think that every single one of them is nonsense? The first one in particular (most people won't pay more) seems self-evident to me.

Pete

 

[halcyon]

Make fewer, but better quality. Don't follow the herd - set the standard!

Quality should be a standard part of the job, a product should do it's job for a minimum design life, the old one was 10 years.

You may add a flash finish and charge extra a better 'quality', but you cannot charge for basic operation, that's not quality that's function.

As country we cannot work on a home market, we must look at the global market, this is were the money and jobs are.

Brian

 

[laffinskip]

BL wasnt "hopeless" Thats nonsense - the cars always were better than anything from France or Italy and not much behind the Germans. What killed them was lack of support from the UK car buyers who unlike their French and Italians oppos didnt support home industry.

The cars were better!!! What planet are you on??

The unions & shoddy workmanship killed BL.

 

[WestWittering]

As country we cannot work on a home market, we must look at the global market, this is were the money and jobs are.

Brian

I completely agree. No country got poor having an export surplus - be it services or products.

And regarding quality - my Aigle wellingtons, which I paid about £150 quid for - nearly 20 years ago - are still going strong and they have done 100's of miles now. Yes they are french, but at least are made in france. The Hunters they replaced were okay, but sprang too many leaks. Hunters are now produced overseas - UK company.

By an almost perverse situation, I would rather buy something made in the UK by UK people, than something manufactured overseas, but designed by a UK firm. I haven't followed through on the logic and implications on that yet, so I may re-think that one.

I don't not buy coffee from Starbucks because they don't pay UK Corporation Tax - I don't buy Starbucks coffee because there is rarely one available when I want a coffee. And their employees pay tax, they pay employees NI, they collect VAT on behalf of HMG, pay business rates, enviromental levies etc etc. We don't penalise companies who operate from here, but employ cheap manufacturing labour overseas, decimating our workforce, so why demonise Starbucks?

Moving up on the scale of jobs, we have Honda assembling vehicles in the UK, Japanese cars, built UK residents. Honda is not a British firm, but finds it viable to build (with HMG help) manufacturing plants here.

Renewable energy - another UK growth sector.

In effect we have the ability & the workforce and the demand - so why doesn't it all come together?

Di

 

[maby]

The problem with this argument is that most people won't even pay extra for quality let alone being bothered who made something. This country is not short of jobs for those that want one and are willing to try to get one. Unemployment was no better when we were manufacturing things.

Personally I think the best thing we could do for the economy is reintroduce student grants. The money will come from unemployment benefits and the unemployed who are "genuinely looking for work" can go and do the part time jobs the students are currently doing. If there genuinely are no jobs available, how come so many people are supporting themselves while at Uni? BTW, I don't accept "there aren't any jobs where I live" as an excuse. I have moved many times for work and improved career prospects and it was easy!

I'm in favour of reintroducing student grants provided it is done in an intelligent way. The government should set up a commission that is tasked with monitoring the labour market and predicting the need for different skills in a few years time, then offer student grants to people studying for corresponding qualifications. This does not mean that nobody will ever get a grant to take media studies (or ancient greek) but we will not fund thousands of media studies graduates who end up in call centres or on supermarket checkouts. People that want to study a subject for which there is no demand should be free to do so - provided they pay for their tuition.

 

[halcyon]

In effect we have the ability & the workforce and the demand - so why doesn't it all come together?

Di

Incentive.

HMG does back UK manufacture.

Banks do not back UK manufacture.

The British Public do not back UK manufacture.

We have engineers, a chap I know has just done 3 years in Germany designing the new Golf, he say's about 60% of the engineers are British in the new car design offices, Merc all speak English. But the UK public will still buy German cars because German engineers and engineering is better than our's.

First thing we need is a massive publicity campaign to sell British engineering and design, then you may be able to sell products.

Brian

 

[Grumpybear]

Incentive.

HMG does back UK manufacture.

Banks do not back UK manufacture.

The British Public do not back UK manufacture.

We have engineers, a chap I know has just done 3 years in Germany designing the new Golf, he say's about 60% of the engineers are British in the new car design offices, Merc all speak English. But the UK public will still buy German cars because German engineers and engineering is better than our's.

First thing we need is a massive publicity campaign to sell British engineering and design, then you may be able to sell products.

Brian

How true. Many, many years ago I saw a very good BBC documentary series about engineers (shown on BBC2 on weekday afternoons, naturally). One featured an aeronautical engineer, trained at Filton. He told the story of being taken home by a girlfriend to meet her family. Hearing that he was an engineer, the father asked him to fix a leak under the kitchen sink. He moved to Toulouse to work on Concorde; meeting his new French girlfriend's family, he was treated to the best Armagnac. Not much seems to have changed.

It isn't just the politicians, the banks and the public. Even now, academe and the media treat engineering as a greasy part of technology, and the engineering institutions let them get away with it.

And the leaders of British industry and universities whine that we will lose what capability we have unless they are allowed to import unlimited numbers of engineers and scientists from abroad. So good to know that our education system is going from steength to strength, and that we are so well placed to succeed in the global knowledge based economy.

 

[WestWittering]

First thing we need is a massive publicity campaign to sell British engineering and design, then you may be able to sell products.

Brian

I thought that was what the London Olympics was all about. Apart from Balfour Beatty on the construction, and having read through the list of design companies and engineering consultancies, a massive amount of manufacturing was done overseas - including printing, carpeting, stuff that we could do standing on our heads. I remember listening to the radio while big businesses called in, saying they had been set aside in favour of overseas companies and it wasnt on the basis of quality or price.

Then, when being told we should concentrate on being a service country - what was the huge embarassment - our British company G4S - completely fluffed the logistics.

All I can say is if it is possible to buy something that is British, and the cost* & the quality stack up, then I will make the effort to support the 'home' side.

Di

* By cost, I am happy to pay a premium of up to 20% if it is of equivalent or better quality.

 

[Sybarite]

BL wasnt "hopeless" Thats nonsense - the cars always were better than anything from France or Italy and not much behind the Germans. What killed them was lack of support from the UK car buyers who unlike their French and Italians oppos didnt support home industry.

.

Hmmm memories of my MG1100 which collapsed around its suspension...