I have a solution… why don’t WE all emigrate to Korea, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc,etc… then they can all move over here into our now empty houses and we can move into theirs over there …
that way we will be able to work over there building and making better products to sell to the new british people over here.
I find the gist of this post a bit rich , I continually read posts from members of our profession who refused to drive ERF`s S/Atkinsons ,Fodens , etc etc etc and were very happy to drive off into the distance in Scanias , Volvos , etc etc etc and at the same time watch factories in Sandbach , Preston , gearbox factories in Manchester ,engine plants in Shotts and stand by while hundreds lost their jobs when they closed , all so they could drive a trendy / ■■■■ truck without a care about British jobs !!!" . The boot is now on the other foot .
shugg:
I find the gist of this post a bit rich , I continually read posts from members of our profession who refused to drive ERF`s S/Atkinsons ,Fodens , etc etc etc and were very happy to drive off into the distance in Scanias , Volvos , etc etc etc and at the same time watch factories in Sandbach , Preston , gearbox factories in Manchester ,engine plants in Shotts and stand by while hundreds lost their jobs when they closed , all so they could drive a trendy / ■■■■ truck without a care about British jobs !!!" . The boot is now on the other foot .
Couldn’t agree more.
Properly specced British trucks were every bit as good as and better than most, but they wouldn’t have it.
Same story with everything else, and despite everything that’s happened people still haven’t got it, never will.
We as a nation have the country and the situation we deserve, the destruction happened on our watch overseen by people we (not me) voted for, let them reap what they have sown.
I would be loathed to add up all the money, that I have paid to BAE as British tax payer 
A more corrupt and criminal company would be hard to find, yet it is all done in cahoots with the UK Govt. And it`s chosen reps. (UK Govt. is just another version of the Mafia anyways 
)
pavaroti:
Immigrant:
Where is the great British Technology gone,who powered once the World?
Sold out,and all the technician,left over,seating around or work in china,India or another such Country.
just think of the many People who would work on it.Not just the Technician,but also the Supplyer and Transport/Logistic IndustryThe unions and the labour party destroyed British industry.
Ok the unions and governments, labour and conservative, all had a part in our industries being destroyed, no one was interested in manufacturing, it became a dirty word, I served my apprenticeship at a large engineering firm, world leaders in making compressors and valves, 300+ men, all on good wages, highly skilled, then dumped on scrap heap, by one of thatchers entrepreneur’s, who bought the company, sold all the assets, sold land for retail development… 125 yrs history gone…
As for the ships being built over here, I think if we put our minds to it, we can be the best in the world, anyone on here who has anything to do with our steel industry, will know we can produce the best steel in the world, Scunthorpe for plate, Port Talbot for coil, Aldwarke for engineering steel, plus Lackenby…
Problem with Italian warships is they only go backwards.
case in point-new forth road crossing-99% of the steel is coming from Poland and China,it’ll be made out of old washing machines and scrap cars,best of luck with that ,consortium building the thing is mostly made up of Australian and German companies iirc,and you can guarantee that a good percentage of the workforce will be our eastern european “colleagues”
raymundo:
The standard of the work on ships produced by the korean and chinese shipyards is overall crap, inferior steel to start with. You can sit and watch them rust away. No names or packdrill but a shipping company I have worked for has had korean built ships but they say never again.
Funny, 'cos I recently got on to discuss this with the insurance inspector who checks our kit.
He was saying he sees loads of Asian built excavators (Hyundai, Kubota, Daewoo Doosan etc) that are on light duties working clay and mud that have the booms cracked/broke/stressed/bent, and that Volvos, Cats, JCBs and UK built Komatsu’s that are working a lot harder (rock) never have any problems at all with the strength.
He puts this down solely to the quality of the steel used.
It properly amazes me that this government (like many others before them) are farming out all these jobs to foreign companies.
If we are in this recession as deep as they reckon we are, then surely a closed shop policy is the way to go.
Buy British - end of!
That Multiplex, Australian company building the Olympic stadium for what 900 million■■? ■■■■ take.
Could Balfour Beatty / Amec / Sir Robert McAlpine not have built it? And if it was a couple of £M more, then so what, the job itself will do a huge good to the countrys economy just by keeping it in-house.
Can you imagine China farming out jobs like an Olympic Stadium or 4th road crossing?
Wheel Nut:
raymundo:
The wages the British shipbuilders got if they had been given the chance of building them would have been taxed so that about 20% then there’s the tax and vat on goods purchased with the remainder of their wage and as has been said the money saved by not having to pay unemployment benefits.
Same fiasco as when the train order went to Germany and then the factory in the UK went pop (I think)
Peter Luff … defence minister… Peter Duff more like, bloody idiots!The train order wasn’t between a British and a German company, it was between two German companies
Bombardier Rail
Schöneberger Ufer 1
10785 Berlin
GermanySiemens Rail
Nonnendammallee 101
D-13629 Berlin
GermanyBombardier Welcomes HRH The Prince of Wales to its Derby, UK Site
February 24, 2012 – Berlin
Transportation
A point I was going to make, but I was under the Impression that Bombardier was a Canadian company.
I’ve also read the Siemens employ more people in the UK than Bombardier.
muckles:
Wheel Nut:
raymundo:
The wages the British shipbuilders got if they had been given the chance of building them would have been taxed so that about 20% then there’s the tax and vat on goods purchased with the remainder of their wage and as has been said the money saved by not having to pay unemployment benefits.
Same fiasco as when the train order went to Germany and then the factory in the UK went pop (I think)
Peter Luff … defence minister… Peter Duff more like, bloody idiots!The train order wasn’t between a British and a German company, it was between two German companies
Bombardier Rail
Schöneberger Ufer 1
10785 Berlin
GermanySiemens Rail
Nonnendammallee 101
D-13629 Berlin
GermanyBombardier Welcomes HRH The Prince of Wales to its Derby, UK Site
February 24, 2012 – Berlin
TransportationA point I was going to make, but I was under the Impression that Bombardier was a Canadian company.
I’ve also read the Siemens employ more people in the UK than Bombardier.
It is the rail division that is German. I think the parent is in Montreal
Another point is we can’t compete with the technology used in foreign shipyards nowadays. Proper money hasn’t been spent on the few British shipyards that are left since the 1970’s. I’m thinking of a shipyard on the Clyde I visited in 2005 that was using logs to hold up sections of steel whereas yards in the likes of Romania are 40 years ahead in terms of technology.
The yards in Korea are like a conveyer belt for ships, I can’t remember the figure for the amount they produce but it’s staggering. That being said, Raymundo was right, they use cheap steel and the ships will likely be knackered in 10 years. I’m on one right now that was built in Korea and it’s knackered.
A guy I know was in dry dock in China, a worker fell to his death from a scaffold and they shut the yard for 4 hours while the investigation was carried out and then they reopened and cracked on as normal. Shocking. I’ve been in drydock in the UK and the yard workers were setting the fire alarm off deliberately most days so that they could get a skive, how can the great british workforce possibly be any competition to the yards in the far east?
The government should hang their heads in shame for letting it get like this but it’s too late to fix now. Imagine the cost of a ship built using British Steel made from British coal by a British workforce? Ships were taking coal to Rosyth from south america to fuel Long Gannat power station a few miles away because it was cheaper than mining the coal from the seam that ran next to it!
dave75:
Ships were taking coal to Rosyth from south america to fuel Long Gannat power station a few miles away because it was cheaper than mining the coal from the seam that ran next to it!
I would’ve stood firm and refused to use that foreign coal, in fact I would’ve set fire to it so that nobody could use it
■■■■ taking aside, you make good points 
dave75:
Another point is we can’t compete with the technology used in foreign shipyards nowadays. Proper money hasn’t been spent on the few British shipyards that are left since the 1970’s. I’m thinking of a shipyard on the Clyde I visited in 2005 that was using logs to hold up sections of steel whereas yards in the likes of Romania are 40 years ahead in terms of technology.The yards in Korea are like a conveyer belt for ships, I can’t remember the figure for the amount they produce but it’s staggering. That being said, Raymundo was right, they use cheap steel and the ships will likely be knackered in 10 years. I’m on one right now that was built in Korea and it’s knackered.
A guy I know was in dry dock in China, a worker fell to his death from a scaffold and they shut the yard for 4 hours while the investigation was carried out and then they reopened and cracked on as normal. Shocking. I’ve been in drydock in the UK and the yard workers were setting the fire alarm off deliberately most days so that they could get a skive, how can the great british workforce possibly be any competition to the yards in the far east?
The government should hang their heads in shame for letting it get like this but it’s too late to fix now. Imagine the cost of a ship built using British Steel made from British coal by a British workforce? Ships were taking coal to Rosyth from south america to fuel Long Gannat power station a few miles away because it was cheaper than mining the coal from the seam that ran next to it!
It’s the small Thing that counts.
__You look in my fridge and if meat,Vegetables,fruit or Cheese it comes from UK.Very unlikely,but it happens all few Month that i buy any Food produced in my country,but usually i make it myself and use British Ingredfience.Because i leave here,and every saved Job will safe mine.__Spell check not working on Firefox? anywhy,just think when you shop.It may affect the Job of a ship Captn but it helps your Job over time
They would be struggling to get coal in this country anymore as most of the pits and open cast mines have been built on turned in to nature reserves or other wise. Also the russian coal(as my dad tells me) ruined the boiler on the flying scotsman as it “caked?” Too much as they were trying to pennypinch by not using british coal.
The government will not/never realise that we are so asset stripped industrial wise until its to late ( and in my eyes its not too far away) brits used to make the best of everything but now we are an massive import country only driven by cost and not allegiance.
What do we (as gb) still export massively other than cider and whisky? Probably not much anymore …:roll::roll:
The power stations couldn’t use pure UK mined coal as it is far too high a grade and would have melted the boiler in a very short time. It was usually used as a ‘sweetener’ for the cheaper surface mined stuff from many locations, South Africa, Russia or USA. I had the honour of working with a guy who used to set the dampers up on the ‘super critical’ boiler system that most of the UK stations had post 1950. The reason for the Bulldozer on the coal-heap was to mix the good/bad coal to the ratio he would work out before it went into the crusher/mills.
Regarding the steel quality of Korean stuff, the first Daewoo digger I saw was bought for a job just outside Edinburgh on very heavy clay type earth. It lasted less that one day. It lifted a scoop of this stuff up where the JCB would have cried foul, the trouble was that although the steel was thicker on the Daewoo, it was too strong on the power for the arm to cope and it twisted like it was made of paper. Less than 4 hrs old and it sat on the bank, wrecked for a good few weeks as a reminder that for all their faults, UK manufacturing companies made stuff to last.
stevenmac08:
Sorry but beg to differ, as a serving ,member of the forces I’m glad that the contract gone out with the uk. We will now get the ships on time on budget and not be taken for of a ride by BAE with delays and add on costs with the company blackmailing us about British jobs. At the end of the day we just want kit that works.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_45_destroyer
That works doesn’t it? End of the day i’m not that arsed about patriotism and flag waving but if there are no decent British firms and jobs left because the Government has given all the manufacturing work away to Johnny Foreigner then there won’t be much left for you chaps to defend.
I’m not saying that this was a blatant case of moving manufacturing abroad as we aren’t renowned for tanker building in this country by the sounds of it but we’ve got people saying that the italian firm would have made a hames of it and the south koreans will make a hames of it, so who’s right?
Why can’t we build tankers here anyway? We still have some ship yards left don’t we. British engineering is still amongst the best in the world i’d say.
pavaroti:
Immigrant:
Where is the great British Technology gone,who powered once the World?
Sold out,and all the technician,left over,seating around or work in china,India or another such Country.
just think of the many People who would work on it.Not just the Technician,but also the Supplyer and Transport/Logistic IndustryThe unions and the labour party and ■■■■ poor management destroyed British industry.
FTFY.
When Clarkson was a proper journalist
Who Killed the British Motor Industry
As said before… unions and management
also weren’t British bikes best at one time? and the manufactures thought they had no overseas competition?
andy187:
When Clarkson was a proper journalistWho Killed the British Motor Industry
As said before… unions and management
also weren’t British bikes best at one time? and the manufactures thought they had no overseas competition?
We could add political intereference, especially in the Nationlised Industries. Lack of R&D, because those running British industry believed that the UK and even the rest of the World would buy our goods because they were British and dissmissed any new competition from the Far East.
We are never going to have the huge labour intensive factories of the last Century, unless we are all willing to work for the same rates and standards as China and India.
However I know many small high tech engineering companies in the UK who do low high volume high precision engineering at short times scales. They have a World Wide reputation for thier work, but they do have a problem getting good people because we have been very poor at training engineers and reconising engineering in this Country from school onwards.
So those who are clever enough to have a choice look are directed to the flashy careers, no doubt encouraged by the type of parents for whom bragging about thier childrens success is so important.