Assembly in China / End of Lode Lane

Very soon London Taxi's International and Morgan will be the only two volume manufacturers left in the UK and still British owned.

Larry

There aren't any fixed ones around here but the plod do have speed guns. Greg

Well I've always been puzzled where all the buyers for the £200k apartments are supposed to come from, not to mention the hundreds of cheaper places they obviously intend to build, there's a lot of new housing in this area and a heck of a lot more on the drawing board. To be honest I wouldn't want to buy into the north bay area as the place has gone right down, that's one reason I moved out. Greg

"Larry" wrote

I wouldn't call either a volumn manufacturer. The first one is about to start up a factory in China, they say for the Chinese market only but......! There are other small manufacturers just like those two,i.e. Westfield, Caterham & Bristol.

Well the whole scheme originally revolved around the idea that they were going to build a 'super casino' there and everyone's houses would rocket in value. And the high rollers from Leeds :-) would buy time shares in the off season for a week's gambling...

However it didn't and so they won't...

They build the casino elsewhere, and unbelievably want to build another on the sea front, just call us the Las Vegas of Yorkshire 8-).

Greg

As soon as the new casino opened the old one closed.

Nobody wants to go to Scarborough for big time gambling when they can go to London.

A real casino has cheap food and booze and gives its gamblers free coffee and snacks when they're playing. The casino in Scarborough is an expensive pub with gambling.

That is exactly my point, they are not exactly "volume" manufacturers but soon making cars in the UK will become a craft industry, like making wicker baskets and coracles.

Larry

Given what the volume market is like, I think I'll vote for a wicker basket over a plastic carrier bag!

Wicker baskets are already made in China! We make sod-all here now, and when the bubble bursts........

The curious thing is that France, Italy, and to a large extent Germany seem to be able to make things and not price themselves out of the market. Apart from a pretty determined "Buy " attitude, the only real difference between us and the rest of the EU appears to be the way capital is raised, and how the earnings from that capital investment are disbursed, which rather points the finger at The City rather than our supposedly unproductive workers. i.e how can Nissan, Toyota, etc build cars, or anything else, cost effectively when British based companies can't. [1]

Personaly I deeply believe a major factor is our short-termism, i.e. our financial insitutions are far more focused on this years profits than on whether the company will be around in 10 years time. This was sad (from the jobs point of view), but is now stupid - we have sold off all the family silver (BOC, British Steel, ICI, GEC, Lucas, Farranti, BR, the water companies, Blue Circle, Cable & Wireless, etc, etc) so that instead of getting a lower return on investement "for ever", a big one-off hit has been made, but also cut off the revenue stream. My evidence for this is that pension schemes used to get most of thier income from investments in Britsh companies, but now they've almost all been sold off the pension companies are in *big* trouble - that's no co-incidence.

The US, the only other country to adopt the same short-termist view, is also suffering from "Made in China", which again I believe isn't just a co-incidence.

Richard [1] completely ignoring the long term effects of not being in the Euro, which will yet turn us into a curious histoical theme park for tourists.

ISTR that a major reason was that it's easier to dump british workers than it is to dump French/German/US etc workers due to the lax rules implemented here in order to encourage investment -- encourage it by making it easy to dump if it's no longer needed. The apathy of the brits helps too, sacking the French seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

Yes but they're talking about building yet another one, which certainly won't replace the one just opened.

Which is why I can't understand the idea of yet another one, it's the last thing we need.

Greg

It is, as I said before, a big posh pub with the posibility of some gambling.

An all cash business, full of pretty girls working for peanuts with loads of chances to impress your mates and you can prove you're not a crook, even if you are, because you've got a license.

In that respect it's the classical seaside businessman's ideal business...

"Ian Rawlings" wrote after Richard wrote

Personally I have always thought the problems in this country were mainly caused by bad management or even lack of management. Possibly too many people promoted because of their handshake instead of their ability? With foreign management our people seem to be able to build things at a profit and up to the best standards but it doesn't seem to be possible with British management. Same problem is manifest in the NHS, thousands of administrators but no management, ask at your local hospital when any of the staff last saw the senior manager walking around talking to his patients and staff, poking his nose in. If he's a real manager it should be daily, if he sits behind a desk he's just another administrator being paid too much.

Ah yes, masonic conspiracy, must be that! If not the masons, it's the Jews or the Knights Templar, they're everywhere....

Evidence of idiocy and disorder is everywhere, in general it's the best explanation for most things. Grass Is Greener syndrome seems to be responsible for most of the "it's different overseas" s**te, where frankly it's pretty much the same. I've seen so many mirrors of the usual whining from Americans, or British ex-pats living in Spain, France etc. People need to accept that the world isn't perfect, and they themselves would f*ck everything up too if they were in command and just get on with the stuff that really matters.

On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:48:14 -0000, "Bob Hobden" scribbled the following nonsense:

huh, try teaching. We have 42 teachers at my school, and 38 support staff, of which 12 are classroom assistants, so the other 26 sit behind desks and push paper, and wonder why we get upset when we tell them to piss off cos we're too busy teaching. I mean, in our school, we now have student well being managers, who look after the children, as well as the traditional heads of year. Needless to say, these well being managers don't teach a single lesson....

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:59:20 +0100, steve scribbled the following nonsense:

and not to be done over populated areas IIRC, ie over the sea....