Having worked in manufacturing in and around Luton all my life I am all too well aware that there is basically very little left, what a sad sad situation! My brother in law who worked for Jaguar said a few years ago that we actually produced more cars now than we did in the 70’s, who knows?

Can anyone in simple terms explain how we can survive without making and selling ‘stuff’, just buying cheap from China etc. surely cannot be sustainable for ever.

Tony

Most of our Manufacturing industries were purchased long ago by Foreign companies. The withdrawal of these companies to their home base comes as no surprise to me. Especially now we are no longer part of the EU and it seems a Tariff war is about to erupt. The writing was on the wall for me with the closure of our last remaining Blast Furnaces. It would not surprise me if these never get replaced, the Chinese only have to say the project is un-economic and we are sunk. It would have been prudent to replace the Blast furnaces before closing them down.

We are fast approaching a point where we will be unable to defend ourselves.

Regards

Gray.

I regret to say that a browse through the SKF website puts the Luton operation into perspective:

https://investors.skf.com/

MichaelG.

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Ref. https://investors.skf.com/en/press/skf-confirms-closure-luton-factory-2165486

On 25 October 2024 at 09:46 Tony Pratt 1 Said:

Having worked in manufacturing in and around Luton all my life I am all too well aware that there is basically very little left, what a sad sad situation! My brother in law who worked for Jaguar said a few years ago that we actually produced more cars now than we did in the 70’s, who knows?

Can anyone in simple terms explain how we can survive without making and selling ‘stuff’, just buying cheap from China etc. surely cannot be sustainable for ever.

Tony

According to the politicians of the 80s, manufacturing was so ‘trade’ and we can make our living by service industries, cutting each other’s hair, selling each other insurance and so on. They seem not to understand wealth creation means you have to actually add value to something. And as others have said, assembling kits of parts made abroad doesn’t bring the ability to design and make the bits. I think I must be getting old! End of rant

I saw something the other day suggesting that Volkswagen are in big trouble. Three factories closing, €200 Billion in debt and sales collapsing in their biggest market. Meanwhile Chinese car maker BYD are to build a massive factory in Turkey.

Then there are Robots. Unsure of the current prediction on that one but it’s probably only a matter of time.

I worked, briefly in Belgium, one man spoke french, one spoke Flemish and I spoke English . The french speaker would ONLY use french, The Flemish fellow had some English and I had a bit of french and Flemish. No yellow jackets, gloves or steel toecaps, we were moving steel weighing over a ton per sheet by crane, what would our HSE boys have made of it ? This situation was quite normal over there, your safety was your responsibility NOT some one who had NO idea as to what or how the job needed to be done in an office 100 miles away.

I still have all my fingers and toes ! Noel.

On 25 October 2024 at 13:55 Vic Said:

I saw something the other day suggesting that Volkswagen are in big trouble. Three factories closing, €200 Billion in debt and sales collapsing in their biggest market. Meanwhile Chinese car maker BYD are to build a massive factory in Turkey.

Then there are Robots. Unsure of the current prediction on that one but it’s probably only a matter of time.

Also Cariad, the software division of VW is a disaster. They delayed new cars launch with up to 2 years because of unstable software. Porsche tried to get rid of Cariad OS and switched to Android auto.

When Britain made things, we were “The workshop of the world”.

Politicians gave away our inventions, and convinced us that shuffling paper did not mean getting dirty hands to prosper.

When times get tough, any foreign owned business will curtail or close its off shore factories.

It is only patriotism, which is a dirty word in UK.

Way back in 1977 spent a little time in USA. Was told that a master plumber could name his price.

But they understood and were happy to work to my back of an envelope sketches.

Now being able to distinguish between a fine thread and a coarse one, let alone between a LH or a RH, is regarded as high tech!

Model Engineering and the preservationists are the very few places where traditional skills remain, and can still function when nthe computer crashes. Compuers are incredibly fast (Except in my bank!) but have no initiative.  Maybe AI will cure that, then watch out human race!

Howard