Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Food for thought

Well I can tell you redundancy laws in the EU vary dramatically. Frankly it is cheaper to close a UK site & the payback faster . QED we lose production. The EU was never a level playing field.
Lets hope in the sun lit uplands of post brexit bliss we can reverse this drift, but the INEOS car fctory saga says no.

@Alistair

Capitalism 100% but 'the people' want cheaper stuff so companies go to where labour is cheap.

A couple of years ago I bought a mug for my daughter. It was Royal Dalton. You cant get any more British. UK made, right ? Nope, made in India !! I was fizzing. It never occured to me that it would be made in any other country than the UK. I got stung again ( silly me ) when I bought a personalised mug from another famous maker. The mug came, made in China !! So twice bitten now, whos the mug? LOL. I double check more thoroughly now.

Point is all these industries that thrived in the UK are sadly gone. But how much more prosperous would 'the people' be rather than a few business men and women those industries came back.
BTW. Im a capitalist. I like money, I have a tiny bit of it, but I want more. I think you can be a capitalist and still want whats best for the people in the country you live in

I don't disagree with your underlying observation Bonesie.

One of the things I particularly admire and respect about Germany, is that they have never run up the white flag over manufacturing industry to the same extent as most Western countries.

Successive governments (and I'm not just talking about the UK) have presided over the closing down of manufacturing industry, without doing enough to develop alternative economic activities, nor to educate or prepare the young who will be joining the workforce to be equipped for the work that is available. An economy made up of short term contracts, often zero hours, on low rates of pay, is no solution for the long term. No wonder so many people are disillusioned and feel that they have no stake in society

Quite. It is an absolute con, and I do my best to avoid buying products from companies that have done this. Take Burberry for example. They make a great deal of their "Britishness", yet closed down their factory in South Wales in 2007 to manufacture cheaply overseas. They didn't cut the prices of their garments, so what they were punting out as a Great British brand, was merely flogging cheaply made stuff from elsewhere under false pretences. After all, the reason an Hermès handbag costs as much as a small car, is that it is genuinely handmade by overpaid, mollycoddled artisans in France. The moment you start to produce them in the Far East, the whole justification for the price point disappears.

I am pleased to note that Burberry have now backtracked on this policy, and are bringing some manufacturing back to Yorkshire. I would like to think that customer feedback has led them to this move, but who knows ?

Not just manufactured stuff Bonesie, how many people think - hey "free" delivery on Amazon prime how cool is that - and then go on to decry the need for food banks.

There are a number of reasons why Germany does better than the UK on manufacturing:
1) High cost of employment created a drive towards automation
2) Structural differences in the way businesses are funded
3) A very different attitude to outsourcing in the 90’s

In the UK and some of our most successful manufacturing firms remain family owned (JCB for example) and not beholden to the short term profit drive of the stock market.

If we want manufacturing jobs returned to the UK, we have to create an environment that stimulates investment. Successive governments (of both colours) have ignored manufacturing in a dash to support the financial services sector.

We also need to think about the education system so that non-academic students are enthused to take up craft apprenticeships.

If I could hope for something with all of the change we are undertaking through Brexit it would be a change to the environment for tax and investment as a result from our self determination. This is our chance to trigger a different approach, will it be taken?

Be careful about "taxing the super rich" you would be surprised who they class as rich these days. There was talk in the Sunday papers about a "one off" tax for the rich. The article was talking about rich people paying a 1% tax on assets. Reading deeper that classed someone with assets as over £500,000 as being rich. There must be an awful lot of people in this country that are not rich but have assets (including your home) that equate to more than £500,000. If they start to include pension funds then it really would hit a lot of people who definitely are not "Rich".

I agree with that Andy. I don't follow greed is good but I do see the value that the risk enabled VC community driving the Tech Bubble in the California have achieved. It does not need to be Tech and given the UK motorsport community is so strong it would be a good start?

Yes I agree that would include a lot of Morgan owners with that threshold but if it is directed to the people that really need the added income in particular the children I view that as a good thing.

If additional tax on my pensions is the way so be it, us baby boomers can afford it even if many may resent it.