making things again.
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Shares in Poundtretcher soar as George Osbourne says Let's get Britain
(15 posts) (7 voices)
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OldThingy
offlineMemberOh no!
Not things.
What make things - real things?
What again?
Why can't we just continue making a mess as usual.I mean if you wanna make stuff - like make kids pick up litter or grown ups make sense
then we could get somewhere.
Make people smile would be good.You know Yam - you may actually be on to something here.
The mind boggles with opportunity and enterprize -
Like there is always a market at the BBC for pianos and naf out of tune musical instruments which they let teenagers loose on in documentary production.
This time next year we could be trillionaires.
Yeh. Make it make it.Posted 2 years ago # -
bonjonelson
offlineMemberNo one is doubting that there are a (dwindling number) of highly expert craftsmen in the UK, and we can when we put our mind to it produce excellent quality items. But what we can't do is mass produce things of a consistent quality at a low cost. And we never will again, because unlike the days of Empire, we no longer produce raw materials in this country. An it's simply cheaper to produce the widgets in the countries that have the raw materials (either because they mine them themselves (eg the chinese) or they have sewn up the world supply by buying up the rights around the world from countries that do mine (eg the chinese) - and ship the finished product rather than ship the raw materials and do the construction here.
Pure simple economics. So, instead we decided to excel at service industries, such as financial products. And we were shit at that too.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I think your raw materials idea is a bit off the mark. Japan, Korea and Taiwan never had raw materials. Just high standard of education, initially cheap labour, and aggressive investment. China is more that pattern, but with much larger population / poor regions, I guess they can continue to make low tech products for longer while Coastal areas with rising wages can take the high end consumer electronics Market.
We are looking to move production to Vietnam, but not for their raw materials.
Posted 2 years ago # -
OldThingy
offlineMemberOooh..bleedin' er
This is now serious stuff.
Well, bonjonelson and Golgo13 you are both right. Freedman the economist said back in the 60's and 70's that the European Nations must change from a manufacturing base to service based economy and to a great extent this has come about and a good thing too. However our accountants and investors have thrown out the bath and the baby. Iconic brands like Rolls Royce (motors) and Jaguar were sold out through lack of will, yes, will and investment.
Jaguar for example should have opened up their range to a wider market while they were on a roll with the E-type etc. Mercedes and BMW have pulled the rug and widened their target market and look at their success today.
I have run a business for 40 years (now semi retired) and the main problem in trying to grow any manufacturing company today is accountants, who only have short term vision and usually do not understand the mix of market, manufacture, finance and future.
Enough already. I think you get the gist. We should retain some manufacturing for mass market and we can compete on design and innovation if investors and accountants backed the people with a will.
Posted 2 years ago # -
FormerlyAlOPecia
offlineMemberWell we used to be good at invading places and taking all of their resources. Trouble is these days we can't even do that without fucking it up, because we no longer have the resources - like trying to invade Libya with six blokes in balaclavas and a twat who thinks he's James Bond. Pitiful.
Posted 2 years ago #
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