made in britain...

misskool

what is made in britain?

now on bbc2, evan davies explores if britain is a nation of shopkeepers and bankers. Do we still make anything?

surprising no one has posted anything yet

he's now in china talking about their industrial development

PasturesNew

We manufacture chavs... but nobody's managed to tap into the export market for those yet.

misskool

well, he's in a factory making suits: £1.50/hour in china, 6 working days. labour costs = £4 per suit

Pimperne1

We could probably "make" coal, oil, tin, facilities for visitors, wind turbines, whiskey, beer, farm produce, solar energy panels, cars (and especially those little three wheel blue ones that we could give to the disabled again) and quite a lot more with just a little investment. I suspect when things get more serious then the tough will get going.

misskool

interesting spin, value versus volume.

Moving the low-cost, high labour production to China where it's cheaper and the service industry which is high value and better paid for British worker. Only 20% of the retail price is paid in China, 80% of it stays in the UK.

misskool

oh, he's now at mclaren, selling expensive sports cars all over the world.

Really2

We have 1000 pocket sprung memory foam matresses in our house all UK made.

I think in reality we are the seventh largest manufacturer in the world.

We just don't make the cheap consumable rubbish on the shop shelves. It is more high end B2B stuff.

Really2

misskool wrote: »

interesting spin, value versus volume.

Moving the low-cost, high labour production to China where it's cheaper and the service industry which is high value and better paid for British worker. Only 20% of the retail price is paid in China, 80% of it stays in the UK.

Indeed, I know many go mad at thatcher but the above does show how uncompetative we would have been if we had carried on building everything.

We can't compete on wages on cheap items. Most of the UK industry would have gone had we done nothing, IMHO embrasing service was a good move.

penrhyn

Pimperne1 wrote: »

We could probably "make" coal, oil, tin, facilities for visitors, wind turbines, whiskey, beer, farm produce, solar energy panels, cars (and especially those little three wheel blue ones that we could give to the disabled again) and quite a lot more with just a little investment. I suspect when things get more serious then the tough will get going.

We do manufacture cars by, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, BMW(Mini), Jaguar, Range Rover, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Lotus, and Morgan, even the Chinese owned MG have started up again in Longbridge.

Rolls Royce have a shed in Derby making Aeroplane Engines, don't know whether they will catch on though.

misskool

He's picking out excellent examples, now Brompton bikes (the expensive folding bicycles). I can see where he's going with this, proper engineering, making things of high value.

Not the Chinese model of import the technology in and make it by the tonne to sell.

penrhyn

Really2 wrote: »

We have 1000 pocket sprung memory foam matresses in our house all UK made.

I think in reality we are the seventh largest manufacturer in the world.

We just don't make the cheap consumable rubbish on the shop shelves. It is more high end B2B stuff.

Possibly in Long Eaton if they are Hypnos.

Some of the lace in Kate Middletons wedding dress was made locally too.