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Cable admires Germans
Comments
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grizzly1911 wrote: »When we have all devalued what happens then?
Don't know about the Germans, I admire the Swiss but they are a mix so a bit more balanced.
Listened to a German commentator last week and he sounded like the pub landlord - "the Greeks must abide by the Rules".
Maybe but they have been dithering for ages now, someone needs to knock them into line soon otherwise the whole scenario just drags on as if they are hoping for "something to turn up".
Trouble is we've flogged off anything we had that was worth anything so we can't really make enough high end products at the moment unlike the Germans. Who wants a MG / Rover owned by the chinks, I wouldn't ....I came in to this world with nothing and I've still got most of it left. :rolleyes:0 -
No thoughts on the original question?
Is Germany the epitome of thrusting private enterprise, or is it a shining example of the social-democratic model?
The German (and Japanese) business model is superior to ours as it benefits from a differnet appraoch;
+ Promoting from within, people schooled in the firm, and that have considerable domain knowledge, from the post room to the board
+ Managers eat with the staff and have lower pay differentials - not this heirarchical snobbish setup
+ An engineer is more likely to be the MD compared with UK norms
+ They have not followed the anglo American obsession with MBA's and ivy league education where by Directors come straight out of school and can apparantly run any kind of business. They want actual long found specific domain knowledge, not a swinging !!!!!! big jock speech maker we and the yanks fall for every time (think of that prat who ran Prudential - Sir Peter Thompson was it?)
+ They have many more SME's
+ Such firms do one thing really well and don't so much go in for size and jack of all trades in the way a Unilever might
+ INVESTMENT IN R&D and longterm objectives is part of this differnet mindset.
+ They don't so much think only about tomorrows share price
Another example of the sort of bad British manager I have in mind is Jerry Robinson. He's a know nothing with no particular domain knowledge and the very epitome of someone that has no clue what goes on at the ground floor.
KODAK
My mate works for them and tells me of this never ending run of new Directors that come in and apply thier business school 'expertise' that has gradually run the firm down.
No one listens to the staff. These big jocks come and go. Short termist, no domain knowledge but great at speeches.
EXAMPLE; At Kodak all engineers were given a palm pilot. At the end of a repair job the engineer HAS to enter the machine is either fixed or broken. This is fed to a dumb call centre in India.
All sorts of chaos ensues because often a machine might be in principle fixed but the engineer needs a period of time to elapse before he can call it for sure. I cant tell you the chaos this has caused with Indian call centre staff terminating a job as it is 'fixed' and then customers going mad when the machine 3 days later fails again. In the good old days the engineer would have personally managed this with far more efficient outcomes. But now he is not given any common sense autonomy, he has to decalre a machine deffo fixed or broken which is non sensical.
Classic out of touch big Jock managment initiatives. Perhaps appointing an engineer to the board might be a good idea...............:rotfl:0 -
We do still have this obsession with class and with maintaining class differentials and barriers. And a lot of our problems stem from it.+ Managers eat with the staff and have lower pay differentials - not this heirarchical snobbish setup
The graduate entry career path is an example. Especially when our education system is designed to dish out degrees to the kids of middle-class parents even if they're as thick as two short planks."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
bo_drinker wrote: »
Trouble is we've flogged off anything we had that was worth anything so we can't really make enough high end products at the moment unlike the Germans. Who wants a MG / Rover owned by the chinks, I wouldn't ....
I am with you on the point of having flogged the silver (I know I shouldn't mention that word).
Interestingly the Chinks seem to like Indian JLR, apparently, and we are exporting more than ever. That will be good for engineering, back in the West Midlands, to some degree.
Not quite sure how the profit flows but at least we are getting, some revenue through employment and consumption here."If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future.".....
"big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas I prefer the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," "Arunachalam Muruganantham0 -
We do still have this obsession with class and with maintaining class differentials and barriers. And a lot of our problems stem from it.
The graduate entry career path is an example. Especially when our education system is designed to dish out degrees to the kids of middle-class parents even if they're as thick as two short planks.
Neither fair nor accurate. The current education system is designed to dish-out degrees to the kids of all parents of all backgrounds, even if they're as thick as two short planks (the parents, as well as their kids).
No prizes (even if everyone gets one) for recalling which government poured petrol on the fire of that little "progressive" scam.0 -
Sink schools produce few university entrants.The current education system is designed to dish-out degrees to the kids of all parents of all backgrounds"It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0
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