Britain's shame... how did we forget how to make things ?

JC Footy Genius said:

Bet you half a cheese roll you don't

But seriously that would be equally inaccurate but any government that claimed to have abolished boom and bust and been responsible for bank regulation for more than a decade should not be absolved of any responsibility I'm sure you would agree.

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beorhthelm said:

disingenuous? you're making a distinction between make/assemble/manufacture, i was just highlighting an interesting information on this countries car industry. i'm well aware that cars are "assembled", this is still counts as manufacturing. while your beloved Germany may be better at maintaining supply chain within the country, its still imports components made abroad, including UK (brake, lights and cats spring to mind).

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Guy Fawkes said:

Raw material costs? (more available locally rather than imported in or far cheaper to import them into foreign countries as they don't have to be shipped so far at a cost)
Staffing costs? (cheaper labour keeps the end costs down)
Market forces ? (the global price is almost always cheaper than we can produce items in the country, even with shipping it can still be cheaper. In the past we would have introduced tariffs to increase that price and make our manufactured products cost around the same or even less than these imports but we have a free market now so no tariffs to protect our industry)
Export costs? (making it here and shipping abroad may make it more expensive than locally manufactured items make in or closer to the country we want to export to)
and so on....

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Guy Fawkes said:

So that could mean a decline or it could mean a more diverse economy, which isn't reliant on one sector but spread over many, making your Country more able to cope in difficult times as it doesn't rely on one sector which could have a volatile period where demand slumps (so we haven't put all our eggs into one basket)

The decline in percentage in employment could be again due to diversification of the job markets as new sectors are introduced and expand or it could also be affected by automation (robots used to make cars instead of by hand)

You could still get these sorts of figures with your manufacturing sector growing over the same time scale and therefore these charts could be misleading

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gordonchas said:

Maybe you don't read all the posts?

I already made the point that, contrary to what practically every poster on here believes (because they've been told it), the value of UK manufacturing has continued to steadily increase. It's more than double now what it was in 1950, though most of that growth took place prior to 2000.

What has happened is that the non-manufacturing sectors in the economy have grown faster, so as a % of GDP manufacturing gets smaller and smaller. The same with % employment.

One of the main reasons for posting those two previous charts is to show un-believers that what has happened to manufacturing in the UK is no different from what has happened in every major industrial nation, and that economically speaking and in general terms, those trends are a good thing. But I will never succeed in that because people are just not interested in seeing anything that doesn't confirm their prejudice.

So it will have made no difference whatsoever that I posted a chart showing that the value of UK manufacturing output has been growing and therefore is at its all-time high. I doubt it's changed the opinion of one person, despite them being able to see it and check it.

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Guy Fawkes said:

So that could mean a decline or it could mean a more diverse economy, which isn't reliant on one sector but spread over many, making your Country more able to cope in difficult times as it doesn't rely on one sector which could have a volatile period where demand slumps (so we haven't put all our eggs into one basket)

The decline in percentage in employment could be again due to diversification of the job markets as new sectors are introducedand expand or it could also be affected by automation (robots used to make cars instead of by hand)

You could still get these sorts of figures with your manufacturing sector growing over the same time scale and therefore these charts could be misleading

Click to expand...

beorhthelm said:

disingenuous? you're making a distinction between make/assemble/manufacture, i was just highlighting an interesting information on this countries car industry. i'm well aware that cars are "assembled", this is still counts as manufacturing. while your beloved Germany may be better at maintaining supply chain within the country, its still imports components made abroad, including UK (brake, lights and cats spring to mind).

Click to expand...