[Boeing Guy]

We are on to our second Dyson Vacuum cleaner, brilliant machine, designed in Britain and was made in Britain, then James Dyson found out he could save money by building the stuff abroad.

Before we all lament the Great British manufacturing base as being down to Heath/ Wilson/ Callahan/ Thatcher/ Major/ Blair/ Brown, maybe we should have a look at ourselves in the 1970's, we, the working people were very unionised and decided that we wanted more money, the Far East started making the same stuff for less, in some cases better, BL against the Japanese.

I remember the Buy British stickers and campaigns, but at the end of the day the British consumer bought foreign goods over his own.
I read an article a while ago regarding the loss of British Leyland, one of the workers said, at the time, that he would not buy one of their own cars as they were shoddy built and his Japanese car, (A Datsun 120Y if I remember rightly) was better built, started first time and was better equipped.

To be fair it is not just the worker and consumer at fault, successive governments and companies management have not helped, we allow imports without question and treat staff in a bad manner then wonder what has happened to our business's

We are very happy to buy Sony/ Samsung/ Toshiba etc, but then wonder why we have no manufacturing left here.


Just for Steeljack here, Apple don't manufacture in the US, but in the Far East, bit like most of the top name companies do.

Sorry for a bit of a drift, but politicians harping after the good old days will not get any of this back.
We have a proud history, The First Passenger Jet, Shipbuilding, Car Manufacturing, the Cotton Mills, the First Computer (not open for debate, Alan Turning and Tommy Flower were first), Concorde, I could go on. But we have all but lost it.