Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

an almost sadder sign of the times was the sight of a truly gargantuan crane being towed - it took 3 months! - from Korea (or was it China?) to Thames Gateway, the off-loading being supervised by an Ozzie

Cranes from China, trains from Germany, nuc power plants from France and China.

Is there any political will to make anything in this country anymore?

MK,

Britain is becoming a Russian, Asian, Chinese, Colony and Wavey Dave and Georgie Boy are encouraging it, while at the same time being euro-phobic.

Ludicrous when you don't want to speak with your neighbours with often similar culture who have across a brook, but willing to have others from far distance across the planet take over ones economy by less than stealth.

Mind I suppose the present crew can shift their "wealth" to the Cayman Isles and the like.

stop being a total arsehole fred .... well, i guess one can live in hope rather than expectation

uk has been in manufacturing decline since the end of WW1 ..... one could cogently argue that the death-knell was significantly hastened by the militant unions in the 50's and 60s - i can just remember a shipyard strike called because of a dispute over which union should be in charge of drawing a chalk line on steel plates! - resulting in uk becoming hopelessly uncompetitive and also unreliable on delivery

in fact, most if not all major international deals are now a delicate matter of (effectively) gov'ts negotiating a mutually beneficial trade-off as opposed to my tin of beans being cheaper than yours

HEY cyners it wasnt just Unions, management where just as Much to blame.

I remember in the car industry when we led it and we could see the likes of Germany Japan re-tooling up and bringing in prod belts. The unions could see this and were demanding british management re tool.......... but Ohhhhhhhhhhh no they knew best, we keep to what weve got (GREED) and then when it was too late what happens they demanded reduncancies.

Of course the Unions were millitant after that.

AND dont forget this it was Maggie T who pushed the service and banking sector in this country and neglected manufacturing.

cynic

his arse must be smothered in your lipstick!

How very dare you , are you sugesting that Fred and Stan are batting for the other side ?

goldfinger

Smart move by Mrs T , look how London became one of the top financal city's in the world when our manufacturing industries were being destroyed by the unions

i fully concur .... uk management was abysmal right the way across the board ..... but on whomever you wish to pin blame, it is irrefutable that uk manufacturing was in terminal decline - too expensive; inefficient; plain incompetence - since WW1

however, all countries go through this manufaturing cycle, as is seen in Japan and now starting to happen in India, Korea and elsewhere

Anybody else have a smile at Bernie Ecclestone, playing the fool outside the court with the revolving door on first of three days in High Court in £100 million damages lawsuit?



All those £££££££££££££££££s and he can't even go through a revolving door, eh?

Very clever Bernie. But you don't fool me.

Hmmm? I wonder if he thinks he needs to fool the judge?

Probably not. :-)

revolving door like some of his payments and deals!

aldwickk - 07 Nov 2013 10:35 - 32348 of 32350
goldfinger

Smart move by Mrs T , look how London became one of the top financal city's in the world when our manufacturing industries were being destroyed by the unions.............ens

Well partly agree alders with your London comment in fact London is nos 1, but management greedy management ruined manufacturing here in this country, and yes I know it could be done in korea far cheaper etc etc, but certain bespoke top tech firms here eg, Top textile class suits made in Huddersfield couldnt be replicated anywhere, but what happened they wanted to make them cheaper so DID take them abroad BUT NO SKILLED LABOUR....within 4 years total industry ruined and went under.

What a great loss.

BBC. I D Smith useless.

7 November 2013 Last updated at 09:00

The implementation of the government's flagship welfare reform has been "extraordinarily poor", with much of the £425m expenditure to date likely to be written off, MPs have said.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee said oversight of the Universal Credit scheme had been "alarmingly weak".

Warning signs were missed and there was a "fortress culture" among officials, it claimed.

Ministers said there was new leadership and controls had been strengthened.

The criticisms by the cross-party committee echo those by the National Audit Office - which said in September that management of the £2.3bn project had been weak and financial controls had been inefficient.

Ministers have insisted the plan to consolidate six separate means-tested working age benefits into a single payment - designed to increase incentives for work - is back on track following a "reset" of the programme at the start of the year.

But the committee said the project had been beset by a string of problems and still faced considerable challenges if it was to achieve its long-term objectives.

It suggested much of the £425m spent up to April, about a third of which has been on computer software and other IT systems, was unlikely to have any worth in future and its value would have to be written off.


Margaret Hodge
The failure to develop a comprehensive plan has led to extensive delay and the waste of a yet to be determined amount of public money”

Margaret Hodge
Labour chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee
'Ad hoc reviews'
Controls over suppliers, it added, had been largely absent with, in some cases, multi-million pound orders being signed off by secretarial staff.

From the outset of the project in 2011, it said, senior civil servants had "failed to grasp the enormity" of the task they had been set by ministers, did not monitor progress adequately and had not intervened when issues arose.

A lack of day-to-day control meant that top officials only became aware of difficulties through "ad hoc reviews" and as problems mounted, those in charge of the scheme had become "isolated and defensive".

"Universal Credit is the Department for Work and Pensions' single biggest programme and enjoys cross-party support yet its implementation has been extraordinarily poor," Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who chairs the body, said.

"The failure to develop a comprehensive plan has led to extensive delay and the waste of a yet to be determined amount of public money.

"Pressure to deliver a programme of this magnitude within such an ambitious timescale created a fortress culture where only good news was reported and problems were denied."

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has insisted that Universal Credit can still be rolled out to all existing and new claimants as planned by 2017 - a view endorsed by officials from the Major Projects Authority who were drafted in earlier this year to run the rule over the scheme.


From October 2013 to April 2014 about half a million new claimants were due to receive universal credit instead of jobseeker's allowance, employment support allowance, income support, housing benefit, working tax credit and child tax credit.
At the same time, another half a million existing claimants and their families were due to be transferred to the new credit when their family circumstances changed significantly - for instance if they got a job or had another child.
From April 2014 a further 3.5 million claimants and their families were due to move to universal credit.
And from the end of 2015 to the end of 2017 a further three million people are due to be moved over, focusing on housing benefit claimants
2017 deadline
But the committee said the pilots conducted to date had been unsatisfactory and a target to enrol 184,000 new claimants on to the single benefit by next April would be missed.

"The department will have to speed up the later stages of the programme if it is to meet the 2017 completion date but that will pose new risks," Mrs Hodge added, urging the government not to throw "good money after bad".

"We believe strongly that meeting any specific timetable from now on is less important than delivering the programme successfully."

Appearing before the committee in September, the top civil servant at the Department for Work and Pensions rejected suggestions the Universal Credit was launched "without a plan".

Robert Devereux said the strategy behind the policy was "very clear" and the "best available" people were running it.

But he accepted there had been a "let's punch through" mentality among the original management team and its leadership was changed once it became clear that a different, more reflective approach was needed.


We have already taken comprehensive action including strengthening governance, supplier management and financial controls”

Department for Work and Pensions
Howard Shiplee, who took over the running of the project in May, has admitted mistakes were made but said real progress was now happening and much of the existing IT systems could be used.

Responding to the committee's report, the Department for Work and Pensions said Universal Credit was a "vital" reform which would ultimately bring £38bn in benefits to society by helping people into work and reducing fraud.

"This report doesn't take into account our new leadership team, or our progress on delivery," it said. "We have already taken comprehensive action including strengthening governance, supplier management and financial controls."

It said it did not accept "the write-off figure quoted by the committee" and expected it to be substantially less.

A spokesman for Mr Duncan Smith said he had "every confidence" in the team now running the programme, including Mr Devereux - whose position some newspapers have suggested is under threat.

"Both the National Audit Office and the public accounts committee acknowledged a fortress mentality within the Universal Credit programme," he said.

"Iain was clear back in the summer about how he and the permanent secretary took action to fix those problems."

For Labour, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves said the report was "another nail in the coffin of the government's promise to deliver Universal Credit on time and on budget", adding that "families facing a cost of living crisis need welfare reform they can trust".

sorry sticky, but while textiles - worsted mills etc etc - were indeed very high quality (Salt's et al) in the end, they generally became too expensive except for the bespoke end ...... Courtaulds were plain incompetent and never moved with the times, and even Liberty (top quality screen printing) also got stuck in history, with the result that much of that business moved to Italy - unsure where it is now

by the way, there was a similar wool-cycle in about 1740 when English broadcloth was superceded by finer merino ..... there was massive hardship in the tradional areas, but thanks to the Methuen family, the Hugenots (i think) were brought in to teach the new techniques

i could rattle on a bit longer if you wanted :-)

I said the bespoke end, ie mens suits.

Cyners post on FTSE board for you.

Cynic,

Blinkered as usual.

Because certain dismal patterns of behaviour repeat themselves, there is no need for them to continue to be.

Even, if you are limited, others don't have have similar restrictions.

But, left to lucky incompetents of such as of your ilk, it seems more likely to be so.

I was told 60 years ago, that when dealing with unions "it was easy to lead donkeys with the hope of food than drive them to the slaughter house".

This seems the difference between some some managements and others and manifested itself during the Thatcher period and is certainly apparent with the present tory party and its adherents.

-----

Hear IDS is playing a blinder.

You cant keep blaming the Maggon for the uk's manufacturing woes.

What did Nu Labour do for manufacturing in the 13 years it was in power?

Did Thatcher destroy manufacturing? The die had been cast long before she ever came to power. Torn apart by industrial strife, debilitated by decades of stop-go demand management, and wracked by inflation, much of British manufacturing had been rendered globally uncompetitive and was basically beyond redemption.

Large parts of the motor and shipbuilding industries were being kept afloat only through repeated state bailouts. Substantial inward investment had by the end of the Thatcher period partially succeeded in rebuilding the UK motor industry, albeit with foreign money and expertise, and today, levels of car production are again close to record levels. Industrial output was higher when she left office than when she began, and indeed, the manufacturing sector shrunk by more as a proportion of GDP under the last Labour government than it did under her. In any case, British manufacturing is still a greater component of UK output than its French equivalent is of French GDP.

Hays I didnt say she destroyed it I sad she neglected it in favour of the services sector.