Hi,
I think costs of production & inflation in particular is a killer when producing industrial products, plus faulty logic applied to management & predatory acquisitions and mergers!
How often have people read about successful R&D teams or production lines being re-jigged & for no particular good reason, where specialists and experts of indeed people familiar with certain products, (using the word in the old fashioned way) were disbanded or projects abandoned, BSA Gold Star, Bantam; Norton, the closure of Bracebridge Street wouldn't have been too bad had Hopwood acquired the New Industrial unit he wanted close by the original Midlands work force, again, with the move to Plumstead London, Norton expertise was lost & facts record this was so!
In Britain the Post Modernists couldn't wait for the death of Industry, planners architects developers had a hey-day, it was thought by the early Eighties that Finance & the Services would see "us" through in terms of wealth creation & jobs, Manufacturing was seen as as being "second-fiddle". Wealth, it was thought, would filter down through the population as if by an osmotic effect, but the reality is that for most people a "real" skilled or semi-skilled job in industry was the only hope they would have of earning a living wage. You need to export goods & expertise in Services to pay off the Balance of Payments. When there's nothing left to Export, the "shit hits the fan", sooner rather than later!
A Dutch female MEP on TV in the last 6 months, but not on Prime-Time said in no uncertain terms that the earnings of people in North-west Europe had to fall by a fifth if not a quarter to make the region as a whole economically viable again, I respect her honesty! The problem is other regions of the World aren't faced with such high living costs, stealth taxes, Green taxes & probably self-serving idiot politicians e.t.c.
You can't have your Cake & eat it, when I saw all the B.M.W's & Mercedes on the road, I thought instinctively some things wrong, you can't lose your major manufacturers in cars & motorcycles & import willy-Nilly and keep a healthy economy, a Global Free market is a dangerous place for most of us,re-jobs & livelihoods.
Researched, J.A.P some good stuff but it seems like the same old stuff is repeated across the Net, Primary source stuff is getting harder to find, by the way some of you may have noticed that Web browsers do not work like they did 10 years ago, as you search source material is shifted out, to what the Browser thinks you should receive, new technology eh! A guy does a presentation on this in YouTube, I noticed this effect some months ago & was puzzled by web search results or lack of them in breadth!
Interesting sites:
http://www.vintagespeedway.co.uk/www.vintagespeedway.co.uk/Home.htmlhttp://www.japrestwich.com/Wink, sent you a PM!
Cheers
JBW
