Ground Report

Mrs Thatcher started it and Mr Blair followed, its robbed the UK of its manufacturing base, by allowing the sale of so many companies that used to be manufacturers and once taken over the manufacturing goes East to Eastern Europe or Asia (China etc). The Germans and French would never let their manufacturing go to non-nationals because they don’t want to loose jobs. This weekends FT even had an article by Sir John Rose, Chief Executive of Rolls-Royce complaining about the need to support manufacturing and therefore help create and sustain a base for engineering jobs. Also the anti-defence Labour Government has reduced the support to the Defence Industry and an example of this is by putting the cost of security clearance up, the defence industry won’t pay for contractors on short contracts. Hence lots of work, but nobody to do it. They need experienced Engineers to do Engineering jobs. So instead of following the supportive example shown by France and Germany they have sold it down the road and it will never come back Its been 30 years since the British Government really supported British Industry and its been going down hill since then. We are even home to the largest Professional Engineering Institute in Europe with the Institute of Electrical Engineers. I am luck that I moved from Defence to Medical, Financial Services, Utilities and Transport.