Deal Or No Deal With E . U ?

[FairTmiddlin]

Possibly British Standard Whitworth or British standard Fine threads. increasingly hard to find  nowadays. Even in the late sixties most new products were using UNF or UNC. Then it all went metric.

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, annv said:

when we have xxxx's that have a marked skin but taste wonderful

Please please please correct that typo.

[grendel]

typo corrected quote edited too

[Mouldy]

1 hour ago, Cheesey69 said:

What shocked me is what we don’t make in this country. 
where I work we use a type of bolt that can stretch and be weather proof. 
It’s used in crash barriers. 
They come from France. 
When asked why can’t we get them from here the answer was that we don’t have factory that can anymore and when we did the quality was iffy. 
When asked why don’t we build one again it was pointed out that no one wants a smelter near them, you can’t build one in five minutes and who has the skills to work in one now. 
We have become a service economy 

One aspect of this great desire to be British that amuses me most is that our new blue passports (that are supposed to define the fact that we have regained our ‘sovereignty’) are being printed in France.  To quote Mr Meldrew ‘I don’t believe it!’

 

[Ray]

I have seen a few references to so called re-shoring where some small manufacturing and textile work is being started up in the UK because of Covid supply line problems.

Who knows this could be the very first small step towards a manufacturing rebirth, not the industries of the past of course because materials and automation have moved on but it could be at least "something"

[MauriceMynah]

I accept I might have this wrong but I seem to remember the demise of "made in England" being the standard to look up to was long gone when I was a kid. In fact I seem to remember our industry was making shoddy goods, over priced and generally not competitive.

If you wanted a decent car you had to go European. If you wanted it with all the bells and whistles as well, you had to look to Japan.

It is possible that some of our more senior members remember those halcyon days, but I struggle.

So what happened? What went wrong? I have my views but not ones that would be allowed on posts here.

Lets take the motorcycle industry, it does show some clear pointers. While I was still hankering after Norton 750s Bonneville 650s and BSA 650s, Honda were offering their customers electric start, indicators  and 4 cylinders with gearboxes that didn't drop  oil wherever it stopped.

What was the British bikes answer to this? 650s went to 750, and 750s went to 850. We wouldn't move with the times. We still don't. We gave our computer technology to the Americans, we left the idea that cars that could go round corners alone, leaving the Europeans to corner both their cars and the market. The Germans gave us the Golf GTi We offered them the Morris Ital or the Austin Allegro. The French gave us cars to be comfortable in, The Germans gave us cars that could hold the road and the Italians gave us cars to be excited with. We gave the world British Layland.

I have heard some say we "sold out". We didn't, we just forgot to end our tea break and get on with the game. 

[Ray]

All good reminders of the lessons to be learned if we ever do start making things again MM 👍

[Mouldy]

9 minutes ago, MauriceMynah said:

I accept I might have this wrong but I seem to remember the demise of "made in England" being the standard to look up to was long gone when I was a kid. In fact I seem to remember our industry was making shoddy goods, over priced and generally not competitive.

If you wanted a decent car you had to go European. If you wanted it with all the bells and whistles as well, you had to look to Japan.

It is possible that some of our more senior members remember those halcyon days, but I struggle.

So what happened? What went wrong? I have my views but not ones that would be allowed on posts here.

Lets take the motorcycle industry, it does show some clear pointers. While I was still hankering after Norton 750s Bonneville 650s and BSA 650s, Honda were offering their customers electric start, indicators  and 4 cylinders with gearboxes that didn't drop  oil wherever it stopped.

What was the British bikes answer to this? 650s went to 750, and 750s went to 850. We wouldn't move with the times. We still don't. We gave our computer technology to the Americans, we left the idea that cars that could go round corners alone, leaving the Europeans to corner both their cars and the market. The Germans gave us the Golf GTi We offered them the Morris Ital or the Austin Allegro. The French gave us cars to be comfortable in, The Germans gave us cars that could hold the road and the Italians gave us cars to be excited with. We gave the world British Layland.

I have heard some say we "sold out". We didn't, we just forgot to end our tea break and get on with the game. 

And the bosses of the companies forgot to research and develop new products and invest in the future, content in the knowledge that the British public would always prefer to buy British made goods.  How wrong they were.

You mentioned British Leyland.  When the original Mini went out of production in the nineties, it was still powered by a derivation of the A series engine that was around in the forties.  The Germans have shown us with the BMW Mini what a success story Leyland and latterly Rover Cars could have had with the foresight and financing to bring the Mini into the new Millennium.  No amount of small producers will compensate for the loss of the major industries in which we used to excel and the need to import more than we export will continue.

[JennyMorgan]

59 minutes ago, Mouldy said:

The Germans have shown us with the BMW Mini what a success story Leyland and latterly Rover Cars could have had with the foresight and financing to bring the Mini into the new Millennium.  

The present German Mini is hardly mini. I'm of the opinion that even the Huns are now missing a trick. The original principle of the Mini was right but BMW have left the mini market wide open to other very small car manufacturers. 

I remember the fun that we had with an original Mini Van, no trouble in getting sixteen teenagers in one! 

[stumpy]

1 hour ago, MauriceMynah said:

 

Lets take the motorcycle industry, it does show some clear pointers. While I was still hankering after Norton 750s Bonneville 650s and BSA 650s, Honda were offering their customers electric start, indicators  and 4 cylinders with gearboxes that didn't drop  oil wherever it stopped.

 

Ipswich used to have a proper bike shop, Nicks Motors, run by an ex proper rocker. When I passed my test and went in to chop my Tiger Cub in on a T120 Bonnie I asked him how come none of his stock had a drip tray under them -"Cos I don't put any oil in the fornicators until they go out the door, son." Seemed fair enough to me. (He used a shorter word than that)

[Mouldy]

10 minutes ago, JennyMorgan said:

The present German Mini is hardly mini. I'm of the opinion that even the Huns are now missing a trick. The original principle of the Mini was right but BMW have left the mini market wide open to other very small car manufacturers. 

I remember the fun that we had with an original Mini Van, no trouble in getting sixteen teenagers in one! 

To be fair, no small cars are as small as they used to be.  Look at the current Fiat 500, which is far bigger than the original.  One can only guess that the size is related to the safety standards and crash testing requirements that are in place now.

[Cheesey69]

Here's a clue..

When the QE2 was being built, in 1965, The workers where using a sheet metal bender built in 1905, steam powered and needed a hundred people to tend.

The shipyard was desperate to modernise, use a hydraulic machine that need 20 men to use.

The union said no, the ship workers said no.

The shipyard died.

Dockers and container use. The same result.

Its not union bashing, after all the union is made up of members. But the pace of change is a race and if one country modernises then you had better or the customer will go.  

Nothing stays still forever, except maybe the Broads Authority