Dyson Dimbleby Lecture
Discussion
I'm surprised I couldn't find a thread on this already, but maybe it was on a bit late last night.
Prior to seeingthis lecture I was dismissive, even vitriolic, about Mr Dyson. When I heard that he was to give a lecture on the British manufacturing industry I was apoplectic! Here is a man who shuts down his manufacturing in the UK and relocates to Taiwan going to lecture us about the state of British industry!
However, I watched.
He managed to eloquently convey what I has long feared(despite stumbling nervously over his script at times). He basically pointed out that the Emperor has No Clothes On; our economy is a sham and we are going to hell in a handbasket.
Without manufacturing there is no basis for an economy. I have long argued with anyone that would listen that a "Service Economy" is a fallacy that cannot exist in isolation. There will come a point when there is no substance to the economy and the bubble will burst. An economy based on everyone spending as much as possible to create jobs for each other in retail and service industries just does not work in reality - how can it? It relies on the rest of the world pouring money into our economy for us to spend. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
The idea of the UK as a hotbed of invention was dismissed, and he suggested we had basically blown the opportunities of the last century. We benefitted from the industrial revolution because we would have struggled to do otherwise, we were just in the right place at the right time. We failed to capitalise on that and have thrown it all away.
Manufacturing and Engineering - making stuff - thats what we need. Industry. Production. Providing material goods.
Is it too late? Can we recover and rebuild our manufacturing industries? I suspect not, the tide is against us now. China has bought the IBM Personal Computer lock stock and barrel. Think about that. Most of the steel production of the western world is being suked into China like a bottomless pit. They have a massive population, they are investing massively, they are educating massively. They are investing in their futures, and our demise.
Discuss!
Prior to seeingthis lecture I was dismissive, even vitriolic, about Mr Dyson. When I heard that he was to give a lecture on the British manufacturing industry I was apoplectic! Here is a man who shuts down his manufacturing in the UK and relocates to Taiwan going to lecture us about the state of British industry!
However, I watched.
He managed to eloquently convey what I has long feared(despite stumbling nervously over his script at times). He basically pointed out that the Emperor has No Clothes On; our economy is a sham and we are going to hell in a handbasket.
Without manufacturing there is no basis for an economy. I have long argued with anyone that would listen that a "Service Economy" is a fallacy that cannot exist in isolation. There will come a point when there is no substance to the economy and the bubble will burst. An economy based on everyone spending as much as possible to create jobs for each other in retail and service industries just does not work in reality - how can it? It relies on the rest of the world pouring money into our economy for us to spend. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
The idea of the UK as a hotbed of invention was dismissed, and he suggested we had basically blown the opportunities of the last century. We benefitted from the industrial revolution because we would have struggled to do otherwise, we were just in the right place at the right time. We failed to capitalise on that and have thrown it all away.
Manufacturing and Engineering - making stuff - thats what we need. Industry. Production. Providing material goods.
Is it too late? Can we recover and rebuild our manufacturing industries? I suspect not, the tide is against us now. China has bought the IBM Personal Computer lock stock and barrel. Think about that. Most of the steel production of the western world is being suked into China like a bottomless pit. They have a massive population, they are investing massively, they are educating massively. They are investing in their futures, and our demise.
Discuss!
It's hard to disagree with most of that.
Certainly Britain has thrown away (mostly becuase of our short-termist political system) many opportunities in the past.
While we have always been a nation of innovators, we have never capitalised on our innovation. Our entire political system and economy is run by people unable or unwilling to think mauch more than a year or so in advance. COntrat that with the Far East where many large comapnies have 50 and 100 year plans...
The British way of doing business is to invest a pound and hope you get £1.50 back in twelve months. The Far East invests a pound on the basis that they will recieve fifty times that in ten or twenty years.
There is also a certain inevitability about this if you understand long term economic development. All Western Countries are effectively in Stage 5 of the demographic transition model - ie. Post Industrial societies.
We cannot afford to pay our workers enough money to produce the goods we all want to buy. Therefore anyone who can work for £20 per week is going to get the business....we have priced ourselves out of our own markets.
The biggest mistakes here were the destruction of specialist skilled industries by the Conservative government of the 1980's. Shipbuilding and car manufacturing among them. The other great crime was the squandering of our own natural resources - North Sea Oil and Coal for example. That we are now importing our coal from Spain, while having many closed but viable mines is a total disaster. Scargill, onerous as he is, was, in restrospect, right.
What the Conservative government failed to realise was that if you have an entirely service based economomy you have an incredibly fragile economy. Whenever there is a downturn you lack the ability to manufacture your way out of it - you are effectively entirely at the mercy of the global economy.
What we have today is not really an economy in the classic sense, but an incredibly complex financial model based upon shifting money from bank account to bank account, but with no one really making anything.
>> Edited by alexkp on Thursday 9th December 09:26
Certainly Britain has thrown away (mostly becuase of our short-termist political system) many opportunities in the past.
While we have always been a nation of innovators, we have never capitalised on our innovation. Our entire political system and economy is run by people unable or unwilling to think mauch more than a year or so in advance. COntrat that with the Far East where many large comapnies have 50 and 100 year plans...
The British way of doing business is to invest a pound and hope you get £1.50 back in twelve months. The Far East invests a pound on the basis that they will recieve fifty times that in ten or twenty years.
There is also a certain inevitability about this if you understand long term economic development. All Western Countries are effectively in Stage 5 of the demographic transition model - ie. Post Industrial societies.
We cannot afford to pay our workers enough money to produce the goods we all want to buy. Therefore anyone who can work for £20 per week is going to get the business....we have priced ourselves out of our own markets.
The biggest mistakes here were the destruction of specialist skilled industries by the Conservative government of the 1980's. Shipbuilding and car manufacturing among them. The other great crime was the squandering of our own natural resources - North Sea Oil and Coal for example. That we are now importing our coal from Spain, while having many closed but viable mines is a total disaster. Scargill, onerous as he is, was, in restrospect, right.
What the Conservative government failed to realise was that if you have an entirely service based economomy you have an incredibly fragile economy. Whenever there is a downturn you lack the ability to manufacture your way out of it - you are effectively entirely at the mercy of the global economy.
What we have today is not really an economy in the classic sense, but an incredibly complex financial model based upon shifting money from bank account to bank account, but with no one really making anything.
>> Edited by alexkp on Thursday 9th December 09:26
I started out in engineering. I thought it would be a good career, skilled and highly trained. Whoops, what did I know. Five years of an apprentiship down the tubes.
When I left back in 1989, the writing was well and truly on the walls for engineering. Unfortunately in this country, decent engineers aren't given sufficient respect or reward simply because they choose to earn their living wearing a boiler suit.
Despite being an economic dunce, even I can see that if you don't make anything, eventually the economic model will crumble. You can only make money if you have something of value to sell in the first place and insurance and burgers, which, while very useful, aren't enough to build a society on.
We should concentrate on low volume high quality goods as that's what we are best at. Yes, there will be cheaper products on the market, but not everyone wants to shop at Aldi.
Having said all that, you would have to pay me a hell of a wage to get me back into engineering. Maybe when all the engineers are gone and industry screams out for them along with a decent package, I'll dust my indentures down and dig my boiler suit out once more.
When I left back in 1989, the writing was well and truly on the walls for engineering. Unfortunately in this country, decent engineers aren't given sufficient respect or reward simply because they choose to earn their living wearing a boiler suit.
Despite being an economic dunce, even I can see that if you don't make anything, eventually the economic model will crumble. You can only make money if you have something of value to sell in the first place and insurance and burgers, which, while very useful, aren't enough to build a society on.
We should concentrate on low volume high quality goods as that's what we are best at. Yes, there will be cheaper products on the market, but not everyone wants to shop at Aldi.
Having said all that, you would have to pay me a hell of a wage to get me back into engineering. Maybe when all the engineers are gone and industry screams out for them along with a decent package, I'll dust my indentures down and dig my boiler suit out once more.
It's all very well criticising what Maggie inherited in 1979 with the benefit of 25 years' hindsight but it must be emphasised just what a dustbin the UK and it's economy had become at that time.
Although I fundamentally agree with the theory of a good manufacturing base, it has to be sustainable and what we had as manufacturing in 1979 was anything BUT productive! Strike action had made us the sick man of western Europe by some margin.
Again, it's easy to sit here now, for the professional liberal, lamenting the break up of the unions but don't forget what a bunch of savage communist bastards many of these fiends were - I'm not talking about the membership necessarily, more the leadership, an overly aggressive mob of unworkable malingerers as ever there was.
Perhaps Maggie did go too far ito the physical, infrastructural sense but what was actually needed within contemporary heavy industry at the time was a different mindset but alas, with Scargill & Co embedded in the psyche of the union movement, Maggie as the political Gekko, it all got way, way too personal.
Btw, Alex is spot on about us pricing ourselves out of markets - this is exactly the problem going forward for companies generally, although I was encouraged by reports recently that Chinese workers are now adopting westernised job seeker values, i.e. demand for jobs exceeding suplly, ergo wages go north.
But they will still be far more flexible than us for aeons yet. It's one thing paying much sheckel for labour but when it's all wrapped up in unexploitable, socialist goo then that's where your major problemo arises.
Although I fundamentally agree with the theory of a good manufacturing base, it has to be sustainable and what we had as manufacturing in 1979 was anything BUT productive! Strike action had made us the sick man of western Europe by some margin.
Again, it's easy to sit here now, for the professional liberal, lamenting the break up of the unions but don't forget what a bunch of savage communist bastards many of these fiends were - I'm not talking about the membership necessarily, more the leadership, an overly aggressive mob of unworkable malingerers as ever there was.
Perhaps Maggie did go too far ito the physical, infrastructural sense but what was actually needed within contemporary heavy industry at the time was a different mindset but alas, with Scargill & Co embedded in the psyche of the union movement, Maggie as the political Gekko, it all got way, way too personal.
Btw, Alex is spot on about us pricing ourselves out of markets - this is exactly the problem going forward for companies generally, although I was encouraged by reports recently that Chinese workers are now adopting westernised job seeker values, i.e. demand for jobs exceeding suplly, ergo wages go north.
But they will still be far more flexible than us for aeons yet. It's one thing paying much sheckel for labour but when it's all wrapped up in unexploitable, socialist goo then that's where your major problemo arises.
derestrictor said:
It's all very well criticising what Maggie inherited in 1979 with the benefit of 25 years' hindsight but it must be emphasised just what a dustbin the UK and it's economy had become at that time.
Oh I entirely agree. I wasn't really making a political point in the party specific sense. The UK economy was in a very poor state in the late 1970's. Indeed we were referred to as the "sick man of Europe".
Unfortunately, the Government at the time pretty much finished off our manufacturing capability for three reasons:
1 They knew that revenues from North Sea Oil and Gas would subsidise the economy for years to come (they are now beginning to run out).
2 Margaret Thatcher was on a personal crusade to demonstrate her Iron Lady persona by breaking the unions.
3 The Government of the time was convinced that Britain could become a world leader in services and technology. This was gravely erroneous.
The final nail in the coffin was flogging off at bargain basement prices the nationalised industries to fund short term tax cuts. Selling something owned by everyone to just a comparitively few shareholders is simply a con-trick. MT boasted of a nation of shareholders - well guess what? We already were, but we aren't now.
Other factors that haven't been mentioned are the 'guilt' now associated with national success and pride, the legislative burdens on industry and also the spiralling welfare burden of fluffy socialism.
I think the economy is propped up by cheap credit and property values. Eventually it will go pop, and Gordon Brown, already heading for the wall, will have a massive recession on his hands.
China has now what we had 200 years ago, and frankly, I don't see how we can possibly compete with hard work, cheap labour and rampant entrepreurship.
I think the economy is propped up by cheap credit and property values. Eventually it will go pop, and Gordon Brown, already heading for the wall, will have a massive recession on his hands.
China has now what we had 200 years ago, and frankly, I don't see how we can possibly compete with hard work, cheap labour and rampant entrepreurship.
unrepentant said:
It's a bit rich for Dyson to bemoan the fact that we are losing our manufacturing base when he has relocated his production facility to Malaysia, purely on the grounds of labour cost.
IF you saw the prog then it would have made a lot more sense. He tackled this in detail. Bottom line is such that if all your component suppliers are in MAlaysia / Korea (because we have no manufacturing here) then why pay a fortune to ship eveything over here to assemble and suffer the issues of shipping timing and imact to manufacturing that has, when you can assemble next to the suppliers removing supply chain issues....
IF more companies in the uk could make 'widgets' etc, then it would be more cost effective to assemble here...
mr_tony said:
It's a bit rich for Dyson to bemoan the fact that we are losing our manufacturing base when he has relocated his production facility to Malaysia, purely on the grounds of labour cost.
IF you saw the prog then it would have made a lot more sense. He tackled this in detail. Bottom line is such that if all your component suppliers are in MAlaysia / Korea (because we have no manufacturing here) then why pay a fortune to ship eveything over here to assemble and suffer the issues of shipping timing and imact to manufacturing that has, when you can assemble next to the suppliers removing supply chain issues....
IF more companies in the uk could make 'widgets' etc, then it would be more cost effective to assemble here...
OK. Fair point, didn't see the prog.
Perhaps if people like Dyson insisted on manufacturing here the widget makers would also set up factories. Chicken / Egg?
Therein lies the rub, Unrepentant. The widget makers wouldn't want to start manufacturing an a country with huge labour/overhead costs when, in many cases, the mountain is perfectly happy moving its factory next to Mohammed's, so to speak.
You and I may be willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority buys on price.
Doomed, we're all doomed, etc.
>> Edited by Ahonen on Thursday 9th December 11:30
You and I may be willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority buys on price.
Doomed, we're all doomed, etc.
>> Edited by Ahonen on Thursday 9th December 11:30
derestrictor said:
Btw, Alex is spot on about us pricing ourselves out of markets - this is exactly the problem going forward for companies generally, although I was encouraged by reports recently that Chinese workers are now adopting westernised job seeker values, i.e. demand for jobs exceeding suplly, ergo wages go north.
But they will still be far more flexible than us for aeons yet. It's one thing paying much sheckel for labour but when it's all wrapped up in unexploitable, socialist goo then that's where your major problemo arises.
Its interesting. I spent 15 years selling sports shoes. When I started we made some of the shoes in Italy. Other production was in Taiwan and then Korea. It soon became imposssible to manufacture in Italy and gradually labour rates in Taiwan went up and then so did those in Korea, effectively making it too expensive to produce there as well. We all moved off to China, Vietnam and the Phillipines.
I have had countless dinner party arguments with bearded lefties about "slave labour" in the far east. The point I make is this. When the factories open up the labour rates are low (relative to ours but NOT by local standards) so all the manufacturers move in, pushing up demand and fuelling the local economy and developing the country as a whole. We all moved on from South Korea but the country is booming and wages and the cost of living are high. Without western company's "exploiting" the low labour rates would that have happened?
By the time I came out of the game our manufacturing was concentrated mainly in China but we were also producing in Spain and Portugal!!
I'm sure we will end up in Italy again one day! And perhaps widget manufacture will return to the UK as Labour turns us into the new 3rd world.
>> Edited by unrepentant on Thursday 9th December 11:35
Ahonen said:And even those of us who do but top of the range....
You and I may be willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority buys on price.
If there were two vacuum cleaners sat next to each other on a shelf and one was half the price of the other, would you really buy th more expensive one if it had "Made in Britain" written on it
There is more to the Dyson story than that which was printed in the media. Planning, restrictive practices for the factory etc etc. One of the reasons why they relocated was cost of manufacturing, but this was the only reason given in the press - because "it makes a good story".
On to the other points though - Derestrictor made a good point about Maggie. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but lets face it Manufacturing was going down hill long before she started. Criticise her and her government on many things, but they did tackle many issues. Unfortunately ran out of steam and impetus before it was seen through. She also did a lot of bad things, but thats another argument.
Specialist engineering is probably the way forward. Manufacturing cant really compete with the far east on cost (which is what a lot of it is all about). But specialist stuff is good. However, that takes investment and this is something that no-one seems to be interested in. The government or private industry seem to think that "investment" is some sort of swear word and should be avoided at all costs. Business seems to be "risk averse" and will not do anything that could be remotely risky. Shame as we have some of the best specialist industries in the world. But fail to capitalise on it.
Motor sport industry is one such area. Outside of the US, we have the largest producer of motor sport stuff. But people like Bernie Ecclescake seems dead-set on sinking this with threats of pulling the F1 GP out of the UK. Why? Profits.... shame really. To be honest we are all stuffed...
On to the other points though - Derestrictor made a good point about Maggie. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but lets face it Manufacturing was going down hill long before she started. Criticise her and her government on many things, but they did tackle many issues. Unfortunately ran out of steam and impetus before it was seen through. She also did a lot of bad things, but thats another argument.
Specialist engineering is probably the way forward. Manufacturing cant really compete with the far east on cost (which is what a lot of it is all about). But specialist stuff is good. However, that takes investment and this is something that no-one seems to be interested in. The government or private industry seem to think that "investment" is some sort of swear word and should be avoided at all costs. Business seems to be "risk averse" and will not do anything that could be remotely risky. Shame as we have some of the best specialist industries in the world. But fail to capitalise on it.
Motor sport industry is one such area. Outside of the US, we have the largest producer of motor sport stuff. But people like Bernie Ecclescake seems dead-set on sinking this with threats of pulling the F1 GP out of the UK. Why? Profits.... shame really. To be honest we are all stuffed...
Incorrigible said:
You and I may be willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority buys on price.
And even those of us who do but top of the range....
If there were two vacuum cleaners sat next to each other on a shelf and one was half the price of the other, would you really buy th more expensive one if it had "Made in Britain" written on it
Strange as it undoubtedly sounds, probably yes - if the company making it was also British- or European-owned.
Which is probably why I'm poor...
Incorrigible said:
You and I may be willing to pay more for a quality product, but the vast majority buys on price.
And even those of us who do but top of the range....
If there were two vacuum cleaners sat next to each other on a shelf and one was half the price of the other, would you really buy th more expensive one if it had "Made in Britain" written on it
That would depend on whether "Made in Britain" actually meant something, if it implied better quality, reliability and high service standards plus supported the employment of people you knew then why not.
The USA is proud of domestic products, China also, Britain however is embarrassed by its existance, what happened to the GREAT in GB?
Stands to attention and salutes whilst playing the national anthem.............
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