Funds Insider - Opening the door to funds

Welcome to the Citywire Funds Insider Forums, where members share investment ideas and discuss everything to do with their money.

You'll need to log in or set up an account to start new discussions or reply to existing ones. See you inside!

Notification

Icon
Error

Money v Making Stuff-Should Britain bid farewell to the golden egg of banking.
Anonymous Post
Posted: 25 June 2011 12:31:16(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Just as an addition to my last post.

Do you think the lost Bombardier contract decision was the right one?

Prof Eman.
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 25 June 2011 12:39:59(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

Chris Williamson (Derby North, Labour)

May we have an urgent debate on how to secure the future of the British train manufacturing industry, following the decision to appoint Siemens as the preferred bidder for the Thameslink contract, which will potentially cost 3,000 jobs at Bombardier based in Derby and a further 12,000 jobs in the supply chain? This could spell the end of the British train manufacturing industry because, come this autumn, Bombardier’s order books are empty.

Link to this
Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 23 June 2011, c487)

Add an annotation (e.g. more info, blog post or wikipedia article)
Photo of George Young

George Young (Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; North West Hampshire, Conservative)

Of course I understand the concern felt in Derby about what has happened, but there has just been an opportunity to ask Ministers about this issue at Transport Questions, and questions were asked, and answers were given.

http://www.theyworkforyo...e/?id=2011-06-23a.487.6

====================

Business of the House (16 June 2011)

Nigel Mills: Will the Leader of the House find time for a statement by the Secretary of State for Transport explaining this morning’s decision to award the contract for Thameslink trains to Siemens, which will manufacture them in Germany, rather than to Bombardier, which would have manufactured them in Derby? I think that the whole House would like to understand how we reached the position of having...
Written Ministerial Statements — Transport: Thameslink Rolling Stock (16 June 2011)

Theresa Villiers: The Department for Transport is today announcing the identity of the preferred bidder for the new fleet of trains required for the Thameslink programme. This represents a significant milestone in the delivery of this crucial rail upgrade project. The £6 billion Thameslink programme includes major improvements to central London stations such as Blackfriars, Farringdon and London Bridge...
Oral Answers to Questions — Electoral Commission Committee: Intercity Express and Rail Electrification (1 March 2011)

Edward Timpson: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that, should the preferred consortium for the IEP contract be unable to deliver all that is has offered, other bidders in the procurement process, including Bombardier Transportation, which has a site in my constituency, will be given due and proper consideration in any future procurement that might result from such a situation? Will he also ensure that its...
http://www.theyworkforyo...transport+%2BBombardier

============

Comment from Jeremy
You can also try searching:
http://www.parliament.uk/ but frankly They Work for You is much easier to use.
Prof Eman
Posted: 25 June 2011 12:53:06(UTC)

Joined: 08/04/2010(UTC)
Posts: 480

Stil on Life Support
Thank you for your contributions at #130.
Norway. Your explanation is correct in many ways, but you appear to have missed another very important point.
GDP by Sector- Agriculture ~2%, Industry ~40%, Services ~58%. Ratio of Industry to Services just 1:1.5.
And, another question-What have we done with our North Sea Oil? What impact has it had on GDP, and our preparations for the post North Sea Oil era.
Switzerland. Agriculture ~1%, Industry 28%, Services 71%, significantly lower than ours.
The overall thread is that the lower the Services the higher the GDP, and economic growth rate.
The higher the Service the lower the economic growth rate. eg. USA, GB, PIGS.

Prof Eman
Anonymous Post
Posted: 25 June 2011 13:17:42(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

My last post was from my friends house.
Please ignore the name.

Prof Eman
engineertony
Posted: 25 June 2011 18:47:19(UTC)

Joined: 24/05/2011(UTC)
Posts: 71

More managerial incompetance through lack of engineering expertise. Edinburgh used to have trams, from 18 something until 1956, someone decided to pull everything out.
Recently a group of local council jokers decided to put them back again.
Big fiasco, spent 400 million and little to show, going to cost 1 billion.
Awarded to a German consortium because no one in the UK could lay tramlines any more, nor could they build the trams,they were made in Spain.
Zero engineering expertise at the top, and just below the top, and just below that. The blind leading the blind.
Jeremy Bosk
Posted: 25 June 2011 19:32:45(UTC)

Joined: 09/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 1,316

engineertony

Trams are a pain. Here in Greater Manchester they are very expensive to use, demand exact fares, have coin and note acceptance machines that frequently do not work and they are no cheaper off peak. Further, they have displaced working rail lines meaning anyone wanting to go to places the trams do not reach, especially outside the area, has to change a least platforms and frequently stations. Try that with lots of luggage and kids in tow. You cannot buy a multi-modal ticket but need to buy separately for each leg of the journey. Integrated public transport? Pah!
Still on life support
Posted: 25 June 2011 20:48:35(UTC)

Joined: 27/09/2010(UTC)
Posts: 52

Prof

Still not convinced that the service sector is the driver of GDP growth. It may be an influence but far more important is the combined level of public and private debt. In times when debt is cheap such as pre 2008, having high borrowing leads to phenominal growth (think Ireland in the years 02-07 beating the rest of Europe) but when debt costs rise rapidly such as post Lehmans in 2008, then high debt acts as a drag.

This would explain why Japan, which has a huge manufacturing sector but has experienced low or negative GDP growth for 20 years. Debt in Japan is more than 200% of GDP and this has driven relative borrowing costs higher (see JGB yield).

On the flip side of this, places like Singapore who has significant service sector but low debt has maintain high steady GBDP growth for many years.

Think the service to manufacturing balance may be more of an influence over the sensitivity of GBP growth to changing environment, rather than its outright pace, as services are usually able to react more quickly to the economic cycle, increasing or decreasing capacity and output far more quickly that manufacturing due to the lower reliance on plant and higher reliance on labour, a more flexible factor of production.

Therefore, seems to me that debt affects outright GDP growth in diff environments, but sector split affects the volatility of that growth.

Exception to this is China, where growth is driven by incredibly low productivity per unit of labour, so dramatic increases in productivity feed into headline growth.

Anonymous Post
Posted: 25 June 2011 21:08:49(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Still on Life Support
Thank you for your latest contribution. I write to you specifically to try to get the balance of argument right.
My comments were not to show that the ratio of services to industry was the sole criterion for economic development/growth, but a very important one.
I had hoped that internationally you would recognise that there is a limit on how much of services an economy can support.
Services cannot just support services, in turn other services, in turn other services and so on.
Somewhere down the line someone must make, do something (make stuff) for there to be a reason for services.
I do hope you can agree with that.

Prof Eman
Anonymous Post
Posted: 25 June 2011 22:05:43(UTC)
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

Dear all
Just want to summarise our discussion to-date.
It started with Making stuff v Banking and Financial Services, expanded to Services Sector, expanded further.
WE tried to identify some root causes/issues, and I was staggered to find so many-
Here are some of them-
Education, Poor Management, Cultural attitudes, Wild swings in interest rates & taxes (make corporate planning difficult), Parliament and regulators permanently asleep, low priority of science and engineering,Wild swings in Govt policy (wrecking our entire infrastructure e.g connecting our water works), Excessive public sector, Lack of awareness of cost/benefit ratios, excessive requirements for due diligence, Lack of competency, skill, expertise, the system itself, Problems with technical skills, level of maths and computer science, Short termism (short term gains v long term benefits), Lack of proper reward for engineers, inventors, manufacturers, researchers, inadequate skills based training, difficulty of sacking incompetent staff, the pension problem, funding issues, Reorganisations mania and political footballs e.g. Education, The ever increasing pay gap between the average reward and top salaries, accumulated mountain of debt, industry/manufacture/engineering-under-represented (inadequate Parliamentary lobby), Services getting too much of the national pie, better teachers required, need to motivate apprentices, Lack of confidence/trust, Lack of automation/robotics, MP's with wrong backgrounds/experience making decisions, Lack of Engineering efficiency, Need to break the welfare generation, Teaching of moral philosophy required, Poor early childhood development, Poor adult learning, Lack of skills/training in science and technology, Lack of shareholder clout, Excessive influence of the gutter press, Grossly overpaid individuals, Not adapting to change, We should make better and more advanced stuff than our competitors, Lack of status of the engineer (poorly paid), Chronic underinvestment, Poor working conditions, Inadequate Govt help/assistance, No broad based engineering infrastructure, Need to recognise a social infrastructure in the UK that recognises practical cleverness rather than intellectual brightness, Give Engineers the status they deserve, Even our new wind farms are made overseas, I treat all political parties with the same contempt, The thread is Education, Education, Education -But how to improve it? Engineering degree-hard graft for no reward, Immigration issues, STEM/Triangle Coalition issues, Return to HNC/HND type of education required or/or foundation Degrees, Education succeed in passing exams not to learn,
I think this is a tall list for any Politician. In fact presented with this list, I would think twice before becoming one.
However, any chance you could look at it and identify in order of priority, ten that could be tackled in the short term, i.e within a year or two and ten that should be addressed in the longer term.

Prof Eman
Still on life support
Posted: 25 June 2011 22:18:36(UTC)

Joined: 27/09/2010(UTC)
Posts: 52

Sorry Prof but I'm afraid I don't agree

You can have an economy that is heavily skewed towards services but there needs to be an edge.

Three M's spring to mind immediately; Macau (gambling), Maldives (tourism) and Monaco (various inc banking). Add to that certain Caribbean areas like the Cayman Islands (offshore banking). All of these have delivered decent growth over time without getting involved in "making" much of anything. They are admittedly all micro economies but economies none the less.

Contrast that with some of the old soviet countries, Latvia, Lithuania etc who are skewed towards manufacturing and heavy industry but suffering awful recessions. For the cause, see my previous post regarding debt. They borrowed heavily in an attempt to join the EU and got carried out when the price of servicing that debt rose dramatically.
88 Pages«Previous page1213141516Next page»
+ Reply to discussion

Markets

Other markets