and yes a new thread! I've said enough! and have absolutely no idea how I'd vote and don't have time to go to Oxford and get a PhD in economics before it happens!
He's trying to lance a boil, imo. The Eurosceptics in the Tory party made John Major's job impossible, Cameron is trying to stop the same fate befalling his Govt. Ukip was certainly a factor at one point, less so now I would say.
seems to show we're being forced into making things no-one else wants to! (until they do) Re-training steel workers to work in the NHS is OK, but I still have no idea whether we would be better off in the EU or out of it! (and I don't know which country owns those manufacturing companies)
but most importantly Vin, the only point I really wanted to make is that you could post those figures on facebook, add a sentence saying this supports why we should or shouldn't stay in the EU and influence the vote. I expect it will be won or lost over whether the EU accepts that our sausages can actually be defined as sausages or whether Cheddar cheese is better than Brie!
In terms of who owns what, Great Britain is very largely a post-manufacturing economy of the large scale, and has become a major research and service economy in many large scale spheres. We manufacture a lot, we just don't own it. Economists and Economic Geographers would assure us that a large manufacturing base would point to the evolution of the industrialisation of that particular country, and consider that those with a large scale manufacturing were further down the economic evolutionary ladder. And have a lower standard of living to boot. Whilst this may be true of Far East Asian and South American countries, European countries like Germany buck that theory with an extremely large manufacturing base. Then again, Germany has always bucked trends.
Randomly watching the ping pong world final - it's actually really good. All tied in the final set. British bloke vs Russian guy.
Oh dear, you mentioned the Austin Metro. Thank goodness it wasn't the Allegro. It was cars like those which were the last real knockings of the British volume car industry. New innovative and fully realised models require real investment. That doesn't sit well with a country that does everything on the cheap. There is one British vehicle manufacturing success story of volume production, though it doesn't have the significance of a major car manufacturer. It's Triumph Motorcycles. Once the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, they also had the British disease and didn't invest. Consequently, the competition took their market away. Then in the mid-80's a businessman called John Bloor bought everything remaining and didn't do anything but researched and designed new motorcycles and how to build them. In fact, he was so thorough, he even improved on Japanese manufacturing methods and quality. These days Triumph are back to being the one of the largest and most profitable motorbike makers there are, with factories in GB, the Far East, India, and I think, the USA, but I'm not sure on that last one. As for VW, are they going to cop it big time? I think they might. They've certainly put enough contingency money aside which is to recompense owners of their naughty vehicles. Thing is, how are they going to fix things without denting the performance or economy of their diesel vehicles? It's going to set them back enormously, and it might even eventually break them.
Allegro's........I was a very young rookie manager when I got a call to go to head office in Woking. I was told my 32 Reps were going to get the allegro as there replacement company car. They had signed a leasing deal for around a hundred of the darn things. They would be replaced every 100000 miles, with a 5 year agreement. They seemed to be ok for about the first 30000 miles with the odd problem. But oh brother from then onward they seemed to rust out or had to have the engine and or the gearbox changed. On average was getting at least 4 telephone call per week once the magic mileage had been reached. In the early days of car leasing replacement cars were not given for maintenance (accidents aside) So my reps were losing time on the road they could not afford so I tried to help them by covering them. In the end after about 18 months of this all of us managers went to the board and created Merry hell. The board scrapped the agreement with the leasing company and we went over to a Morris something or other (not minors) but it wasn't the Metro don't think. (There was an Austin version of the same car) We had little or no trouble after that. Mind you prior to that the Company had bloody Sim Cars anyone remember those?
http://news.sky.com/story/1629168/explorer-worsley-dies-after-antarctic-airlift Sad news especially as he was doing it for a good cause and not just for the glory.
Oh man! That's desperately sad. I was following it a week or so back and kept meaning to see how he was doing. Now I feel like **** and realise I should have paid more attention.
SHAVING . Any one here use the Traditional type razor + Soap + Brush ? I have never tried it , but my Brother in law says although it takes a little getting used to , it is FAR better that Gillette etc .