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While I'm just a fuckin' bloody Aussie with a ball and chain and no kulcha etc, I still feel sad when I hear that MG Rover might be over. I have worked in the mechanical/electronic trade all my life and my first boss was as British as a boiled egg. The workshop he built up was full of post-war British made machine tools and he wouldn't have any of that " Jap crap " - especially after " Wot they done during the war " etc.

He continued to buy English stuff 'till the day he died, but even he had to admit the quality took a dive somewhere in the seventies, while at the same time the Japanese stuff was getting better. We all know what happened to the British machine industry.

I know the poms can design really clever stuff, its just the guys on the factory floor that will not build it right. Perhaps it comes from the way tradesmen are looked down upon - its supposed to be a job you get 'cause your not smart enough to be a lawyer etc. In Australia lately, tradsmen like me are now earning better money than many ' professionals ' because there's too many of them and not enough of us. I hope this pulls more kids with natural ability back into the trades. It can be a bloody good career.

Back to cars. We build our own Fords and Holden ( GM ) down here. They are not as well made as the mighty Japs, but they have a strong following of loyal buyers who will not buy anything else. They are getting their build quality slowly better and better. Recently while looking for a new car, I checked out the locally made Mitsubishi ( " Mr. Bishi " ) and the build quality was fucking perfect ! They used to be shit. They've just installed a $40 million press that forms body panels to within 0.3mm every time and their robots put everything together dead on. I was looking for things to pick on and couldn't bloody find any.

I hope you pommy bastards can save your industry - after all, you started the industrial revolution that set everyone else up.

The problem with British industry are the people in it.... from the very top to the very bottom.

Those on the shop floor tend to be badly trained (the apprenticeship sytem has all but disappeared in favour of largely worthless NVQ's etc); middle-management is made up on the whole of workplace bullies who have no idea how to "manage" and think making threats is the only way of getting the best out of the workforce, whilst senior management is made up of greedy people who only care about their own pension funds/share options and are rewarded for their failures by "golden parachute" payments when they eventually resign/get sacked.

The current plight at MG/Rover should come as no surprise to anyone but those who read the red tops.

Well I'll spout my twopeneth and say the blame must stop with the greedy bastard directors and the barmy short sighted well paid workers. The bloke who lives next door to us works at longbidge on the B plant. He's a fork lift driver (wow fuckin we) and he's pulling down ?22,500 a year plus bonus. Now you might think that it aint much but we aint talking the capital of the WORLD London living prices we are talking cheap as chips Walsall. He tells me that if something should fall from the pallet that he is moving he must leave the pallet on the floor where another bloke probably on the same wage can re pack the pallet (what the fuck). Hey hang on I aint done yet, on the news last night they announce that the directors in their wisdom have earned themselves 10 fuckinspunkin million since they took over in 2000 which impresses me. Just think they take over a fucked company fuck it some more and then screw it side ways and whoola they get a big whopping salary.
Now what we forget is the cars are that SHITE that even the crowts couldn?t sort it and they are pretty good at sorting. If you disagree I urge you to check out the basic SKODA. Yes that?s right that other totally fucked company brought also by the crowts. Take it for a brief drive and then blip over to a rover dealer and have a go in theirs. After you have stopped laughing and you realize the salesman is serious about the price you?ll note the difference is the skoda looks and feels well made but the rover looks and feels like it was made by my daughters school. I must point out that my daughters school does a dashing line in jam tarts. So should the PM rescue this prestigious company and inject cash in the form of a loan to keep it going?

Relax I have the answer. Lets leave the injecting to the directors on a night out with the Birmingham Gay Mans Society.

Remember Red Robo (up the workers)

Deano, sad to say MG-Rover should go. The problem with Britain and its industry is
1) Training Apprentiships and Professional qualifications are being overlooked in favour of NVQ
2) Labour costs at all points from Directors down, are under pressure from the institutional shareholders, 100,000 jobs finished in the City of London and moved to low cost centres. Anything that requires telephone contact with the public has moved to a call centre in Banglelore
3) Middle Management have sussed out what is happening, the just can?t do anything about it, so push staff to ridiculous length to achieve silly targets. This is evidenced by the amount of Litigation relating to Employment Law
4) Directors have the power to make change but are aware of the silly shareholder pressure for more and more instant profit, so they take what the can get including obscene pension payments
5) Turning to Skoda, when they were a joke it was because they were built using prison labour. V W took them over hired competent staff and left them to get on with it. If you really want a joke car, go to the JD Power survey and look at the respective points of Skoda and VW. After three and a half years in Germany I can honestly say the Economic Miracle was attained by Guest workers from around the rest of Europ Turkey in particular.
I am sad to say that whatever way you look at it Europe is fucked and it is down to short term investment targets

Oh what, you mean they no longer use prison labour in Skodadom!

Pesky Polski's perhaps MG Rover could use prison labour and a short term investment plan?

The biggest scandal was the enormous payouts those greedy directors were taking while the company was going down the tubes.

Mart

A level playing field would help.
Renault and Peugeot-Citroen are all heavily subsidised by the French govt, and a lot of other manufacturers are helped by their respective countries.

It's a sad day for Britain that it has come to this. but the company is a mess and can't be saved. The directors knew that when they got in to fleece it for themselves and bugger the workforce. Rover cars are a pathetic joke compared to the competition and no amount of money would help - they've been dumped by Honda and BMW, so it was only a matter of time.

The way Rover is being run is just the UK in microcosm, because the upper classes and directors of all the major institutions and companies are taking us all for a big ride, while they feather their own nests.

What manufacturing have we left? Look in the shops and the only quality goods from the UK are from foreign owned companies - UK owned companies make plastic bowls and buckets. Apart from the South East and the financial sector, the UK is now a 2nd world and 2nd rate country with a piss poor infrastructure.

The future will only get worse when Honda and Nissan up roots and head for Hungary or The Czech Republic.