Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[butchersapron]

Now they care about economic problems. Economic collapse.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Right so we nationalise the plant and then what build gearboxes and pile them up in


So we nationalise the gearbox plant at Dagenham, then what? keep making gearboxes and pile them up in the fields next to it?

Having nationalised manufacturing centres, we could actually make cars without bosses or multinational companies. It's possible.

 

[mauvais]

Oh aye? On what basis?

Makes more stuff (not just cars) and employs more people - and skilled people - than at many points in its beleaguered past, possibly ever. JLR, Nissan, Honda, various others and a huge industry supplying them.

 

[mauvais]

Having nationalised manufacturing centres, we could actually make cars without bosses or multinational companies. It's possible.

Do you know anything about car manufacturing?

 

[SpackleFrog]

Makes more stuff (not just cars) and employs more people - and skilled people - than at many points in its beleaguered past, possibly ever. JLR, Nissan, Honda, various others and a huge industry supplying them.

Primarily high end premium cars or sports vehicles. Not basic transport models, and even then not on the scale of what was produced in the 1960's and '70's.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Do you know anything about car manufacturing?

I know you don't need a multinational or shareholders to do it. What do you know about car manufacturing?

 

[mauvais]

I know you don't need a multinational or shareholders to do it. What do you know about car manufacturing?

A little. Modern car manufacturing (of affordable cars anyway) is an inherently global business, and yet despite that, the return on capital investment is still relatively poor.

Take almost any modern mass market car of your choosing and I'll show you a globally-appropriate design, a platform shared with multiple other vehicles quite often including those of other manufacturers, an integration of thousands of off-the-shelf parts from various manufacturers that also appear in countless other vehicles, and after all of that, the duplication is too high, the margin is still questionably weak and the manufacturer may go bust.

In the actual reality we inhabit, your home-made, go-it-alone Car of Britain is either a £250k Bristol Bullet (and it needs an engine) , or it's a Trabant.

 

[elbows]

In terms of car production, for some years now the industry body has been predicting the possibility of beating the 1972 record for number of cars produced. Last time I checked they had to push their prediction a few more years down the road, and Brexit may already have killed the confidence of the predictors, I don't know, but it seems clear to me that the sector is far larger than some assume. Yes there were decades of bad news and some focus on the devastation caused as specific plants got shuttered, especially here in the midlands, but it seems the bad news has perhaps left the wrong overall impression in peoples minds.

 

[mauvais]

Primarily high end premium cars or sports vehicles. Not basic transport models, and even then not on the scale of what was produced in the 1960's and '70's.

Nissan don't make high end vehicles, do they?

The British car manufacturing peak was 1.9m cars in 1972, significantly more than during the 60s or later 70s. Now we make about 1.7m, and a lot more exported via the secondary tier than ever before (major parts etc, 2.5m engines), hence why I say we make more stuff.

And about 850,000 people employed.

 

[BemusedbyLife]

Having nationalised manufacturing centres, we could actually make cars without bosses or multinational companies. It's possible.

If we nationalised every car plant and car component plant in the UK we wouldn't have a car manufacturing industry we would have several incomplete ones since the UK can't nationalise the component manufacturers that are outside the UK, it would cost billions maybe tens of billions to nationalise them and as much money again to try and retool them to work together. Money which could be better spent on other things like doing something about record child poverty for example.
If your objective is to simply save jobs (an admirable goal) then this can probably be achieved more easily by staying in the EU or at least the single market.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Nissan don't make high end vehicles, do they?

The Washington plant's two biggest production lines are for the Qashqai and the Juke, which are pretty run-of-the-mill motors I think.

 

[mauvais]

The Washington plant's two biggest production lines are for the Qashqai and the Juke, which are pretty run-of-the-mill motors I think.

Indeed. To be fair the UK does make plenty of high end stuff (Aston Martin, Bentley, Lotus, some JLR models) but inevitably the big numbers are formed by the ordinary.

 

[elbows]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the misunderstanding, including luxury vehicle stuff, stems from many of the bad news stories from recent decades have been centred around ownership of car companies and brands, ie the loss of British-owned companies, rather than whats manufactured here.

 

[yield]

Nissan don't make high end vehicles, do they?

Infiniti but it's mainly for the North American Market. Didn't know that Mitsubishi had joined Renault-Nissan? So there's those too.

 

[mauvais]

Infiniti but it's mainly for the North American Market. Didn't know that Mitsubishi had joined Renault-Nissan? So there's those too.

Yeah - Mitsubishi's cars business especially in Europe has long been in trouble due to a general failure to sort out the aforementioned sharing activities.

 

[Supine]

Having nationalised manufacturing centres, we could actually make cars without bosses or multinational companies. It's possible.

Hahahahahahaha.. no.

 

[yield]

Hahahahahahaha.. no.

Of course you can there's nothing inevitable about bosses or multinationals. That's just a result of historical circumstance.

Most of the fall in productivity in the West is due to monopolies, bad pay, inefficiency and poor management.

Probably not the not what SpackleFrog had in mind but take Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia as an example.

Capitalism at its best should be a meritocracy but the reality is that access to limited fee paying schools is a fast track to management.

 

[mauvais]

You could certainly build a modern 'people's car' if you could replace globalised capitalism with globalised something-else-cooperative, thus sustaining the necessary scale and commonality, but you would need to have changed the entire world first, unlike most products where a local initiative would yield far better results. So perhaps not the first item on the revolutionary's morning agenda. Better to get rid of the car and pretend that was the aim

 

[yield]

Better to get rid of the car and pretend that was the aim

Ha! Think the internal combustion engine maybe on the scrap heap of history. Not sure about the car though.

 

[DotCommunist]

Ah thank you that explains the mob of starving children I had to fight my way through heading for the bus stop tonight

is starving kids begging on the streets your metric for existing poverty?

 

[Raheem]

At the risk of sounding like a swivel eyed tory hard brexiteer loon. The UK has a massive home market for cars. Foreign companies put factories where there is a market for their product.

Australia and New Zealand no longer make any cars. I'm not saying that's what's in store for the UK, or that the cases are even comparable (population sizes are an obvious difference), but it does show that there is no law of nature that says just because you have a consumer market for cars you will automatically have car production to match.

A big thing to take into account in the UK case is the very close relationship between the car industry in the EU and the French and German governments. The French government owns a massive slice of it. I don't think it is likely that EU workers will be being made redundant after Brexit in order to benefit UK workers and/or consumers. Even in a no deal scenario, it will be imperative for them to keep the UK as an export market, and they will do what it takes.

 

[yield]

is starving kids begging on the streets your metric for existing poverty?

Child poverty in Britain set to soar to new record, says thinktank
02/11/17

The number of children living in poverty will soar to a record 5.2 million over the next five years as government welfare cuts bite deepest on households with young families, a leading UK thinktank has said.

That's fucking appalling.

 

[SpackleFrog]

A little. Modern car manufacturing (of affordable cars anyway) is an inherently global business, and yet despite that, the return on capital investment is still relatively poor.

Take almost any modern mass market car of your choosing and I'll show you a globally-appropriate design, a platform shared with multiple other vehicles quite often including those of other manufacturers, an integration of thousands of off-the-shelf parts from various manufacturers that also appear in countless other vehicles, and after all of that, the duplication is too high, the margin is still questionably weak and the manufacturer may go bust.

In the actual reality we inhabit, your home-made, go-it-alone Car of Britain is either a £250k Bristol Bullet (and it needs an engine) , or it's a Trabant.

In terms of car production, for some years now the industry body has been predicting the possibility of beating the 1972 record for number of cars produced. Last time I checked they had to push their prediction a few more years down the road, and Brexit may already have killed the confidence of the predictors, I don't know, but it seems clear to me that the sector is far larger than some assume. Yes there were decades of bad news and some focus on the devastation caused as specific plants got shuttered, especially here in the midlands, but it seems the bad news has perhaps left the wrong overall impression in peoples minds.

Will have to admit defeat here, as you both clearly have far more extensive knowledge of car production than I

However:

If we nationalised every car plant and car component plant in the UK we wouldn't have a car manufacturing industry we would have several incomplete ones since the UK can't nationalise the component manufacturers that are outside the UK, it would cost billions maybe tens of billions to nationalise them and as much money again to try and retool them to work together. Money which could be better spent on other things like doing something about record child poverty for example.
If your objective is to simply save jobs (an admirable goal) then this can probably be achieved more easily by staying in the EU or at least the single market.

This is just nonsense. Yes it would require massive investment to restructure production - but why shouldn't we invest in it? We spend billions on bombs and wars and bailing out banks and keeping Parliament in subsidised booze and whatever else. Why shouldn't we redirect that money? Would you argue that we shouldn't convert weapons production into socially useful industry for example?

Your last sentence just reveals again your complete moral bankruptcy. To you the only way to save jobs is to obey the law of the Market - the same Market that takes away those jobs as it sees fit. As far as you're concerned you'll pay any price to satisfy the Market - including 5.2 million and rising kids in poverty.

 

[BemusedbyLife]

is starving kids begging on the streets your metric for existing poverty?

I have seen starving kids on the streets begging lots of them but not in this country though, this country is nowhere near a collapsed economy and won't be even after Brexit, don't try and use emotion especially misdirected emotion as a substitute for logical argument.

 

[BemusedbyLife]

Will have to admit defeat here, as you both clearly have far more extensive knowledge of car production than I

However:



This is just nonsense. Yes it would require massive investment to restructure production - but why shouldn't we invest in it? We spend billions on bombs and wars and bailing out banks and keeping Parliament in subsidised booze and whatever else. Why shouldn't we redirect that money? Would you argue that we shouldn't convert weapons production into socially useful industry for example?

Your last sentence just reveals again your complete moral bankruptcy. To you the only way to save jobs is to obey the law of the Market - the same Market that takes away those jobs as it sees fit. As far as you're concerned you'll pay any price to satisfy the Market - including 5.2 million and rising kids in poverty.

Because we haven't got it? there are other far more important things to spend it on. Yes we waste money on lots of other useless things there is no excuse for wasting more when we have real problems like an unequal society, the effects of austerity on the poorest rungs of society, inadequate housing, an underfunded NHS.
The British weapons industry is the second largest in the world and that fact is nothing to be proud of but if a future government decides to change that, then those jobs will simply go, swords aren't beaten into ploughshares, they just aren't made any more. You won't find anyone in the TUC pressing for arms sales reductions.

 

[mojo pixy]

When it comes to a post-brexit picture, I have to say agriculture is something I'd like to know more about. Obviously negotiations being what they are I'm learning little, but I do know as well as anyone that we're far from self-sufficient in anything but whisky, cheese and cider. That's fine but what will the kids eat?

a huge proportion of our trade in food and drink is with the EU. If that becomes more expensive - perhaps even considerably more expensive - what are some of the potential outcomes?

It's extremely hard to find any clear information or even confident projections, and I have to admit possible outcomes in this area are worrying me the most.

 

[agricola]

Child poverty in Britain set to soar to new record, says thinktank
02/11/17

That's fucking appalling.

It is, but it isn't welfare cuts (or at least in direct terms) that are doing it - the damage is being done by the lack of affordable quality housing, and the gradual disappearance of secure, stable employment. Provide them and you would almost certainly reduce the benefits bill and poverty at the same time, because the state would stop subsidizing landlords and bad employers and instead put the money where it was actually needed.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Because we haven't got it? there are other far more important things to spend it on. Yes we waste money on lots of other useless things there is no excuse for wasting more when we have real problems like an unequal society, the effects of austerity on the poorest rungs of society, inadequate housing, an underfunded NHS.

What kind of economic policies produced this society do you think?

The British weapons industry is the second largest in the world and that fact is nothing to be proud of but if a future government decides to change that, then those jobs will simply go, swords aren't beaten into ploughshares, they just aren't made any more. You won't find anyone in the TUC pressing for arms sales reductions.

You can retrain skilled engineers to make socially useful things instead of bombs and bullets. You can adapt and redevelop industrial sites to suit new purposes. There are a great many trade unionists who are in favour of shifting production away from weapons towards socially useful things within the TUC unions, although perhaps not so much in the leadership.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

You can retrain skilled engineers to make socially useful things instead of bombs and bullets. You can adapt and redevelop industrial sites to suit new purposes.

Are you as sure about this as you were about your opinions of how the car industry is?

 

[SpackleFrog]

Are you as sure about this as you were about your opinions of how the car industry is?

Do you disagree?