Engineering contributes a third to our overseas revenues

The message on Labour's serial failures is starting to get through to trade journals, as the editorial (extract below) by Les Hunt for DPA magazine shows. Remember these are the hard headed people who only pay attention to measurable reality and bottom lines, and are immune to Labour spin and announcements.

In my view its particularly significant that Gordon Brown's relationship with his "Banker friends" is so clearly identified. We have enslaved ourselves in debt to save the bankers, but the engineers offer a large contribution to our economy. How do we get repaid - with a dumbed down and disastrous education system ( see GCSE Physics and weep ), no credit to small companies (despite the announcements ), and large helpings of bullshit about the green economy whilst not even taking the measures to keep the lights on over the next few years.

The political class in general needs to wake up to reality, as dealt with on a 24hr basis by UK Advanced Engineering plc.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

12 March 2009

Engineering – to be more precise, advanced engineering - was in the news last week as trade & investment minister, Lord Davies of Abersoch reminded us that our advanced engineering exports accounted for a whopping third of the UK’s total annual overseas revenues – some one hundred and nine billion pounds, in fact, according to 2007 figures.

Speaking to an invited audience gathered at the great hall of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, the recently ennobled Lord Davies (a labour peer and a member of Gordon Brown’s coterie of ex-banker friends) was launching yet another government initiative to promote British engineering prowess overseas.

So, was this yet another plate of sops proffered to our floundering engineering sector and a lot of expenses-paid trips for company executives to exotic climes (apparently including Brazil, Russia, India and China, this time around)? It is clearly important that we undertake these trade missions and one hopes for positive outcomes, but it is difficult not to be cynical about their promotion, particularly at a time when manufacturing infrastructure remains in such a precarious state back home.

Lord Davies mentioned companies like Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover as leading the drive overseas. He also said that many companies in the UK sector are small and medium sized businesses that form a vital part of the global supply chains for firms such as Boeing and Airbus. Quite so, but aren’t these businesses also currently those that are now crying out for help, simply to keep afloat?

Perhaps Lord Davies would be better off going back to his masters to persuade them that charity, first of all, begins at home, and that unless the government is minded to put some fiscal measures into effect now to shore up the Jaguar Landrovers of this world, not to mention their many suppliers, that is the erstwhile viable, hi-tech companies that have simply become victims of circumstance, then we’ll have little advanced engineering to peddle at home, let alone overseas.....

Les Hunt [ The rest is avialble at DPA Magazine "Buddy can you spae a dime" here ]