The vanished Engineering firms..

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Quote:

Originally Posted by wednesday1 View Post

Hey, you'll soon have all the out of town Tories on in a minute telling us how much more engineering, Sheffield does than now than 30 years ago!!!

 

Yes and this one who will tell you how the unions destroyed the engineering industry by ceaselessly demanding more money, thereby making products too expensive and forcing production abroad.

 

The truth is that industry became more efficient. It had to. And it started during the early to mid `70`s. And picked up with a vengeance in the very early `80`s. Nothing to do with any political party. Just technology.

 

I watched it happen first hand in my particular industry, engineering. First we had the Automatic machines, which became much more common in the `70`s, then in the early `80`s the C.N.C.`s, (computer numerical control), machines came along. And as they progressed in sophistication, they reduced the manual tasks that were needed on all types of component.

 

This type of thing happened all across industry.

[mikep57]

Hi,

 

Don't know much about the financing of Japan's recovery but Germany's was done through the American "Marshall Plan". The main thrust of the plan was to rebuild industry in Europe, principally, West Germany's so that the whole region didnt fall prey to the Russian's. At the time, there was a good possiblity that this might happen.

 

Britain got next to nothing from the Plan: The Abbey/Margam steelworks complex at Port Talbot was the only thing I can think of.

 

They might have done better if they had sent a better negotiator. As it was, John Maynard Keynes, was a terrible choice. Keynes was a brilliant (in his own mind) economist but his speciality was arrogance and talking down to people. He rubbed the Americans the wrong-way from the start.

 

He had convinced the Attlee Government he could get a gift of $6bn, whereas the Americans offered a loan of $3.75 bn for 50 years at 2%. On the advice of Keynes, the British Government rejected the offer and every subsequent offer was worse than the one before. In the end they got next to nothing.

 

If you want a more detailed explanation, See "A History of Modern Britian" by Andrew Marr. In the paper-back edition, it's on pages 11&12.

 

Regards

 

I was told that under reparations, Britain got some old German machinery which the US replaced with new kit.