@tim - I think you'd be wasting your money on IDS. He's engaged in a hugely complex and much-needed reorganisation. No-one expected it to be easy, or for the DWP suddenly to become the world's most proficient implementor of IT systems (it's not Tesco or Walmart, after all). He's taken steps to sort out the problems which have cropped up, and is sensibly not rushing in to full implementation before the IT systems are ready (thank goodness for that!).
I think antifranks conclusion is more realistic
antifrank Posts: 1,384 12:04PM The NAO's commentary on the implementation of the Universal Credit is about as damning as it could be. It really should be a resignation matter. Iain Duncan Smith is fortunate that the coalition is so carefully brokered and that he is a key component in keeping the Tory headbangers reasonably quiet.
He's out of his depth,always has been, wandering around a Glasgow estate with a bible looking for a purpose hasn't changed that.
What exactly is the problem with his reforms that make them unworkable? I've not paid much attention to this, but as far as I can see IDS makes some changes and the civil service says it is absolutely impossible to create an appropriate database because they don't want to have to bother with the reforms.
" Over 70 per cent of the £425 million spent to date has been on IT systems. The Department, however, has already written off £34 million of its new IT systems and does not yet know if they will support national roll-out. The existing systems offer limited functionality. For instance, the current IT system lacks a component to identify potentially fraudulent claims so that the Department has to rely on multiple manual checks on claims and payments. Such checks will not be feasible or adequate once the system is running nationally. Problems with the IT system have delayed national roll-out of the programme.
The Department will not introduce Universal Credit for all new claims nationally in October 2013 as planned, and is now reconsidering its plans for full roll-out. Instead, it will extend the pilots to six more sites with these new sites taking on only the simplest claims. Delays to the roll-out will reduce the expected benefits of reform and – if the Department maintains a 2017 completion date – increase risks by requiring the rapid migration of a large volume of claimants.
The spending watchdog found that the Department took some action at the end of 2012 to resolve problems, but was unable to address the underlying issues effectively. The source of many problems has been the absence of a detailed view of how Universal Credit is meant to work. In addition, poor control and decision-making undermined confidence in the programme and contributed to a lack of progress. The Department has particularly lacked IT expertise and senior leadership, with frequent changes in senior management."
They need to get IDS out of ther, replace him with someone more capable and try and reach some form of cross party agreement on this, like the one on elderly care that Lansley blew up before the last election
How the hell can you spend £425 million on an IT system which doesn't have the full functionality you need? It's a database with a user interface attached, it's not rocket science.
If you say the average IT developer costs around £50k a year then that means they've spent 850 years worth of labour on the system. And yet it still doesn't work.
You can blame the Tories and they should sort this out, but these ludicrous IT schemes have been going on for years in government under both parties.
How the hell can you spend £425 million on an IT system which doesn't have the full functionality you need? It's a database with a user interface attached, it's not rocket science.
If you say the average IT developer costs around £50k a year then that means they've spent 850 years worth of labour on the system. And yet it still doesn't work.
You can blame the Tories and they should sort this out, but these ludicrous IT schemes have been going on for years in government under both parties.
It's harder than that of they're still trying to figure out what it's supposed to do while you're building it.
Cameron tried hard in his early years with his detoxification to change this but with limited success which is the only rational explanation I can find for nearly 30% of our fellow citizens who could be bothered to vote voting for Gordon Brown in 2010. There simply are not enough asylums for any other explanation.
David, I normally have a lot of time for your thoughts and observations, but if you honestly do not possess the insight to understand opposing points of view how do you hope to understand politics in a general sense?
Please understand that I only ask this question of you, rather than many others on this site, because I retain some hope that you might be able to understand the point of view of people you disagree with, unlike too many others in life generally.
Late on today, so this may have been posted before.
I’ve thought for some time that Labour would be rejected the next general election. I now think Labour may well not even contest that election. Ed Miliband should be giving the British people a choice in 2015. Instead, there is now a serious danger he will give the voters no choice but to hand a second term to David Cameron.
Labour is not just losing the 2015 election. As was the case in 1983 and 1987, it is losing its licence to govern.
Does anyone know who wrote this?
Note:The subject Avery responds to the stimulus much later than other PBers.
It's harder than that of they're still trying to figure out what it's supposed to do while you're building it.
I very much doubt IDS knows what the system is supposed to do let alone the IT team. The government rushed into this without making bulletproof plans on how to implement it to look like something was being done about benefits and now it's come back to bite them in the arse. How very surprising...
I see TUD was earlier trailing the Panelbase Leader satisfaction numbers.
By some bizarre oversight, he neglected to mention the other question Panelbase asked - what impact would the expected UK 2015 GE have on referendum voting intentions.
I can't imagine why.
Very/quite : Unlikely/Very unlikely to vote for independence:
Con/Con led govt: 50 : 41 Lab led govt: 47 : 42
That's the massive swing our friends in the north have been fondly predicting......
Nice that you're taking Panelbase seriously though.
I don't - I was merely commenting on your selective quotation of what was a transparently rigged poll......
I suspect they are using consultants at £500-£1000 a day.
@JananGanesh: Problem with IDS welfare reform is not just complexity. It won't change much. Improves some incentives, diminishes others. Vastly oversold.
@JananGanesh: In-work benefits are not a perfectible system. Its just a big machine that can be tinkered with. Most countries do it worse than us.
There's a lot of sense in that, tackling it through tax breaks for companies paying a living wage may be a better start point with bigger long term savings and benefits
I'd go as far to say that it is impossible to simplify the system. There's too much pressure from civil servants whose jobs depend on the complexity. They make darned sure it doesn't work and anyone who tries will end up looking foolish.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) announced growth in UK car sales of near 11% in August accelerating from 10.4% average for the year to date. Key figures:
• 18 months of consecutive rises realised as new car market grows 10.9% in August to 65,937 units.
• Only about 3% of annual registrations occur in August ahead of September’s plate change, which typically accounts for around 17% of full-year registrations.
• Fifth successive month of double-digit growth pushes year-to-date market up 10.4% to 1,391,788 units.
• Private registrations see biggest gain but fleet and business buyers also continue positive performance.
• Registrations of all fuel types continue growth, with alternatively-fuelled vehicles up 41.4% in August.
• Registrations have grown in every month in 2013 by an average of 10%.
Figures for August:
August Total Diesel Petrol AFV Private Fleet Business 2013 65,937 32,903 32,108 926 31,608 32,386 1,943 2012 59,433 29,391 29,387 655 27,567 30,153 1,713 % inc. 10.9% 11.9% 9.3% 41.4% 14.7% 7.4% 13.4% Share 13 49.9% 48.7% 1.4% 47.9% 49.1% 2.9% Share 12 49.5% 49.4% 1.1% 46.4% 50.7% 2.9%
I suspect they are using consultants at £500-£1000 a day.
@JananGanesh: Problem with IDS welfare reform is not just complexity. It won't change much. Improves some incentives, diminishes others. Vastly oversold.
@JananGanesh: In-work benefits are not a perfectible system. Its just a big machine that can be tinkered with. Most countries do it worse than us.
There's a lot of sense in that, tackling it through tax breaks for companies paying a living wage may be a better start point with bigger long term savings and benefits
I'd go as far to say that it is impossible to simplify the system. There's too much pressure from civil servants whose jobs depend on the complexity. They make darned sure it doesn't work and anyone who tries will end up looking foolish.
The world is an anti Tory conspiracy, all the polling showing that the Tories are toxic is probably rigged too. Because it can't possibly be the Tories fault that they are incompetent and disliked, there must be someone else to blame.
I very much doubt IDS knows what the system is supposed to do let alone the IT team. The government rushed into this without making bulletproof plans on how to implement it to look like something was being done about benefits and now it's come back to bite them in the arse. How very surprising...
That's complete nonsense in all ways:
(a) IDS knows more about the structure of welfare than any other politician except perhaps Frank Field
(b) They hardly 'rushed into' it. As tim never fails to remind us, the implementation is proceeding slowly and the system won't be ready until well into the next parliament. Is over five years 'rushing into' it? Of course not.
(c) Even IDS' critics accept this is the biggest change in welfare since 1945, so saying it was 'to look like something was being done' is A1 tosh. The truth is the complete opposite - a more valid criticism is that it's too ambitious, not too cosmetic.
(d) In what conceivable sense has it 'come back to bite them in the arse'? There's no chaos, people are still getting paid benefits, the pilots are proceeding, the IT system is a bit behind schedule and is not finished yet, but it seems to be back under control after the personnel changes which IDS made, and the important bit which is up and running (RTI) seems to be working reasonably well.
'Massive IT System is a bit behind schedule' is not exactly the end of the world, is it? - if it were, the world would have ended many times over.
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80% 2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29% 3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06% 4. Daventry: 56.50% 5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
I see TUD was earlier trailing the Panelbase Leader satisfaction numbers.
By some bizarre oversight, he neglected to mention the other question Panelbase asked - what impact would the expected UK 2015 GE have on referendum voting intentions.
I can't imagine why.
Very/quite : Unlikely/Very unlikely to vote for independence:
Con/Con led govt: 50 : 41 Lab led govt: 47 : 42
That's the massive swing our friends in the north have been fondly predicting......
Nice that you're taking Panelbase seriously though.
I don't - I was merely commenting on your selective quotation of what was a transparently rigged poll......
'Look, look, poll show these silly Nats are speaking crap about prospect of Con government causing a massive swing to independence. All the rest of the poll is transparently rigged though.'
No link to 'massive swing'? Since you have problems remembering what you've written I thought it unlikely you'd be able to dredge up the words of anyone else.
The party which is actually having to take some of the most difficult decisions for decades is not liked... who'd a thunk it?
That party is, of course, the LDs who don't fare too badly on the Ipsos-MORI ratings.
Maybe that's because voters haven't recognised all those difficult LibDem decisions - even Miliband beats Clegg on that score:
Our poll shows Mr Miliband trails David Cameron by 37% to 15% on who is most trusted by voters to make tough decisions, with Nick Clegg polling just 4%
Cameron tried hard in his early years with his detoxification to change this but with limited success which is the only rational explanation I can find for nearly 30% of our fellow citizens who could be bothered to vote voting for Gordon Brown in 2010. There simply are not enough asylums for any other explanation.
David, I normally have a lot of time for your thoughts and observations, but if you honestly do not possess the insight to understand opposing points of view how do you hope to understand politics in a general sense?
Please understand that I only ask this question of you, rather than many others on this site, because I retain some hope that you might be able to understand the point of view of people you disagree with, unlike too many others in life generally.
I have a bit of a blind spot with Brown which makes me say silly things sometimes. I have no problem understanding why people vote Labour per se. Many of my family have and I have come close myself on occasion (SNP-v-Labour, tough call).
Thanks very much for your explanation of the GDP issue the other day. After several efforts by you I finally got there. Much appreciated.
''Because it can't possibly be the Tories fault that they are incompetent and disliked, there must be someone else to blame. ''
This is one big problem with the Hodges critique. He completely overlooks the fact that the government isn't exactly in voters' good books.There's very little context in what he writes.
On the World Economic Forum competitiveness ranking I note that we have dropped a couple of slots but remain still very much at the top of the list. The issues letting us down are debt, deficit and credit availability.
Hmm...I wonder which party is most to blame for these structural weaknesses in our economy and which is doing its damnedest to restore the status quo ante....
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80% 2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29% 3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06% 4. Daventry: 56.50% 5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
What do you mean "outside"?? Those four regions are half the country!
Best sellers August Year-to-date 1 Fiesta 3,289 1 Fiesta 75,418 2 Astra 2,428 2 Focus 57,129 3 Golf 2,233 3 Corsa 53,284 4 Focus 2,225 4 Astra 42,324 5 Corsa 2,151 5 Golf 39,530 6 1 Series 1,927 6 Qashqai 33,299 7 Qashqai 1,875 7 Polo 27,730 8 3 Series 1,517 8 3 Series 26,175 9 Polo 1,442 9 1 Series 24,364 10 Insignia 1,147 10 208 24,269
Hmm Mr Pole lets look at your YTD rankings and country of origin:
1. Spain and Germany 2. Spain and Germany 3. Spain and Germany 4. UK !!! and Germany 5. Germany 6. UK !! 7. Spain and Germany 8. Germany and South Africa 9. Germany 10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
On the World Economic Forum competitiveness ranking I note that we have dropped a couple of slots but remain still very much at the top of the list. The issues letting us down are debt, deficit and credit availability.
Hmm...I wonder which party is most to blame for these structural weaknesses in our economy and which is doing its damnedest to restore the status quo ante....
It might explain why we're lower on the list it doesn't explain why we're not going back up it.
@TUD - so the poll wasn't transparently rigged - or ar least have the independence intention affected by the two preceding questions?
And next time one of your fellow Nats rubs their hands at the prospects for the independence vote of a likely Conservative led government in 2015 - I will gladly upbraid him on your behalf.
Given how much impact the first two questions had on the independence question - relative to other polls, I'm surprised the Con vs Lab 2015 result was basically MOE.....
It looks as if the WEF information reflects the problems of earlier this year before the credit pump was primed again. If we can maintain progress elsewhere I think there is a good chance of us moving back up again next year.
He says: "We are still in the early stages of recovery. We still have great economic challenges. I arrive at this summit as the finance minister with pretty much the highest budget deficit around the table, even though it has come down by a third.
"So we have a long way to make up for what happened. We are still in the early stages of that journey,"
As usual he is right.
Sounds like a fairly complete precis of the tory manifesto to me.
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80% 2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29% 3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06% 4. Daventry: 56.50% 5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
What do you mean "outside"?? Those four regions are half the country!
It doesn't include the East and West Midlands and the Tories would have got more than 55% in scores of seats in those areas in previous times.
Just checked: those four regions represent about 43% of the UK's total population, or about 45% for GB.
Best sellers August Year-to-date 1 Fiesta 3,289 1 Fiesta 75,418 2 Astra 2,428 2 Focus 57,129 3 Golf 2,233 3 Corsa 53,284 4 Focus 2,225 4 Astra 42,324 5 Corsa 2,151 5 Golf 39,530 6 1 Series 1,927 6 Qashqai 33,299 7 Qashqai 1,875 7 Polo 27,730 8 3 Series 1,517 8 3 Series 26,175 9 Polo 1,442 9 1 Series 24,364 10 Insignia 1,147 10 208 24,269
Hmm Mr Pole lets look at your YTD rankings and country of origin:
1. Spain and Germany 2. Spain and Germany 3. Spain and Germany 4. UK !!! and Germany 5. Germany 6. UK !! 7. Spain and Germany 8. Germany and South Africa 9. Germany 10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
It would be interesting to see a BoP for the car industry.
Your analysis deals just with finished product and a true picture should look at manufacture of intermediate goods, e.g. engines and gearboxes as well.
But you are right that the UK is better at the flashy brands rather than the consumer staples.
You'll be posting Cosmo surveys on how to transform yours and your partner's sex life next.
As you should now Mr Pole english women are the most sexually adventurous and promiscuous in the world. Though this may surprise many english middle aged men.
I can only advise you not to employ a croatian for domestic tasks.
(a) IDS knows more about the structure of welfare than any other politician except perhaps Frank Field
(b) They hardly 'rushed into' it. As tim never fails to remind us, the implementation is proceeding slowly and the system won't be ready until well into the next parliament. Is over five years 'rushing into' it? Of course not.
(c) Even IDS' critics accept this is the biggest change in welfare since 1945, so saying it was 'to look like something was being done' is A1 tosh. The truth is the complete opposite - a more valid criticism is that it's too ambitious, not too cosmetic.
(d) In what conceivable sense has it 'come back to bite them in the arse'? There's no chaos, people are still getting paid benefits, the pilots are proceeding, the IT system is a bit behind schedule and is not finished yet, but it seems to be back under control after the personnel changes which IDS made, and the important bit which is up and running (RTI) seems to be working reasonably well.
'Massive IT System is a bit behind schedule' is not exactly the end of the world, is it? - if it were, the world would have ended many times over.
When the government first came into power I seem to remember 2018 being related to the roll out timetable, somehow that was brought forwards and now scores of people are going to be moved to an untested and mostly unfinished system just before an election, seems like a terrible idea.
I have read article after article on the universal credit, I consider myself to be quite well informed and I still can't figure out exactly what it changes. I know what IDS said it would do, but so far everything written about the changes point to tinkering around the edges while branding it a huge change.
As for IDS knowing about welfare, I don't deny that, my comment was more on what IDS wants the computer systems to do and what functions they will carry out electronically. He seems woefully untechnical and not someone I would trust with a massive IT budget. In fact no one in the DWP inspires confidence, and from what I've heard as someone in the industry the government are pretty much the worst employer in IT because of constantly changing specifications. One day ministers and civil servants want one thing, the next day they say they want something completely different. That alone causes a massive rise in the cost of labour. If the government had decent IT advisers and stuck to their original specifications then I don't think there would be any late projects.
Microsoft are just putting the finishing touches on a global virtualised server system that is incredibly ambitious, they delivered it on time and under budget. At Sony we just finished upgrading our server network (1000x the capacity and 20x the speed), ahead of time and under budget. The common thread here is that for both companies the specification was set early and not changed, big IT companies are successful because they achieve what they set out to do. The government still has not learned this lesson, and universal credit is just another example in a long line of failures by setting the original specification poorly and not sticking to it.
Plenty of posters on PB rightly rage at the waste of money that was Labour's failed NHS system, but the same can now be said about the DWP universal credit system. It needs to be junked, new objectives need to be set and a whole new team needs to be appointed. Then get IBM in and let them deal with it, don't change the spec in between and in 2-3 years it will be operating within the specifications set.
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
Actually it's a curious feature of the UK motor industry that the UK is both a big exporter and a big importer.
As long as we continue exporting Jaguars and importing Fiestas I guess we'll be doing ok.....
My understanding is that we are now in surplus for vehicles but it is going to be difficult to maintain that when we have by far the fastest growing market for new cars in Europe and we import the one's we buy.
If the UK market continues to grow as it has in the last 18 months it would be very helpful if some of the manufacturers could be lent on to rebase some production here. The government should be chatting up Ford assiduously.
Best sellers August Year-to-date 1 Fiesta 3,289 1 Fiesta 75,418 2 Astra 2,428 2 Focus 57,129 3 Golf 2,233 3 Corsa 53,284 4 Focus 2,225 4 Astra 42,324 5 Corsa 2,151 5 Golf 39,530 6 1 Series 1,927 6 Qashqai 33,299 7 Qashqai 1,875 7 Polo 27,730 8 3 Series 1,517 8 3 Series 26,175 9 Polo 1,442 9 1 Series 24,364 10 Insignia 1,147 10 208 24,269
Hmm Mr Pole lets look at your YTD rankings and country of origin:
1. Spain and Germany 2. Spain and Germany 3. Spain and Germany 4. UK !!! and Germany 5. Germany 6. UK !! 7. Spain and Germany 8. Germany and South Africa 9. Germany 10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
It would be interesting to see a BoP for the car industry.
Your analysis deals just with finished product and a true picture should look at manufacture of intermediate goods, e.g. engines and gearboxes as well.
But you are right that the UK is better at the flashy brands rather than the consumer staples.
You'd lose.
The real question facing the UK car industry atm is with demand coming back to pre-recession levels can the export boom of luxury vehicles still pay the bill ? The UK has a deficit in small to medium vehicles and vans which is mostly what we use in volume terms. the bigger question to me is why we don't manufacture more of these vehicles domestically since the sources of import and exactly low cost centres of manufacture. It's like I keep telling you too much of our deficit in goods isn't so much with low cost countries for low tech products, its with medium to high cost economies ( mostly EU ) for mid tech goods. It's a shame we don't have a pro-business govt that can grasp that fact and put measures in places to on-shore lost production.
Still I'm sure house price inlation will get us up and running gain :-).
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80% 2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29% 3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06% 4. Daventry: 56.50% 5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
What do you mean "outside"?? Those four regions are half the country!
It doesn't include the East and West Midlands and the Tories would have got more than 55% in scores of seats in those areas in previous times.
Just checked: those four regions represent about 43% of the UK's total population, or about 45% for GB.
Fair enough, a touch under half in that case. But am I right in thinking the converse that apart from London, the Labour Party only won a handful of seats in the East, SE and SW?
Best sellers August Year-to-date 1 Fiesta 3,289 1 Fiesta 75,418 2 Astra 2,428 2 Focus 57,129 3 Golf 2,233 3 Corsa 53,284 4 Focus 2,225 4 Astra 42,324 5 Corsa 2,151 5 Golf 39,530 6 1 Series 1,927 6 Qashqai 33,299 7 Qashqai 1,875 7 Polo 27,730 8 3 Series 1,517 8 3 Series 26,175 9 Polo 1,442 9 1 Series 24,364 10 Insignia 1,147 10 208 24,269
Hmm Mr Pole lets look at your YTD rankings and country of origin:
1. Spain and Germany 2. Spain and Germany 3. Spain and Germany 4. UK !!! and Germany 5. Germany 6. UK !! 7. Spain and Germany 8. Germany and South Africa 9. Germany 10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
It would be interesting to see a BoP for the car industry.
Your analysis deals just with finished product and a true picture should look at manufacture of intermediate goods, e.g. engines and gearboxes as well.
But you are right that the UK is better at the flashy brands rather than the consumer staples.
The SMMT Year Book gives some statistics:
On average over the last decade, the UK has produced 1.6 million cars and commercial vehicles and more than 2.5 million engines annually. 1.58 million vehicles and 2.5 million engines were made in the UK last year, and of these, 81% of total vehicles and 62% of engines were exported.
• UK automotive is a vital part of the UK economy and typically generates more than £55 billion in annual turnover, delivering around £12 billion in net value added to the economy.
• The automotive industry is the UK’s largest sector in terms of exports by value and generated £27 billion of revenue for the UK in 2011. In a typical year, the sector exports to over 100 markets worldwide and accounts for around 11% of total UK exports.
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
Actually it's a curious feature of the UK motor industry that the UK is both a big exporter and a big importer.
As long as we continue exporting Jaguars and importing Fiestas I guess we'll be doing ok.....
My understanding is that we are now in surplus for vehicles but it is going to be difficult to maintain that when we have by far the fastest growing market for new cars in Europe and we import the one's we buy.
If the UK market continues to grow as it has in the last 18 months it would be very helpful if some of the manufacturers could be lent on to rebase some production here. The government should be chatting up Ford assiduously.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
It's going to end up being 2 years late at least. If it gets going. A pencilled-in race in Mexico is on the list, as is the Austrian Grand Prix (formerly the A1 Ring, now the Red Bull Ring) and Russia's Sochi circuit.
Best sellers August Year-to-date 1 Fiesta 3,289 1 Fiesta 75,418 2 Astra 2,428 2 Focus 57,129 3 Golf 2,233 3 Corsa 53,284 4 Focus 2,225 4 Astra 42,324 5 Corsa 2,151 5 Golf 39,530 6 1 Series 1,927 6 Qashqai 33,299 7 Qashqai 1,875 7 Polo 27,730 8 3 Series 1,517 8 3 Series 26,175 9 Polo 1,442 9 1 Series 24,364 10 Insignia 1,147 10 208 24,269
Hmm Mr Pole lets look at your YTD rankings and country of origin:
1. Spain and Germany 2. Spain and Germany 3. Spain and Germany 4. UK !!! and Germany 5. Germany 6. UK !! 7. Spain and Germany 8. Germany and South Africa 9. Germany 10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
It would be interesting to see a BoP for the car industry.
Your analysis deals just with finished product and a true picture should look at manufacture of intermediate goods, e.g. engines and gearboxes as well.
But you are right that the UK is better at the flashy brands rather than the consumer staples.
The SMMT Year Book gives some statistics:
On average over the last decade, the UK has produced 1.6 million cars and commercial vehicles and more than 2.5 million engines annually. 1.58 million vehicles and 2.5 million engines were made in the UK last year, and of these, 81% of total vehicles and 62% of engines were exported.
• UK automotive is a vital part of the UK economy and typically generates more than £55 billion in annual turnover, delivering around £12 billion in net value added to the economy.
• The automotive industry is the UK’s largest sector in terms of exports by value and generated £27 billion of revenue for the UK in 2011. In a typical year, the sector exports to over 100 markets worldwide and accounts for around 11% of total UK exports.
Not much on imports though!
from memory we import about 85% by volume. The Uk market has been about 2 million in recent years and is now heading back above that level to 2.2-2.3 million.
Plenty of posters on PB rightly rage at the waste of money that was Labour's failed NHS system, but the same can now be said about the DWP universal credit system. It needs to be junked, new objectives need to be set and a whole new team needs to be appointed. Then get IBM in and let them deal with it, don't change the spec in between and in 2-3 years it will be operating within the specifications set.
I'm sorry, that is utter nonsense. Labour spent over £10bn on the failed NHS system. IDS has just written off... wait for it.. £34m. OK, that might not be the whole story, but you're comparing wasting a bag of peanuts with losing a vault of gold bars.
Saying 'scrap the lot and bring in IBM' is just childish nonsense. They've already got big IT suppliers like IBM in (as did Labour). That is not the issue; it's the project management and the complexity of the problem which is the issue, plus the legal and administrative difficulties of what everyone accepts is an incredibly complicated project. Of course it would be much easier if you could just set it up from scratch, but you can't - you have to transition from the existing system as well as integrate with the tax system.
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
Actually it's a curious feature of the UK motor industry that the UK is both a big exporter and a big importer.
As long as we continue exporting Jaguars and importing Fiestas I guess we'll be doing ok.....
My understanding is that we are now in surplus for vehicles but it is going to be difficult to maintain that when we have by far the fastest growing market for new cars in Europe and we import the one's we buy.
If the UK market continues to grow as it has in the last 18 months it would be very helpful if some of the manufacturers could be lent on to rebase some production here. The government should be chatting up Ford assiduously.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
I accept that Ford has got serious over capacity problems but they do make many, many of the cars we actually buy, as Avery's list shows. If more of them were made in the UK it would make a very helpful.
Totally agree about the van situation. There is a large and growing market here. Our economic model seems to be driven by white van man these days with his amazon deliveries. And construction has more money again too. This really should be Vince's second top priority (after making sure that the idiots in energy don't let the lights go out).
The UK has never really done boring mass produced reliability, lets face it.
The British marques have always been associated with luxury, flamboyance, fun, touring etc. What you might call 'character'
To be fair we now do it as well as we ever have done.
atm Nissan Washington is the plant with the highest producivity in Europe and possibly world wide. The UK can stay with the best anywhere depsite the doom sayers in the City.
Walked along the old A13 (A1306) through Dagenham a couple of weeks ago. Seemed quite desolate - the massive car parks that once held row upon row of newly built cars only a few years ago now empty. I think there's only a "Stamping Plant" there now.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
I don't think it's too late for Ford at all. They are getting out of uncompetitive markets where productivity is stifled by unions and stupid employment laws. If the government could tip the balance in our favour we have a highly skilled workforce ready to go for car and van production. It would take a lot of courting from George and Vince though.
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
IMHO PB tories quote Hodges because it annoys you, rather than because they necessarily agree with what he says. He's obviously become a sort of satire of himself.
He reminds me of Mr Happer's analyst in 'Local Hero'
@TUD - so the poll wasn't transparently rigged - or ar least have the independence intention affected by the two preceding questions?
The PB Unionist view in a nut(!)shell Yougov: 'It's ridiculous to think that anyone would be influenced by their preamble about leaving the UK, and weighting by 2010 Westminster party voting? Irrelevant.' Panelbase: 'Transparently rigged.'
And next time one of your fellow Nats rubs their hands at the prospects for the independence vote of a likely Conservative led government in 2015 - I will gladly upbraid him on your behalf.
So, no link then.
Perhaps you should be concentrating on those first 2 questions since by definition they are either not leading or minimally so. 52% agree & 37% disagree that Scotland can be a successful country. 60% trust Holyrood over Westminster to make the best decisions for Scotland, while 16% trust Westminster over Holyrood.
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
Actually it's a curious feature of the UK motor industry that the UK is both a big exporter and a big importer.
As long as we continue exporting Jaguars and importing Fiestas I guess we'll be doing ok.....
My understanding is that we are now in surplus for vehicles but it is going to be difficult to government should be chatting up Ford assiduously.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
I accept that Ford has got serious over capacity problems but they do make many, many of the cars we actually buy, as Avery's list shows. If more of them were made in the UK it would make a very helpful.
Totally agree about the van situation. There is a large and growing market here. Our economic model seems to be driven by white van man these days with his amazon deliveries. And construction has more money again too. This really should be Vince's second top priority (after making sure that the idiots in energy don't let the lights go out).
I suspect we've got as far as we can in Ford. Ford closed all it's assembly facilities in the UK because they were the cheapest plants to shut. Now it's having to face hard core decisions in expensive places like Belgium. My suspicion is that longer term Ford will drop down the rankings. The days when companies insisted we drive a UK badge has already helped them along the way. There's perhaps more hope if Company execs can be persuaded to drop their Mercs and Beemers and switch to a Jag or Bentley.
Walked along the old A13 (A1306) through Dagenham a couple of weeks ago. Seemed quite desolate - the massive car parks that once held row upon row of newly built cars only a few years ago now empty. I think there's only a "Stamping Plant" there now.
Walked along the old A13 (A1306) through Dagenham a couple of weeks ago. Seemed quite desolate - the massive car parks that once held row upon row of newly built cars only a few years ago now empty. I think there's only a "Stamping Plant" there now.
from memory the stamping plant is scheduled to close.
The comment re: Indian men and sex give me another chance to refer to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6161691.stm On the subject of cars, the multi-vehicle pile up this morning should give a boost to the industry.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
I don't think it's too late for Ford at all. They are getting out of uncompetitive markets where productivity is stifled by unions and stupid employment laws. If the government could tip the balance in our favour we have a highly skilled workforce ready to go for car and van production. It would take a lot of courting from George and Vince though.
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
Very good points Max but is Cambridge not the obvious place for such a set up? It was a great pity that the Motorola plant in Fife never got going. I think it was ultimately demolished.
I'm sorry, that is utter nonsense. Labour spent over £10bn on the failed NHS system. IDS has just written off... wait for it.. £34m. OK, that might not be the whole story, but you're comparing wasting a bag of peanuts with losing a vault of gold bars.
Saying 'scrap the lot and bring in IBM' is just childish nonsense. They've already got big IT suppliers like IBM in (as did Labour). That is not the issue; it's the project management and the complexity of the problem which is the issue, plus the legal and administrative difficulties of what everyone accepts is an incredibly complicated project. Of course it would be much easier if you could just set it up from scratch, but you can't - you have to transition from the existing system as well as integrate with the tax system.
So explain to me how Microsoft were able to massively expand their server side business without impacting current systems. The new Azure virtual machines are so much more complex than what they previously offered, yet they managed to get it done, integrate it with their existing systems and all without any major downtime. Sony have managed a similar feat and also integrated an external company at the same time, again all without major downtime.
It's not use getting the likes of IBM in if the specification and objectives change on a weekly basis (which is what I've heard happens from friends who used to work on public contracts). They may as well not bother in that case. It's the lack of joined up thinking with irks me, integrating the tax collection system and the DSS systems is a big job, no doubt, but why not have a single larger project, externally managed rather than having two separate systems which are likely incompatible with each other and will require major changes to be made compatible. Yes the single budget will be larger, and departments will squabble over the costings, but for the government it would end up cheaper and near hassle-free. Instead we get two tenders, two contracts, then a contract to change the two systems to make them interoperable, then it fails and there is a massive data loss etc...
No joined up thinking. As for the money lost, £34m is all we know about so far. Until the system is either finished or junked the full cost will not be known. That's not to say Labour were better, they weren't, but really it's the same tired thinking from the civil service that leads to it, I don't really think either party is to blame in a direct manner at least.
tbh it's too late for Ford, they're still cutting back capacity across Europe we should butter up Tata, GM and the japanese. And then we should attract another van manufacturer.
I don't think it's too late for Ford at all. They are getting out of uncompetitive markets where productivity is stifled by unions and stupid employment laws. If the government could tip the balance in our favour we have a highly skilled workforce ready to go for car and van production. It would take a lot of courting from George and Vince though.
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
wrt Ford from what I can see it is. They have a general problem of overcapacity so are closing plants like Genk in Belgium to get the others back on a 3 shift pattern which is when they can make money. In terms of future production they are shifting more towards developing nations like Turkey and Russia. Not so much for so called low cost but because they will become major markets in their own right.
As for the rest of you post couldn't agree more, we've spoken about semiconductors in the past and it remains a shame HMG is just brain dead when it comes to targetting key sectors.
Very good points Max but is Cambridge not the obvious place for such a set up? It was a great pity that the Motorola plant in Fife never got going. I think it was ultimately demolished.
Cambridge would be the natural destination of course, but land is too expensive and semi-conductors requires a lot of land.
Motorola spun off that division into Freescale from what I remember which is why the Fife plant failed (cost cutting).
If anybody doubts how outrageously badly Labour equipped talented young people for the modern world, they need only read James Dyson's comments in the telegraph today.
He commented that Iran and Mexico, with a fraction of what we spent on educashun in the labour years, have more engineering graduates.
He's hiring 350 engineers in Britain, but says he could hire 2,000 if they existed. They just don't.
So explain to me how Microsoft were able to massively expand their server side business without impacting current systems. The new Azure virtual machines are so much more complex than what they previously offered, yet they managed to get it done, integrate it with their existing systems and all without any major downtime. Sony have managed a similar feat and also integrated an external company at the same time, again all without major downtime.
For heaven's sake, Max - have you ever done a really big-scale commercial IT project, let alone a government one? The purely technical challenge of upgrading servers is completely trivial in comparison. You're thinking about IT as though this was a technical problem - it's not, that's the easy bit. It's about training hundreds of thousands of staff, collecting massive quantities of data from semi-manual systems, interfacing to dozens of existing systems some of which date from the 1970s ('stiffware') and which will no doubt be on hundreds of different IT platforms stuck together with glue and sealing wax over decades, and so on and so on.
Take it from me - this is massively, massively more complex than Microsoft expanding its server business - not that Microsoft's record on large-scale IT is exactly blemish-free.
@TUD "Do you agree" lead ins do bias in favour of an affirmative answer - which is why the SNP had theirs wrists slapped over their first draft of the referendum question - now amended. It would be much more satisfactory if all the pollsters simply used the agreed question without preambles - and first, without leading in questions like this Panelbase poll. That said, I was disappointed that only 53% of Scots thought their country could be successful if it left the UK.
If anybody doubts how outrageously badly Labour equipped talented young people for the modern world, they need only read James Dyson's comments in the telegraph today.
He commented that Iran and Mexico, with a fraction of what we spent on educashun in the labour years, have more engineering graduates.
He's hiring 350 engineers in Britain, but says he could hire 2,000 if they existed. They just don't.
But there are plenty of media studies, David Beckham studies and business management graduates Mr Dyson!
Again more joined up thinking is required. The government needs to start incentivising engineering and science courses by offering rebates on the £9k fees once the degree is completed and a high enough grade is achieved. Get a 2.1 and they will write off a quarter of your student debt, get a 1st and they write off half of it or something like that. Encourage students to go into engineering and science and keep them on the straight and narrow at the same time. Again, they would have to deal with lefties screaming bloody murder and "social engineering" accusations since only science/engineering courses would be included but they just need to deal with it for the good of the nation.
If anybody doubts how outrageously badly Labour equipped talented young people for the modern world, they need only read James Dyson's comments in the telegraph today.
He commented that Iran and Mexico, with a fraction of what we spent on educashun in the labour years, have more engineering graduates.
He's hiring 350 engineers in Britain, but says he could hire 2,000 if they existed. They just don't.
and then we get another privileged Juan Kerr like David "empty cranium" Willetts ramping up the cost of education when the country needs skills.
For heaven's sake, Max - have you ever done a really big-scale commercial IT project, let alone a government one? The purely technical challenge of upgrading servers is completely trivial in comparison. You're thinking about IT as though this was a technical problem - it's not, that's the easy bit. It's about training hundreds of thousands of staff, collecting massive quantities of data from semi-manual systems, interfacing to dozens of existing systems some of which date from the 1970s ('stiffware') and which will no doubt be on hundreds of different IT platforms stuck together with glue and sealing wax over decades, and so on and so on.
Take it from me - this is massively, massively more complex than Microsoft expanding its server business - not that Microsoft's record on large-scale IT is exactly blemish-free.
For reasons of sanity I declined job offers from companies that deal with public sector contracting. I enjoy what I do, and yes, I am paid less now than I would be at Accenture or SAP but it's not for me!
Walked along the old A13 (A1306) through Dagenham a couple of weeks ago. Seemed quite desolate - the massive car parks that once held row upon row of newly built cars only a few years ago now empty. I think there's only a "Stamping Plant" there now.
from memory the stamping plant is scheduled to close.
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
Horrible business - global overcapacity, massive capital destruction. Most of the value is in the chip design, not the manufacturing - more companbies like ARM would be great, but let's leave the plants to Taiwan and SEA in this sector
I see Gove is having a right pop at the NUT and NASUWT over strikes
" Mr Gove said: “There is no excuse for going on strike. What is the complaint that teachers have? Is it that pensions are poor? It has been pointed out that even after recent changes, teachers have better pensions than the majority in the public and private sectors.”
Performance-linked pay will let schools pay more to good teachers, he said. “I fear the reason is that there are people within the executive and leadership of the teaching unions who are for ideological reasons on some sort of kick,” he said. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article3861434.ece
Have a private booth with Yvette Cooper for £300 and no EDB present.
" Join us for our fundraising dinner to support LabourList with Yvette Cooper MP.
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LabourList is the place where Labour Party members can have their voices heard by the national media and Labour leadership.
The LabourList fundraising dinner is on Wednesday, 30 October 2013 19:00-23:30 at Sway Restaurant, located on 61-65 Great Queen Street, London, WC2B 5BZ near both Holborn and Covent Garden tube stations.
Tickets are £50 each for a three course meal and a reception with wine. Private Booths with seating for six are £300 each. Student and unwaged tickets priced at £35. Whole tables with seating for 8, 10 or 12 also available - buy a table and get one ticket free."
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
Horrible business - global overcapacity, massive capital destruction. Most of the value is in the chip design, not the manufacturing - more companbies like ARM would be great, but let's leave the plants to Taiwan and SEA in this sector
yes maybe we should plough more in to banking, that's worked tremendously well for us. No value destruction there, no siree. And we know it's never cyclical value destruction like Crocker and the US, or Third World debt, or UK property or Ninja loans or PPI or .......
can we have out £1.1 trillion bank support back some day ?
Horrible business - global overcapacity, massive capital destruction. Most of the value is in the chip design, not the manufacturing - more companbies like ARM would be great, but let's leave the plants to Taiwan and SEA in this sector
That's why there is an insane shortage of 28nm parts despite it being a very mature process. Overcapacity...
That's why in one year TSMC made more money than ARM have in the last 20 years.
We're not above manufacturing in this country and this kind of attitude is why we are falling behind Asia so quickly. Japan had the same problem for the last 20 years as well.
Also, the only area where overcapacity is an issue is DRAM and NAND. SoCs, CPUs, GPUs and new technology like the memristor are where the money is going to made. I'm not suggesting that the government go all in and decide to take on the likes of Hynix and Micron in unprofitable sectors...
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80% 2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29% 3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06% 4. Daventry: 56.50% 5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
That's no bad thing for them. Winning more than 55% is really just wasting votes.
Does the spiral of silence still apply when people are anonymously filling in a questionnaire? You'd think it would apply most when talking to a real person.
For reasons of sanity I declined job offers from companies that deal with public sector contracting. I enjoy what I do, and yes, I am paid less now than I would be at Accenture or SAP but it's not for me!
Very wise. You'd be spending your whole time in the most brain-achingly boring meetings. I got out of that stuff years ago, but I know enough to know what it's like!
If anybody doubts how outrageously badly Labour equipped talented young people for the modern world, they need only read James Dyson's comments in the telegraph today.
He commented that Iran and Mexico, with a fraction of what we spent on educashun in the labour years, have more engineering graduates.
He's hiring 350 engineers in Britain, but says he could hire 2,000 if they existed. They just don't.
Students have to pay for their own degrees these days and businessmen are shocked that they choose to do what they like rather than what is good for their business.
If Dyson wants more engineers then why doesn't he pay to train some up? Oh right he wants someone else to pay for the expertise that he needs for his company.
I see Gove is having a right pop at the NUT and NASUWT over strikes
" Mr Gove said: “There is no excuse for going on strike. What is the complaint that teachers have? Is it that pensions are poor? It has been pointed out that even after recent changes, teachers have better pensions than the majority in the public and private sectors.”
Performance-linked pay will let schools pay more to good teachers, he said. “I fear the reason is that there are people within the executive and leadership of the teaching unions who are for ideological reasons on some sort of kick,” he said. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article3861434.ece
Oily Gove whining about people doiong stuff for ideological reasons?
@tim - IDS is not dead in the water at all, but he'll be busy overseeing the implementation phase for quite a while yet. It will be interesting to see whether there are any significant welfare changes proposed in the manifesto.
On Topic: I think Labour benefits from a 'spiral of silence in reverse' phenomenon. They push the Nasty Tories theme hard and the left puts huge effort into portraying itself as the nice / touchyfeely / moral / decent side of the political divide. It's horseshit of course - but it sticks and I'm sure some proportion of people seeking affirmation say they're for Labour but don't really feel that way inside. The polling on issues such as welfare limits suggests the support for Tory policies and values exceeds stated support for the party.
In the polling booth on the day though, with Ed potentially becoming PM? I think Labour will achieve less than polling suggests.
Michael Crichton was, well odd, but a regular theme in his books was the discipline and skills that came with making things rather than simply designing them. I think he was on to something and we should be doing what we can to rebuild our manufacturing base where we can. Apart from providing mass employment it also forces the designers to live in the real world.
A good example is NCR in Dundee. First we designed and built holes in the wall. Then we lost the manufacturing (it is now, depressingly, an Asda), then, inevitably and bit by bit we lost the higher value design work as well.
To build we need cheap energy, none of this subsidised green nonsense, we need education systems that produce what employers want and we need an infrastructure to deliver the product. It really should not be beyond a government that is focussed on important stuff to deliver this.
Mr. Patrick, I agree entirely. This is closely linked, I feel to the rise in negative news stories, because it's much easier and more effective to attack the 'enemy' than to promote one's own side.
I had an interesting discussion with one of our finance guys over lunch. He said the growth in the economy is only sustainable in the short term. Basically we will reach a point where companies will run into capacity walls in terms of energy, infrastructure and skilled labour by the end of 2016. He said the government basically needs to invest in road transport, shipping, air transport, energy and bring in new training for young people to go into jobs without requiring a degree. He also said companies need to stop attaching such huge importance to degrees as well.
On the other side he said companies will need to invest a lot of money in building new production capacity or firing up mothballed plants (which is also costly) and the government need to assist this by cutting investment penalties.
Finally he said the biggest issue is education, and while the new free schools are good, they may have come too late to save UK PLC because the current crop of graduates and school leavers don't have the basic work skills.
If this decision isn't reversed I'll be amazed - the Outrage Bus has been touring all day and I'm onboard it. There's no *public interest* WTF?
An interesting bit of anecdata has been the number of callers mentioning that they were friends of those from a minority who were pressured into getting an abortion after finding out the sex of the child. And that Britain was considered a soft touch to get one using whatever reason.
More unintended consequences. That the DT found two quite easily - and they've just had their wrists slapped is totally the wrong message.
That said, I was disappointed that only 53% of Scots thought their country could be successful if it left the UK.
Yep, and 82% of of those who do not believe that Scotland could be “a successful, independent country” are people planning to vote No. Now, about that positive case for the Union...
That said, I was disappointed that only 53% of Scots thought their country could be successful if it left the UK.
Yep, and 82% of of those who do not believe that Scotland could be “a successful, independent country” are people planning to vote No. Now, about that positive case for the Union...
I agree that gender abortions are extremely disturbing, but also, that if we agree that women have the right to have an abortion, for any reason, including just not wanting a child, how can we stop, or prosecute a woman having an abortion because the baby is the wrong sex?
An interesting bit of anecdata has been the number of callers mentioning that they were friends of those from a minority who were pressured into getting an abortion after finding out the sex of the child. And that Britain was considered a soft touch to get one using whatever reason.
More unintended consequences. That the DT found two quite easily - and they've just had their wrists slapped is totally the wrong message.
Anecdatally, this is very obvious in my daughter's year at primary school. The boy:girl ratio is north of 60:40.
Comments
If you say the average IT developer costs around £50k a year then that means they've spent 850 years worth of labour on the system. And yet it still doesn't work.
You can blame the Tories and they should sort this out, but these ludicrous IT schemes have been going on for years in government under both parties.
Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott 4m
Stood up by Labour figure who confirmed meeting only few hours ago.Reshuffle underway??
Oh hang on.
Avery ! Avery ! George has screwed up again.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10287140/UK-drops-down-global-competitiveness-league.html
Please understand that I only ask this question of you, rather than many others on this site, because I retain some hope that you might be able to understand the point of view of people you disagree with, unlike too many others in life generally.
http://www.networknorwich.co.uk/Articles/370359/Network_Norwich_and_Norfolk/Regional_News/Norwich/Obama_mentor_inspires_Norwich_community.aspx
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) announced growth in UK car sales of near 11% in August accelerating from 10.4% average for the year to date. Key figures:
• 18 months of consecutive rises realised as new car market grows 10.9% in August to 65,937 units.
• Only about 3% of annual registrations occur in August ahead of September’s plate change, which typically accounts for around 17% of full-year registrations.
• Fifth successive month of double-digit growth pushes year-to-date market up 10.4% to 1,391,788 units.
• Private registrations see biggest gain but fleet and business buyers also continue positive performance.
• Registrations of all fuel types continue growth, with alternatively-fuelled vehicles up 41.4% in August.
• Registrations have grown in every month in 2013 by an average of 10%.
Figures for August: Figures for Year to Date:
SMMT figures:
(a) IDS knows more about the structure of welfare than any other politician except perhaps Frank Field
(b) They hardly 'rushed into' it. As tim never fails to remind us, the implementation is proceeding slowly and the system won't be ready until well into the next parliament. Is over five years 'rushing into' it? Of course not.
(c) Even IDS' critics accept this is the biggest change in welfare since 1945, so saying it was 'to look like something was being done' is A1 tosh. The truth is the complete opposite - a more valid criticism is that it's too ambitious, not too cosmetic.
(d) In what conceivable sense has it 'come back to bite them in the arse'? There's no chaos, people are still getting paid benefits, the pilots are proceeding, the IT system is a bit behind schedule and is not finished yet, but it seems to be back under control after the personnel changes which IDS made, and the important bit which is up and running (RTI) seems to be working reasonably well.
'Massive IT System is a bit behind schedule' is not exactly the end of the world, is it? - if it were, the world would have ended many times over.
In 2010 Conservative candidates were only able to poll more than 55% in five constituencies outside the south-east, south-west, Greater London and Eastern regions:
1. Richmond (Yorks): 62.80%
2. Aldridge - Brownhills: 59.29%
3. South Holland & The Deepings: 59.06%
4. Daventry: 56.50%
5. Northamptonshire South: 55.24%
No link to 'massive swing'? Since you have problems remembering what you've written I thought it unlikely you'd be able to dredge up the words of anyone else.
Our poll shows Mr Miliband trails David Cameron by 37% to 15% on who is most trusted by voters to make tough decisions, with Nick Clegg polling just 4%
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-miliband-poll-blow-only-2189683
Thanks very much for your explanation of the GDP issue the other day. After several efforts by you I finally got there. Much appreciated.
This is one big problem with the Hodges critique. He completely overlooks the fact that the government isn't exactly in voters' good books.There's very little context in what he writes.
Hmm...I wonder which party is most to blame for these structural weaknesses in our economy and which is doing its damnedest to restore the status quo ante....
1. Spain and Germany
2. Spain and Germany
3. Spain and Germany
4. UK !!! and Germany
5. Germany
6. UK !!
7. Spain and Germany
8. Germany and South Africa
9. Germany
10 France :-(
Looks like we've got a bit of a BoP problem heading our way.
You'll be posting Cosmo surveys on how to transform yours and your partner's sex life next.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039cccz/live
And next time one of your fellow Nats rubs their hands at the prospects for the independence vote of a likely Conservative led government in 2015 - I will gladly upbraid him on your behalf.
Given how much impact the first two questions had on the independence question - relative to other polls, I'm surprised the Con vs Lab 2015 result was basically MOE.....
Meanwhile George is being uncharacteristically cautious: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/g20-summit/10288776/Dont-get-ahead-of-yourselves-Osborne-warns-against-celebrating-the-recovery.html
He says:
"We are still in the early stages of recovery. We still have great economic challenges. I arrive at this summit as the finance minister with pretty much the highest budget deficit around the table, even though it has come down by a third.
"So we have a long way to make up for what happened. We are still in the early stages of that journey,"
As usual he is right.
Sounds like a fairly complete precis of the tory manifesto to me.
Just checked: those four regions represent about 43% of the UK's total population, or about 45% for GB.
Your analysis deals just with finished product and a true picture should look at manufacture of intermediate goods, e.g. engines and gearboxes as well.
But you are right that the UK is better at the flashy brands rather than the consumer staples.
I can only advise you not to employ a croatian for domestic tasks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10283527/If-Indian-men-have-the-least-sex-who-has-the-most.html
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/09/why-do-sixties-peaceniks-turn-into-21st-century-warmongers.html
"British women were also the most promiscuous, reeling in an average of nine partners each":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10283527/If-Indian-men-have-the-least-sex-who-has-the-most.html
I have read article after article on the universal credit, I consider myself to be quite well informed and I still can't figure out exactly what it changes. I know what IDS said it would do, but so far everything written about the changes point to tinkering around the edges while branding it a huge change.
As for IDS knowing about welfare, I don't deny that, my comment was more on what IDS wants the computer systems to do and what functions they will carry out electronically. He seems woefully untechnical and not someone I would trust with a massive IT budget. In fact no one in the DWP inspires confidence, and from what I've heard as someone in the industry the government are pretty much the worst employer in IT because of constantly changing specifications. One day ministers and civil servants want one thing, the next day they say they want something completely different. That alone causes a massive rise in the cost of labour. If the government had decent IT advisers and stuck to their original specifications then I don't think there would be any late projects.
Microsoft are just putting the finishing touches on a global virtualised server system that is incredibly ambitious, they delivered it on time and under budget. At Sony we just finished upgrading our server network (1000x the capacity and 20x the speed), ahead of time and under budget. The common thread here is that for both companies the specification was set early and not changed, big IT companies are successful because they achieve what they set out to do. The government still has not learned this lesson, and universal credit is just another example in a long line of failures by setting the original specification poorly and not sticking to it.
Plenty of posters on PB rightly rage at the waste of money that was Labour's failed NHS system, but the same can now be said about the DWP universal credit system. It needs to be junked, new objectives need to be set and a whole new team needs to be appointed. Then get IBM in and let them deal with it, don't change the spec in between and in 2-3 years it will be operating within the specifications set.
If the UK market continues to grow as it has in the last 18 months it would be very helpful if some of the manufacturers could be lent on to rebase some production here. The government should be chatting up Ford assiduously.
The real question facing the UK car industry atm is with demand coming back to pre-recession levels can the export boom of luxury vehicles still pay the bill ? The UK has a deficit in small to medium vehicles and vans which is mostly what we use in volume terms. the bigger question to me is why we don't manufacture more of these vehicles domestically since the sources of import and exactly low cost centres of manufacture. It's like I keep telling you too much of our deficit in goods isn't so much with low cost countries for low tech products, its with medium to high cost economies ( mostly EU ) for mid tech goods. It's a shame we don't have a pro-business govt that can grasp that fact and put measures in places to on-shore lost production.
Still I'm sure house price inlation will get us up and running gain :-).
On average over the last decade, the UK has produced 1.6 million cars and commercial vehicles and more than 2.5 million engines annually. 1.58 million vehicles and 2.5 million engines were made in the UK last year, and of these, 81% of total vehicles and 62% of engines were exported.
• UK automotive is a vital part of the UK economy and typically generates more than £55 billion in annual turnover, delivering around £12 billion in net value added to the economy.
• The automotive industry is the UK’s largest sector in terms of exports by value and generated £27 billion of revenue for the UK in 2011. In a typical year, the sector exports to over 100 markets worldwide and accounts for around 11% of total UK exports.
Not much on imports though!
F1: New Jersey not on the provisional calendar for 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23974794
It's going to end up being 2 years late at least. If it gets going. A pencilled-in race in Mexico is on the list, as is the Austrian Grand Prix (formerly the A1 Ring, now the Red Bull Ring) and Russia's Sochi circuit.
Russia and South Korea may not happen.
The British marques have always been associated with luxury, flamboyance, fun, touring etc. What you might call 'character'
To be fair we now do it as well as we ever have done.
Saying 'scrap the lot and bring in IBM' is just childish nonsense. They've already got big IT suppliers like IBM in (as did Labour). That is not the issue; it's the project management and the complexity of the problem which is the issue, plus the legal and administrative difficulties of what everyone accepts is an incredibly complicated project. Of course it would be much easier if you could just set it up from scratch, but you can't - you have to transition from the existing system as well as integrate with the tax system.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100234317/barack-obamas-chief-ally-is-a-clueless-french-socialist-the-presidents-two-man-syria-coalition-looks-desperate/
We castigate politicians for "not being like normal people" then pillory them when they are.....
Totally agree about the van situation. There is a large and growing market here. Our economic model seems to be driven by white van man these days with his amazon deliveries. And construction has more money again too. This really should be Vince's second top priority (after making sure that the idiots in energy don't let the lights go out).
Another area in which the government needs to look is semi-conductors. Make a special zone near Milton Keynes (mid point between Cambridge and Oxford) for semi-conductors investment and watch the employment roll in. Sponsor a few special courses at universities for semi-conductors engineering and microarchitecture programming to lay the ground work for long term employment and investment in the sector once the tax breaks expire.
Hugely profitable industry and many, many Asian companies are looking west at the moment for long term investment. On a productivity aligned basis our unit labour cost is now comparable with the more expensive parts of Asia (Taiwan and SK, China is catching up fast because of huge wage growth). There is no reason that our new phone couldn't be assembled in the UK (it would add just $3-5 to the unit cost), but there is no infrastructure to support it because there are no semi-conductor manufacturers here. A concerted effort to bring in high tech Asian companies would serve the country well, but it would need to be a very bold and ambitious plan which will inevitably come with headlines like "government gives billionaire companies Toshiba and TSMC £1bn in tax cuts".
IMHO PB tories quote Hodges because it annoys you, rather than because they necessarily agree with what he says. He's obviously become a sort of satire of himself.
He reminds me of Mr Happer's analyst in 'Local Hero'
Yougov: 'It's ridiculous to think that anyone would be influenced by their preamble about leaving the UK, and weighting by 2010 Westminster party voting? Irrelevant.'
Panelbase: 'Transparently rigged.'
So, no link then.
Perhaps you should be concentrating on those first 2 questions since by definition they are either not leading or minimally so.
52% agree & 37% disagree that Scotland can be a successful country.
60% trust Holyrood over Westminster to make the best decisions for Scotland, while 16% trust Westminster over Holyrood.
60% v 16%! The split is in and won't be fixed.
On the subject of cars, the multi-vehicle pile up this morning should give a boost to the industry.
It's not use getting the likes of IBM in if the specification and objectives change on a weekly basis (which is what I've heard happens from friends who used to work on public contracts). They may as well not bother in that case. It's the lack of joined up thinking with irks me, integrating the tax collection system and the DSS systems is a big job, no doubt, but why not have a single larger project, externally managed rather than having two separate systems which are likely incompatible with each other and will require major changes to be made compatible. Yes the single budget will be larger, and departments will squabble over the costings, but for the government it would end up cheaper and near hassle-free. Instead we get two tenders, two contracts, then a contract to change the two systems to make them interoperable, then it fails and there is a massive data loss etc...
No joined up thinking. As for the money lost, £34m is all we know about so far. Until the system is either finished or junked the full cost will not be known. That's not to say Labour were better, they weren't, but really it's the same tired thinking from the civil service that leads to it, I don't really think either party is to blame in a direct manner at least.
As for the rest of you post couldn't agree more, we've spoken about semiconductors in the past and it remains a shame HMG is just brain dead when it comes to targetting key sectors.
Motorola spun off that division into Freescale from what I remember which is why the Fife plant failed (cost cutting).
He commented that Iran and Mexico, with a fraction of what we spent on educashun in the labour years, have more engineering graduates.
He's hiring 350 engineers in Britain, but says he could hire 2,000 if they existed. They just don't.
Take it from me - this is massively, massively more complex than Microsoft expanding its server business - not that Microsoft's record on large-scale IT is exactly blemish-free.
Again more joined up thinking is required. The government needs to start incentivising engineering and science courses by offering rebates on the £9k fees once the degree is completed and a high enough grade is achieved. Get a 2.1 and they will write off a quarter of your student debt, get a 1st and they write off half of it or something like that. Encourage students to go into engineering and science and keep them on the straight and narrow at the same time. Again, they would have to deal with lefties screaming bloody murder and "social engineering" accusations since only science/engineering courses would be included but they just need to deal with it for the good of the nation.
" Mr Gove said: “There is no excuse for going on strike. What is the complaint that teachers have? Is it that pensions are poor? It has been pointed out that even after recent changes, teachers have better pensions than the majority in the public and private sectors.”
Performance-linked pay will let schools pay more to good teachers, he said. “I fear the reason is that there are people within the executive and leadership of the teaching unions who are for ideological reasons on some sort of kick,” he said. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article3861434.ece
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can we have out £1.1 trillion bank support back some day ?
That's why in one year TSMC made more money than ARM have in the last 20 years.
We're not above manufacturing in this country and this kind of attitude is why we are falling behind Asia so quickly. Japan had the same problem for the last 20 years as well.
Also, the only area where overcapacity is an issue is DRAM and NAND. SoCs, CPUs, GPUs and new technology like the memristor are where the money is going to made. I'm not suggesting that the government go all in and decide to take on the likes of Hynix and Micron in unprofitable sectors...
Where is Y0kel when we need him?
Russian Intelligence gathering ship and two landing craft now moving through Bosphorus.
What are they up to?
Preparing to evacuate Russian personnel from Syria in advance of a US military strike?
Or there to pick up chemical weapons stocks and take them away to a safe location for destruction?
Do you really dislike Labour that much ? All parties hold events to raise funds - even the Conservatives.
If Dyson wants more engineers then why doesn't he pay to train some up? Oh right he wants someone else to pay for the expertise that he needs for his company.
Oh, the irony.
Full support to the teachers.
In the polling booth on the day though, with Ed potentially becoming PM? I think Labour will achieve less than polling suggests.
How to pollsters adjust for this?
A good example is NCR in Dundee. First we designed and built holes in the wall. Then we lost the manufacturing (it is now, depressingly, an Asda), then, inevitably and bit by bit we lost the higher value design work as well.
To build we need cheap energy, none of this subsidised green nonsense, we need education systems that produce what employers want and we need an infrastructure to deliver the product. It really should not be beyond a government that is focussed on important stuff to deliver this.
Wonder what the parents will think......
On the other side he said companies will need to invest a lot of money in building new production capacity or firing up mothballed plants (which is also costly) and the government need to assist this by cutting investment penalties.
Finally he said the biggest issue is education, and while the new free schools are good, they may have come too late to save UK PLC because the current crop of graduates and school leavers don't have the basic work skills.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10287574/Gender-abortions-criminal-charges-not-in-public-interest-says-CPS.html
An interesting bit of anecdata has been the number of callers mentioning that they were friends of those from a minority who were pressured into getting an abortion after finding out the sex of the child. And that Britain was considered a soft touch to get one using whatever reason.
More unintended consequences. That the DT found two quite easily - and they've just had their wrists slapped is totally the wrong message.
Now, about that positive case for the Union...
Mike should get in touch with the authors and run it as a "with permission" thread.
Doubt many here will read it otherwise. David Aaranovitch's views are far more, er, "insightful".
Presumable the goal is to save money on dowry?