Quote:
Originally Posted by justleanitupabit
I agree with most of your post and it is largely correct except the bit above, Thatcher didn't shut down decent, efficient manufacturing plants that produced quality products.
She closed down these plants because they were by making absolute crap and were losing a huge amount of money and costing the country a fortune.
The Callaghan government was completely beholdant to Trades Unions who throughout the 70's went on strike whenever they felt like it, affecting quality, production and profitability of these state owned (at the time) assets. If you're looking a guilty party for the demise of the UK Large scale industrials look no further than the Labour government and the Trades Unions of the 70's.
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Yup, but to expand (a little)
Yes, the labour party/unions stuffed it up good and proper in the 70s, Thatcher then leapt so far the other way, that even those companies who did have worthwhile products they could develop and sell suffered badly. Basically throwing the baby out with the bathwater (small baby, large bath).
Most/all other European countries give large scale tax breaks to R&D spend (some make it positively beneficial to spend cash on R&D). The Thatcher governments policies pretty much made it financial suicide to invest in R&D within the UK (compared to doing it in, say, Germany). So even the non-UK based companies moved work/R&D to other countries in Europe (and now to china, india and so on) or holding companies bailed out and sold off/closed down UK based companies to minimise exposure. Those remaining borderline/potentially successful UK based, UK owned businesses ended up with little/no chance in the European/Global market. And are now mostly owned by someone else. Or gone forever.
Unfortunately, successive governments since then have proceeded to do the same. So now there isn't much left to save.
Except, on the whole, the very very top end of the high cost/technology
market, where customers really will pay thro the nose for cutting edge knowledge based stuff. F1, Aerospace, Surface treatment, Composites and so on.