Well >0 respondents which is a good sign!
Ray makes some interesting observations about the political implications -
in pretty safe Labour area there is unlikely to be much effect on the
forthcoming election. Birmingham's high unemployment rate may well be
correlated with it being a manufacturing area
In fact the government's (ie taxpayers') offer is £150m for the affected
area which is much more than other unemployment incidents have received.
Some people writing on the BBC Have Your Say page have commented on this.
So this makes it (per Rover job lost) about £30k/job. Of course the real
investment is rather lower as there will be about 15k job losses in
suppliers plus about 10k job losses in dealers although the latter will
probably find jobs selling other cars. Many suppliers that 5 years ago
were totally dependent on Rover have diversified but it is not an easy
thing to do.
I am deeply worried by the loss of manufacturing - although it should be
mentioned that most manufacturing is in food and many other countries
manufacture small amounts too. And it should be said that the writing was
on the wall a long time ago - when evidence shows that not only did
factories not have air conditioning in critical areas but no
de-humidifiers so someone went round with a Black and Decker grinding off
rust from the panels before they were painted. Now you know why your ****
rusted after a year if it was made during a period of high humidity!
Mechanical engineering type of manufacturing is a major incentive to
invention and innovation as well as ensuring that imports are kept down.
The fact that Switzerland makes no cars is not excuse - the Swiss make the
world's best machine tools, the best high value steel, many high value
manufactured products and about 50% of their economy is in manufacturing
believe it or not.
Having to import trains, cars and even now civilian aircraft is not a good
sign for the future. Some are made here but the essential research and
manufacture of high-value components like engines is often carried out
elsewhere. It is the loss of these design skills which is critical.
With Lotus, TVR and other niche sports manufacturers also now in foreign
hands, I fully expect us to lose the number of F1 racing car facilities.
To be fair, the economy has diversified not only into service jobs but
bioscience very strongly and it may well be that this area will be the
source of new ideas. A major reason for the strength in bioscience and
pharmaceuticals is of course the link with the NHS - an integrated source
of data and treatments - and this will be reinforced by the UK Biobank
located here in Manchester.
HMG had a 2020 vision document for manufacturing. I looked at it some
time ago and there is no mention of statistics in it at all - just lip
service to quality improvement. The current Manufacturing Strategy Review
also does not mention statistics. Of course statistics cannot take the
place of the appalling management and industrial cowardice that has
characterised our governing classes for at least 100 years but the UK is
well provided with statistical expertise and it could be a short-cut to
putting manufacturing back onto a proper foundation.
It really is time for this statistics industry to wake up and insist on
involvement. The recent proposal for a BS Six Sigma standard is a step in
the right direction and the RSS will I hope be fully engaged there. (Don't
be afraid of Six Sigma - it is only a name and doesn't mean what it says
on the tin but does contain some good processes). We need to look at the
way in which sematech pulled the US chip industry back - every chip plant
in the US must have a statistician and many have a department. Intel
alone employs over 100 statisticians. Check out www.sematech.org and it's
links to NIST. The US took the threat very seriously. In this country
managers and politicians are just fiddling while Longbridge burns.
'Nuff sed 4 the moment!
Best wishes
John
John Logsdon "Try to make things as simple
Quantex Research Ltd, Manchester UK as possible but not simpler"
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
+44(0)161 445 4951/G:+44(0)7717758675 www.quantex-research.com
On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Ray Thomas wrote:
> >This list seems to be largely populated by government, academic and
> >medical/bioscience folk so maybe the sad events at Longbridge have passed
> >you all by.
>
> At least one of us notes three aspects of these sad events. First, it
> could not have happened at a worse location. The media have noted few
> marginal seats in the area; it isn't an election matter because Birmingham
> is solidly Labour. Associated with that Birmingham is probably already
> the largest concentration of unemployment in the UK outside London.
>
> Ladywood, that includes the city centre, has the highest unemployment rate
> of any parliamentary constituency in the UK - 10%. Clare Short is the MP.
> The next highest is Sparkbook just to the south of the centre. There are
> nine constituencies in the conurbation with unemployment rates in the top
> decile of constituencies.
>
> For the pedantic I am writing about statistics for constituencies on 1995
> boundaries (that I happen to have handy). But they do use population of
> working age (PWA) denominators, in accordance with current ONS practice.
> PWA denominators understate unemployment levels in comparison with national
> and regional figures using economically active population as denominators.
>
> Second, the governmental response of £50 for retraining characterises
> Labour's labour market policy - welfare to work. Underpinning that policy
> is the assumption that solving unemployment problems is exclusively a matter
> of getting people out of unemployment.
>
> Rover over, as John neatly puts it, shows rather dramatically that a major
> cause of unemployment is people losing their jobs. 'Rover over' symbolises
> the decline in manufacturing that is probably the main factor that has
> already made Birmingham the second largest concentration of unemployment in
> the UK. The government has no policy for the decline in manufacturing
>
> Third, the ONS and the RSS have colluded in encouraging governments to see
> only exit from unemployment as a solution to unemployment problems by
> ignoring claimant count statistics for entry to unemployment. The biggest
> boob was to switch to almost exclusive reliance on ILO unemployment
> statistics that do not recognise the concept of entry to unemployment.
>
> Ray Thomas
> 35 Passmore, Tinkers Bridge, Milton Keynes MK6 3DY
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Tel/Fax 01908 679081
>
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