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British industry (again)

I expected to get home yesterday to find the TV news full of resigning politicians, GKN having confirmed that it will sell its share of Agusta-Westland to Finmeccanica. But no, it just about rated a couple of lines on teletext. How times have changed - nobody bats an eyelid at the last vestiges of our helicopter industry passing out of British control, and the politicians are more interested in telling us we are eating too much junk food!

Sorry if this is a bit OT, my excuse is that Westland was founded by Petters.

Reply to
Nick H
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Nick, The politicians pulled the chain on Westland when Tony Bush agreed the deal to buy Blackhawk helicopters from the US some while ago. If there were any resigning to be done, it should have happened then.

HM Gov seem to have decided that manufacturing is a nasty business, to be allowed to drain away abroad. Being cynical for a moment, maybe its the only way we have a hope of meeting our Non Fossil Fuel Obligation which they signed up to under one of the international environmental agreements (Montreal or Kyoto I think). Get other countries to do the energy-hungry manufacturing for us, while we crow about our reduction in carbon emissions.

Could politicians be so short-termist and myopic? You betcha!

...climbs down from soapbox....

Regards, Arthur G

Reply to
Arthur G

we have the same problems here in the usa. could the politicians be the problem? sammm

Reply to
sammmm

Hi Sam,

The significance of my post is possibly not so obvious in the 'states so a little history lesson might be in order:-

Nearly 20 years ago now Westland was going through another ownership crisis, there were disagreements at cabinet level over whether it should be allowed to fall into foreign hands (in that instance Sikorsky) and defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, resigned in protest. Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the matter, as least it appeared that politicians were at that time concerned about the ownership of our industries whereas now it seems likely to pass without comment, let alone a resignation.

Reply to
Nick H

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