The demise of industry in the UK

Despite promises made by successive governments in the UK to reverse the decline of manufacturing the opposite has happened and it is now in an ever-increasing downward spiral.

But why would the representatives of this country suppress something that has the potential to make vast amounts of money from innovative exports?

For exactly the same reasons that Turkeys should try to escape before Christmas but don’t. While some MP are intelligent most haven’t got the long-term awareness or maturity to realise what is going to happen to precision engineering in the UK or perhaps they don’t care.

How many MP’s in the UK have ever been in a factory; not many.? How many have ever worked in a factory; even less than not many. The big drawback with Parliment is that there are no long-term plans that continue for more than a term in office.

We still have incredible innovative ideas in the IK but once an idea is turned into a prototype there is isn’t an easy pathway to the world marketplace unless you start off with money. The innovation hubs that promise help for innovative new products only work up to the prototype stage but after that help appear to be there for large companies who have enough money to fund their own products but don’t use it.

So you started off with no money but what you think is a great idea, an innovation hub helps to channel your designs drawn on the back of cigarette paper into a nicely drawn blueprint. You scrape the money together to produce a prototype. It looks great.

Where do you go now? You knock on doors no one opens them. There are government sites that will link you up to a business that desperately wants what you have developed ‘oh no there isn’t’ (this is where you look behind you)

So how could we address this situation? Set up a video channel on which only aspiring UK inventors are able to post their inventions and offer them help with patent protection prior to their enrolment. Only allow international and other companies access if they agree to a confidentiality clause before being allowed access to the site. Make sure that these companies fund these projects and pay tax on the profits in this country.

Set up an online directory with companies that are looking for new ideas; again I know that there are such things as government business links, but they really don’t work. ( I wonder if there is one MP who has ever tried phoning one of these numbers)

I am sure that if the wheel had never been invented and someone in Humpshire UK thought of the concept now he would just go round in circles trying to get help from the government.

There is, of course, another industrial time bomb waiting to happen that will decimate manufacturing and again it’s one that the majority of the government are totally unaware of; or not concerned about.

Walk into most engineering companies in the UK and look at the skilled workers. Oops most of them are old; fifty, sixty, seventy or even older. Thirty years ago we stopped training apprentices and now there is a wide gap between young engineers and the ones who speed around on badly wielded zimmer frames. And soon there won’t be anyone left to pass generations of skills on.

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