russel
./_dazed_and_confused
I was an apprentice and an engineer at Royce's for part of the 70s and 80s. Old enough to have seen what it used to be post-war and to have watched it fade into what it has become at least from an engineer's perspective. I have also worked in Germany and certainly didn't return to the UK for work reasons! We had the option back in the 80s to maintain an infrastructure that would be required by high/medium tech industries of the future but opted not to do so. Not a lot we can do about it now.
Perversely, I suspect the low tech, low wage manufacture of luxury goods represented by something like Tannoy speakers is something that might start returning in a few years time. It will depend of course on whether we continue to be viewed by the rest of the world as a joke or manage to retain some kudos, our trading relationships with richer countries, how deep the growing crash turns out to be, etc... Despite the large number of negative changes that are happening there are likely to be a few positive ones. Not many but some (from the perspective of the 99% not the 1% of course).
A Finnish guy was chatting to me about the U.K. and he said “what happened to the U.K.?, at one time we really used to look up to U.K. engineering, now it’s just full of salesmen who over promise and under deliver”, he does have a point.