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Author Topic: Swindon v High Wycombe Match day Thread  (Read 12202 times)
Mother Brown

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« Reply #30 on: Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 18:42:39 »

Stick an entry into the 8 Year thread.

FWIW, I'd regard Robbo as a decent Trade Unionist, who fought for his members. My old man worked for BL, and always maintained that its demise was in the main down to poor management. It should be noted that Longbridge ceased car manufacture some 25 or so years after Robbo got sacked.

and there was me thinking that BL ceased car manufacturing. . . because they made crap cars.
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horlock07

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« Reply #31 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 17:31:31 »

Of course he does, as does his protege young Horlock. Though i’m disappointed that there was no mention of Derek (Red Robbo) Robinson yesterday in either the ‘Lets Get Political’ or ‘The 8 Year Old People Who Have Died’ threads. Maybe there was a silent and personal tribute with black ties and a rousing rendition of ‘The Red Flag’ instead?

Young.....  Roll Eyes However I am young enough to barely remember the miners strike, although you have again confirmed my suspicion that Reg is in fact my father...

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horlock07

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« Reply #32 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 17:36:38 »

and there was me thinking that BL ceased car manufacturing. . . because they made crap cars.

I would say that the cars were not crap - some of them included technology years ahead of its time, just were not cars that people wanted to buy. The UK care industry is much like village post offices, no one bought the cars and the industry went to shit, then the same generation that didn't buy them now moans that there is no UK car industry. Strangely they are often the same people who are now pinning their hopes and justifications of a successful Brexit upon the potential impacts upon the German car industry, which in interesting when one considers what their parents lived through.
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« Reply #33 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 19:16:29 »

I would say that the cars were not crap - some of them included technology years ahead of its time, just were not cars that people wanted to buy. The UK care industry is much like village post offices, no one bought the cars and the industry went to shit, then the same generation that didn't buy them now moans that there is no UK car industry. Strangely they are often the same people who are now pinning their hopes and justifications of a successful Brexit upon the potential impacts upon the German car industry, which in interesting when one considers what their parents lived through.
I'm sorry mate but for anyone old enough to remember the 70's and remember those rusty piles of crap first hand, every part of that statement is equally and utterly hilarious. Cool
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Mother Brown

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« Reply #34 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 19:54:32 »

Triumph, Austin, Rover, Morris to name a few made decent cars until they were absorbed into the BL empire.
Much the same as AEC, Scammell, Albion to name a few made decent lorries until BL fucked them up aswell.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #35 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 20:41:13 »

Triumph, Austin, Rover, Morris to name a few made decent cars until they were absorbed into the BL empire.
Much the same as AEC, Scammell, Albion to name a few made decent lorries until BL fucked them up aswell.

The reasons for the decline of the UK's traditional manufacturing are no doubt complex. Look at Wycombe once considered the chair making capital of the western world, and famous for other furniture.

In my early lifetime Wycombe had 10,000 people employed in furniture manufacturing, by 75 this had declined to 6000, now all gone.
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4D
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« Reply #36 on: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 23:38:42 »

Beautiful and classic

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RobertT

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« Reply #37 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 00:36:10 »

The reasons for the decline of the UK's traditional manufacturing are no doubt complex. Look at Wycombe once considered the chair making capital of the western world, and famous for other furniture.

In my early lifetime Wycombe had 10,000 people employed in furniture manufacturing, by 75 this had declined to 6000, now all gone.

Commercial shipping containers and air freight - enabling global supply chains, followed by automation.  I went to see the then Rover plant when at College and it was clear as day to me then that they could probably have gotten away without 10 people running the whole thing with a bit of investment in robotics.  People were literally paid to pick up a sheet of metal and place it in a press and then press a button.  Someone is either going to do that cheaper in another country if we can get it supplied back to a local market, or find a way of using a robotic arm.

In the 60's-90's it was Manufacturing, now it is warehousing, soon it will be office work (it has already begun to ramp up).

Anyone who ever watched a John Harvey Jones Troubleshooter episode with Morgan cars will see why the manufacturing industry slept walked into oblivion.
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #38 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 01:00:26 »

Commercial shipping containers and air freight - enabling global supply chains, followed by automation.  I went to see the then Rover plant when at College and it was clear as day to me then that they could probably have gotten away without 10 people running the whole thing with a bit of investment in robotics.  People were literally paid to pick up a sheet of metal and place it in a press and then press a button.  Someone is either going to do that cheaper in another country if we can get it supplied back to a local market, or find a way of using a robotic arm.

In the 60's-90's it was Manufacturing, now it is warehousing, soon it will be office work (it has already begun to ramp up).

Anyone who ever watched a John Harvey Jones Troubleshooter episode with Morgan cars will see why the manufacturing industry slept walked into oblivion.

Certainly there's an element of "we're British and are just better then Johnny Foreigner"  Unfortunately as soon as we've innovated the rest of the world has caught up and copied....look at something like Cheddar cheese  Cheese 

The same happened with football...
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tans
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« Reply #39 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 08:13:41 »

The reasons for the decline of the UK's traditional manufacturing are no doubt complex. Look at Wycombe once considered the chair making capital of the western world, and famous for other furniture.

In my early lifetime Wycombe had 10,000 people employed in furniture manufacturing, by 75 this had declined to 6000, now all gone.

Parker Knoll
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Red Frog
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« Reply #40 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 08:41:55 »

Anyone who ever watched a John Harvey Jones Troubleshooter episode with Morgan cars will see why the manufacturing industry slept walked into oblivion.

Except JHJ was famously wrong about Morgan, who survived because they understood their customers much better than he did, and resisted the degree of automation that he was proposing.
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horlock07

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« Reply #41 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 09:26:16 »

I'm sorry mate but for anyone old enough to remember the 70's and remember those rusty piles of crap first hand, every part of that statement is equally and utterly hilarious. Cool

Probably should have put it better than I did...

The cars were not crap as designed, technology that was often years ahead designed by innovative engineers, let down by shoddy production techniques and a workforce (led by Union officials more interested in career advancement within the union movement and Labour Party) more interested in battling the management rather than understanding that the best way to keep jobs was to make sure costs were reasonable and the product well made), a management regime that rushed things to market way too soon, strangled investment needed to get things right and had no idea about marketing (a five year old could see through the badge engineering) and that was a puppet of a government, so many nationalised industries who was placing battling the unions higher than actually sustaining the company.

The cars are often shit but that mainly down to being paper of paper thin steel, badly painted with cheap parts bin mechanics, for instance Issigonis was having to use the A Series years after he had designed a more modern and better engine as the company would not invest in the new line. 
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« Reply #42 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 09:59:16 »

ha, I remember my great great aunts story taking delivery of a brand new Austin. A few days later a lump of filler fell out the door.

But aunty Doris didn't live through two world wars for that kind of shit. She drove it to Longbridge and demanded they put it right (successfully iirc).
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Reg Smeeton
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« Reply #43 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 10:01:55 »

Parker Knoll

A good name were they ever in Wycombe?

An interesting study is the Silentnight bed dispute. Happened at the same time as the Miner's Strike, but went on for 18 months.

It was about the ability of management to reduce the pay of workers for doing the same job as previously undertaken. The company was owned by Tom Clarke, a local Tory in the Yorks/Lancs border region... the union had negotiated a deal whereby they'd accept a pay freeze in return for no redundancies. As soon as agreed 50 odd people were sacked, which provoked the strike.

Clarke was one of the highest paid directors in the land at the time, and Thatcher called him "Mr Wonderful" as he wished to break Trade Unionism and return to something like the popular Thatcherite trope of the time, Victorian values, whereby the 5 evils of the Beveridge post war settlement,  Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness would be unleashed.

Sadly some 30 years later we see an increase in all 5.
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pauld
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« Reply #44 on: Friday, November 3, 2017, 10:07:31 »

Clarke was one of the highest paid directors in the land at the time, and Thatcher called him "Mr Wonderful" as he wished to break Trade Unionism and return to something like the popular Thatcherite trope of the time, Victorian values, whereby the 5 evils of the Beveridge post war settlement,  Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness would be unleashed.

Sadly some 30 years later we see an increase in all 5.
It's what the Austerity Project was all about.
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