Past week or so I’ve been running into the question “Should America start making things?” as a solution to the recent economic global crisis. In America that answer is a complex question given that most large American based companies have an European/Global presence and possibly outsource quite a bit to developing nations, especially when it comes to writing software code and telephone support lines. Bringing all of these things back ‘in-house’ for a US company may prove costly in comparison and cause more problems than such a move was intended to solve.
However, ambitious plans for new projects – especially in the tech sector – do seem to make sense for American companies to start “making at home” and allowing home grown talent to shine. Take the Web 2.0 scene for example, Silicon Valley is still the heart-land for any web/computer technology to gain traction and launch on a major scale. President Obama has already made pledges to make money available for developing roads, improving broadband (in a country where broadband is still slow in uptake, especially in some of the more remote areas – or so I’m lead to believe by the reports I read in the UK), and improving communications – getting Americans back to work and re-laying the foundations for continued growth and development in a country that prides itself on development and growth.
Plans for wide scale use of electric cars are already well into development and talk has already been made about developments of fast electronic planes that are silent in operation and have capabilities of vertical take-off, both of which could revolutionise the aero industries (if it is actually possible to create such a plane to start with – I’ll leave you make up your own mind on that one). But America actually making things or use and consumption in their own backyard makes perfect sense, reducing the amount they need to import from a far where possible and “doing thing for themselves” to drive down costs and improve profits in their own companies, perhaps also driving up demand and increasing export.
The US is one of the countries at the forefront of science with a Commander in Chief looking to increase funding for science and technology and with an expectant hope that results will be returned, not only will America be making things for themselves, but its also entirely plausible that these “things” will be highly developed and sophisticated, placing them ahead of many other companies and countries in terms of quality, features and smart developments.
Of course, this begs to question, if America does start making things for themselves in an effort to boost their national economy, then what are we doing in the UK in an effort to make things for ourselves and could this be an answer to our own economic problems?
Thinking about what the UK has traditionally done well in, we’ve traditionally been engineers; from the railroads, steam trains, tunnels, glorious buildings with ingenious design, steal makers, ship builders, etc. More recently in the UK, we’ve developed a talent for highly efficient call centres, that have increasingly been moved out to India and beyond purely in search for cost savings – yet the skills of the UK worker in this sector are still highly available.
A quick look at the flip side shows that we no longer build on the grand scales we used to (our country is becoming smaller and the population denser if anything), the stream train has been replaced by the automobile – and despite the UK car industry being alive (or just about barely alive), we no longer have any British car brands, like Jaguar and Land Rover any more; instead our roads are now filled with German and Japanese cars – not that I have any qualms about those cars, I myself drive a Japanese car, but the British alternative has disappeared entirely via a variety of different reasons. Our steal factories are closing, our ship building has been halted, and our coal mines have closed and as previously stated our call centres have been outsourced.
Try thinking of an industry now that is entirely British; the only ones I can think of are Government “essential” services such as the NHS, Police Service, Military and Fire Brigade – all of which are hardly unique industries to the UK.
Our televisions are from Japan – even the programme we watch are no longer British with most being imported from the States, from cable and satellite companies that don’t even belong to us - our computers and the software that runs on them are from the US, and the clothes we wear are from retailers who outsource their production far and wide. Our mobile phones are from anywhere but the UK and the biggest mobile operators aren’t UK companies – even good old British Telecom isn’t so British anymore, preferring instead to be known only as “BT”.
Fortunately, whilst our science perhaps isn’t as advanced as our cousins in the US, we are advanced and it would be great to see the UK Government have a real big push at getting more people into developing UK Science and Technologies, mirroring those commitments made by President Obama, and hopefully opening up new markets for UK companies to expand and develop into our own unique products or heavily licensed to other countries where the expertise exist in exchange for a percentage of the workforce to be based in the UK to protect our investments in such fields as new technology and developments – partnerships in other words.
The last partnership in the field of “development” that I can remember from the UK was that with France in the search for supersonic flight. That particular partnership resulted in the birth of the Concord, capable of journeys from the UK to New York in only
three hours! A truly remarkable feat of design, science and engineering that should have changed flights across the globe forever. Unfortunately, as money dried up for further development and flight on “traditional” airlines grew cheaper, Concord became a more extravagant and costly form of transportation. Upkeep of the supersonic plane declined and after the fateful crash of the Air France Concorde, the fate of the most advanced passenger airliner was sealed; Concord now collecting dust as a museum piece, standing as an icon as the “first” in a long line of more advanced super sonic flying machines, it instead stands only as an icon for advanced technology, through collaboration and partnership that was ceased in development and longer a fixture in our skies.
The question is not “Should Britain start making things?” but instead should be “What should Britain start making next?”. What are the unique skills, scientific and technological advances do we have in the pipelines in the UK and what are we are doing to exploit and unleash these assets in order to build new industries that we can call British. Perhaps we have nothing, which is unlikely, but if such is the case, then at least we should be taking steps to correct that first and foremost.
Rule Britainia I say!
However, ambitious plans for new projects – especially in the tech sector – do seem to make sense for American companies to start “making at home” and allowing home grown talent to shine. Take the Web 2.0 scene for example, Silicon Valley is still the heart-land for any web/computer technology to gain traction and launch on a major scale. President Obama has already made pledges to make money available for developing roads, improving broadband (in a country where broadband is still slow in uptake, especially in some of the more remote areas – or so I’m lead to believe by the reports I read in the UK), and improving communications – getting Americans back to work and re-laying the foundations for continued growth and development in a country that prides itself on development and growth.
Plans for wide scale use of electric cars are already well into development and talk has already been made about developments of fast electronic planes that are silent in operation and have capabilities of vertical take-off, both of which could revolutionise the aero industries (if it is actually possible to create such a plane to start with – I’ll leave you make up your own mind on that one). But America actually making things or use and consumption in their own backyard makes perfect sense, reducing the amount they need to import from a far where possible and “doing thing for themselves” to drive down costs and improve profits in their own companies, perhaps also driving up demand and increasing export.
The US is one of the countries at the forefront of science with a Commander in Chief looking to increase funding for science and technology and with an expectant hope that results will be returned, not only will America be making things for themselves, but its also entirely plausible that these “things” will be highly developed and sophisticated, placing them ahead of many other companies and countries in terms of quality, features and smart developments.
Of course, this begs to question, if America does start making things for themselves in an effort to boost their national economy, then what are we doing in the UK in an effort to make things for ourselves and could this be an answer to our own economic problems?
Thinking about what the UK has traditionally done well in, we’ve traditionally been engineers; from the railroads, steam trains, tunnels, glorious buildings with ingenious design, steal makers, ship builders, etc. More recently in the UK, we’ve developed a talent for highly efficient call centres, that have increasingly been moved out to India and beyond purely in search for cost savings – yet the skills of the UK worker in this sector are still highly available.
A quick look at the flip side shows that we no longer build on the grand scales we used to (our country is becoming smaller and the population denser if anything), the stream train has been replaced by the automobile – and despite the UK car industry being alive (or just about barely alive), we no longer have any British car brands, like Jaguar and Land Rover any more; instead our roads are now filled with German and Japanese cars – not that I have any qualms about those cars, I myself drive a Japanese car, but the British alternative has disappeared entirely via a variety of different reasons. Our steal factories are closing, our ship building has been halted, and our coal mines have closed and as previously stated our call centres have been outsourced.
Try thinking of an industry now that is entirely British; the only ones I can think of are Government “essential” services such as the NHS, Police Service, Military and Fire Brigade – all of which are hardly unique industries to the UK.
Our televisions are from Japan – even the programme we watch are no longer British with most being imported from the States, from cable and satellite companies that don’t even belong to us - our computers and the software that runs on them are from the US, and the clothes we wear are from retailers who outsource their production far and wide. Our mobile phones are from anywhere but the UK and the biggest mobile operators aren’t UK companies – even good old British Telecom isn’t so British anymore, preferring instead to be known only as “BT”.
Fortunately, whilst our science perhaps isn’t as advanced as our cousins in the US, we are advanced and it would be great to see the UK Government have a real big push at getting more people into developing UK Science and Technologies, mirroring those commitments made by President Obama, and hopefully opening up new markets for UK companies to expand and develop into our own unique products or heavily licensed to other countries where the expertise exist in exchange for a percentage of the workforce to be based in the UK to protect our investments in such fields as new technology and developments – partnerships in other words.
The last partnership in the field of “development” that I can remember from the UK was that with France in the search for supersonic flight. That particular partnership resulted in the birth of the Concord, capable of journeys from the UK to New York in only
three hours! A truly remarkable feat of design, science and engineering that should have changed flights across the globe forever. Unfortunately, as money dried up for further development and flight on “traditional” airlines grew cheaper, Concord became a more extravagant and costly form of transportation. Upkeep of the supersonic plane declined and after the fateful crash of the Air France Concorde, the fate of the most advanced passenger airliner was sealed; Concord now collecting dust as a museum piece, standing as an icon as the “first” in a long line of more advanced super sonic flying machines, it instead stands only as an icon for advanced technology, through collaboration and partnership that was ceased in development and longer a fixture in our skies.The question is not “Should Britain start making things?” but instead should be “What should Britain start making next?”. What are the unique skills, scientific and technological advances do we have in the pipelines in the UK and what are we are doing to exploit and unleash these assets in order to build new industries that we can call British. Perhaps we have nothing, which is unlikely, but if such is the case, then at least we should be taking steps to correct that first and foremost.
Rule Britainia I say!
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