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[Varche]

It comes to something when a takeaway delivery firm knocks a manufacturer (Babcock) out of the top 100 quoted firms.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42129425

[Sir Tigger KC]

It's all down to BREXIT. 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

And the Russians. 

[Lizzie Zoom]

Just shows what a sorry state our industry is in

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Not really. Much of our industry is doing pretty well, but a young trendy fashionable company like this can easily shoot up into the FTSE 100. How long it stays there is the real indicator of how things are.
The company I work for produces electronic devices and exports them worldwide. In the last year it has bought a Chinese company, to add to its other acquisitions in Germany, Singapore, U.S. and the U.K.
Its share price has risen from approx. 350 to 525 in the last 12 months. 

[tunnie]

Just shows what a sorry state our industry is in

When you say industry, you are thinking clothes manufacturing and other low skill stuff which is done by the likes of India, Pakistan now.

More valuable industry is doing rather well, technology for example. JLR (well Tata) is doing rather well to, we've just moved on 

[Varche]

Just shows what a sorry state our industry is in

When you say industry, you are thinking clothes manufacturing and other low skill stuff which is done by the likes of India, Pakistan now.

More valuable industry is doing rather well, technology for example. JLR (well Tata) is doing rather well to, we've just moved on 

No I still stand by my original assertion. It comes to something when a fast food delivery company is "worth more" that a proper company that actually makes things. Britain has loads of companies that make things. My mate used to work for the company that makes specialist underwater stuff for example. I do however accept that it is a sign of the times.

[STEMO]

Just shows what a sorry state our industry is in

When you say industry, you are thinking clothes manufacturing and other low skill stuff which is done by the likes of India, Pakistan now.

More valuable industry is doing rather well, technology for example. JLR (well Tata) is doing rather well to, we've just moved on 

No I still stand by my original assertion. It comes to something when a fast food delivery company is "worth more" that a proper company that actually makes things. Britain has loads of companies that make things. My mate used to work for the company that makes specialist underwater stuff for example. I do however accept that it is a sign of the times.

They’re not a fast food delivery company, there are a tech company. The simply put buyers in touch with sellers, and take a cut. Like Uber and others.

[STEMO]

Our local Chinese uses just eat, she was, more or less, forced into it because younger people are obsessed with apps and they won’t use any shop that’s not on the just eat app. They tap in their order, add in delivery if that’s what they want (you can pick it up yourself) and it arrives at your door, delivered by a driver that she ‘employs’, not just eat. If the order comes to £20, just eat take £2 so, unless she puts her prices up, she loses out.
I ring up with my order and collect it, so she gets the full £20.

[TheBoy]

It's all down to BREXIT. 

Partly, most mostly down to the last 20yrs of politics.

Industry is suffering, services is where any growth is now coming from.

Underinvestment due to uncertainties has knackered productivity, making our industry expensive to export. And knee'd in the knackers by the whole EU thing.

[TheBoy]

More valuable industry is doing rather well, technology for example.

Try telling that to any DXC employee. Or HPE employee. Or just about any multinational "high tech" employee

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

See reply number 4. 
Theres doom & gloom if you want to look for it and theres good news if you want to look for it. Always has been, always will be.

[STEMO]

More valuable industry is doing rather well, technology for example.

Try telling that to any DXC employee. Or HPE employee. Or just about any multinational "high tech" employee

Just eat is tech. 

[TheBoy]

See reply number 4. 
Theres doom & gloom if you want to look for it and theres good news if you want to look for it. Always has been, always will be.

Completely agree.

However, in a global world, we're seeing a lot more doom and gloom than good news, and a lot more people leaving their offices with a small box as their high tech job is cheaper to do in a low cost country.  I feel for those people. And unless they move to Mumbai, stand little chance of getting another job...   ...so they'll end up jacking cars to make a living...

[Rods2]

Different types of company are treated very differently by investors and is reflected in their stock market valuations:

1. Established companies in 'traditional' industries will be priced very much on their track record, profitability, dividends and growth plans and strategy. They are a known quantity and (hopefully) a steadily growing one in terms of turnover, profitably and dividends. As similar companies in a sector tend to have similar performance their share price-earnings ratio will normally roughly fall within the same band.

2. New companies in new development areas are priced on their development potential and future profits and dividends. The price will be a reflection of growth potential and future profit potential. High growth and gaining sector market share are absolutely critical and will be reflected in the share price, profits don't matter losses are ok (within reason) and normally expected, dividends aren't expected.

With type 1 companies, do you want capital gains, income or both? The steady growth hedges against inflation. With type 2 companies you are betting on the capital gains where this maybe immense or not or losing your money if they go bust. The risk and share volatility will be much higher, but so are the potential gains and as the sector matures you are looking for it to gradually transition into a type 1 company.

Trying to equate the two types of businesses and their share prices is like comparing apples and oranges or will the hare or the tortoise have be biggest winning margin when they eventually cross the line?

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

http://www.westmonster.com/1bn-brexit-boost-as-2-pharma-giants-move-to-britain/

 

[Lizzie Zoom]

Not really. Much of our industry is doing pretty well,

So GDP growth of 2%, declining to a predicted 1.6% in 2018 is "doing pretty well"?

The truth is our manufacturing industry is just not producing enough growth.  Service and financial industries are the ones keeping us afloat, as has been the case for the last 3 decades.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

See reply number 4. 
Theres doom & gloom if you want to look for it and theres good news if you want to look for it. Always has been, always will be.

Completely agree.

However, in a global world, we're seeing a lot more doom and gloom than good news, and a lot more people leaving their offices with a small box as their high tech job is cheaper to do in a low cost country.  I feel for those people. And unless they move to Mumbai, stand little chance of getting another job...   ...so they'll end up jacking cars to make a living...

These major changes happen in the job market every generation or two. They are inevitable and painful (ask an ex miner or shorthand typist), but long term the slack in the economy is taken up by a new sector and the world moves on

Edit. Globalisation is a different problem though. It either has to be fought tooth and nail, or managed in a way that it doesn't cause the damage it currently does.
For all those who are focussing their suspicions on influences such as Russia and China for the root of our major problems, I suggest they do some research on George Soros instead.
He is a squillionare gloabalist who doesn't believe in nation states, and goes to great lengths to undermine them.
He currently funds left wing projects and movements worldwide (from Hilarys election campaign, to REMAIN, to importing uncontrolled unchecked numbers of "refugees into Europe) because the left have been hoodwinked into believing in the global citizen view, via the old hippy claptrap, such as "imagine theres no countries".
If Soros one day gets what he wants, they will wake up horrified at what they have helped to achieve, but I will be too late.

[TheBoy]

So GDP growth of 2%, declining to a predicted 1.6% in 2018 is "doing pretty well"?

Apparently, being the worst performing economy in the western world is a good thing

[Sir Tigger KC]

http://www.westmonster.com/1bn-brexit-boost-as-2-pharma-giants-move-to-britain/

 

Isn't it curious how the BBC et al trumpet the loss of non productive regulatory jobs from the rooftops, but consign good news like this to obscure corners of their websites or buried deep inside their newspapers. 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

So GDP growth of 2%, declining to a predicted 1.6% in 2018 is "doing pretty well"?

Apparently, being the worst performing economy in the western world is a good thing

When have these predictions ever been accurate ?
By no stretch of the imagination is the UK economy the worst performing in the western world.

[Doctor Gollum]

JLR/Tata is an Indian company

They only make stuff here because nobody would pay £100k for an Indian made car

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Nor would they have the design expertise, manufacturing skills or Kudos of long standing British brands if they made the cars in India.

[Rods2]

Productivity has fallen for a number of reasons:

1. Output gap, this always happens during a recession where companies tend to keep employing skilled, trained, experienced, but under-worked staff in the expectation that they can quickly expand as the economy recovers.

2. Most service jobs are one-to-one customer facing, so productivity and productivity growth is limited. If each customer takes on average 10 minutes to serve that is only 6 per hour. 48 for an 8 hour day. Competition and margins have been squeezed, we have a glut of cheap unskilled labour from mainland Europe and wages for the semi-skilled and unskilled have trended down due to automation and computerization since the 1980s.

3. Our oil industry is in decline which were very high productivity high value-added jobs. Many of our more productive (than the service sector) jobs have been exported abroad due to our high-cost base compared to 2nd and 3rd world countries, but it has dramatically reduced these countries poverty. Virtually all of our high energy industries have been lost due to the UK plant food policies including chemical, petrochemical, glass, cement and most of the steel industry. The loss of the high energy using manufacturers has generally raised the global amount of plant food produced in much more inefficient 3rd world companies where they don't pay renewables or carbon trading energy premiums.

4. Brexit and the drop, from June 2016 onwards, in the overvalued Pound against the US Dollar and Euro has been a real boost for manufacturing industry growth with sales and exports reaching new highs. This is also reflected in a modest gain in the latest productivity figures.

I personally expect once we leave the EU, long-term growth and productivity will rise where we can concentrate on the 7bn people in faster and very much faster-growing economies outside of the EU, especially once free-trade agreements have been concluded. The virtually no-growth EU will continue to lose global market share at double the speed of the US, which is a good 1st world benchmark to compare it against. EU Commission policy has always been politics, the project and every closer union at the expense of economics. The big problem with this is that economics always long-term wins over politics and normally after the politics have made an economic area much poorer.

[Rods2]

Not really. Much of our industry is doing pretty well,

So GDP growth of 2%, declining to a predicted 1.6% in 2018 is "doing pretty well"?

The truth is our manufacturing industry is just not producing enough growth.  Service and financial industries are the ones keeping us afloat, as has been the case for the last 3 decades.

I find it amusing that Rabid Remoaners will spout Treasury & OBR predictions (when it suits them) that in the last 17 years have not been occasionally wrong, 50% wrong, most of the time wrong but 100% cast iron wrong. Project Fear is a good example where they used the wholly inappropriate Gravity Economic Model. Some economic Professor wrote a report that called them out over it as a highly misleading and totally inappropriate economic model to use. After all what would he know? Apart from being the inventor of the Gravity Economic Model.

No doubt you will be quoting the 'independent' EU OECD and largely French run IMF figures next, where they quite independently fully endorsed the Project Fear ones with their infallible crystal ball and they will say the whole truth nothing but the truth with not a whiff of EU spin or political Gerrymandering in sight.

Unfortunately, economic forecasting has become more and more politicized and less and less trusted. The measurement of inflation is a good case in point.

[Sir Tigger KC]

So GDP growth of 2%, declining to a predicted 1.6% in 2018 is "doing pretty well"?

Apparently, being the worst performing economy in the western world is a good thing

Given that it was predicted that we would plunge into immediate recession should we dare vote to leave the EU and that there would have to be an emergency budget with swinging budget cuts and huge tax rises none of which actually happened, I think that yes economic growth is doing pretty well actually. 

There's little point comparing ourselves to other countries as they have their own set of problems and issues, many of which have yet to rear their ugly heads, particularly in the Eurozone where economic growth has indeed picked up after a decade of stagnation.  The thing is, they never solved the sovereign debt issues, the banks are extremely shaky and at some point the ECB will have to raise interest rates and stop printing Euro's like it's going out of fashion! 

[Lazydocker]

It comes to something when a takeaway delivery firm knocks a manufacturer (Babcock) out of the top 100 quoted firms.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42129425

Let’s not forget that Babcock build some rather large items - like warships! And what’s happening to the UK Naval Fleet and military spending worldwide?

They’re also small fry in the consumer market, which is where Just Eat are making a killing

[Mister Rog]

The only places around my way that work with them, are places that I wouldn't accept even free food from 

[Kevin Wood]

The only places around my way that work with them, are places that I wouldn't accept even free food from 

Yes, my observations too. Surely if you have to sell via these sites, where the customer doesn't give a cr@p where the food comes from, you are doing something wrong in the first place?

[Lizzie Zoom]

See reply number 4. 
Theres doom & gloom if you want to look for it and theres good news if you want to look for it. Always has been, always will be.

It is not a case of me being full of doom and gloom.  Rather I want British industry, in the apparently bright new age we are entering, to rekindle at least some of the growth, advancement, and leadership this country once knew when we were Number 1 in the World for industrial output.  Yes, I know we will have to see some kind of miracle to overtake the USA and Germany who have led the field since around 1900, let alone beating China.  But, we must get better than being number 8.

A case in point for me is although we do still build some trains for our railways, we have got to outbid foreign competitors like the Japanese and specifically Hitachi.  The Javelin trains being used on the South Eastern Railway and HS1 lines are built by Hitachi, and the GWR have recently started to use new Intercity trains also built by Hitachi in Japan.
https://www.gwr.com/about-us/media-centre/news/2017/october/first-new-trains-in-a-generation-launched-by-gwr

These actually broke down on their first day of public use, proving I would say these are not unique, wonder trains, that British industry couldn't have built. Bombardier are still, thank God holding on and building new trains, and the other good news is that Crossrail/ TFL are now  using the new trains built in Britain:
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/new-trains/

But, the country needs to do better to increase it's output, and again make British Engineering the number 1 choice in more cases than now.  For that we must educate and train more youngsters to enter the industrial field and away from service industries.  For our country to really become what people expect post-Brexit, the politicians and industry leaders must do better

[Doctor Gollum]

New expensive, complicated piece of equipment broke down on first day... apparently because it is foreign 

Ffs Lizzie, it would have been more of a worry if the train worked perfectly. The perception that everything is 100% perfect 100% of the time is laughable. The suggestion that had it beern built here it would have worked is, quite frankly, offensive.

Yes it would be nice to be entirely self sufficient for cars/aircraft/trains/food/electricity/cash, but that is not the way the world works. Times change. Accept that and embrace it.

[Mister Rog]

See reply number 4. 
Theres doom & gloom if you want to look for it and theres good news if you want to look for it. Always has been, always will be.

It is not a case of me being full of doom and gloom. 


 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , the politicians and industry leaders must do better

Well said Lizzie.

In addition, post Brexit, there SHOULD be less Red Tape, compulsory tendering etc that will enable big buyers to buy British and/or the best, rather than the cheapest. I have no idea if Hitachi trains are cheaper, but I do know that in the NHS compulsory and beaurocratic tendering in accordance with EU regulations led to some appalling buying decisions.

[Marks DTM Calib]

New expensive, complicated piece of equipment broke down on first day... apparently because it is foreign 

Ffs Lizzie, it would have been more of a worry if the train worked perfectly. The perception that everything is 100% perfect 100% of the time is laughable. The suggestion that had it beern built here it would have worked is, quite frankly, offensive.

Yes it would be nice to be entirely self sufficient for cars/aircraft/trains/food/electricity/cash, but that is not the way the world works. Times change. Accept that and embrace it.

They have been testing it for 18 months (maybe longer, I recall being one of the first to see it move under its own power on the Old Dolby test track), it should not have suffered the specific issues it did.

[Lizzie Zoom]

New expensive, complicated piece of equipment broke down on first day... apparently because it is foreign 

Ffs Lizzie, it would have been more of a worry if the train worked perfectly. The perception that everything is 100% perfect 100% of the time is laughable. The suggestion that had it beern built here it would have worked is, quite frankly, offensive.

Yes it would be nice to be entirely self sufficient for cars/aircraft/trains/food/electricity/cash, but that is not the way the world works. Times change. Accept that and embrace it.

You know that is not what I was saying, so do not exaggerate.

What I am saying is we need to get back to "British is best", as I knew when growing up, not everything being stamped with "made in China". To achieve that the public, who buy the goods, must be returned to the perception that this is the case and not think that to buy a reliable car you must buy German or Japanese.  British must again mean quality, but with goods produced at competitive prices.  Those GWR Hitachi trains are just one case in point that I thought the mature amoungst us would relate to, and hopefully can prove to some that buying "foreign" is not a good idea, like it was in yesteryear when I was growing up.  That is what has been lost.

On this site all I am reading is so many stating that Brexit is the best route for this country, and (now I find this offensive) us "remoaners" should just accept what is and stop complaining, as though us 48% of the voters in the Referendum do not matter.  OK, so now in this thread I am for now, but making it, I thought, very clear that the country MUST do better to not only survive but excel in our new found confidence as a completely independent country that will grow our economy and pay for our brave new world expectations.  It is no good just sitting back and using fancy words on what will be so great; as in business you HAVE to achieve your targets and grow the business, proving that all is really good.

This will take a new attitude by politicians, leaders of business and general employers, leading the way with new investment in, as I stated, education and development to produce what we need. Words on this car forum will solve nothing, but what we do at the ballot box could.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

I have a feeling, but could be wrong, that EU regs forbid our Govt. from simply buying British ?
Brexit will be an opportunity for this country in all kinds of ways. I wont hold out any hope for our politicians to make the most of this situation as it seems they don't just get worse with every incoming generation ,but get worse by the year, or even by the month.
However, on the whole our business people are as good as any you will find anywhere, and they, and the people they employ, are our hope for the future imo.

[Doctor Gollum]

A hefty dose of national pride is certainly in order, on both sides of the Brexit argument, but the constant media driven negativity both here and outside is frustrating to say the least.

See it every single day at work too

I currently work for one of the worlds larget facilities management companies, and they are woeful. My operation is being Tupe'd to a new company in February. This can only be a good thing as that company is 100% owned and operated by its founder and employs less than 4,000 people, and with no shareholders to satisfy can be run without compromise. Yet day in and day out, all I hear is that the new firm will be just the same as the old firm, and it really pisses me off.

Approach everything in life with a negative attitude and it will never end positively.

[Lizzie Zoom]

A hefty dose of national pride is certainly in order, on both sides of the Brexit argument, but the constant media driven negativity both here and outside is frustrating to say the least.

See it every single day at work too

I currently work for one of the worlds larget facilities management companies, and they are woeful. My operation is being Tupe'd to a new company in February. This can only be a good thing as that company is 100% owned and operated by its founder and employs less than 4,000 people, and with no shareholders to satisfy can be run without compromise. Yet day in and day out, all I hear is that the new firm will be just the same as the old firm, and it really pisses me off.

Approach everything in life with a negative attitude and it will never end positively.

Now we can agree on that DG!

[Mister Rog]

A hefty dose of national pride is certainly in order, on both sides of the Brexit argument, but the constant media driven negativity both here and outside is frustrating to say the least.

See it every single day at work too

I currently work for one of the worlds larget facilities management companies, and they are woeful. My operation is being Tupe'd to a new company in February. This can only be a good thing as that company is 100% owned and operated by its founder and employs less than 4,000 people, and with no shareholders to satisfy can be run without compromise. Yet day in and day out, all I hear is that the new firm will be just the same as the old firm, and it really pisses me off.

Approach everything in life with a negative attitude and it will never end positively.

Now we can agree on that DG!

In the enlightened corporate world, when presented with a proposition . . . two responses

NO ! . . . . . because

YES !  . . . . . if we