Pointless vanity business wins The Apprentice.

[Fnaar]

It's forced perspective, they use cameras strapped to the backs of cat and dogs for arty low-down shots.

a pussy-cam?

 

[Maz]

I watch it primarily because I'm amazed by how long the female candidates' legs always are.

Same here!...or is it the short skirts.

 

[Christopher]

I thnk some manufacturing is coming back to the UK due to rising costs in China, the time it takes to get a product on the market and the general shonky quality of Chinese goods - they can make stuff as good as anyone but that is not how you make mioney these days..

 

[swee'pea99]

OTH, you're nearly right but Britain still manufactures a few specialist goods like, er, weapons systems and chemicals, special papers and textiles, we're just not in the mass-market areas any more. My own employer is breaking records almost every month making industrial perfumes, we are now 80% export (was 30% export when I joined in 1988) and selling in 95 different countries and we are building a new £9m robotic compounding factory. Why can't Sr'Alan use his financial muscle to promote more small specialist manufacturing?

I recently went to visit a company - a spin-off from Manchester university - that's the world leader in nanotechnology for lcd screens and lighting and solar panels. I asked how come the big Korean and US manufacturers were buying this stuff in from a company in Manchester rather than doing it themselves. "The UK's still very good at science," was the answer.

 

[BSRU]

I wonder what that big Honda factory does just outside Swindon

 

[TVC]

It's forced perspective, they use cameras strapped to the backs of cat and dogs for arty low-down shots.

Er, there are websites for those kinds of pictures - or so I've been told

 

[Over The Hill]

I wonder what that big Honda factory does just outside Swindon

Answer 1 -Soaks up lots of government grants for being there.
Answer 2 - Nothing. It closed down for six weeks (or something like that) recently as demand was low.

I do accept what has been said above re manufacturing generally. Here in sunny Basingstoke we are world centre of making bank notes at DeLaRue. Basingstoke also made part of the cross sword sculpture in Baghdad, the bit with Saddam's hands!

With many things we are adding value by adding brains rather than brawn to an object. This is however multi million pound stuff and difficult for a single person even with £250k in her pocket to get into.

 

[BSRU]

Answer 1 -Soaks up lots of government grants for being there.
Answer 2 - Nothing. It closed down for six weeks (or something like that) recently as demand was low.

I do accept what has been said above re manufacturing generally. Here in sunny Basingstoke we are world centre of making bank notes at DeLaRue. Basingstoke also made part of the cross sword sculpture in Baghdad, the bit with Saddam's hands!

With many things we are adding value by adding brains rather than brawn to an object. This is however multi million pound stuff and difficult for a single person even with £250k in her pocket to get into.

Funny how that closure was last summer.

How about Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan and others?

 

[Over The Hill]

Funny how that closure was last summer.

How about Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan and others?

Jaguar is just making ugly cars for the Americans, Land Rover is doing well but that expansion is not in the UK they are setting up plants abroad. Nissan (like Honda) have a subsidised unit is just for a non EU company to get round EU restrictions and become on the inside of the market.
While car numbers are holding up fairly well (main drop in uk production being the recession) overall the number of jobs has dropped back to a tiny number of what it was. Ford used to pour iron in one end at Dagenham and drive cars out the other end. Now the UK assembles a few parts mainly made elsewhere.
What we have got in car production is a hangover from the past not really anything to carry into the future.
Why did Ford choose to shut down its Transit factory in Southampton and build a new one in Turkey? The answer answers the OP.

 

[slowmotion]

There are plenty of small specialised technology companies beavering away in small units on industrial estates, barns, and sheds. They are fast and flexible, and some people appreciate those virtues. People with MBAs think that you just have to send an email for the gadget to appear tomorrow. They have our utter contempt.

BTW, was that a rant?

 

[pplpilot]

Land Rover is doing well but that expansion is not in the UK they are setting up plants abroad.

Some abroad but not all, there is currently a massive recruitment drive on here in the midlands and solihull for staff, about 1200 needed here at Jag/landrover in solihull and castle brom alone. Then theres the £500m gearbox plant in wolverhampton due for completion soon.

 

[ufkacbln]

I wanted the young lady with flexible moral values to win, then discover her Company was in fact a front for the sex and drugs parties she used to organise and partake in for a living

 

[User169]

Basingstoke also made part of the cross sword sculpture in Baghdad, the bit with Saddam's hands!

It ain't known as Amazingstoke for nothing!

 

[andylaw79]

Er, there are websites for those kinds of pictures - or so I've been told

I believe so, Fnaar told me about them

 

[SpokeyDokey]

I'm not a great fan of the prog' - it was more interesting in the early series but it has become lazily repetitive and with too much focus on LS's inane and sometimes rude mutterings.

I don't though agree that all the candidates are tossers.

In the main they are bright, have bags of self confidence, are very focused and they generally get stuck in to whatever task is thrown at them. Good qualities for future leaders. Many of those tasks are quite tough to do well at with the timescales given plus the fact that the 'teams' only have a notional leader when in fact all the participants are competing with each other.

Yes they have some irritating quirks but what else would anyone expect of young guys and girls just getting started in the rough and tumble of the business world. I had a good career but looking back I would quite like to have had more of the poise and charisma of this years winner when I was that age if I am being truthful.

Having managed a graduate development program for a large retailer in the early 90's I would have given my metaphorical right arm to have the two finalists (and some of the other contestants) on board.

Far better than some of the hapless applicants I used to assess that could muster up a reasonable CV but had not a clue as to what was needed to a) secure a position in the first instance and b) then go on an actually be a success.