[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17127488[/url

The government has yet again not backed UK industry and bought foreign ships for service with the fleet for the first time. They prefer spending money paying out benefits then supporting our manufacturing base. They will have to spend a fortune adapting the ships before they enter service and I doubt they will be as useful as the ship they are due to replace.

Bit harsh to be blaming the Government, when not a single UK firm submitted a final tender for the build contract.

Don't spoil it for him.

Wonder why they didn't submit a final tender? Couldn't be that the rules were changed and fixed in such a way as to make it impossible for them to do so, could it???

This surely couldn't happen with this scratch the backs of your pals government, whilst you are in power???

We don't know. Well, I don't. I haven't read that anywhere so are there any grounds to think this?

You do know how tight and complex procurement rules are, don..hang on, you clearly don't.

Aren't the Koreans the world's biggest ship builders - by a considerable margin?

Maybe they realised that the fact that Korea was being allowed to tender it was not worth the millions involved in these processes only to suffer the inevitable defeat.

I suppose they could have negotiated with the unions to pay £50 a month, put the workers up in large factory bunk houses and feed them slop on the job.

They are indeed. Although many of their ships are of generic design, almost allowing the Korean's to mass produce ships. I always found that European built vessels and in particular those from Germany, Holland and Finland to be of the highest quality.

You still find that many of the most specialist and unique vessels designed and conceived, are still built here in Europe.

European built still holds a credence of superior quality in most of the world. Particularly when it comes to marine engineering.

Here's an idea. Stop spending billions on Iraq, Afghanistan etc and instead spend the money on paying UK wages to shipbuilders on the Clyde or the Tyne. Sure it will cost a lot more than Korean prices, but every penny stays in the UK, creates a whole bunch of employment and generates a decent tax/NI rake.

Am I missing something?

Nothing other at the moment, than a tingling feeling up my spine.

I actually do know a little bit about them and have had a reasonable amount of experience over the years.
On paper, the process is clear, watertight with many built in checks and balances. However, there's always interpretation, very often from the vested interests. I'd just say, if you were starting your own business and decided to tender, based purely on the procurement rules, I don't care how good your bid is, you wouldn't stand a chance.

you quite rightly wouldn't stand a chance, I'd want to see two years accounts and have faith n the fact that you were a viable supplier for the longer term. You wouldn't even get past the first PID.

Warship orders placed with actual rather than mythical shipbuilding industry ... and?

(ducks)

I did say if "you", not me were to start a new business.

Sadly the most relevant point made.

seen as though you manage to start a sentence which goes on to have any meaning, I'd agree.

~polite cough~

apologies, but you understood my point, people bemoan things they know little (if anything) about, it a curse of the Sin Bin (and life in general), do I believe the UK Government (of whatever colour) place contracts domestically where possible, indeed, was that an option in this case, it appears not.

and it isn't as if it's just the coalition that have been guilty of this, administrations over many years (if not decades) have found the same issues and the same challenges, I'm always interesed when the same old stagers bemoan the fact foreign companies get contracts, and yet companies like Siemens, Nissan, Toyota, Novartis et al are all heavily invested in the UK.

it's not so much double standards, as thick people with internet access.

I wouldn't call you thick Standee, even if you have got internet access. "Seen" as you are just so clever and every fink, why don't you just concentrate on finding a cure for athletes foot or motor mouth disease, you know something useful instead of pontificating on here.

Having foreign companies "invested" in the UK is not the same as British companies doing the same though is it?
Nestlé were heavily invested in the UK. Then started laying people off. If the boot were on the other foot, do you think Rowntrees would have laid off Swiss workers or British workers first?

The fact that those companies you mention are all so competitive now on price and quality is because they or their industries were invested in by their home governments decades ago. We didn't invest then, and haven't done anything to redress the balance since, and boy is our economy suffering because of it.

The continuous policy of giving contracts to foreign companies instead of developing our own companies and industries is a short termist policy that just dooms any current British company.

Should all contracts be given to British companies? Probably not.
Should more than currently? Absolutely.

Completely unlike when you wade in to an argument, get your ar[is[/ie handed to you on a plate and storm off in a hissy-fit?

Nice use of straw men though

You mean like the time he got talking about how easy it is to get work and how everyone who doesn't work is nothing more than a waster.
Is that the kinda thing you mean

No they don't. That is the problem. Read on for why they don't.



The idea because the likes of Siemens are heavily invested in the UK means it is OK they get major contracts over domestic suppliers is just stupid. Only thick people with Internet access would think it was.

Last year Siemens won a £1.4bn contract to build trains for Thameslink winning the contract over Bombardier who are based in Derby. Bombardier are foreign owned (Canadian) but the difference is they build trains here in the UK and employ UK workers whereas the beneficiaries of the Thameslink contract will be Germany and German workers. Siemans do not have a train factory in the UK and quite clearly Bombardier are the foreign company who in terms of actually building trains here are the more heavily invested in the UK.

Now as has been alluded to earlier in this thread a reason why Bombardier think Siemans got the work was down to how UK government Dept of Transport officials interpreted various aspects of the bid other than just its technical feasibility:

From here: [urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/26/bombardier-bid-for-crossrail?INTCMP=SRCH[/url

David Faircloth, 65, a former train buyer for British Rail who also worked in procurement for Bombardier, says the decision to change the procurement method by combining the financing of the trains with their manufacture was crucial in Siemens winning preferred bidder status. Many observers say that financing, and Siemens's superior balance sheet, was the crucial factor.

"It is clear that they did not consider the effect that bundling would have. It just was not on the horizon at all," says Faircloth, referring to the planning documents.

Williamson says that the Crossrail competition must take a different approach: "These papers expose an alien culture in the Department for Transport, where officials are so obsessed by bureaucracy that they've forgotten what is in the national interest."

It seems from that companies like Siemans will always win a bid if the Department for Transport [uinterpret[/u the bidding process as they did for that.

I have even less faith in a right wing governemnt that views competition as the be all and end all of doing anything to ensure the bids are interpreted in such a way as it benefits this country. In the UK we seem to want play scrupulously fair when it comes to competition to the detriment of our country when it may well be possible to quite legally set the rules of the procurement to prevent massive companies like Siemans framing bids in such a way as to make it almost impossible for companies like Bombardier to be in with a shout.

The Crossrail contract mentioned in the link is going to be a big test of this government who claim to want to increase manufacturing in this country to re-balance the economy. The government, not faceless Department of Transport officials, need to frame the context of the procurement not to virtually exclude Bombardier before the process starts.

As also mentioned in the article was this:

"Non-UK manufacturers also bridle at the notion of bias on the continent, pointing out that the recent Eurostar procurement, which went to Siemens, proved that French businesses are not duty-bound to pick home-built Alstom vehicles."

Well one contract doesn't convince me. France with some of the most employee friendly labour laws around still has a domestic car manufacturing industry and huge domestic manufacturing companies that build things ranging from sophisticated jet fighters, ships and other defence related stuff through to giants such as Tomson and so on. Despite EU procurement rules the French have ensured they protect their industry.

It is not a new thing and has gone on in just about all the major western economies for as long as I can remember. When I first started out in IT we had ICL as a major domestic computer manufacturer and IBM were forever moaning the UK government favoured ICL over them on public sector contracts. They also pointed out how much they invested in the UK but what they didn't shout about so much was how the US government supported them with huge contracts for the US Navy in the 60's and 70's to ensure the US had a viable computer manufacturing industry.

So its not a new thing or just an EU thing that UK's industry was being undermined by "fair" procurement methods. It has gone on ever since the end of the second world war.

Just to add to that, we've been on local trains in the Languedoc-Roussillon that were made by Bombardier in Derby. So presumably they're not wildly uncompetitive. And indeed, I noticed last night that they're making the replacement rolling stock for the London Underground.