Proud to be British - Finally !

[dang65]

Watched a documentary about Rolls Royce making jet engines last night, it was bloody brilliant.

They were pretty good before the jet engines too.

n.b. A bit NSFW right at the end!

[scooterscot]

Here's some nice Rolls Royce engine for you..

[Sysman]

Yup.

He managed to destroy, almost single handed, much of British electronic industry, such as it was.

The Old Liebour bunch in the 60s were dead keen to have GEC as the be all and end all of British electronics.

Turned out well, didn't it?

I was ever so impressed to read that, when some computer salesman had earned more in bonus than the sainted Arnie, he thereupon changed the bonus scheme so that it could never happen again.

Feckwit.

Feckwit indeed. A mate of mine went for an interview with GEC in the early 1980s. On the tour around the factory floor they came across some old telephone exchanges and he was told that they'd come from abroad and were destined for British Telecom (still part of the Post Office back then).

He was so mad with the idea of them fobbing the British public/taxpayer off with second hand junk that he turned the job down.

Around that time I started working in France and was expecting to find a telephone system which was a joke. Not at all, for they had just revamped it with all shiny new kit and I enjoyed a far better system than the UK would see for many years.

I'll upgrade Weinstock from Feckwit to Public Enemy.

[Green Mango]

Feckwit indeed. A mate of mine went for an interview with GEC in the early 1980s. On the tour around the factory floor they came across some old telephone exchanges and he was told that they'd come from abroad and were destined for British Telecom (still part of the Post Office back then).

He was so mad with the idea of them fobbing the British public/taxpayer off with second hand junk that he turned the job down.

Around that time I started working in France and was expecting to find a telephone system which was a joke. Not at all, for they had just revamped it with all shiny new kit and I enjoyed a far better system than the UK would see for many years.

I'll upgrade Weinstock from Feckwit to Public Enemy.

Simpson took over GEC, talking about Weinstock's GEC he said it was a sign of a badly run company to have
2 billion in the bank. Simpson spent all the dough at the height of the tech boom.

Labour made him a Lord.

Then the tech boom came to an end the music stopped and the company basicly went broke,
many parts of what had been the old telecoms business GPT were closed down or sold off
cheapley.

Weinstock wasn't perfect, but at least he didn't wreck the company....

[scooterscot]

Simpson took over GEC, talking about Weinstock's GEC he said it was a sign of a badly run company to have
2 billion in the bank. Simpson spent all the dough at the height of the tech boom.
.

I remember going to the NEC in Birmingham as a newly keen graduate when I just started at GEC. We were all given a share by Simpson the day he give his lecture. He said keep it safe that single share will be worth some countless amount in the years to come. Years came and the company went bust.

Manufacturing in the UK does not get the respect it deserves. At no point I can think of in my lifetime have I known the UK manufacturing bailed out to the crazy numbers the banks were. They should have been allowed to fail. Yet when you have people like Dyson fronting money to build a school of design and engineering, we through beauoracy and tell no can't help you. So off to the US he went instead.

Oh services will save us! The city just keeps on making money, who cares if its ethical..

Services can only exist with a strong manufacturing base. Exporting manufacturing jobs abroad to make the end of year accounts look better is no excuse.

We need to be leading the world again with our innovative engineering know now, instead we punish it.

[Sysman]

Did anyone watch the thing about Qnetiq?

I taped recorded it and will watch later.

[lukemg]

Yeah, I started watching it, bit of a disappointment after the Rolls one. Having to rip-out the whole of the insides of 8 yank copters due to a total nob-up and painting wind farms is not the story of excellence I am after, despite the obvious skills in evidence.
No doubt there was a lot of more interesting work going on that they weren’t allowed anywhere near.
Great shots of decaying 1960’s industrial units to reinforce the make-do and mend impression you kind of expect. There is obviously some cutting edge work going on but much of this is bespoke military stuff. I know this does generate revenue from oil states but I want to see the numbers. Key thing about RR was competition in a global market place and how they met this head on and were doing brilliantly.

[SupremeSpod]

There was a program about 15 or 16 years ago about DERA.

It was memorable for some unfortunate squaddie who looked like he had an enormous cabbage on his head.

Apparently it did something magic in the cabbage field though I now can't remember quite what.

That'll be camouflage...

SupremeSpod - In "Cabbage Head" mode!

[gingerjedi]

DERA/QinetiQ use a beach near me, they lost a crate of high explosives at high tide once.

Just across the water from you Zeity, have they washed up yet?