Naughty boy, Tim.

I trust you are doing a spot of trolling here, Tim? If so, fair enough - otherwise, whooooooooaa there!

A country prospers because all of the citizens of the country have food and shelter, to say nothing of computers with broadband connections to read your words of wisdom. If we are merely a country of a few "fat cats", earning a bundle by making small numbers of expensive "stuff", we are not exactly on track, are we? All those unemployed oiks are going to rebel in the end - unless the "grand plan" is to let them starve - or, in the words of someone famous before you; "let them eat cake".

No, Tim. Making small numbers of expensive things, employing equally small numbers of people in the making is merely a puff of mist in the eyes of logic.

I think you are a Tory and I claim my €5...

Weird

You're all weird. The author is is rightly pointing out the silver-lining, when the rest of the media (and society) wants to wring its hands over whether our secret services know that other intelligence agencies torture people.

So to all the hand-wringers out there, shut the fuck up, or I'll send my friends round to your house. And you don't want that.

And to the writer, nice one mate, a lovely piece of prose from the flip-side.

Logistics and economics

Bottom line is we are to a lesser or greater extent reliant on imports of basic goods such as clothes and food, which is inevitably an issue for those of low skill, because they are competing for jobs on an international basis.

However. As the cost of oil and therefore logistics inevitably rise, the relative cost of creating those simple items in the UK will reduce to a point where we are better off creating them.

The same is true of more complex goods. I work within the supply chain department of a UK manufacturer and have been involved in outsourcing large elements of our operation to China. We are now finding that with the increasing costs of logistics and the cost of increased cost of the additional stock holding required by longer lead times, Chinese manufacture is already looking like a bad idea.

The only real way to increase the level of low-skilled employment in the UK is to raise the living standards of those employed "on the cheap" in low cost countries. Some one doesn't need to be making televisions all day for many days until they want a pay rise to pay for it.

Nobody seems to be answering the BIG question ...

*IS* that graph taking inflation into account?

And if not, can somebody *please* urgently revise it so that it DOES !!!

Logically challenged.. needs €5 for beer

BestBeer is seeing Tories everywhere (na mate, you should run the country you blood-clot), and makes that classic error of trying to speak for everyone all the time. "WE are not exactly on track are we?" (= I am not on track and I have no life) .. But there's a place for you in the BNP or the English Defence League with your "all those unemployed oiks are going to rebel, starve and shit, unless you all hand out cake" (= unless I get free money and beer, I will be VERY angry and ruin all your lives with my ill behavior). Oh I'm trembling. Why don't you try making something? Start off with something easy, like BEER. You can buy a kit from Boots, at very reasonable cost. All I ask is that you don't become a completely useless twat. For instance, avoid writing poetry, which makes normal unskilled people into twatty unskilled people, with an English GCSE.

Bravo - You should be a climate scientist...

The only long term conclusion you should draw from this graph, is that before too long you will be working for the Daily Mail too.

The IoP is made up of these industries:

Food, drink & tobacco (14.9%)

Textiles & clothing (2.6%)

Leather & leather products (0.3%)

Wood & wood products (1.9%)

Paper, printing & publishing (13.2%)

Coke, refined petroleum & nuclear fuels (1.7%)

Chemicals & man-made fibres (11.3%)

Rubber & plastic products (5.0%)

Non-metallic mineral products (3.6%)

Basic metals & metal products (10.9%)

Machinery & equipment (8.3%)

Electrical & optical equipment (11.1%)

Transport equipment (10.9%)

Other manufacturing (4.4%)

For all you know the rise since 1964 could be entirely due to North Sea Oil - ( and t4 by extension Rubber & Chemicals ) you don't have enough data to make any meaningfull assesment about the long term viability of British manufacturing from this chart.

In fact North Sea Oil production peaked in the mid 80s and late 90s

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=198

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=169

@Successive Govt Failure

'Well at least the UK still make shed-loads of guns, ammo, and other military paraphernalia which we *could* use to defend ourselves (although I'd gladly see the back of this trade's exports).'

Actually we don't. Our last military grade munition factories have been largely shut down and our rifle cartridge production capacity was shipped to India a few years back. We also don't produce tank rounds any more which means the UK's tank fleet now has to have new barrels fitted so as to allow them to fire rounds purchased abroad. We make very few fire arms, although we do make some very nice speciality weapons such as sniper rifles, and our heavy armour production capabilty has almost vanished. Do try to keep up, becuase when some nasty men come kicking down our doors, we literally have no means of holding them off on our own anymore without assistance from willing countries. Thank you Labour, you finally managed to prepare our country for rule by foreign powers. In the cold war it was the Russians, and now it could be anybody.

Quality

Wealth produced by service output is fiat. Stuff that translates directly to property without passing go (manufacturing output) , produces a higher quality of wealth - it's true value is more based on need versus output rather than confidence. Now the losses in fiat value are being socialised again for a loss of confidence in the banking sector, surprise. Nothing has truly been lost but everybody ends up paying for it.

What a crock...

Speaking as a newly redundant techy specialising in dealing with the sharp and nasty end of manufacturing I don't think I've ever read such a lopsided piece.

Manufacturing in the UK is all about "High Value, Low volume" because we can't compete with the likes of China. Or at least that is what everyone tells us. Well, given politically inspired butchering we've had over the last decade it is hardly surprising that we can't compete. Most large manufacturers have been bought by foreign firms which have promptly closed or moved all manufacturing to somewhere else simply because there aren't the benfits to getting it built here. Why, well, go ask the Govt. Unless there are votes to be bought, the UK Govt will not fork out cash or offer grants to manufacturing. I know, I've tried it.

Manufacturing within a secure nation must be balanced. There must be an appropriate mix of high, low, and medium value products to sustain the country's income from this corner of it's GDP. We're skewed all to one end meaning "average" cash output for Manufacturing with a way way below average employment rate. Hence higher social costs..

As for this "fewer people in manufacturing means more people to go write games". I'm looking for something politer than "what the f***" but at the mo' it escapes me. 90% of your normal manufacturing operators are not coders. If they had an affinty for coding, trust me, sitting doing a repetitive manufacturing task would drive them to suicide.

The only simple and obvious facts are a) you can prove anything you like given a graph and a bunch of narrow field figures, and b) manufacturing as an industry now employs vastly less people and makes far fewer items than it did 10 years ago. In my book this equals "eviscerated".

There's a few valid points in the article, but it's still an epic fail in it's narrow scoped and simplistic view.

Rant over......

Timing, before an election. What colour is TheReg?

I'd like to agree with all of it and believe all is fine; couldn't we all do with some good news?

But why is this article being published now, in the run up to an election? Which colour do you want to sway us in favour of?

Megaphone icon - because, it sounds like you're going canvassing.

False Axioms

"What has actually happened is that manufacturing has become more productive and moved higher up the value chain, both entirely desirable things."

Are they? Why?

I really don't see why increasing productivity while reducing employment is a desirable thing. At all.

This is a classic flaw in the pro-capitalist argument - when they talk about the system working they always carefully select measurements of success. Yet when people are asked if they are happy, the picture gets a lot more muddied.

People who are out of work tend not to give a damn about whether their old job is now done by a robot (a Polish word) "higher up the value chain" or not. Any economic system which results in millions of miserable people living in fear for their lives is not in any democratic sense "desirable". Which is why it appeals so much to those who hate democracy and work so hard to keep economic decisions and power as far away from voters as possible.

Production of more and more shiny tat is not a useful goal in itself and has in fact tended to drive the actual quality of life (as measured by real people and not half-wit economists) down.

big question answered - and more

the figures are 2005 pounds ie take inflation into account. i've analysed the manufacturing sectors behind this at effortlesscomputing dot co dot uk - plus a bonus chart to make you feel properly uncomfortable about all this

SO whats the solution?

If productivity is a good thing and you can only be more productive by firing people, it seems to me that the only solution you think will fix the unemployment problem is to kill everyone that don't have a job, because if they are alive not on the service industry already, they will never get another job (as everyone is aiming at higher productivity, be it on manufacturing or the service industry).

So, to keep unemployment levels low you appear to be suggesting that that are no alternatives other then sending people to hell when they're fired. Good solution, unless you loose YOUR job...

Timing is simple

AC @ 15.37, Tim's been researching this sort of thing for ages (and was going through the dataset before Xmas), and I'm pretty sure he's had a draft of this for awhile now, but was looking for someone to put it up. But I'm not sure what bias you're seeing?

It's not a pro- or anti- govt piece, merely a response to repeated claptrap in the media and elsewhere about the non-existent decline of manufacturing.

It's good that this has been published, voting coming up, we ought to be a lot more informed than we are about what we're doing. It's also nice that we've figured out a way of persuading countries overseas to buy our expensive products and services, so that we can use the money to import cheap goods, making us all a lot richer.

Can't we all be a bit more sensible

The bottom line from the statistics offered is not very exciting really. If everyone referred to the historical economists (who focus entirely on how economies actually behaviour) rather than the economists who constantly look at how to change things the wholse thing becomes rather obvious. The message from the graph is that the UK has had a 1.5% average annual growth rate in manufacturing. For a mature pinacle economy this isn't half bad so no great suprises or concerns there.

The graph was prepared by real statisticians so it doesn't lie about the value of manufacturing in our economy. It is inflation compensated so that increase is a real increase in value. There is one serious statistically issue left open which is whether the graph only includes value add rather than the total exit value of goods. This makes a big difference as our manufacturing is now higher up the foodchain and hence has much more significant material input costs than would apply many years ago when it including everything from the mining / farming of raw materials on upwards. Given the involvement of professional statisticians I would assume that it is value add.

After that all we are left with is that 1.5% per annum tailing of to the present day is a little pitiful against other nations (like China) but it is expected performance. If you are among the richest countries in the world (and we are) then you are automatically at a serious competitive advantage. The main brake on British manufacturing isn't government policy it is the income expectations of the British population* and there is nothing you can do about it..

* Please note British population applies to all those involved in any manufacturing business not just the shop floor workforce. Industry in rising countries tends to have the advantage of consistently reinvesting profits and cheap management as well as cheap shop floor labour.

what fucking manufacturing industry?

This story is ridiculous. The underlying reason why Britain's economy is fucked is because of the collapse of manufacturing and the move to service-based jobs. Most of those McJobs don't generate wealth or are economically useful other than to keep people off the dole. Today, it's almost impossible to think of any British manufacturers that are world-wide household names apart from Rolls Royce (aero engines) and GSK (pharma). Compare that with the nations that compete and are now way ahead of us: Boeing, Sony, BMW, Seimens, Samsung, Apple, Xerox, Bayer, HP, Cisco, Hitachi, Philips, Yamaha, Intel, Canon, Bosch, Pioneer, Volkswagen, etc, etc.

50-60 years ago, Britain was still just about the workshop of the world and produced well over half the world's ships and locomotives. It had a successful car industry too. And made most of the world's motorcycles. It had an amazing aviation industry. Now that's pretty much all gone. Instead people work in call centres and non-jobs in the public sector.

This country would be a basket case if it wasn't for North Sea Oil. And that's been pissed away. Compare how the Norwegians have used their oil revenues with how it's been used here. Once the oil's gone, this country will be as economically significant as say Egypt.

Stats are meaningless without context

This graph could also be very easily interpreted negatively:

I see no real growth in manufacturing output from about 1997 to 2008. These are 12 BOOM years for the UK industry without one negative GDP growth and yet manufacturing grew, well NOT AT ALL.

Now if you add on the last 18 months, then we're back to mid 60s levels. Sure we'll regain a lot of that in the coming years, but not over night, so fast forward two decades and we'll very likely still be at 1998 levels.

"The myth of Britain's manufacturing decline". Pull the other one...

Same thing in the USA...

We manufacture a lot of stuff, but automation and technical skill means there's no need for unskilled labor and less need for labor. Mostly what you usually hear is complaints from people who think that a high school education should be all that is necessary to get on.

For an instance, a lumber mill that used to require 50 people and would start out high school graduates at $10.50 an hour and give them a top wage of $16 an hour now requires 8 people who need training to run advanced equipment and make significantly higher wages.

Common Sense

The author clearly subscribes to the New Labour / Frank Furedi sect worldview and probably thinks that people need video games, gambling and banking services (which are now defined as products and may soon be included in manufacturing). Apart from counting the value of manufactured products rather than volume or use-value, the author also failed to account that we now consume 3-4 times per capita than in the 1960s.

Britain's main manufacturing exports are military hardware, pharmaceuticals, entertainment industry accessories and rapidly shrinking reserves of North Sea oil. Of the things we actually need, most is now imported, that includes according to government statistics 40% of our food (I think it's higher), 75% of motor vehicles, most electronic gadgetry, industrial machinery, medical equipment, most steel, timber and even plastics. We are now net importers of gas, oil and almost unbeliavably coal.

And if carrying coal to Newcastle seems absurd, bottled water marketers have successfully sold French H20 to gullible rain-drenched islanders.

N

So this article is ultimately...

Simply Tory puffery?

OTOH, Dark Satanic Mills, Ltd has gone away, which I count as A Good Thing.

What a pile of old flanges, stan...

My car was made in various parts of Asia.

So was my TV.

And my computer.

My keyboard

My monitors

The chair I'm sitting on, the table my computer is on.

My clothes

My shoes

...all made somewhere in Asia..

... and this bloke is trying to have us all believe how 'gobsmackingly obvious' it is that British Manufacturing *isn't* in decline?

I recall the toys my Dad gave me when I were a nipper - toys from his youth - every last bit of it made in the UK. The cars his dad used to drive, the trains he caught to school as a kid - all made in the UK. The clothes he wore - made in the UK.

Tim Worstall, if you can find a cluestick manufactured in Blighty, feel free to smack yourself around the head with it, repeatedly.

If you can find an average high-value manufactured item manufactured in Britain of greater value than the millions of vehicles we drive (very few of which are manufactured here), you get a gold star, if not, just keep smacking yourself in the face with that cluestick - it may improve your outlook.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're a SERVICE industry - effectively, a nation of shoplifters. ... er shopkeepers..

we ought to be a lot more informed

We should indeed be all be lot more informed. E.g. courtesy of this article, readers of El Reg should now be able to recognise Worstall's claptrap, and related stuff, wherever it may appear. There was more value in the comments from (eg) Ac 15:27 than there was in the article. But what else should we expect from a self-confessed failed commodity trader who can't even keep the About page on his bog up to date once every couple of years, despite managing multiple "articles" on a good day?

Wrt Rolls Royce as oft-quoted example of British technology leadership: UK plc used to have leadership in steam engines too. Times change. Nothing I see around RR fills me with anything other than fear that within maybe ten years or so, Rolls Royce will be out of business, both because of unavoidable oil-related changes in the air transport market, and because of the total and utter (but for some reason, as yet totally unaddressed) long term engineering management incompetence at some of RR's critical suppliers.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

I love that graph. Looks wonderful. Shame it hides so much. Such as:

(1) The numbers of UK jobs in UK manufacturing has drastically gone down in the past 50 years.

(2) Entire UK industry product sectors have been virtually wiped out in the UK, where we now have to import vastly more than we export.

(3) Vast amounts of manufacturing real estate in cities have now been turned into housing, which shows we have lost considerable amounts of manufacturing that once employed considerable numbers of people in these communities.

(4) That graph also hides consolidation. As industries consolidation we get fewer companies taking larger market shares. (Thats not growth for the industry as a whole, although the surviving companies always want to pitch it as good news, (because they always want to paint a positive image of their industry to encourage new trade with them), plus its good news for the few companies that survive the inevitable consolidation process).

(5) That graph also hides automation. This results in yet more job losses, as machines take over production, which when added to fewer companies results in considerable job losses in the UK workforce.

For example that graph would allow the following situation and yet it would still look good on the graph, e.g. So where once say 1 Million people in the UK could be employed and so earn a living in maybe 10000 small companies, we may soon end up with say 10000 people in 10 companies, doing 3 times the output of the 1M people (via automation), whilst only 1000 of the people will likely be on the 100k+ vast wages (if you are very lucky). The problem is, in all this rampant greed fueling the inevitable consolidation process, its a major shame about the other 990000 people now out of work!. Consolidation is inevitable, so no point in getting worked up about it, as thats just life, but that graph hides a lot of hardship felt by a lot of workers. Which is the real point when people talk about decline in UK industries

Also before you cling to the "High Value, Low volume" hypothesis for the future of UK engineering and technology, all that kind of thinking totally overlooks countries like China are increasingly moving into these "High Value" business areas as well. Then where will we be, if we just cling to this hope?

So in summary, that graph is very misleading, but also even more importantly we cannot be complacent with the way things are, believing them to be good when they are not good. The UK government needs to invest a lot more into engineering and technology, but graphs like this will be picked up by politicians as excuses to do (and so to spend) nothing.

The UK government needs to invest in the future, not blind itself with statistics to imply we are still industrial revolution style world leaders. We need to invest and build for the future, because while we currently don't, other countries most definitely are heavily investing and we are loosing ground to them every day. That cannot continue without serious consequences to the UK and its workforce. :(

@ Robert Long 1

I gave up economics long ago - at about the time that Thatcher was squandering oil money on a campaign against UK industry. As someone pointed out, the Norwegians weren't so stupid.

Back to the point: the origin of "robot" in English is usually ascribed to the Czech word "robota".

Industrial Policy

...is missing in most (all?) Anglosaxon countries. Driven by some simpleton economists, it is the consensus of London and Washington governments that they should only interfere with business in Healthcare and Pensions.

Here in Germany the state takes the stance that each young person should get a solid education. If you leave school after nine or ten years you normally apply for a three year apprenticeship with a company, big or small. Those who have 13 years of schooling normally go to university, similar as in the US or Britain. The major difference is with the majority, which go for the three year apprenticeship: Half the time they spend it in special schools ("Berufs-Schule") where they get the theoretical background of their profession. The other 1.5 years they can apply that knowledge in their employer's company. Big companies have their dedicated departments for apprentices.

After those three years the skilled workers normally work in their profession for a couple of years and then have the option to become "Meister" or "Techniker" in their field, deepening their expertise.

All of that is not just free, apprentices normally get a wage between 500 to more than 1000 Euros/month. Employers are committed to this kind of strategic investment.

The results are impressive, as every interested person can see in companies like Daimler, VW, BMW, Bosch but also a vast number of smaller companies like Trumpf or SAP. Financially, Germany is clearly the strongest european country, despite the fact that Frankfurt is not a "truely global financial center" as The Economist put it. We are very happy with this situation.

Other arrangement such as financial relief (for wages - "KurzArbeiterGeld") in times of temporary economic trouble of a company also helps to retain employees at their company.

Unions are also collectivist in their rhetoric here, but they are not as insane in their actions like the UAW. They milk the cow instead of sucking the blood out of it.

It is striking to me that most of those industries the US is still strong enjoy some kind of industrial policy: Aerospace gets at least 100 billion $ per year through the pentagon; drug companies can sell their expensive substances (effectively) to the US government at enormous price.

Other kinds of mechanical engineering in the US are virtually dead or on emergency life support (think of those GM billions). Fiat recently took control of Chrysler, after Daimler considered it a potentially lethal drag and decided to offload it.

IT is one of the few industries that are a success in the US, without significant government help.

I do think education is the key to sustainable economic success as people *are* truely what makes the difference. Any idiot can buy a CNC tool machine, but it will not be very useful with a monkey operator. US industry thinks workers are monkeys they only need to train for a few hours and that is sufficent. I know that from working in a HP manufacturing operation soldering PCB boards 15 years ago. My training lasted not even an hour ! God knows how many tens of thousands of marks HP lost in the boards my badly adjusted machines soldered together.... Only weeks later I found out they had an ISO9000 document describing everything of that board production process.

AFAIK Japanese companies also emphasize the training of their workers and have made quality a cornerstone of their company philosophies. The Toyota affair is a mere abberation of this way of thinking.

Industrial Policy

...actually made Germany financially very strong. On the Eurasian continent only China is stronger and on other continents countries are in debt to their chin or small players. America, Britain, Japan, all highly indebted and in the process of digging themselves deeper into the shit. Japan for different reasons than the anglosaxons, though.

On a ranking of financial strength, Germany is arguably now the number two behind China.

Prost !

Hmmm

I've worked in manufacturing and tried to become a manufacturer and can confirm that, generally, 'manufacturing' of material raw and finished goods in the UK has declined in scope, volume and value. Some labour has been re-employed in the Service sector.

Decline in UK prosperity will continue as niche industries are killed off by Idiot Financiers, Bureaucrats and Politicians. Niche need not necessarily be small. Pharma isn't small, neither is banking but they are niche.

Given that (and with the cost of logistics rising that is not necessarily so) the same good can be supplied from anywhere in the world what is the critical added value that makes the UK favourite? Cost of capital, education and differential competitive pay rate are the three determinants to develop and/or attract and retain high added value specialisms, which IMHO is what UK PLC should be nurturing.

Numerical literacy (Science and Mathematics) is essential in a technical workforce - look at China and India. Highly valued numerical ignorance in "the meja" and politics in the UK does not help! In the modern era we don't do 'bulk' so we'd better learn how to do 'valuable niche' a lot better if we want decent work, remuneration and pensions.