British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles.

Archeum said:
Well clearly it was cheaper to outsource so why not?

Er merr gerrd, taxes are rising because we want to be thoroughly British.
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Maybe we could have built them, trained up a load of people, took them of JSA, lower the welfare bill.

You know, that sort of joined up thinking we are clearly lacking in Government.
 
Only the first 100 of approx 600 are being built in Spain. The design is based on a Spanish design apparently so I guess the manufacturing facilities are already in place. In order to meet the 2017 deadline they're building the first ones there.

The rest are being made in Merthyr Tydfil and ongoing maintenance will be from the same faciity I suppose.

That seems more reasonable, if they'd fully stiffed South Wales that would have been a little less defensible.
 
PlacidCasual said:
Only the first 100 of approx 600 are being built in Spain. The design is based on a Spanish design apparently so I guess the manufacturing facilities are already in place. In order to meet the 2017 deadline they're building the first ones there.

The rest are being made in Merthyr Tydfil and ongoing maintenance will be from the same faciity I suppose.

That seems more reasonable, if they'd fully stiffed South Wales that would have been a little less defensible.
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Thank you for that clarification.
 
OldCoals said:
Maybe we could have built them, trained up a load of people, took them of JSA, lower the welfare bill.

You know, that sort of joined up thinking we are clearly lacking in Government.
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What you mean like well paid skilled workers in heavy industry building something they are committed to, then spending their wage at local vendors or service providers who in turn cascade that value added money through the economy paying tax at every change of hand, never work mate surely or the Germans would do it.
 
You can't expect the government to prop up every industry going; the companies themselves need to make themselves competitive in skillset, cost and wages.
 
OldCoals said:
Maybe we could have built them, trained up a load of people, took them of JSA, lower the welfare bill.

You know, that sort of joined up thinking we are clearly lacking in Government.
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If we were going to create jobs for the sake of employment i would probably pick an industry which is not struggling, does not bleed money, we have modern facilities for and does not already have a surplus of trained, skilled workers.
 
Metallifux said:
No I suppose not but I would like to know if the British companies were even invited to tender and what the cost difference was.
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It would have been huge, like when everyone kicked off about building new trains outside off UK. The UK trains where not only much more expensive, there spec were far worse.

Stop propping up industries that will never be profitable (unless we need to produce it our selfs for national security)
Instead invest in those industries. Like steel, it's pretty pointless just changing owner and having large investment. Instead have massive investment and produce the highest quality metal that only Japan can currently produce and can not supply enough fir tithe massive resurgence of nuclear power plants.

We can't produce cheap stuff, so convert to the best.
 
Not sure how purchasing rules work in the MOD. But a tender that size would be EU wide and of course it will go the lowest bidder.

The rules are in place for a reason and if we decided to build something in the UK we could have got cheaper elsewhere there would be people asking why it wasn't done there instead.
 
War vehicle Ajax?? :D


npiK1xi.jpg
 
Metallifux said:
Built in Spain with Swedish Steel.
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Well I would state that the steel will arrive on time, but the tanks will not, then.

Who will be buying these tanks? If they're being sold across Europe and aren't by a British company then that seems fair enough. If they're just for Britain, it's a bit of an Up Yours to our own steel industry.
 
PlacidCasual said:
Only the first 100 of approx 600 are being built in Spain. The design is based on a Spanish design apparently so I guess the manufacturing facilities are already in place. In order to meet the 2017 deadline they're building the first ones there.

The rest are being made in Merthyr Tydfil and ongoing maintenance will be from the same faciity I suppose.

That seems more reasonable, if they'd fully stiffed South Wales that would have been a little less defensible.
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And all of a sudden in the thread, Peace broke out. :)

Thanks for that.
 
tom_e said:
You can't expect the government to prop up every industry going; the companies themselves need to make themselves competitive in skillset, cost and wages.
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Well there was an effort in the EU to alter tariffs so that Chinese steel didn't have quite such an advantage.

But Britain vetoed it because we were afraid of offending China.
 
Glaucus said:
It would have been huge, like when everyone kicked off about building new trains outside off UK. The UK trains where not only much more expensive, there spec were far worse.

Stop propping up industries that will never be profitable (unless we need to produce it our selfs for national security)
Instead invest in those industries. Like steel, it's pretty pointless just changing owner and having large investment. Instead have massive investment and produce the highest quality metal that only Japan can currently produce and can not supply enough fir tithe massive resurgence of nuclear power plants.

We can't produce cheap stuff, so convert to the best.
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I can't agree enough with this. The only profitable direction Britain can take is to aim for the best level in quality we can and compete on that. No other approach will justify the currently over-valued pound on the international market.

And building some of those nuclear power stations in Britain itself would be a step in the right direction giving our industry cheaper power and more environmental wiggle room under international agreements on Climate Change.
 
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