I went to the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon in Warwickshire yesterday as part of a lovely weekend in the area. It’s a nostalgic trip down motor alley; nothing is such a stark reminder of how good we used to be at making cars and being innovative in the motor industry.
And how significant were female politicians non driver Barbara Castle (compulsory seat belts and drink drive breath testing in the 60s) and Margaret Thatcher trying to keep British Leyland alive.
Now other foreign manufacturers lead the way and whilst British car plants do assemble Nissan, Toyota, BMW Mini and Honda cars we do not have the iconic British motor industry and anything like the jobs we used to have.
Ironically we lost the motor industry because Union demands made our workers uncompetitive; didn’t they see the obvious outcome of this? So we no longer have a car manufacturing industry of consequence and union ranks have dropped like a stone.
Even so, today’s unions are off again determined to apply the same principle to our British airline, it seems. And to hold the tax payer to ransom despite us all realising that our public services have become employers to benefit workers rather than their customers, to the detriment of our economic recovery in future.
A lesson too late in the learning. Again.
FOXY Steph
