Dibden Purlieu Saint

The missus is looking at buying a car, and we have several on our radar. However, I wanted to know if anyone has any prior experience with any of these cars, or anything we should think about before purchasing. The cars we're looking at are: 2007 Mercedes CLK 280 Sport 2005 BMW M3 2006 Porsche Boxster 2.7 2008 Audi A4 2.0T Any advice will be welcomed.

Done.

Left-wing : "Pander to them" Right-wing : "Help yourself"

Agreed, which I alluded to in post 67. I just thimk we need all the economic facts about this prior to: A) Saying the Government is at fault for this contract going elsewhere; B) Saying that the contract would have been, overall, beneficial to the British economy. C) As said earlier in the thread, we didn't even submit a tender, and we don't have the expertise for this kind of job.

If we broke it down, how much of the £800m do you think stays in the UK? Materials are probably sourced overseas for the most part. I'm not sure of the breakdown on resources and pay to staff when building something like this?? Anyone any idea? I think after all costs are taken into account that are effectively accessed by the Government, you're looking at 30%? Which means the bid would have needed to have been within £240m to even break even. There is a good chance it could have been higher...

We're not even saying have a fair crack, we're just taking away the ability for foreign companies to win tenders over here. We have not got 2 pennies to rub together, yet as ever people are telling the Government to subsidise the building of ships which potentially shows no economic advantage to the country? Madness.

I'm not getting into this, but why the hell shouldn't people work for their benefits? Personally I'd prefer to see people have to do work that helps the community, and not work that benefits corporations (unless those corporations have to pay the tax and NI on those employees (but no wages)).

So now we're saying that every large tender that doesn't go to a British company should be intercepted prior to work beginning, by the government. Proper government intervention in what should be a free trade country. You start doing that and countries will start rejecting tenders from our country straight off. You have to agree that this is a dangerous precedent to set, no?

So the OP is frankly incorrect then?

So in fact this can't be attributed to the Government then? At what level of money would you have to go above procurement level?

I think people do underestimate the intelligence of those in office, even those jokers who were in last.

As you were obviously part of the tendering committee, why don't you inform us of who made the decision and at what level.

There is no chance that the knock on effects will not have been considered by the government.

I was trying to work out why this contract being given to the Koreans is the Governments fault in a free market. My point is, on the whole, the reason we are no longer massive exporters of manufactured produce is that on the whole, we are pretty w@nk at it. The point I was making was generalised. For instance, we're also very good with F1 cars. I didn't realise that we were excellent at building ships, but then I couldn't give 2 sh!ts about them. Which again raises the question, why were we not picked to build these ships? I don't give a f*** about rip off Britain, we don't obtain the materials or labour cheaply enough to compete, end of, so what do you expect?

I will, perhaps you can point me to who I should write to and who is responsible.

Either way, we cannot buy the materials and obtain the labour for the same price as South Korea...

Fair point.

Well, seemingly so if it costs us more to manufacture the same ship...

Meh, the issue as I can see it, as with the NHS and every other bl00dy thing in this country, is that we are inefficient.

So you are of the belief that the Government decided that these shipbuilders weren't good enough so they put up barriers to entry for a tender? Or that they did it just to spite the population?

The fact that that is the kind of thing we build here. When was the last time we manufactured something good? Concorde?

Do you remember the Austin Maestro? Heap of sh!t. Now, imagine you were underwater in the equivalent of that.

I love the way some people want a closed economy, so we can spend more money on an inferior product. What we need is Bombardier and ship builders etc to start getting oversees contracts by becoming more efficient and increasing their technological know-how.

110% this.

Couldn't possibly judge yet, but with Holt, Graham and Morison doing a job there, as well as Yakubu, I would say so.