Why is buying British seen as not a good thing ?

[MrLongbeard]

I'd be hard pushed to think of anything I've bought where where it's manufactured had any bearing on my purchasing decision.

[roadster]

As a retired engineering employee of British companies you could say I am a bit biased but...

I am about to buy a car which ( hopefully!) is being made in Britain right now. It does influence my buying decisions to some extent, but my current car is a Hyundai which I am not entirely happy with, although only because of minor niggles. I have also bought six new Hinckley Triumphs since the factory opened. They had at least some UK content.

It would be marvellous if major companies could stay in British hands and also keep most of their production facilities in the UK but I fear that's just wishful thinking.

[Mr. Dazzle]

McLaren?

They probably have the most British content of any established brand. Structure is made in Sheffield (in house), engine is made by Ricardo in Shoreham, lots of the bodywork is done by Prodrive here in MK and s'all put together in Woking,

[KungFooBob]

McLaren?

They probably have the most British content of any established brand. Structure is made in Sheffield (in house), engine is made by Ricardo in Shoreham, lots of the bodywork is done by Prodrive here in MK and s'all put together in Woking,

I drive past McLarens Composites Technology centre on my commutes, there's Boeing on an industrial estate on the opposite side of the parkway too.

They don't make door plugs there.

[Mr. Dazzle]

McLaren?

They probably have the most British content of any established brand. Structure is made in Sheffield (in house), engine is made by Ricardo in Shoreham, lots of the bodywork is done by Prodrive here in MK and s'all put together in Woking,

I drive past McLarens Composites Technology centre on my commutes, there's Boeing on an industrial estate on the opposite side of the parkway too.

Yeah that's the AMRC, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. S'not just any industrial estate. I've been there loads of times. It's one of the "Catapult Centres" in the UK. There's also the NCC in Bristol (National Composites Centre) and the MTC (Manufacturing Technology Centre) in Coventry, who I've also worked with/at loads. There are quite a few.

The UK is actually really good at investing and supporting this kind of tech and R&D, the Government funds it in part and they get a pretty decent return on their investment.

https://catapult.org.uk/about-us/our-centres/

[Taipan]

McLaren?

They probably have the most British content of any established brand. Structure is made in Sheffield (in house), engine is made by Ricardo in Shoreham, lots of the bodywork is done by Prodrive here in MK and s'all put together in Woking,

With a reputation as being the most unreliable supercar!

[Yambo]

I'm with MrLB on this.

I just want things that work, at an acceptable price. I don't really care where it's made. I guess a cream tea in Devon or an Arran jumper might be all British but not much else.

There are a few simple reasons why very few people buy
very few British cars for example. I'm guessing it's the same with a lot of stuff.

[JackyJoll]

I work for a company that makes spoons.

They're 'Designed in Sheffield', it's all over the packaging and a big selling point.

It's all made in the PRC tho'

The old spoons game, hardest game in the world.

And the spoon designing game is harder than that.

[Greenman]

Cost.

When has anyone ever gone to buy something and then opted for the one that's twice the price and probably less reliable just because it's British made, very rarely i bet, also how can you 100% be sure it is actually British made, i bet half the materials and labour is outsourced from other countries.

I don't get the comment about it being racist, that is just woke idiot thinking, people who think that should just be ignored and not even given the time of day!

Most stuff these days is made crap anyway so doesn't really matter where you buy it, it will probably fail within a short period of time anyway. With my skeptical brain on IMO it is made poorly for a reason, so that you have to spend money to repair or buy a new one year after year after year!

[JackyJoll]

Ans let's remember there was nothing racist about Brexit. It was just trying to treat people differently depending on what country they came from, in the hope of gaining an advantage for British people, what's racist about that?

So far as I can see, most of the races are there in the British people.

We live in Britain. Should we be generally for or against Britain?

Is the EU racist for trying to advance the interests of the people who live in it?

[Yambo]

Cost

With my skeptical brain on IMO it is made poorly for a reason, so that you have to spend money to repair or buy a new one year after year after year!

It's called the built in flaw and it's been around for donkey's years.

It always surprised me why British car manufacturers (now there's a misnomer!) never brought out a 'Flaw' model. The Morris Flaw would have been their best seller - you'd know what you were getting!

[Mr Moofo]

There's an interesting thread about Orange bikes in cycling section which made me think about how "buying British" isn't actually seen as a good thing, some see it as being all racist, brexity, etc... Whereas in say France, buying French stuff is seen as supporting your economy, in America, buying American is obviously massively popular... but over here it's somehow seen as wrong.

Nowdays in the UK we 'make' a lot lot less than we did 30-40 years ago... Now we can sit here and blame the government (i'd rather not go down that though) but the reality is also that we as British don't really buy our own stuff in the same way do we..

Why is this... and what if anything can/should we do about it. ?

STW is full go British hate - they hate everything about the country - it past, it's history, the people who live here, it's politics, it's industry and it's values. Everywhere is much better - despite most have never moved about 4 metres away from where they were born, let alone another country. Most , it seems , would have trouble coping if their gears were indexing incorrectly. And that is before you get to the hard left agent provocateurs, who will blame everything on the Tories.
So the hate of British manufacturing is deeply ingrained - Orange, Hope, HebTroCo etc - ironically Starling , Cotic, and Stanton (whose bikes generally come from Taiwan) are "good". Santa Cruz however, are the best thing since sliced bread.
One thing that you realise when you live outside the UK is, that despite it's many faults, I has. a lot of positives. Spain - the country that STQ loves, is just a smidge away from moving back to the far right ( and if they could only grow up and not show donkeys of churches , and pit their macho skills against bulls, eh!). Politics through out Europe is kinda of rubbish - the USA , and Russia and China.
Oddly STW is quite happy to buy stuff lock, stock and barrel from China - who likes to kill its own, will eventually destroy the world in it power grab. But STW don't see that - they just see all "other" Britons as "gammons"

British manufacturing can be very good - Thatcher's decision to build up finance at the cost of manufacturing is a poor legacy. Germany did nor make the same mistake ( but even there has big issues now). We seem to have niche skills , rather than world leading production. The biggest challenge is the rubbish productivity we have - people just don't want to work. Furlough, and its generosity hasn't helped.
But though terrible management, the power of unions, woeful productivity and quality, the car industry, steel industry, rail industry etc have all declined. Many of so called British companies have been sold off cheaply. Our utilities are now French , German and Australian owned ( who have been raping the consumer buy taking out cheap loans against the companies - and paying great dividends (( Thanks , Southern and Thames Water)).


Despite the rose tinted glasses, Europe is not in a much better position ( the irony being that ex Trump's USA is going gangbusters in terms of it's economy). The EU has essentially had no growth for about 15 years.
SEA / China will take over - the brain and talent drain to Singapore etc has already happened - so the old world is going to become less important because of over indulged inhabitants, high entitled work forces and a great expectation for someone else to foot the bill.

It is very said that the younger generations of Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Switzerland are all proud and patriotic of their countries. Certainly the Germans will buy German first - for quality and loyalty reasons, the Swiss will support Swiss companies, Swiss politicians, Swiss sportspeople whatever.
The younger generation in Britain are embarrassed to be British - and despite our colonialist past, we have far less to be embarrassed about than Belgium, Germany and Spain

Rant over

I had an Orange Patriot (I knew Lester N is the past through Tushingham sails) - it was horrid and flexy, and the welding was shit. Initially I like the Halifax Filing Cabinet look, but that has dated badly. And the value for money was shocking

[JackyJoll]

There's an interesting thread about Orange bikes in cycling section which made me think about how "buying British" isn't actually seen as a good thing, some see it as being all racist, brexity, etc... Whereas in say France, buying French stuff is seen as supporting your economy, in America, buying American is obviously massively popular... but over here it's somehow seen as wrong.

Nowdays in the UK we 'make' a lot lot less than we did 30-40 years ago... Now we can sit here and blame the government (i'd rather not go down that though) but the reality is also that we as British don't really buy our own stuff in the same way do we..

Why is this... and what if anything can/should we do about it. ?

STW is full go British hate - they hate everything about the country - it past, it's history, the people who live here, it's politics, it's industry and it's values. Everywhere is much better - despite most have never moved about 4 metres away from where they were born, let alone another country. Most , it seems , would have trouble coping if their gears were indexing incorrectly. And that is before you get to the hard left agent provocateurs, who will blame everything on the Tories.
So the hate of British manufacturing is deeply ingrained - Orange, Hope, HebTroCo etc - ironically Starling , Cotic, and Stanton (whose bikes generally come from Taiwan) are "good". Santa Cruz however, are the best thing since sliced bread.
One thing that you realise when you live outside the UK is, that despite it's many faults, I has. a lot of positives. Spain - the country that STQ loves, is just a smidge away from moving back to the far right ( and if they could only grow up and not show donkeys of churches , and pit their macho skills against bulls, eh!). Politics through out Europe is kinda of rubbish - the USA , and Russia and China.
Oddly STW is quite happy to buy stuff lock, stock and barrel from China - who likes to kill its own, will eventually destroy the world in it power grab. But STW don't see that - they just see all "other" Britons as "gammons"

British manufacturing can be very good - Thatcher's decision to build up finance at the cost of manufacturing is a poor legacy. Germany did nor make the same mistake ( but even there has big issues now). We seem to have niche skills , rather than world leading production. The biggest challenge is the rubbish productivity we have - people just don't want to work. Furlough, and its generosity hasn't helped.
But though terrible management, the power of unions, woeful productivity and quality, the car industry, steel industry, rail industry etc have all declined. Many of so called British companies have been sold off cheaply. Our utilities are now French , German and Australian owned ( who have been raping the consumer buy taking out cheap loans against the companies - and paying great dividends (( Thanks , Southern and Thames Water)).


Despite the rose tinted glasses, Europe is not in a much better position ( the irony being that ex Trump's USA is going gangbusters in terms of it's economy). The EU has essentially had no growth for about 15 years.
SEA / China will take over - the brain and talent drain to Singapore etc has already happened - so the old world is going to become less important because of over indulged inhabitants, high entitled work forces and a great expectation for someone else to foot the bill.

It is very said that the younger generations of Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Switzerland are all proud and patriotic of their countries. Certainly the Germans will buy German first - for quality and loyalty reasons, the Swiss will support Swiss companies, Swiss politicians, Swiss sportspeople whatever.
The younger generation in Britain are embarrassed to be British - and despite our colonialist past, we have far less to be embarrassed about than Belgium, Germany and Spain

Rant over

I had an Orange Patriot (I knew Lester N is the past through Tushingham sails) - it was horrid and flexy, and the welding was shit. Initially I like the Halifax Filing Cabinet look, but that has dated badly. And the value for money was shocking

What are STW and STQ?

[Mr Moofo]

STW = Singletrackworld . Inhabited by Millennial whiners, Corbinista fanbois, car and motorbike haters, dog haters, coffee wankers and people who have never had real relationship, other than with a bike. And Weeksy, Ming , mBoy and myself ( who are not in that bracket)
STQ - must have been a typo

[Mussels]

I thought STW was his pet name for MLSP.

[Count Steer]

I'm not sure I buy into this 'Brits are inherently lazy' thing. Some are, and that's probably true everywhere. We do seem to have had a post-war legacy of poor management and under-investment which probably reduced motivation somewhat. There's the old saying that weak management creates strong unions too. BL is a classic example of all that. (That's not to suggest that pre-war management was better - and 'the workers lot' was much worse).

Germany and Japan got investment to rebuild the countries while we struggled on.

Re buying British, I will as long as it makes sense for me (currently wearing quite smart boots made in Glastonbury ) but not otherwise. I'll buy outdoor stuff from Paramo - it's made in South America and they make a thing of employing women who might otherwise be in a completely different sort of business. Same with Patagonia, they do good things with their profits. If I'm getting spendy and fancy a bit of v. nice clobber, well made and tip top material I'll buy stuff from John Smedley....if they have a sale on.

I used to get clothes from Orvis (they're American)...because, although their kit was made in forrin parts, they seemed to actively avoid China. Unfortunately they more or less shut down the UK operation but it's building up again, on-line only.

So, yeah, I think about where stuff comes from but don't push myself out of shape about it.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Ans let's remember there was nothing racist about Brexit. It was just trying to treat people differently depending on what country they came from, in the hope of gaining an advantage for British people, what's racist about that?

Surely being in the EU is about treating people differently according to where they're born, one rule for EU citizens, another rule for non EU citizens?

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

British Manufacturing was killed by piss poor management, disinterested politicians, poor product development, good marketing by foreign manufacturers and high costs. British people are no more lazy than anyone else, but they won't work for the low wages immigrants will, and the British people are correct in doing this, but employers would rather pay people as little as they can get away with to maximise profits, and the media and politicians of all parties support employers doing this, and the British public go along with it because they don't want to pay for anything.

[MingtheMerciless]

STW = Singletrackworld . Inhabited by Millennial whiners, Corbinista fanbois, car and motorbike haters, dog haters, coffee wankers and people who have never had real relationship, other than with a bike. And Weeksy, Ming , mBoy and myself ( who are not in that bracket)
STQ - must have been a typo

I bailed on STW at the start of COVID, I managed to upset the Mods on the COVID conspiracy theory thread (how??) and then when I dared to doubt another members "facts" who everyone was fawning over I got a bit of abuse so fucked off.

I also upset some of them by having a very blunt opinion about people who stick their heads out of train windows and then suffer a fatal head injury (despite signage, which apparently wasn't clear enough according to the HSE FFS!).

The UK has always had a very adversarial/combative Management/Union situation, ever since workers first setup unions. I remember watching a documentary about the German business structure and the Union and Management were much more collaborative towards the good of the organisation. This was helped immensely at the end of WW2 when Germany was trying to get back on its feet and the companies/armed forces advisers and unions were all working together.

After WW2 there were some horrendous political decisions towards UK manufacturing, including giving away our knowledge to the Yanks regarding supersonic flight, gifting Russians two jet engines, axing of various state of the art military projects as the Yanks promised cheaper alternatives (to keep their export markets) and didn't deliver.

There was no attempt at reversing the union and management combative stance. We were at one point the leaders in Nuclear Reactor design and the politicians of all colours let this slip and our other manufacturing/science R&D ability in favour of easy money from "the City".

[Skub]

I'd be hard pushed to think of anything I've bought where where it's manufactured had any bearing on my purchasing decision.

Wot e sed.

I tend to go for whatever does the job and is within my budget. I have some quality Brit made stuff,such as the Abba Skylift and Hideout leathers.

I have become more circumspect when it comes to the likes of Aliexpress and Temu. Those I will go out of my way to avoid,but I don't see 'made in the UK' as a bad thing.