Jabba - thanks for the response, which went into more effort than my rant perhaps deserved.
I cannot speak for any company, but in my experience there is absolutely no conspiracy, or move to 'get out' as quickly as possible, other than from hard economics. If anything, one of the problems that the industry has brought upon itself is the sentimental attachment to facilities, which have been 'kept going' against the background of decline, just on the offchance. This leads to increasing costs per hour for the work that there actually is, which makes the work less competitive, which reduces the order book, and so on. It could be argued that the extremely rapid and hard faced 'dash' to close un-needed facilities is the only way to keep the residual industry competitive - something which has finally been recognised.