Originally Posted by
MAINJAFAD
A very stupid and short sighted remark. If the industry dies we will never get it back There is also the cost issue to UK PLC overall. Yes a piece of kit will cost a lot more if made in the UK that it would if bought off the shelf from the USA or anywhere else. The main cause of this is the main cost of any design and manufacturing process. Manpower!!! The UK costs are inflated by a number of issues mainly driven by tax. What this however does is recycle a large amount of money back into HM Treasury either by the direct taxation (PAYE, NI payments and Corporation Tax) from the workers and indirect taxation on most things that the staff spend their money on and the direct taxation on the people and companies that provide those services. The most likely total costs that actually leave the UK would be the costs of materials / components not produced in the UK and any royalties on licencing which at most would be 30% of the total spend.
Yes, I get all that, and thanks for the insult.
My point, which I thought I made quite clearly but obviously not, was that if we didn't have to worry about UK industry we would often have cheaper/better kit like many smaller nations around us do.
F15/F16/F18/F22? instead of Tornado/Typhoon
Arleigh Burke many years ago instead of T45 now.
P8 instead of Nimrod.......oh, wait...
Apache for half the price.
The simple fact is that even with the taxation of UK industry, you cannot pretend that we get value for money by any stretch of the imagination with our toys.