Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Why British Nuclear Energy Failed" video.
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So, Britain, essentially bankrupt after World War 2 and needing to export something, by government meddling came up with a nuclear power station design that nobody would want. Yep, that sounds like Britain all right. They did the same with their lame aircraft industry created by a forced merger of various companies, some ok, some terrible, resulting in such things as the Bristol Brabazon, an airliner for which no market existed, and the BAC TSR-2, which was incapable of performing a mission. They did the same with their telecommunications industry - the government owned BT forcing manufacturers to make a telephone exchange (Highgate Wood type) nobody wanted even if it worked ok, which it didn't. And when their electronics semiconductor industry had trouble competing with the US, their government decided to subsidize - not Mullard, who were the most technology capable, well run, and very nearly could make it on their own, because they were foreign owned (by Philips). They subsidised the ones that had no hope, so money down the drain.
The common problem in all this is the British Govt tradition of appointing committees to answer difficult questions. Expert committees are in principle good, because elected politicians cannot be knowledgeable of all things. But what they do in Britain is appoint old university professors and judges to chair and sit on their committees - these are the worst types to get a grip on commercial issues.
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@indyrock8148 : That's ok, I get comments on posts I made a year ago. I myself have a policy to not comment on threads more than 6 months old unless the thread has only one or 2 posts and those posts could seriously mislead someone.
Re your first para, it's not quite right. Churchill could have sent things, but he actually denied that the Japanese were a serious threat. Given Churchill was pretty smart and usually well informed, it is unlikely he genuinely believed that - it was just an excuse for sending nothing and retaining Australian troops for his own use in North Africa and Europe. It put Britain on the nose in Australia. It was the last straw destroying government and general loyalty to Britain.
Your second paragraph is spot on.
Your third para begins with a major error. Immediately post war, the British government implemented measures to create export volume, as they desparately needed the cash. For example, they tightly rationed steel to manufacturers supplying their own internal market, but there was no rationing of steel for manufacturers exporting. This was why Rover, who had minimal export volume, changed to using aluminum bodies. The govt policy led to the infamous "home quality / export quality" phenomenon (in old British trade/industry jourmals you often see reference to models for export supposedly better) - not withstanding that their exports were never-the-less of lower quality than that from the USA and others. This was because they built to pre-war quality, which was no longer good enough. Austin/Morris, who had considerable export volume, were able to use all-steel construction.
Your last sentence is spot on - As the post war years rolled on, British exports had to complete with indigenous, US, and Japanese products, all of which were much better quality.
My background is electronics engineering. Form this I can give examples of how poor British products, built in a cost-cutting environment, led to some surprising results. For example, when television started in Australia, most local factories had acquired ties with US manufacturers, and put into local production adapted American TV set designs - which were good. However EMI Australia was 100% owned by EMI Britain and had no tie with any US firm. EMI Britain sent out drawings and a few sample British-made TV sets, with the expectation that the Australian factory would just copy it exactly. But the local factory engineers immediately saw that the British design was so bad it would ruin their reputation, so they set about designing their own set from scratch, with help from Philips. The result was the best set on the Australian market.
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@agt155 : You must be joking. That's exactly what Britain has repeatedly done - ever since WW2. Sometimes they did by cash handout, sometimes by nationalising, and sometimes by State-owned enterprises eg RAF, BPO, awarding propping-up type contracts. They have a habit of subsidizing the most lame, as in the examples I gave in my earlier post.
The most famous of the misguided British subsidising of lame industries was the spending of 1.5 billion pounds on developing most of the Concorde airliner.
The funniest thing was the Transputer. When all the American semiconductor firms came out with microprocessor chips in the late 1970's, the remaining Britain based manufacturers saw that they had no hope of competing, and their market would die. So the British Govt decided to step in and subsidize. The cash was used to design a computer chip - called the Transputer. It was actually a clever design, but not likely to sell well as it was very different. So the government decided to have it made by contract. The lowest price tender was from an American company. So, British taxpayer's money was used to have a product, that practically nobody wanted, made in the USA - no benefit to Britain at all, except for a handful of boffins.
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@krashd :The "processor" you are thinking of is no doubt the ARM. The ARM company is a design house, which sells to chip makers and others the VHDL and instruction set license, essentially they sell the modern computer equivalent of a set of drawings for a mechanical machine. The actual implementations are made by other (non British) manufacturers.
The device I typed this on is a Chinese-made laptop, which has an Intel processor and GPU, probably made by TSMC in Taiwan. I could have used my mobile, which has a Korean-made processor that is a not an ARM. The reason why the number of processors using the ARM design is so high, is not because it is used in the PC and personal device field, it is used in embedded controls - for example your bread maker, your coffee machine, microwave oven, washing machine may have an ARM design processor. More likely an Intel derivative though.
The existence of the ARM company in Britain, although very successful, provides a minute amount of employment for Britons, whereas their car industry used to employ vast numbers, who paid, collectively, vast amounts of income tax.
You know perfectly well Britain lost its' markets. Before WW2 there were ships carrying British made goods of all kinds, cars, planes, electronic parts, knives, forks, plates etc etc to the British Commonwealth countries and returning carrying wheat, wool, cotton, etc etc. Not any more.
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