Re: Its all cobblers
As to the 'its expensive to build your own'
Actually it is NOT
Each million or so we send to the yanks for one of their planes is a million from our treasury for something we then have to buy spares for, contains only a portion of input from us and the yanks can sell and profit from
If we build a new aircraft factory, kit it with British machine tools and use build some British planes we can then take a good few people off the unemployed list and stop paying benefits etc. (a huge bill per person when you include the housing, council tax rebates etc etc etc). Those people would then pay tax on their earnings... so some of the 'cost' recycles to the treasure anyway. We can then sell those planes to those people who are our friends (the yanks are not, never have been and never will be... history tells us that). Selling to others would mean we take a profit. Further the research and dev we could then afford at the factory would allow us to produce a next gen plane. Its not just the French that sees the benefit of keeping an arms industry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
