Re: All the jobs were sent offshore to get it for cheap....
It is not just that.
Even if there is an attempt to bring them on-shore it will misfire.
The real engine behind the German Manufacturing StreamRoller is the FREE technical education. In the UK, you have to make an effort to graduate with a technical degree. In Germany you have to make an effort to graduate without.
This is the real means for German government to subsidize its industry. As long as we charge our future engineers 20-40K up front which they cannot recoup with their starting salary we have NO MEANS TO COMPETE.
Other countries which are doing very well lately in terms of emerging tech all have very heavily subsidized or free education as well.
From this perspective, the recent UK governments including this one have failed to improve UK's engineering and manufacturing potential. In fact, they have done everything they can to decrease it. They also have no intention to fix things - it is all empty talk to facilitate the exchange of brown envelopes in between members of the old boy's club.
Call me cynical, but I will believe in the noises about "manufacturing strategy" only after the education is again free with the caveat that liberal majors above an "essential" centrally tendered national quota pay full price. Not the 9k they pay today. The full one (which is more). Technical are free - period. There is no such thing as surplus of technical education :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
