Former MG Rover workers to get just £3 each

Typical!

You can say that again. Ain't Britain really great these days?

And of course now we have the spectacle of the bankers making very good use of "quantitative easing" to boost their bonuses, don't we?

Re Marconi-GEC: I remember when it was fast going down, and in dire straits, the directors had a meeting. They all swanned off to the West Indies for an all-expenses-paid beano that cost tens of thousands. Greed at the top coupled with lack of investment has been a hallmark of business leaders in this country for very many years. In 1890, the steel output of both the US and Germany exceeded that of Britain for the first time, and one of the papers interviewed Andrew Carnegie, asking how this could have happened. He said - as near verbatim as I can remember (and, no I wasn't alive then!!) "When bosses in Britain invest in machinery, they expect it to go on working 25 years and more after it should have been scrapped, so it becomes unreliable, profits decline, and they become uncompetitive. We, on the other hand, have invested in the most modern machinery and the best efficiency."

The most relevant thing that I can quote from more recent times is that William Lyons in the 1950s was the most highly paid motor executive in Europe, though Jaguar was by far the smallest mass-producer. When Jaguar needed to invest in tooling for XJ6 to start production in 1968, there was no money, and he had to sell the company to BMC. Need I say more?

The only thing British bosses seem to be good at is asset-stripping and other legal business scams.

In fairness it has to be said that British companies suffered disproportionately from a lack of new tooling in the years immediately after WW2 due to the government policy of paying them only for labour and materials used during wartime. Western Europe and Japan on the other hand received massive financial aid from the US to build new factories while West Germany still had state-of-the-art tooling left over from WW2, often hidden in underground factories.

In fairness it has to be said that British companies suffered disproportionately from a lack of new tooling in the years immediately after WW2 due to the government policy

It was much the same after WWI; but they'd long done the same thing - bought machinery, then didn't renew it, even when times were good. After all, when times are good, that's when you invest for the probably of bad times, if you have any sense of prudence! I think many British companies are too opportunistic, and don't see any need to modernise or keep investing, in either plant or employees (through training, for instance), and it always comes back and bites them on the bum. My last employer didn't invest when they should, and it's now in big trouble. We were actually told that we should "use our brains" to compensate for lack of modern equipment, only a few years ago! Unfortunately the human brain can't make use of data to produce 3D visualisations of e.g. vibration modes in a structure, it takes a powerful computer and modern software to do that, as with kinematics, FE analysis, materials and fatigue analysis, circuit analysis.....etc., etc.

Even back in the 60s, when GEC was making good profits, when we needed a decent lathe in the Trunk Radio Lab, what did we get? A very worn out Myford Super 7! For the first 4 inches of the bed, there was so much play in the saddle, that it wouldn't turn accurately; beyond 4 inches, the saddle jammed on the bed, because the first 4 inches were so badly worn, and adjusting for it made the other 20-odd inches unusable! A new Super 7 would have cost a few hundred quid, and we weren't allowed to have one, instead we had to make do, and struggle every time we used the one we were fobbed off with. The company only made £48 million that year. No doubt Lord Weinstock and the shareholders were happy though!

MG Rover Trust wound up with no money for former workers

THE MG Rover Trust Fund is to be wound up after more than seven years – without a penny going to 6,500 former workers forced out of Longbridge.

Trustees are calling time on the long-running cash saga after banking giant HBOS withdrew £12.5 million earmarked for ex-employees and the High Court rejected a legal bid for a reprieve earlier this year.

The news comes more than seven years after former Phoenix Venture Holdings chairman John Towers pledged up to £30 million for those made redundant.

It also follows a fruitless last-ditch plea to the Phoenix Four for personal contributions from their reported £42 million fortunes. Birmingham historian Carl Chinn said: “After all this time, it is very disappointing.’’