Thread: Iconic British engineering demise

HI,
That is Sad that it is finished. A question though so where do the Engines get Tested now China?.

It is sad to see a once state of the art faciltity rusting away.

The photography is very well done and evokes that decline very well.

This decline has been happening all over the Western world where lack of investment and ever increasing wages costs have forced manufacturing to places like China.

The punch line was also ironic, the plant will be demolished to make way for a retail distribution centre.

All throughout the western world countries get together and specialise... There is still going to be a state of the art jet engine test bed facility somewhere friendly where the UK can test engines but it is going to be in Germany or France most likely, rather then every country having their own facilities, there would probably be one facility in the EU that everyone uses...

Such is the way of centralisation and ease of transport.. This sort of setup is cheaper and we see it happening even on a local level in Australia... I saw a glaring example of centralisation and specialisation and the drawback it has just last week...

The city of Rockhampton and indeed the entire northern coastal Qld got cut off from the Brisbane area for a few days last week..... I know you are wondering why would a few days make any difference... After two days isolation from Brisbane, bread supplies were running low, while milk supplies were very very low, after three days I heard stories of people paying $7 for a loaf of bread and milk was very scarce... How could this happen, well deregulation of the dairy industry along with Coles $1 a litre milk has decimated the Qld dairy industry as such a lot of milk comes from places like Victoria where they can produce milk at the prices consumers want to pay and still be viable unlike in Qld... As such there is no longer any milk processing plant in Rockhampton... Same with bread, there used to be a flour milling plant here, not the case now, so flour has to come from the south...

Roads cut... No product and it is amazing how quickly it runs out...

Of course the other thing about the UK closing down the facility, was it government or privately run? Governments in places like the UK and Au despise owning assets and having to spend money on facilities for manufacturing defence products and such, better off getting private companies to do that so they take all the risk and cop all the flak should something go wrong..