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How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

construction-physics.com

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Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#421

Post by BeFlatXIII »

pjc50 wrote: post #231
vintermann wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was a highly distributed, extremely flat, high skilled industry, with little to no management. It made it easy for the industry to rapidly grow and shrink, and made it extremely effective at producing bespoke products. ... That sounds a lot like the Norwegian shipbuilding industry which I work for right now. Maybe not with little management exactly, but nothing crazy either - significantly less than a British mu…

From the article re: Norwegian customers: "…every reported speech by a British shipbuilder in the Norwegian press usually comprised a list of excuses for poor performance, ranging from official and unofficial stoppages, shortages of labour, failings on the part of subcontractors, modernisation schemes not producing the anticipated results, to recently completed contracts having entailed substantial losses. The impres…

> My working theory is that British management over large groups of British workers collapses into class warfare.

May this spread to all other nations. Down with management.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#422

Post by loglog »

ggm wrote: post #2

The best time to try and fix this is 20 or 30 years ago, but absent a time machine, the next best time is now. Either you feel this kind of construction process is national-strategic and you ignore the cost over imports, or not. If you don't regard this as a core competency which should be kept in the national register, then sure, buy the ships from other places. But, don't come whining when the national-strategic in…

1. The article states "In 2023, the UK produced no commercial ships at all." It does not consider military ship building, which still exists in the UK. 2. Given the scale of problems described in the article, it is probably easier to restart a civilian ship building industry from scratch than to expand it from the previously existing.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#423

Post by varispeed »

parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

People often miss:

- Productivity is low, because the pay is low and from that comes everything else (thinking of paying the bills instead of the job, being seen as "cheap" by others etc.)

- Nobody cares about "social status" if the pay is right. Status comes from pay.

- There is some merit to that, but I think the real reason was outsourcing. Why invest at home if you can get the same or better cheaper from overseas.

The problem is the UK is the class system. Shareholders see workforce as slaves and not equals. That's why we see wage compression and it is now next to impossible for working class to climb the social ladder. So why bother? Your quality of life will not be vastly different whether you are stacking shelves or develop software. Everything is being creamed by shareholders, who also enjoy preferential tax system and other incentives not available to working class.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#424

Post by pfdietz »

dijit wrote: post #391
pfdietz wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't it sustainable? All the inputs can be derived from non-fossil sources. Maybe N2O emission? But I think that could be addressed technically.

Not sustainable due to the fossil-fuel laden garbage we feed to bovine stock. Not sustainable because it causes major health issues which stress the healthcare system and limits quality of life - especially the affordable stuff that people tend to think is “normal value”

As I said, all the fossil fuel inputs could be replaced with renewables. In particular: farm machinery can be run on non-fossil energy, nitrogen fertilizer can be made with green hydrogen, and pesticides can be synthesized with feedstocks derived from non-fossil sources like biomass.

The second sentence doesn't make any sense. None of that makes something unsustainable, just regrettable.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#425

Post by Qwertious »

michaelt wrote: post #97
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a country that is an Island you'd think that the question of whether or not it is 'national-strategic' would have been answered in the affirmative.

If shipbuilding is a strategic national industry, doesn't that also make all the inputs to a shipyard strategic industries? After all, if a war broke out and our normal trading partners weren't willing to sell us ships, presumably they wouldn't sell us steel or engines or ball bearings or paint or radar modules or computer chips or plastics.

If a war broke out and the UK couldn't call in NATO, then the UK is already fucked. And if they can call NATO in, then they can tap into the inputs in all NATO countries.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#426

Post by alt227 »

varispeed wrote: post #423
parados wrote: post #332

Former UK manufacturing engineer here (1980s onwards). The manufacturing industry in the UK at that time suffered from three serious problems: - Low productivity workforce. There was a huge pool of skilled, low wage, workers that had little incentive (or will) to up-skill. There were few apprenticeship schemes or other education programs to train them for the modern world. - Poor quality management. "Working in trade…

People often miss: - Productivity is low, because the pay is low and from that comes everything else (thinking of paying the bills instead of the job, being seen as "cheap" by others etc.) - Nobody cares about "social status" if the pay is right. Status comes from pay. - There is some merit to that, but I think the real reason was outsourcing. Why invest at home if you can get the same or better cheaper from overseas…

The problem IMO is nothing to do with status or pay, specifically in the UK the issue is capitalism.

Capitalism demands that companies show continous growth, or they are classed to be failing. The UK is very small on the world stage, and so inevitably all manufacturers come up against the need to export and grow beyond the UKs borders. This is when aquisitions and mergers from overseas corperations occur, and they have little need for an expensive workforce in the UK.

Foreign investors or parent corporations buy out the UK businesses, strip out the manufacturing, and use the brand recognition to turn them into shell companies for distributing the material which are produced much cheaper overseas.

This has happened time and time again with all raw material manufacturing, and is now happening to the food production industry too (the Cadbury story is used as a regular example around these parts).

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#427

Post by jack_tripper »

nradov wrote: post #403
jack_tripper wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's around 100 torpedoes loaded in the water. Is that enough to break a blockade?

No, it's not nearly enough. The exact number of weapons onboard is largely irrelevant. At any given time only about one third of a nation's attack submarines can be out on active patrol while the others are in transit, undergoing maintenance, or working up. During a crisis they can maybe surge two thirds of the force for a few months but that isn't sustainable. Each submarine can only be in one place at a time and th…

That's why my money(figuratively) is on Kraken Roboticss and Anduril's autonomous robot submarines. This will be the future of naval warfare.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#428

Post by DonHopkins »

dijit wrote: post #343
AppleBananaPie wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing :) I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one. And on top of that the higher profit one is probably of less value to society.

The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials). The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food. This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" co…

What is the lowest value thing you can do with your life? Props comedian who destroys good food with a sledge hammer?

Bill Hicks on Gallagher and Carrot top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJjgFcJ0DoQ

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#429

Post by potato3732842 »

scott_w wrote: post #374
potato3732842 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society can't ignore the cost. But the bad faith peddlers of the costs sure can. You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation, some additional labor overhead, some procedural change, some tweak of input sourcing or other reduction of outputs relative to inputs as being "amortized" over the course of whatever to much applause from the comment section. And yet these sa…

> You can't go an hour without some HN comment just hand waving away the costs of some regulation I don't see what regulation has to do with (effectively) nationalising the entire shipbuilding industry. When I say "cost" I literally mean the financial cost to the Exchequer.

Regulation was just one example. Could be any sort of TPS report or other overhead type crap.

Re: How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry

#430

Post by _DeadFred_ »

pfdietz wrote: post #377
dijit wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ehhhh, lets be real. I’m a dyed in the wool meat eating junk eater. But, a lot of how we produce food today is not humane or sustainable, and a lot of the food itself is so poor in nutrition that it leaves us unhealthy and unbalanced. This isn’t a lecture, just an observation, I am guilty of eating (almost exclusively) poor quality, over processed, mass produced foods. But realistically speaking, if we solve the worl…

Why isn't it sustainable? All the inputs can be derived from non-fossil sources. Maybe N2O emission? But I think that could be addressed technically.

Huh? Nitrogen fertilizer is mostly derived from fossil fuels and has been since the 1900s food boom. Aren't phosphates mainly shipped from islands that build up huge stocks of bird poop? The inputs are all fossil fuel intensive.
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