Posted 18 July 2016
I spent some of April in China and was interested to see the way various factories are dealing with the Western downturn.
More Chinese companies are focusing on their expanding home market whilst juggling wage inflation of 20% per annum with a workforce that is increasingly rejecting manufacturing as a career.
We may groan at the burden of health and safety, but there are far fewer opportunities to lose a limb or similar in the West than the East! Their workers are also recognising this and opting for service industries or office jobs. The shift away from cheap labour will be more significant in years to come. All this bodes well for the West with a real possibility of niche manufacturing returning – assuming we haven’t irretrievably lost the skills we need.
Our Apprentice Programme is continuing to go well with more joining and more completing it. If 10% of the UK SME’s took on one or two apprentices it would put a massive dent in youth unemployment and save a potentially wasted generation.
Apologies to all our customers who had problems contacting us in early May. All our internet and emails were down, along with 5000 other subscribers in St Albans for the best part of a week. Eventually BT told us it was due to cable theft which was interesting when a couple of days later the police turned up asking for help identifying power cable they’d recovered from suspected thieves in an unconnected incident. They knew nothing of the BT “theft” which left me wondering how many incidents go unreported.
All this cable theft is getting out of hand! Especially when they don’t buy the replacement from us!