Atomic Systems

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-de ... e-14019992

Seeing as the Thameslink contract has gone to Siemens it would appear that our country is in jeopardy when it comes to trains

A sad day indeed
Kind regards Stephen

Thameslink appears to have cost Bombardier only 200 jobs. They had already stated 1200 were going anyway.

I understand that the Bombardier offer was £15,000 per vehicle more expensive than Siemens. Which I think is £64 million more than the alternative.

Indeed it is. Although I understand the EU rules about competing within the EU, there should at least have been a provision that guarantees a certain portion of the work be subcontracted to local manufacturers, i.e. from the country that orders the equipment; much the same as they do when they procure new jetfighters and other weaponry.
These kind of actions will in the long run not benefit the EU as it will create too many differences between the member states as far as manufacturing expertise, employment, standards of living etc. is concerned.

Just a few thoughts.
Jos

black8 wrote:Indeed it is. Although I understand the EU rules about competing within the EU, there should at least have been a provision that guarantees a certain portion of the work be subcontracted to local manufacturers, i.e. from the country that orders the equipment; much the same as they do when they procure new jetfighters and other weaponry.
These kind of actions will in the long run not benefit the EU as it will create too many differences between the member states as far as manufacturing expertise, employment, standards of living etc. is concerned.

Just a few thoughts.
Jos

Jos, the EU is big sh x t
I don't tell this story again

You know ICE and Siemens.
Problems from morning to evening. Including those broken axles.
They only looked at the costs and not for good material and good quality.

Look on the bright side chaps.

Think about all those British migrant workers who will be going to Germany, as Norman Tebbit once said,"Get on your bike!!"
Oh what a wonderful thing to be, a migrant worker in the EU-E.

rlmathers wrote:....Think about all those British migrant workers who will be going to Germany, as Norman Tebbit once said,"Get on your bike!!"
Oh what a wonderful thing to be, a migrant worker in the EU-E.

...makes me think of Mark Knopfler's song 'Why aye man', "...on the run to Germany...etc..."
It has happened before that's for sure, it should not have to happen again in that 'great' European Union of the 21st century.

I don't lnow much about the modern railway's here in the UK,
But apart from Network rail, I thought it was all privately owned,
Why are the government buying rolling stock ?

And how much do these private operater's cost us tax payers ?

Because they've decided they know more about what the TOCs want than the TOCs do themselves. Notice that in privatised freight where there's virtually no Government interference FOCs build, buy, lease and/or exchange stock all the time with no issues.

Something I considered about this yesterday was this: Siemans make trains for all over Europe and perhaps the world, Bombardier UK is just Derby/BREL, anything else can be built elsewhere. There used to be Procor at Horbury near Wakefield but Bombardier shut that down as well after building 60, 92 and Voyager bodies, although the work they did on refurbing the Mk4s there suggested it wasn't worth keeping over, although the quality could have been related to plans to close the plant down.

As I understand it, the operators are loath to invest because they're on relatively short franchises (that is, short compared to the expected economic life of rolling stock) and yet the Govt. has promised new trains to the people. So the Govt. has to do the buying, although I forget whether this is done via the ROSCOs or not.

At the very least, the Govt. is doing the deciding of what to buy, probably in the interests of standardisation (just HOW many types of EMU and DMU do we have now?) but they haven't necessarily demonstrated their competence to do so (at any time in the past 50+ years). There's a lot of merit in letting railwaymen make the decision, but even many of the operators are not, in the traditional sense of the word, railwaymen.

As for how much all this is costing the hard-working British taxpayer, I shudder to even think. An unfortunate fact of governments of populous countries - which the UK is - is that "All of the taxes paid by the average citizen over his entire lifetime are spent by the government in less than a second."

It's about time the British government manned up and told the EU where to get off, it really shows up who's running this country when the government can't give a contract to it's own countries workers for fear of falling foul of a law that's not even made by them!

It's amazing how often this same story emerges. It reminds me of the furore when the Government chose F111s over the infamous TSR2.

I was in the sixth form at the time, and remember writing an article on the return to the Government from tax, NI and other returns in terms of the potential work for local businesses.

Still to be perfectly honest I'm more concerned about how I shall pay my energy bills!!!!!!

Alec

Dear Colleague
As promised, the details of the Bombardier march and rally are below. Attached is copy of the petition.

http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/ ... ng_on.aspx



Saturday 23 July. March from
Bass Recreation Ground, Derby. Assemble 10.00 am

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?rlz=1T4SU ... CBkQnwIwAQ


Followed by rally at the Silk Mill museum

Bring family and friends.



Office of Glenis Willmott MEP
Labour MEP for the East Midlands
& Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party

Jon,

Signed and passed it on to my contacts with a request that, should they be so inclined, they do the same.

Regards,

Dave Oldrocker.

jbilton wrote:Dear Colleague
As promised, the details of the Bombardier march and rally are below. Attached is copy of the petition.

http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/ ... ng_on.aspx



Saturday 23 July. March from
Bass Recreation Ground, Derby. Assemble 10.00 am

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?rlz=1T4SU ... CBkQnwIwAQ


Followed by rally at the Silk Mill museum

Bring family and friends.



Office of Glenis Willmott MEP
Labour MEP for the East Midlands
& Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party

Are you going Jon? I'll be there, my Brother in Law is going to loose his job through this.....