Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by pjc50 on Friday November 04, 2016 @12:06PM (#12873616)

I think that's overstating it, there's a lot of engineering in the UK. It just has a very low media profile, because it either has a foreign name on the product (Nissan!) or doesn't sell to consumers.

A surprisingly large amount of it is in really unglamorous buildings in industrial estates outside cities other than London. Since the media have largely stopped bothering to leave the M25, it's invisible.

(I have a pet theory based on the car industry that the really toxic thing is British labour relations; there are successful small British companies, and successful large plants with foreign owners, but all the British-managed mass-employment industries collapsed in strikes and/or were looted by the directors like MG Rover.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by vkou on Friday November 04, 2016 @01:37PM (#12874366)

From the perspective of employees, if they didn't collapse in strikes, they would have collapsed for them due to outsourcing and automation (Which was the fate of manufacturing in America).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by fdgdasfadsf on Friday November 04, 2016 @12:22PM (#12873736)

> I have a pet theory based on the car industry that the really toxic thing is British labour relations

I don't think that many people will disagree with you on this theory.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by sgt101 on Friday November 04, 2016 @03:37PM (#12875350)

I will.

Every large company in the UK has a significant union. Not every large company has failed. Some company failures have been exacerbated by unions, british leyland being one example.

The really toxic thing is financial short termism. It used to be results in a year, which was very bad. Now they want results in under a quarter which is to value generation as acid to chalk.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by fdgdasfadsf on Friday November 04, 2016 @08:45PM (#12877461)

Just to clarify my post was saying that the relation between union and and management is the problem - not the existence of the union. I ascribe this as much (if not more) to management than to the union.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Dyson opens Britain’s first degree where students get paid by crdoconnor on Friday November 04, 2016 @09:05PM (#12877536)

The strikes tended to come after the looting and the collapse of the companies due to mismanagement.

The systemic reason for this was the high value of the pound though. This dose of Dutch disease was avoided in Germany that has managed to repress the value of its currency in a variety of different ways.

[ Parent | on HN ]