You may have heard the BBC this morning desperately spinning that a UK consortium had won a £7.5 billion order for trains for the East Coast main line. It turns out that the UK consortium members are Barclays (finance) and Laing (building the depots) but the trains come from Hitachi and are as Japanese as sake.
The losing bidder was a combination of, amongst others, Siemens and Bombardier, who run the only train manufacturing plan at Derby, the old BREL works (later ABB, then Adtranz).
The Financial Times puts a rather different spin on this story, with the headline "Japanese group in line for £7.5bn UK train order".Geoff Hoon reckons the deal creates 12,500 jobs in Britain. Anyone know how many would have been created (or retained) by awarding the contract to the Siemens/Bomardier consortium? Just askin'.
27 comments:
It makes sense choosing a Japanese company.
After all, they invented railways, and they drive on the left, like us.
Oh dear, not hinting at economic nationalism are we Iain?
Bad news for England - as usual.
At least the trains will work if they are built in Japan.
As I understand it these trains will be designed and built specifically for the UK. Surely we could just buy some off the peg stuff thats cheaper and been proven to work elsewhere in the world.
"Geoff Hoon reckons the deal creates 12,500 jobs in Britain."
Since every word uttered by a Labour Minister is spin and crap, that means 12500 jobs will NOT be created. More like 12500 redundancies will be delayed.
No Longer Anonymous, no I was trying to test whether this was British jobs for British workers.
no longer anonymous. Can't you see the hypocrisy of the government and Brown's British jobs for British workers? Surely the first thing Labour has to do is live up its own (low) standards. No doubt someone will find a way to blame it on the Conservatives while conveniently forgetting the last 12 years of Labour misgovernment.
Geoff Hoon reckons that the deal will "create or safeguard" 12,500 jobs, but he doesn't say how many will created. He also doesn't mention how many may be lost, nor does he say whether there will be a net increase or decrease in employment. There are already trains on the ECML, and they already require maintenance, so the test is whether the long term net employment will increase or decrease.
Since Hoon doesn't mention the fact, I guess it kmeans it will be bad for UK jobs.
Still Bombardier's case waould bhave been helped by partnering with Babcock & Brown, whose share price has fallen more than 99% in the past year.
"Anyone know how many would have been created (or retained) by awarding the contract to the Siemens/Bomardier consortium? Just askin'.
More in the short run, but presumably if the bid isn't as good it will have to be paid for in some way. If the winning consortium are cheaper then presumably fares will be lower than had the other bid won. So presumably passengers who would have had to spend more money on fares would now be able to spend some of it on other goods, which will also create jobs.
BTW, aren't you an Audi driver? So what's with the demand that others buy British?
That should have read:
"Still Bombardier's case wouldn't have been helped by partnering with Babcock & Brown, whose share price has fallen more than 99% in the past year."
"no I was trying to test whether this was British jobs for British workers"
I hadn't see that comment when I posted my comment. Sorry for presuming that you were hinting at economic protectionism.
I had a quick look at Bombadier, and to be honest they are not particularly "British". They were originally a company from Montreal and now the HQ is in Berlin. It seems the only "British" thing about them is that they already operate in Britain. But surely, Hitachi setting up the manufacturing here would amount to the same thing?
As far as I can tell, the only marginal difference is that Hitachi won't design them here (why would they when they already have R+D elsewhere and probably most of the job has been done before?), whereas it isn't clear whether Bombadier would design them here or elsewhere.
Since Hoon refuses to say how many jobs created - just mixing existing jobs in with it - its likely relatively few new jobs.
Your point Mr D about the BBC is well made and I have just made it on the BBC Message Boards. the BBC are just following labour spin.
I think Mr Anonymous its not a question of economic nationalism - its a point about just what is left of our industrial infrastructure.
A British based (Canadian owned?) train manufacturing company has lost out. This cannot be good for British jobs. But you seem not to care Mr A.
Word verification 'preedea' - TDs definition - the peculiar form of hubris displayed by politicians before they are voted out of office.
Thank God for the weak pound that helps our exports and makes imports so much less attractive.
Siberian Tory wrote
"Surely we could just buy some off the peg stuff thats cheaper and been proven to work elsewhere in the world."
Yes but..
When the railways were built they skimped on bridge clearances etc (except the GWR who built to broad gauge). This meant that our loading gauge is smaller than everyone else in the world. It's the price we paid for being first. The others saw what we were doing and built bigger.
So we can't buy off the shelf. Even the class 59 & 66 diesels we bought from the USA had to be made smaller to fit in our tunnels and stations.
I was mystified to hear the BBC report that a british company had won the contract to build these trains. What? The BBC get something wrong? Surely not!
ANA (All Nippion Airlines) ordered Rolls-Royce engines as the launch customer for the Boeing 787. It's called free trade.
Sorry, typo, Nippon, not Nippion
Trevorsden hits the nail on the head. The BBC ran this story as a bit of economic good news (12,500 new jobs for a British company), when the reality is that there are probably no net jon increases as there always would have been new trains on the East Cos Main Line, and this isn't really a UK train. It may be designed sepcifically for the UK, but Hitachi will already have most of the train specs figured out from their existing products and will have most of the parts already costed from their presumably Japanese suppliers, to be bolted together in a UK workshop.
Surely what the BBC meant was that GOrdon was arranging training and additional education to enable British Workers to compete for Japanese Jobs? After all, it would be illegal to try and restrict British Jobs for British Workers?
The Penguin
Crewe. Derby and York were building trains until quite recently. As were Brush at Loughborough so it is sad, we cannot design our own rolling stock any more. Curiously enough the Japanese built the DART suburban trains and Irish Railways Multiple Units quite recently - actually the Irish DMU looks very like a British Rail Class 158 dmu.
Where the Class 66's are concerned, these Canadian built locos are without doubt a tried and proven design even DB uses them.
As for the gauging issue, remember we were the first in this technology with even then, far more expensive land costs. New lines can be built to the Continental Gauge and indeed some lines can be upgraded
One question must be why do the railway companies insist on fixed formation diesel and electric multiple units. These do lack flexibility so that when a power unit is out of action, the whole rake is. There is still merit in the design of a loco with a rake of coaches (which on occasion can be expanded at times of excess design)
But one thing by the way. If you want to photograph one of the new trains, Zanunulab will regard you as a terrorist, stop you, search you, take your dna and you fingerprints and even when it is clearly demonstrated that you were doing something quite legal, keep them on the national database with your name being flagged up as a potential threat to the Nulab Project.
Iain, Geoff Hoon this morning on Sky said it would safeguard/create upto 12,500 jobs, using his figure of 7.5 billion, then this works out at approx 600,000 pounds per job!!!! This puts the banks to shame.......
Some points;
a) Hoon did not explaine why the Govt was paying for these trains (7.5 Billion spent on buying cars would have made better economic sence surely,)
b) they only come into service in 2013, that sems a long lead time,
c) What happens if the train companies do not repay the govt., or loose there franchise before repaying?
d) are they the type most needed?
e) are the govt trying to buy off the green lobby after the 3rd runway and T6?
Chris
"No Longer Anonymous, no I was trying to test whether this was British jobs for British workers."
My apologies, my mind is having a slow day today.
It's nice to see our Prime Minister and Geoff The Hoon delivering on his promise to create "British jobs for British workers".
Except that most of the work will actually be for Japanese workers instead. And that hardly any British jobs will be created out of this. And that the few British jobs created will go to foreigners anyway...
Under the circumstances and in the light of Brown's grilling today, this seems an absolutely gob-smacking decision. Paying for imports that we can't afford rather than paying people to work (and spend) here.
Why do I get the feeling there is absolutely no coherence in this government's thinking?
At least Harperson has shut up.
The penny seems to have dropped at the BBC.
The latest report highlights he Japanese connection.
Its hard to see what we are getting for the billions - the trains are still at 125mph. And quite a bit of the construction is likely to be from abroad.
The contract and the work involved itself is said to be complicated and still 12 months form being signed - so plenty time for things to grow in price.
Seems to me that there is likely to be redundancies in Derby.
Iain,
Apart from price, Hitachi have a much superior technical product and this was the main reason they won.
I understand that the trains will be manufactured in Japan but assembled in the UK, which is what the new manufacturing plant is for. The Depots are for maintenance only.
This is very important strategic win for Hitachi as they hope to expand into Europe. If they do then future orders will be manufactured in the UK, but not this one.
The other point is at present there is no firm commitment for 1400 carriage. The initial firm order is for 400-500. The issue is finance, which delayed the announcement.
I do not have exact figure on jobs but will come back to you when I do.
I hope this helps.
FYI, I used to work in the rail industry.
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