Brexit and the electronics industry

Terry Baker

Submitted Date:
29 June 17 04:19 PM

The sooner we are totally out (as hard as can be) the better!! I'm sick and tired of the Euro Elite living like feudal lords off the backs of the hard working British taxpayers and thinking that they have some god given right to dictate to us how we live our lives!!!

Mr Fraser Wilson

Submitted Date:
29 June 17 02:15 PM

Okay guys......Brexit would not have happened if the EU was transparent, accountable and honest which it none of the three. Look at the amount of fraud for God's sake! Whistleblowers having their lives decimated for having the cheek to suggest anything is wrong! The EU is an example of all that is wrong with central government. If it was running properly, problem areas would have been brought up, discussed and dealt with accordingly. We are trying to revolt against all those in Brussels who are enjoying the ride on the great gravy train which will eventually hit the buffers. We led the world in invention and trade and we can do it again so stop the negative vibes and lets all pull together and get on.......except the SNP and Catweazle Corbyn!

Chris May

Submitted Date:
29 June 17 02:03 PM

Brexit is a completely retrograde step and can only damage British manufacturing industries by making it more difficult and more expensive to trade outside the UK. 70% of our sales are outside the UK - and while we have many valued customers in non-EU countries, it is far more complicated to export and trade to those beyond the EU borders. My hope had been that the EU would enlarge and become an even more open environment - and I feel both socially and commercially the 'Little Britain', nationalistic attitudes of the whole brexit agenda and propaganda is both damaging and divisive and will leave us forever poorer commercially and culturally!

Sharpy

Submitted Date:
26 June 17 09:44 AM

Having just received my notice of 'consultation for redundancy' due to my company's German, French and Spanish clients reducing and pulling their investment from the UK as a result of Brexit, I can't really put my 'delight' at Brexit into words that are suitable for the comments section of this site, I'm sure the thirty plus colleagues who received theirs on the same day are just as thrilled at the prospect of 'taking back control' and looking forward to a rosy future that will once more see Britannia ruling the waves and ensuring a free punkah wallah for every household or some such fantasy promise from a bunch of rich elite political agitators who won't suffer one jot or, more likely, will get even richer as a result of the con job they pulled on the country. I'm thoroughly relishing the prospect of the career change that will see me moving from a head of department in a multi-national to picking strawberries in the fields. One of my best friends lost his job within 24 hours of the result as he was still on a trial period in an IT department that was dedicated to ensuring EU data protection compliance, the whole team of 15 has since been made unemployed. What a lot of the leave voting people seem not to realise is that many people in the UK are employed and paid as a direct result of the EU and EU trade in the UK and those jobs are in the process of being 'repatriated' to the EU or just vanishing altogether. Make no mistake, this process is going to hurt a *lot* of people and the country for a long time to come.

James Duckworth

Submitted Date:
24 June 17 11:20 AM

I'm afraid I don't agree with any of the comments so far expressed and consider Brexit to be severely damaging to the electronic component and manufacturing industry, which I worked in for 40 years. Following demob from the Royal Signals in 1960 I worked in 3 different British electronic companies making my way up from the production line to the test department and then the design labs. It was pretty horrible in clapped out old buildings, no real investment in new machinery, pathetic 'old school tie' management with no real understanding of the industry and certainly no passion for the product. There were also no merit award payment schemes so it didn't matter how hard you worked, you didn't get payed any more, giving no incentive. This was the Britain pre Common Market ('standing on our own two feet') and on the national scale it was not successful (a diplomatic understatement!), and the country lurched from one crisis to another. I then went on to work in the semiconductor industry first for a US multinational for 10 years then a Japanese company for the rest of the time and entered a tough new world where senior management were engineers, investments made to take the business forward and everyone incentivised to make this happen. Once inside the common market, then the EU, we got a seat around major pan european project tables and participated in (for example) the GSM project, leading to a huge increase in prosperity for the U.K. electronic component industry in what became the worlds most successful mobile phone system. In other industries such as automotive, multinational Japanese and German companies stepped in to invest and successfully manage companies in which we had failed. It took BMW and Volkswagen to rescue arguably the world's two most famous marques- RR and Bentley - drifting into bankruptcy under British control. Brexit wil pull the rug from under the multinational companies who have saved us by inflicting import duties , supply chain disruption and restricting essential free movement of staff around Europe. We will have have gone from the incredibly important position of the english language speaking 'Gatekeeper' to the world's most successful free trade zone to a bitterly divided inward looking 'nothing and nobody' who in trade terms, the world will increasingly ignore, and set up their HQ and factories on the continent of Europe. Scratching around the world for replacement trade will be a very long and arduous process which will not bring equivalent prosperity in our life times. Regarding sovereignty I share the disdain expressed by others for the Brussels bureaucracy but having said that, they have never done a single day's harm to me or my family. I wish I could say the same thing about the present government. No, I am very sad for the industry I worked hard in for 40 years and fearful for the great damage Brexit will undoubtedly cause it.

Nigel Johnson

Submitted Date:
23 June 17 06:41 PM

Brexit is a means to an end with no guarantee of arriving at the required destination. By that I mean Brexit is only a necessary part of the process of rebalancing the UK economy back towards manufacturing and production. In my view the UK electronics industry, like most other UK industry, has suffered from the effects of globalisation. The EU has aided this process, helped by successive UK governments all too willing to sell off UK companies that represent critical assets, technology and the means of production. The UK electronics industry supply chain is now spread across Europe and the rest of the world, particularly the far east. As a result the UK imports most of its electronic components, modules, and almost all consumer electronics. I suspect an electronic waste mountain was created by the governments determination to upgrade commercial broadcasting TV and radio to the new digital standards, so as to free spectrum for mobile phones. This appears to have been done without any regard to the amount of equipment that would be imported or the waste it would create?. It could be argued that this upgrade was a one off, though it continues as the standards evolve. A bigger problem is the unnecessary hardware obsolescence produced each time Microsoft decides to bring out a new version of its operating system. My point is that the EU has distorted the UK economy towards finance and other service industries at the expense of design and manufacturing. After years of neglect, the UK electronics industry is at the mercy of the whims of foreign software and hardware companies. They decide when hardware becomes obsolete, when components will nolonger be supplied or supported. Brexit is the first necessary step to rebalancing the UK economy and bring our supply chains home, but it does not guarantee this will happen. The real enemy is globalisation that allows products to be made in low wage, low regulation countries who have scant regard for the environment and exported to rich, or rather indebted, countries where rules and standards make manufacturing too expensive and who have governments that happy to see their populations turned into nothing more than consumers. The EU would have us believe that the nation state is dead and globalisation is good, but if the UK is to prosper in the long term, I maintain that a level of protectionism is necessary to avoid a leveling down process that brings us on a par with those low wage economies with which we are being forced to compete. Any analysis of the UK's membership of the EU would conclude that the relationship was not sustainable in the long term, as a nation of consumers, sooner or later UK debt levels would exceed our ability to ever repay it.

Mike Morgan

Submitted Date:
23 June 17 05:10 PM

If whining winnie of the SNP and Komrad Korbin , he of the farleft people , don't favour it , then it must be good .

Mr Paul England

Submitted Date:
29 July 16 12:39 PM

I completely agree with the comments made so far and cannot believe that there are still people who want to be governed by an unelected and failing organisation like the EU. In my previous working life I communicated with many of my collegues in Europe and found them to be decent and ordinary people like myself with the same views and aspirations, so my opinions are not due to a hatred of people of Europe but of the politicians who govern it. As far as trade is concerned I think that European manufacturers still value our goods and services and will still want to trade with us following Brexit and most of the alarmist information is coming from the big commercial organisations who get cheap labour from Europe at the expense of our indigenous workers so naturally they are up-in-arms at the prospect of us leaving Europe.

Mr SPA Design

Submitted Date:
28 July 16 10:16 AM

It was corporal Jones, the butcher who said DONT PANIC, Frazer was the one who used to say "We are all DOOMED" :-0

Mr colin rennie

Submitted Date:
30 June 16 11:24 AM

Considering the burden of legislation and the protectionism that epitomises the EU, we can only be better outside and being free to trade with the rest of the world without financial penalties being imposed. A good example being the Union customs Code legislation recently imposed that actively fines UK businesses every time they service/repair goods from outside the EU. Most of our trade is outwith the EU and that is unlikely to change. Most components are made in the far east regardless of their technical ownership so why do we get charged more for importing US badged versions versus German ones? Protectionism at its worst.

Mr Fraser Wilson

Submitted Date:
30 June 16 11:18 AM

I have to agree with David Valentine, yet up here in Scotland we have an annoying little midge that is trying to bite all of us! Ms Sturgeon is running around spouting "democratic rights" for Scotland and conveniently ignoring the "democratic" vote against independence! For the life of me I cannot understand why the SNP would want to take sovereignty AWAY from London only to GIVE it to Brussels !?! Yep......DON"T PANIC is the watchwords here! right enough........Now if we could only get the media to stop talking us into another recession again all would be well!

Mr Timothy Tree

Submitted Date:
30 June 16 10:31 AM

The UK was a thriving world leader before we joined the common market, why shouldn't it be so now? It is up to the electronics industry to step up to the plate and stop predicting gloom and doom. Let’s get on with trading, on an equal footing, with the rest of the world.

Mr David Valentine

Submitted Date:
30 June 16 10:25 AM

The UK has successfully trading with europe before the 'common market' and during the gradual more 'EU control'. If we manufacture goods and provide services that are wanted, correctly priced and good quality, then we will continue to trade. At the time of writing, one week after referendum, the biggest problems seem to be the currency traders and share dealers running around like headless chickens. These people who are responsible for handling huge sums of money are behaving like primary school children. Little better are the politicians who are fighting for who is in control. Then of course the european admistrators and heads of state who are saying 'we won't talk about X if you don't first agree to Y'. If all of these people (who in my view contribute little compared to their cost) just leave things alone, it will all sort itself out. The people involved in manufacturing will sort out acceptable standards for products. People involved in sales will have their say over what products are wanted. There are plenty of non-EU countries around the world who are getting on just fine. With apologies to Douglas Adams and Cpl Frazer. DON'T PANIC!