For an Island race, it seems incredible and sad that the last commercial shipyard in Scotland has just gone into receivership. There are still BAE run shipyards, but these are for Military orders.
I suppose there is the argument of economics, and ship building in the UK isn't competitive compared to developing economies where resource is cheaper. But why can't we compete with European shipyards?
It's not like closing a furniture factory is it. All that technical expertise and historical experience will be lost forever, and you can't just set up a new shipyard when you need one.
So if for whatever reason we needed to scale up our ship building and start to increase our dwindling merchant fleet, contracts would end up going overseas.
I'm not a fan of subsidising failing industries with tax payers money, but sometimes I wonder if there should be an exception, or at least until we can find (or buy in from abroad) the right CEO who can turn things round.
Why can't we run a successful shipyard? Why haven't we got a British owned car industry? Why did it take the Indian Tata group to turn Jaguar Landrover into the massive growth and success story it is now?
Maybe Tata should start building ships here...
I was starting to get all doom and gloom, but according to themanufacturer.com we are still the worlds 11th largest manufacturing nation, a long way from previous glory, but still not too shabby when compared to our size, although South Korea gets the number 5 slot!
Friday rant over, it's been a while, and Clives on holiday 
