Sad news. I used to see it occasionally chug past the office window when I was working just south of Frankfurt in the early 2000s. You don’t realise how spoilt we are in the UK for historics until you live somewhere else.

It would be nice to see some Japanese aircraft restored. I have always found it a bit strange given the lengths people go to recover the Allied & German aircraft how much the Japanese stuff has just been neglected. It’s still part of the historic story even if the regime they represent was brutal. I can understand ex combatants not wanting to see them again, but couldn’t the same apply to Bf 109s and Fw 190s?

Sea Vixen cockpit project up for grabs if you are feeling rich.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dehavilland-Sea-Vixen-FAW2-XP925-cockpit/232952834759?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l9372

We look a right bunch of numpties to the rest of the world. One thing I’ve learnt in life is a crap plan is better than no plan. I think we should get Aunt Betty the Second to tell everyone what to do. But we can’t because she has to stay apolitical.

Anyway with the car manufacturers saying it’s going badly I thought that before it all goes belly up and I get accused of jumping on the bandwagon I would state for the record my concerns. I have avoided getting embroiled in the Brexit slaging match so far but feel I should make comment. It’s not scaremongering, it’s how it is.

My concerns about Brexit, which I think we all agree is going to happen.

I admit this is my view based on a small section of the issues involved, but these are issues I feel qualified to comment on as I see it every day in my work.
My concerns mainly come from my experiences working in part of the aerospace industry for the last 28 years, especially my 18 years working on the manufacturing side of engineering.

I do not think many people outside of the manufacturing industry fully appreciate how difficult it will be to “just” do more trade with the rest of the world outside the EU. I have worked on bids for new work and have colleagues who have been/are on teams who go out to find new customers. I have seen that the companies I have worked for have already done, and continue to mount a global trade campaign. It is probably safe to assume most large manufacturing companies have done/do the same already. We are not going to magic up more trade just like that. We are already fighting bl**dy hard for it as it is. Potential new customers will know we are negotiating from a position of weakness and will exploit us.

Ah, but we are good at manufacturing in the UK I hear people say. Well we are, but the manufacturing sector has been contracting for decades. Part of the result of this is that manufacturing companies have merged many times with consequent loss of skills and facilities, if not closed down completely. This has occurred across most manufacturing sectors. I don’t feel UK Manufacturing is not strong enough in its’ current form to pull us out of trouble.
When I started in my particular part of the industry we had three major manufacturing sites in the UK. These three sites had expertise and facilities which allowed at least two of them to perform certain manufacturing tasks. As mergers occurred between the sites these skills/facilities were “consolidated” on one site to save on overheads and the other inefficiencies. One site was eventually closed which was a great loss. So we had a situation in the late 90’s with tasks split between two sites with no dual capacity, i.e. a certain department would exist at one site only. We then started merging with European companies out of the necessity to stay in business. This meant more consolidation, meaning we went from having one site in the UK to perform various tasks to one site in Europe. The skills/facilities have been lost to the UK. It is not just in my part of the industry this has happened. I was recently involved in the procurement of an assembly jig that needed to be accurate to 0.1 mm flatness over 2.5 meters. Many decades ago there would have been a considerable number of companies in this country that could perform the work. After extensive research we could only find four in the UK.

Then there are people looking out for their own turf. Certain factions within the large EU conglomerate companies have been trying to get work from the UK sites to their European sites for years. The culture of the individual companies from which the large conglomerates were formed still exists to a certain extent and they want to strengthen their position. Brexit will be the excuse they have been longing for to consolidate further by chopping the UK sites out of the equation. Again this will affect a lot of manufacturing sectors.
Where profit margins are small, any additional costs incurred by additional overheads due to difficulties moving staff and other assets around post Brexit will be a further excuse to cut the UK sections out of the loop. The Tariffs are only one part of the costs incurred.

Don’t think it won’t happen as the skills set is here in the UK. A lot of large companies move their people around doing secondments for several years and there will already have been a significant amount of knowledge transfer between sites. One site I worked at for many years was gradually having its work transferred to another site in Europe in a subtle manner. Staff would be seconded to us, work their way up the management tree then disappear to whence they came. It got to the point where it was a challenge to spot the Brit on the new management organigrams when they came out. Having said that, I was discussing recruitment with my manager and asked when we were getting the new bod he had promised us. He assured me he was doing interviews then remarked “ do you realise that we have only had one UK applicant for the position?” which brings me to my next point.

Another factor to consider is the status of Engineering in British society. It’s not regarded as being a career to aspire to by many as it doesn’t earn or hold the prestige of other professions such as Architects, Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors etc. Tell someone you are an Engineer and they assume you are either a nerd and/or covered in oil (I admit that is me, but only in my time off). The horror of a mother at a dinner party mentioning her offspring wanted to be an engineer would result in an awkward silence and much cutlery shuffling/comments about the weather in certain parts of the Home Counties.
So we don’t have enough engineers now, as due to contracting manufacturing and the social stigma, not many Brits want to be Engineers. In my industry approx 20% of the office are foreign nationals, mostly from the EU. A lot don’t feel welcome anymore so will leave the UK and we don’t have anyone to fill their places. Even if we have a massive campaign to train UK nationals it will be about 8-10 years by the time they have gone through the education system and have a decent amount of experience to make an impression on the problem. This will further knock back various sectors of UK manufacturing.

In fact Brexit is already having an effect. A lot of projects in Aerospace are multinational now. We are seeing the hit on research projects, especially in the academic/university area where the uncertainty of Brexit has lead to the potential UK participants being shut out as they are now seen as too great a risk.

It’s not just Engineering. I have friends, expat Brits, who live near Frankfurt who have seen the value of their property rise dramatically in the last few years as a result of all the new financial jobs in Frankfurt as companies recruit there, ignoring London for the most part. You don’t hear about it as there are no large financial job losses in London, just not so many new ones.

So I don’t think we are in a position to go through with Brexit. 25 to 30 years ago maybe we could have got away with it, but we are too integrated with the EU and have lost a lot of strengths we need to rely on to make a success of Brexit. In my view the financial damage of Brexit will far outweigh any benefits.

The people may have spoken but I don’t think they had been fully informed of the full situation and the consequences of their vote.

Anyway, I’m not saying anymore on the matter.

Good Luck Everyone.

To add insult to injury they call it an airplane!

Only almost historic, but the first I have seen, a Piaggio Avanti came over a few weeks ago when I was up in Guildford. It was going at a fair old speed as well.