If you want to safeguard shipuilding you build ships. Easy as that. Research does not employ skilled workers in large numbers. Skilled workers leave the industry, without replacement, and the industry dies….it really is that simple. UK yards will never compete for commercial hull building with SE Asia no matter how clever the technology gets as you just replace 10 shipfitters salaries with 3 maintainance guys salaries plus the guy who installs and programmes the technology who earns a potload!. Then you add the costs of developing the technology. The SE Asia cost base it just too low for us ever to compete on price.
Which leaves the UK government as the main buyer. In the end it would be cheaper to built no chips and lay-off the workers, than to have the government buy ships.
How many jobs and with what legacy?. Will the new airport for London lead to a demand for a travelling UK workforce to go and build airports elsewhere?. Will we be building CO2 neutral power plants for Brazil here and shipping them out to be assembled by teams of British workers onsite?. How about flood defences?. How does the Thames flood defence scheme you talk of promote industrial growth?. The intellectual property of the design can be marketed but the labour force is always going to be predominantly local wherever schemes are developed. In terms of return on investment its a poor comparison to the defence project isnt it?.
A new airport would surely protect the job off many people in the airline industry, which helps to protect the job in all associated industries. In addition it helps the building industry. In comparison to a defence project it is a sterling investment, as it does not only allow to sell the intellectual property and export technology, but also it benefits every person travelling to London. The carriers are to the benefit of whom exactly? The RN and their memories of former glory?
The average taxpayer profits from more taxpayers paying tax!. Again 10,000 employed by the CVF project, paying taxes and not claiming unemployment benefit is significant. Infrastructure alone is not enough to attract business and create opportunity. In my industry, comms, the current trend is a move away from primary city sites to hinterland/suburb centres and the fact that physical/logistic access is far worse is barely a consideration.
Taxes paid by people who get the money from the state in the first place are not efficient. It is like saying raising the payments by social security systems will increase the tax income of the state and so help to balance the budget.
But I do not want to lecutre your Brits, what you should do. Sorry about that. I just think that defence has to be scaled back to the actual needs of the country.
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