British made Hi-Fi

[chebby]

Kimbleman:I am a freelance Mechanical Design Engineer....and (with some pride) I work almost exclusively for small British companies quietly designing some World class and World beating machines (Bio-research through to Post print binding equipment). I have to concede that although designed in the UK not all the parts (and even not all the assembly) is necessarily done in the UK, but the Design, intellectual rights, prototyping, Research and development ARE ALL DONE HERE and the PROFITS all contribute towards the coffers of Great Britain PLC.

Many people NOT connected with Engineering in the UK seem to take great pride in knocking the efforts and endevours of our Design and manufacture. I have personally worked on designs for products made here in the UK that the Swiss...bless them....wouldn't even get near!

That's all fine and dandy, just suggest you stay away from marketing these break-throughs the way you have here.

Jingosim and Nationalism tend to be a little off-putting to the modern pan-global world.

I personally don't care where something is invented or made so long as it is good. (Check my 'signature' below if you assume that means I don't appreciate British hi-fi.)

 

[Anonymous]

Well done Clare.....for the 'promotion'....and obviously you are an International publication too.....it was just an idea....humbly put forward....for the sake of UK manufacturing.

 

[Anonymous]

I couldn't agree more..... I used to wince at Rover putting Union Jacks on their Cars.....but it can be done 'quietly'.

I'm giving up on this thread.....as I said, when we are all claiming benefits and the UK (or what's left of it) is reduced to a wholly service / agricultural based nation I shall probably be earning my corn in Australia designing mining equipment to feed raw materials into the wheels of Chinese/Korean/Indian Industry.

 

[Anonymous]

Kimbleman:
I couldn't agree more..... I used to wince at Rover putting Union Jacks on their Cars.....but it can be done 'quietly'.

I'm giving up on this thread.....as I said, when we are all claiming benefits and the UK (or what's left of it) is reduced to a wholly service / agricultural based nation I shall probably be earning my corn in Australia designing mining equipment to feed raw materials into the wheels of Chinese/Korean/Indian Industry.

kthanksbye!

 

[Andrew Everard]

Compare and contrast...

 

[MickyJG]

Er, I think you'll find the word 'British' includes the Scots - though giving the Scots credit for 80% of all major inventions is a fantasy on your part. Their biggest invention seems to be anti-English moaning and whining. :boohoo:

As for myself, I'd rather goods be labelled with their origins - i.e. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc. Unfortunately many people - the English being the worst culprits - substitute 'British' for 'English' - as does the poster of this thread

 

[GCE]

Don' t forget James K. Maxwell, from Edimburgh

and his 4 electromagnetical fundamental equations...:read:

 

[namefail]

Er, I think you'll find the word 'British' includes the Scots - though giving the Scots credit for 80% of all major inventions is a fantasy on your part. Their biggest invention seems to be anti-English moaning and whining. :boohoo:

As for myself, I'd rather goods be labelled with their origins - i.e. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc. Unfortunately many people - the English being the worst culprits - substitute 'British' for 'English' - as does the poster of this thread

Shut the **** up.

 

[andyjm]

Don' t forget James K. Maxwell, from Edimburgh

and his 4 electromagnetical fundamental equations...:read:

Or even James C. Maxwell from Edinburgh.

 

[Covenanter]

Don' t forget James K. Maxwell, from Edimburgh

and his 4 electromagnetical fundamental equations...:read:

Or even James C. Maxwell from Edinburgh.

He was a demon scientist.

Chris

 

[Vladimir]

Wales FTW!

 

[namefail]

 

[Crocodile]

Rant

I'm intrigued as to what search terms you used to find a six-year-old thread to rant about? :roll:

 

[the record spot]

Er, I think you'll find the word 'British' includes the Scots - though giving the Scots credit for 80% of all major inventions is a fantasy on your part. Their biggest invention seems to be anti-English moaning and whining. :boohoo:

Really? Are you sure about that? I've nothing against the English, or England at all. Well, I mean, it's there, so you might as well...

 

[Andrew17321]

Once, when I was having difficulty choosing between which of two pairs of shoes to buy in a shoe shop, I decided to choose the British made ones. It turned out that the uppers, the soles, and the glue to join them together came in separate containers from China to UK. They were glued together in England, thus becoming British made shoes, and avoiding European import tax (designed to give Italian shoe manufacturers an unfair advantage).

It is hard to know how much of British made HiFi equipment is British.

If Scotland chooses independence will I have to buy Linn?

Andrew

 

[the record spot]

Rather hoping it's a question that doesn't have to come to light...!

 

[namefail]

Once, when I was having difficulty choosing between which of two pairs of shoes to buy in a shoe shop, I decided to choose the British made ones. It turned out that the uppers, the soles, and the glue to join them together came in separate containers from China to UK. They were glued together in England, thus becoming British made shoes, and avoiding European import tax (designed to give Italian shoe manufacturers an unfair advantage).

It is hard to know how much of British made HiFi equipment is British.

If Scotland chooses independence will I have to buy Linn?

Andrew

I guess if it’s your preferred component? Why do you ask?

 

[andyjm]

Once, when I was having difficulty choosing between which of two pairs of shoes to buy in a shoe shop, I decided to choose the British made ones. It turned out that the uppers, the soles, and the glue to join them together came in separate containers from China to UK. They were glued together in England, thus becoming British made shoes, and avoiding European import tax (designed to give Italian shoe manufacturers an unfair advantage).

It is hard to know how much of British made HiFi equipment is British.

We had this discussion a few weeks ago. There is an EU definition of 'made in' that refers to the last place in the chain that a 'significant change in form' took place as the point at which the product was made.

So Naim (for example), who are owned by a French private equity group, who design products in Salisbury and then assemble them out of components which are made in the far east can put a 'made in England' sticker on the box.

Personally, I am not sure I agree with this definition, but this is the law as I understand it.

 

[drummerman]

I think designed and assembled pretty much constitutes 'made' in ...

regards

 

[spiny norman]

I think designed and assembled pretty much constitutes 'made' in ...

With no 'hewn from the living rock in' qualification?

Seriously, agree completely.

 

[spiny norman]

We had this discussion a few weeks ago. There is an EU definition of 'made in' that refers to the last place in the chain that a 'significant change in form' took place as the point at which the product was made.

So Naim (for example), who are owned by a French private equity group, who design products in Salisbury and then assemble them out of components which are made in the far east can put a 'made in England' sticker on the box.

Personally, I am not sure I agree with this definition, but this is the law as I understand it.

It's a bit like claiming 'made in England' when major components are made in Indonesia, isn't it? :doh:

Seriously, though, how far back do you want to go when it comes to provenance? Every single component made from raw materials made in that country? Should be good for the massive British aluminium and precious metals mining industries.

Or a sensible definition allowing for basic electronic components – the individual transistors, capacitors, resistors, etc – to be sourced from abroad, assembled onto circuitboards in the claimed country of manufacture, and then built up into finished products?

I think what you're trying to say is that a Jaguar isn't a British-made Jaguar, or a Rolls-Royce a British-made Rolls-Royce, because the parent company is foreign-owned and the tyres aren't made from rubber tapped from trees grown in the rainforests of Runcorn, or from petrochemicals from the Ormskirk oilfields. Which is, of course, a nonsense.

 

[andyjm]

We had this discussion a few weeks ago. There is an EU definition of 'made in' that refers to the last place in the chain that a 'significant change in form' took place as the point at which the product was made.

So Naim (for example), who are owned by a French private equity group, who design products in Salisbury and then assemble them out of components which are made in the far east can put a 'made in England' sticker on the box.

Personally, I am not sure I agree with this definition, but this is the law as I understand it.

It's a bit like claiming 'made in England' when major components are made in Indonesia, isn't it? :doh:

Seriously, though, how far back do you want to go when it comes to provenance? Every single component made from raw materials made in that country? Should be good for the massive British aluminium and precious metals mining industries.

Or a sensible definition allowing for basic electronic components – the individual transistors, capacitors, resistors, etc – to be sourced from abroad, assembled onto circuitboards in the claimed country of manufacture, and then built up into finished products?

I think what you're trying to say is that a Jaguar isn't a British-made Jaguar, or a Rolls-Royce a British-made Rolls-Royce, because the parent company is foreign-owned and the tyres aren't made from rubber tapped from trees grown in the rainforests of Runcorn, or from petrochemicals from the Ormskirk oilfields. Which is, of course, a nonsense.

Taken to the extreme, as you point out, it clearly is nonsense.

This is a nuanced issue however. If Nissan in Sunderland are opening a crate from Japan that contains a kit of parts, wheels, body panels, engine, wiring etc and just bolt them together - is the car 'made in the UK' ? According to the EU it is.

There is an argument that the device is 'made' at the point that the majority of the intellectual property (IP) is incorporated in the device.

Going back to the Naim situation, Naim will be incorporating semiconductors into their products that contain orders of maginitude more IP than the design team at Naim incorporate. So is the Naim product made in Shenzhen where the fab plant that made the semiconductors is located? or Santa Clara where Intel designed the processor in the first place?

Personally, I prefer a definition along the lines that the location at which most value is added to the product defines where it is made. In the case of Naim, that would probably be the UK.

 

[spiny norman]

Taken to the extreme, as you point out, it clearly is nonsense.

This is a nuanced issue however. If Nissan in Sunderland are opening a crate from Japan that contains a kit of parts, wheels, body panels, engine, wiring etc and just bolt them together - is the car 'made in the UK' ? According to the EU it is.

There is an argument that the device is 'made' at the point that the majority of the intellectual property (IP) is incorporated in the device.

Going back to the Naim situation, Naim will be incorporating semiconductors into their products that contain orders of maginitude more IP than the design team at Naim incorporate. So is the Naim product made in Shenzhen where the fab plant that made the semiconductors is located? or Santa Clara where Intel designed the processor in the first place?

Personally, I prefer a definition along the lines that the location at which most value is added to the product defines where it is made. In the case of Naim, that would probably be the UK.

Laeving aside your confusing point that the IP in a completed product is down to the IP in the individual components, which would suggest every product with a processor inside should really be labelled 'made in China', you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how car companies' UK-bsed manufacturing plants operate.

Nissan Sunderland has its own press shop where it makes the body panels, its own plastics palnt where plastic components are injection moulded, casting shop fo aluminium components such as cylinder heads, plus paint shops for bodies and plastics, and two assembly lines. Not to mention all the outside component suppliers dependent on the factory in the surrounding areas.

Same goes for, say, Honda in Swindon, which also has its own casting, pressing, injection moulding, paint and assembly operations, as wel as being surrounded in the local area by supplying companies.

Toyota in Burnaston operates in a very similar manner.

So the employment implications of a plant such as these go far beyond the staff actually working on site, and out into the supply chain.

 

[tino]

Personally, I prefer a definition along the lines that the location at which most value is added to the product defines where it is made. In the case of Naim, that would probably be the UK.

Not their latest Muso though which is going to be assembled in China. I'm sure it will have emblazoned on the back of it though a bold and brash label that says "Designed an engineered in Salisbury, UK" and in really tiny letters and in a difficult to find place it will say "assembled in PRC",

 

[andyjm]

Taken to the extreme, as you point out, it clearly is nonsense.

This is a nuanced issue however. If Nissan in Sunderland are opening a crate from Japan that contains a kit of parts, wheels, body panels, engine, wiring etc and just bolt them together - is the car 'made in the UK' ? According to the EU it is.

There is an argument that the device is 'made' at the point that the majority of the intellectual property (IP) is incorporated in the device.

Going back to the Naim situation, Naim will be incorporating semiconductors into their products that contain orders of maginitude more IP than the design team at Naim incorporate. So is the Naim product made in Shenzhen where the fab plant that made the semiconductors is located? or Santa Clara where Intel designed the processor in the first place?

Personally, I prefer a definition along the lines that the location at which most value is added to the product defines where it is made. In the case of Naim, that would probably be the UK.

...you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how car companies' UK-bsed manufacturing plants operate.

Nissan Sunderland has its own press shop where it makes the body panels, its own plastics palnt where plastic components are injection moulded, casting shop fo aluminium components such as cylinder heads, plus paint shops for bodies and plastics, and two assembly lines. Not to mention all the outside component suppliers dependent on the factory in the surrounding areas.

The "If" in "If Nissan in Sunderland are opening a crate from Japan" was to indicate that this was a strawman for discussion. I will be more explicit in future.