Believe it or not we actually parked in the "pencil museum" car park when stopping off in Cumbria on the way back from a trip to Edinburgh. I got the impression manufacturing wasn't a big operation and it would be interesting to compare the two operations, here and Germany.

One thing I am always reminded of when discussions like this arise is the old "Trouble Shooter" program Sir John Harvey Jones (ex ICI boss) used to front.

One of the companies he went to see was a Chinaware manufacturer in Stoke. They were determined to be listed on the stock exchange. [uJones advised against it.[/u They were listed and to cut a long story short the only things left in the UK when he returned later were a design and sales office. All manufacturing had gone to the far east. They were once a UK equivalent of a "Mittelstand" company but once that ceased so did the UK manufacturing jobs.

As a general thread related point "Mittelstand" just goes to show what a pile of nonsense zero hours contracts are IMO.

As a brand its known worldwide but the interesting thing about comparing the two web sites (above) and also the manufacturer Staedtler (also German) is that of those three world renown brands only Derwent don't produce anything for the technical design market, other than a simple pencil of course - both Faber and Staedtler have always specialised in tools for architects & other design trades whereas Derwent is pure art focused.

I haven't been to the pencil museum in Keswick (although I suspect that I have supported it financially over the years) but looking at the main company web site their production facility seems of a decent size and they do state that their pencils are manufactured in the UK, and there is a huge range, plus their paper products which from memory I can't recall Faber or Staedtler being involved with.

Actually I correct myself there, I do have an A3 pad of Staedtler ink sketching paper of a type that I have never seen before in art shops but was given to me by an architect friend who uses it quite extensively (he is an old fashioned architect who STILL draws by hand, his practice is getting to be like a museum for architects these days).

Damn those conversations for not sticking to an absolutely specific subject.

Funny you should mention that: I'm just talking to an artist down here (south of France) about using social media better in order to forward a commercial operation. The internet stuff is still being ignored or, at best, done badly by some.

You should refer him to Mick Oxley and the band of businesses in his village and district that Tweet and FB constantly to promote themselves - thats the way to do it.

If you want to show him other examples I have favourited (is that a word) a lot of professional artists FB sites and Groups that he can join, if he has a smartphone then he can post "on the easel" type posts once a day with one minute to spare

Derwent was a brand of the Cumberland Pencil Co. which was an old established but small manufacturer. In the mid 60's early 70's I worked for the Eagle Pencil Company which had several leading quality pencil brands such as 'Mirado' (trade) 'Turquoise' (technical) 'Graduate' & 'Verithin' (educational) I visited schools, colleges and local authorities in the north of England giving talks and demonstrating the various products to teachers and specifiers. If ever the name of 'Cumberland pencils' came up I would mention the 'Staedtler' take over in my best German accent which was enough to prick a hole in the comfy Lake District image they tried to float.

Eagle had a large pencil factory in Tottenham (purpose built in 1906) which was an amazing place with bespoke machines with very active pulleys, belts, cedarwood and laquer smells and noise over three floors. Here they made a range of pencils with 17 degrees from 6B to 9H (including and F) and were the leading supplier to schools (each with grosses of pencils each year) and the likes of Rolls Royce technical drawing offices. I think the factory relocated to Kings Lynn in the 90's. In the 60's Eagle bought out Hardmuths (German), Margros (paint and art products) and Venus Esterbrook-Papermate and rebranded the group as Berol It is still selling its brand leading products.

I'm not clear what this bit means.
Did Staedtler own Cumberland back then?

Great memories, there's nothing quite like taking a new pencil out of the box for the first time, better still if its one of those pencils that are just sticks of wood with no sharpened end yet, better even still if you have one of those old pencil sharpeners that clamp to a desk and mechanically grip the pencil while you turn a handle to sharpen it - the points you get on those are lethal



And there is a world of difference between a cheap pencil and a "good" one and you usually find that out when you try and sharpen it - its all trivial and silly I know but they are tools to me and a good one is like finding a good chisel that you never want to lose or lend to anyone.

Am I right in saying that in GB the shareholders, by law, come first, re profits, whilst in Germany the workers, the home base i.e keeping work within the town etc, all have to be taken into consideration before cutting wages / hiving off the profitable portions of the company to overseas.
If so, it's a no brainer why things are better for the workers over there.

Anyone know if this is true ?

Don't know about the above but it is certainly harder to lay people off. Can't remember whether it's 6 or 12 months notice and the company has to help the employee find new work either within their organisation or elsewhere. Rules in Switzerland are similar.

All that regulation must be killing the Swiss and German economies! (Not).

Not sure this is 100% reliable but it chimes-in with conversations I've had with German colleagues ... worldemploymentlaw.com/Germany-N ... eriod.html

Not sure this is 100% reliable but it chimes-in with conversations I've had with German colleagues ... worldemploymentlaw.com/Germany-N ... eriod.html

I had completely lost interest in this thread after Mintball completely boshed it as usual when anyone doesn't bow down to her pronouncements!!

Back on topic - I have stated my view on zero hour contracts i.e. completely unnecessary - a sympton of lazy management.

You have omitted to comment on why Germany, despite having many, many of the sort of rules that, in your opinion would ruin a country's economy, is nonetheless nowhere near being an economic basket case.

Yes in late 60's or early 70's

Germany is not here, the culture is very different to compare is like comparing apples to oranges, yes they are fruit but that is as far as meaningful comparison goes. Why not compare Germany to China? it simply cannot be done with any sense of gravitas. What works in one country is not necessarily transferrable to another.

One of the problems with pencils is that the lead can break inside the pencil if it falls on a hard floor. This means that when sharpened the point can keep breaking away. Eagle invented and patented a method of bonding the lead to the wood so that the lead could flex and not break on impact (chemi-sealed) This meant although more expensive to buy the Eagle pencil lasted much longer and was in fact better and cheaper in the long run.

To demonstrate and prove this to unbelieving teachers we used to bash an Eagle pencil on the desk and then throw it on the floor with gusto before slitting open the pencil to show the unbroken lead inside.

I remember one NUT Easter conference (at Blackpool or perhaps the Isle of Man) when we had a stand in the exhibition hall where teachers could updated their knowledge of books and educational equipment. Our stand was on the first floor balcony and a colleague was in full flow demonstrating a "chemi-sealed" pencil to a group of teachers and was a little more enthusiastic than usual as he threw the pencil onto the hardwood floor where it bounced on its end and flew into the air and over the balcony railings. It continued its fall landing at the feet of a snooty publisher on a book stand below. It may have been the Oxford University Press, Macmillan or similar.

It should be pointed out at this stage that the sales personel of these publishers were a snooty lot that considered getting their hands dirty by actually selling was beneath them and they always looked down their noses at those of us from the educational equipment companies that didn't have such hang ups. Any way this 'book rep' was so annoyed that his peace and quite had been disturbed that he chose to throw the offending pencil back. It sailed up from the ground floor and back over the railings to land at the feet of my colleague who cooly continued his pitch, picking up the pencil cutting it open to show the proof to the astonished and open mouthed teachers.

Throughout the rest of the weekend we had groups of teachers coming onto our stand for an encore.

Has the well-deserved backlash started?

[url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/21/hovis-bakery-workers-strike-zero-hour-contractsHovis workers vote to strike over zero-hours contracts[/url

No you can't compare Germany to China. Or the UK to China. To suggest you can't compare the UK to Germany is ridiculous. In terms of trading and employment legislation, economic development and culture we have far more in common than we have differences. The fact there [iare[/i differences in the way employment works over there despite the similarities is the very thing that needs to be understood and and learned from but it is certainly not meaningless to make such comparisons.

Not really. In fact we have way more in common with Germany than most other European countries.

Apart from management philosophy & practice.

Oh and levels of union membership

After you have gone to great lengths talking about political theory (not limiting your arguments to the UK) and how things you disagree with CANNOT work and how socialism has been proven NOT to work in other countries (other countries with other cultures, I might point out), I then point at one of the countries where social democracy does work and, in that instance, has provided the strongest economy in continental Europe ... and the best you can come up with is that it's a different culture?
Sorry Sal, but if you are going to use other countries as examples to try to show how the extreme version of something won't work, you cannot then dismiss those employing the more moderate version where it does.

Just losing interest, 'tis all.

I was speaking to a former colleague on Saturday night who informed me that one leading contract research organisation, that performs scientific studies for all the major pharmaceutical companies, is now employing PhD qualified Chemists on zero hour contracts. These people will not be on good money either when they do work. The job market for Chemistry graduates has got worse since I finished University in the early 90s. Graduate salaries for Chemists have not risen massively despite the alleged demand for scientists. I have seen positions advertised for graduate Chemists with salaries that are barely higher than the minimum wage.

My main reason for staying on to do a PhD was the lack of jobs at the time. At least I wasn't burdened with a massive debt after six years of study. Successive governments have encouraged young people to obtain a University Education in order to obtain a career with good prospects. In actual fact all that many have to look forward to is a massive debt hanging over them while they slave away in a low paid job where their qualifications have very little worth or relevance.

There is a simple way to circumvent zero hours contracts: introduce an aggregated annual hours contract. That should cover the vast majority of all "real" jobs and take account of any seasonal demands. Employers would have the flexibility of labour and employees would have the safety-net of knowing what they'd be earning each week/month.

It would of course require managing, maybe that's where the UK and US fall short?

Quote ="cod'ead"It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Quote ="cod'ead"It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/