And the people who work are paying for these benefits through excessive taxing. That doesn't sound like free to me.

All we want is simples ,work to live ,not live to work.

Just filled up with diesel on the M40 at Warwick services £1.40/litre!!!!!

Just been on the radio that the government may not increase the duty on fuel in April. Oh yeh pull the other one.

Could be an indication that the cost of diesel is going to keep rising anyway so they'll get there money through taxes anyway.

They wont need to if the basic price goes high enough.

damn

I must learn how to type with two fingers

Flippin eck Keith it'll tek me a pon full to get theer

Those that work , yes , but many come because of the benefits available for those that don't , IMO of course

Almost impossible to compete any more , I have just comissioned an Aluminium extrusion from China through a British stockholder

If I get it from Britain there would be a £ 600 die cost and the end product would be 30 percent more expensive , with a 5 week lead time to produce the sample and then similar to end product

If I get it from Spain/Portugal the die cost is £ 300 and the end product would be 20 percent more expensive with a similar lead time

I placed the order from China 14 working days ago and the sample is on my desk at work now , at no cost and I will sign it off and the end product will be available to me inside 8 to 10 weeks at the lower cost

Unfortunatly it is a no brainer for me and no doubt many others , what the answer is , I just don't know , the damage has already been done

Just double check everything out Steve, a certain Car company bought 10,000 standard stillages (metal bins) from China because they were cheaper, we spent 6 months reinforcing them because of the poor quality of steel they'd used, they were cracking around the top when stacked on top of one another.

That said, we did the same with the daughters prom dress a couple of years ago, shopped around the North west prices were £300 + for the ones she wanted and up to three months wait, a friend told us about a company in China, we picked the style of the dress, colour etc, they emailed us a body image we filled in every dimensions possible and emailed it back, a couple of weeks later we had email telling us our dress was in production, a week after that we had a photo showing it almost complete, after about 6-8wks it arrived.
Fitted perfectly and looked great.

Cost £75 postage and £15 for the dress.

I already get some extrusion from China , I dont go direct as I would have to pay up front , I use a stockholder , so any quality problems would be theirs

Well, certainly don't bother to compete on price that's for sure.
But is price what customers really care about?
For you - lead time seems to be just as important.
Price tends to be given as a reason by customers because it is easy to articulate.
if the UK firm was more responsive, had fantastic quality, were less bother to deal with, had great credit facilities so you could manage your cash flow and actually did what you needed to be done and assured you that if anyting went wrong they would be there to fix it immediately, you would be less inclined to go for the cheaper stuff from the other side of the world.

If we really have it in our heads that price is all that matters - then we should stop now and let China get on with it and we find something else to do.

But price is not the be all and end all.....

why is Waitrose the fastest growing supermarket in the UK despite being the most expensive and in a recession?

iphones and ipod are not the chepaest, or even the best of their product categories - but they sell millions? why?

cheers, //p.

Paul, I wish it was so straightforward mate.

I'll be honest and say I rarely come across customers who say 'you are more expensive than the others but you are better - here is the contract'.

I'm sure it happens, but the person doing that job (getting the best/cheapest deal) isn't always the person who has to deal with the poor serive or product when it arrives. The thing is though, he rarely cares - he's got a tick in his box under 'work procured within budget'.

Tides will turn in the next generation when the far east folk currently living 10 to a hut decide they want proper wages, satelite telly, and running water like the rest of the world has. Add rising fuel (shipping and haulage) costs, the continuing inflation within the far east economy and before long that £300 42" plasma telly might not be as cheap as it once was because the fella once making it can't work for tuppence a month any more.