‘Great Britain has the world’s sixth largest economy, but as far as I can see it doesn’t make much of anything any more. Whitbread doesn’t brew beer. Tate & Lyle no longer refines sugar. Only five of Britain’s largest companies manufacture any products at all in the UK now. So few industrial companies are left that the Financial Times had to take the word ‘industrial’ out of the Financial Times Industrial Average, its principal measure of corporate well-being. When I was a child, Britain made a quarter of all that was produced in the world (though to be fair, my being a child had very little to do with it); now the figure is 2.9 per cent and falling. These days, Britain makes Rolls-Royce jet engines and all the little pots of marmalade in the world, but that’s about it, as far as I can tell. Nearly everything that’s left seems to be owned by foreigners. French companies own Hamley’s toy store, Glenmorangie whisky, Orange mobile phones, Fisons pharmaceuticals and EDF, the power company. E.ON and Npower are German. Scottish Power is Spanish. United Biscuits, which makes McVitie’s Digestives, Jaffa Cakes and Hula Hoops, is owned by Yildiz, a Turkish company. Jaguar, Blue Circle Cement, British Steel, Harrods, Bass breweries, most of the main airports, several of the most important football teams, and the company that brought you this book are all foreign owned. Fewer than half of Britain’s largest companies even have a British-born Chairman.
HP and Daddies sauces are made in Holland. Smarties are made in Germany. Raleigh bicycles are made in Denmark. In 2010, RBS, a failed Scottish bank owned by the British government, lent the money to the American food conglomerate Kraft to buy Cadbury’s, Britain’s most venerable chocolate maker. As part of the deal Kraft promised to keep open a Cadbury factory near Bristol, but it was just fooling. As soon as the deal was complete, Kraft closed the factory and shipped its machinery to Poland.
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