British passports

[scouser]

Just had a listen to the news, it would seem that French & German companies are in line to supply the new Blue passports for when ( I wish ) and if we leave the E.U.

[blackbird]

Brexit what a joke ? we must be the laughing stock of the EU we vote to leave & we can’t even produce a passport for our British citizens ??

Edited March 22, 2018 by blackbird

[old'un]

Because they undercut rivals, including a British firm, by around £50 million. 

[sierra 11]

"and if we leave the E.U."    That phrase surprises me..locally the high pitched whines have subsided to a  sob and even the keenest Euro cuddlies  are searching for a new cause. Plastic in the Ocean looks like the favourite at the moment, and that really is a worthwhile cause of protest as far as I'm concerned.

Personally I find it amusing that our Continental friends are being tasked with making the new British Passports,  (probably cut price) there's a certain irony there I think....I wonder if the print workers will have to be inoculated against  contracting the  independence bug while handling the new passports...  

[walshie]

Well that's at least one company that will trade with the UK after we leave.  They'll be able to do a nice little sideline selling them direct to economic migrants.

Edited March 22, 2018 by walshie

[matone]

What a farce.

[old man]

Sadly we still seem hell bent on giving it all away?

To the immense ammusement of the rest of the EU I'm sure?

Jeux Sans Frontiers

[12gauge82]

3 hours ago, sierra 11 said:

"and if we leave the E.U."    That phrase surprises me..locally the high pitched whines have subsided to a  sob and even the keenest Euro cuddlies  are searching for a new cause. Plastic in the Ocean looks like the favourite at the moment, and that really is a worthwhile cause of protest as far as I'm concerned.

Personally I find it amusing that our Continental friends are being tasked with making the new British Passports,  (probably cut price) there's a certain irony there I think....I wonder if the print workers will have to be inoculated against  contracting the  independence bug while handling the new passports...  

I was annoyed by this story, until I read your post, brilliant way of looking at it 

[Walker570]

That's commerce. Get the best deal.  If our printers can't meet the bid price then tough.  How many of you will be buying European made shotguns and cartridges come Independence Day ?

 

[old man]

11 minutes ago, Walker570 said:

That's commerce. Get the best deal.  If our printers can't meet the bid price then tough.  How many of you will be buying European made shotguns and cartridges come Independence Day ?

 

Baikal?

[yod dropper]

The irony is that we had to put this out to tender under EU rules but we could never bid to produce the French passports as they are produced by the State.  Within the free trading single market as it operates in France there are several areas where we cannot compete for their business but they can for ours, I guess the way things are it favours them more than us.

[Lloyd90]

Two sides to this really, are we going to start using British companies exclusively for everything now? 

Are we going to start refusing companies who can do jobs for us at a significantly cheaper price because they aren’t British? 

Seems a bit odd. Just the other day in the toys R us discussion people were saying it’s much cheaper to buy online / direct from China. 

 

The real question we should be asking; why is the British company £50,000,000 more expensive than the French one? 

Did they assume the surge of national pride would mean they automatically got the contract so could charge what they want? 

I don’t know, but it needs to be asked! 

 

[matone]

All valid observations ! Just wonder if this is the result of a back room deal to buy some of the opposition off in euroland....no doubt there will have been shenanigans going on to which we are`n`t privy.

Edited March 22, 2018 by matone

[Lloyd90]

56 minutes ago, matone said:

All valid observations ! Just wonder if this is the result of a back room deal to buy some of the opposition off in euroland....no doubt there will have been shenanigans going on to which we are`n`t privy.

Perhaps, although I do genuinely wonder if the company thought they had it ‘in the bag’. And could charge whatever they wanted. Essentially fleecing the British public? 

[Lloyd90]

56 minutes ago, matone said:

All valid observations ! Just wonder if this is the result of a back room deal to buy some of the opposition off in euroland....no doubt there will have been shenanigans going on to which we are`n`t privy.

Perhaps, although I do genuinely wonder if the company thought they had it ‘in the bag’. And could charge whatever they wanted. Essentially fleecing the British public? 

[krugerandsmith]

2 hours ago, yod dropper said:

The irony is that we had to put this out to tender under EU rules but we could never bid to produce the French passports as they are produced by the State.  Within the free trading single market as it operates in France there are several areas where we cannot compete for their business but they can for ours, I guess the way things are it favours them more than us.

Absolutely correct ...... There is no way the French people would allow this to happen. ....Just fools in this country.

[Guest]

It will have to Turkish guns .they don’t import baikal as there is a embargo on with Russia 

[scouser]

Just on the news,the French have got it, they must be laughing their c##ks off.

[Vince Green]

Its false economy, the contract is worth £500 million a year and the French came in 10% cheaper. But all that money (half a billion) is now going out of the country, and we will never see it again. Dead money

Had the contract stayed in Britain the money would have gone to pay wages for the British workforce. The government would have got tax back on those wages and VAT when they spent their wages in the UK.  Their wages get spent in local shops, garages, etc  and it just goes round and round. Earning tax and/or  VAT for the government every times it changes hands.

That's worth much more to the treasury a than the 10% they are supposedly saving. 

Any money spent by the Government on a contract with a UK company based in the UK is technically free because the money all finds its way back to the government eventually. Its the same with defence spending, most goes to British companies and recirculates back into the UK economy in wages and keeps people in work in the process.

Coal was probably the most graphic example of total stupidity. Coal was mined in South Wales and Yorkshire, but also the Notts coalfields and the Northeast coalfields to a lesser extent  and sold by the (then) Coal Board to the (then) Electricity Generating Board.

Both Nationalised Industries, so no real money changed hand it was just moved from one government balance sheet to another.

The Electricity Generating Board discovered they could buy (inferior) coal from Poland cheaper and bizzarely stopped buying UK coal. Thousands of miners lost their jobs and ended up on the dole, most never worked again. The dole bill for that alone must have exceeded any savings.The mines closed and were left to flood, so they can never be reopened.

We are still buying Polish coal forty years on. If anybody can explain to me how that was ever sound financial reasoning please feel free to try. We are sitting on hundreds of years worth of the best quality coal in the world. It is literally beneath Steve B's house. hundreds of millions of tons of the stuff. Yet we import rubbish coal from Poland.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Vince Green

[Newbie to this]

11 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

Its false economy, the contract is worth £500 million a year and the French came in 10% cheaper. But all that money (half a billion) is now going out of the country. Had the contract stayed in Britain the money would have gone to pay wages for the British workforce. The government would have got tax back on those wages and VAT when they spent their wages in the UK. That's worth more to the treasury a than the 10% they are supposedly saving. 

100% 

False economy, like most government contracts.

[old man]

1 hour ago, Swinton said:

It will have to Turkish guns .they don’t import baikal as there is a embargo on with Russia 

When has an embargo ever worked properly? I wonder? 

Cash is king?

[Dave-G]

It's not surprising that EU countries can undercut us while we give them so much money to subsidize their firms overheads.

[old man]

14 hours ago, Dave-G said:

It's not surprising that EU countries can undercut us while we give them so much money to subsidize their firms overheads.

Not much longer hopefully but am I filled with confidence in the negotiations/ors? 

Nope, an absolute fire sale, seemingly? Just the way we carry out Government business?

[walshie]

They're £50 million cheaper at the moment. Once the EU add their punishment tariff, it won't be.

[mick miller]

The company that currently make the UK(EU) passport is part Dutch, part French owned, so hardly a 'British' company. They also make passports for 40 other countries. I'm not sure what the fuss is about, we wanted the deal with the EU to be trade and business only, this is trade and business and the company that put the tender in had the lowest bid by a long way so they won the tender. What we didn't want is the greater political union and the other baggage that came with the EU. Seems like a win to me, we get to sell others passports made here,  thus guaranteeing British jobs , whilst we get our passports made elsewhere at a great price. That's trade, unless you favour protectionism that is?