Rolls Royce has competitors

[principled]

After watching the Rolls Royce programme on BBC2 last night, I have to say I was encouraged that all is not lost in terms of our engineering skills.
But, RR should beware, there are others who also dream of flying high. Enjoy
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-_dsNTZch0
P

[jonjel]

I love it Principled ;D

A good way to start the day!

[marchesarosa]

I too loved that (RR) programme, principled. It was such a relief after watching another tv programme presented by Robert Peston on the previous day, that showed UK manufacturing was going down the pan. Sadly, most of the engineers at RR were knocking on for tea-time.

And today the BBC news reports that more overseas students are studying engineering at UK universities than British. This has been obvious in Leeds for a long time. The LU Engineering Dept is full of Chinese! Good for them, serious problem for us.

[marchesarosa]

OECD on Income Inequality
reported in Roger Pielke's blog
rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/oecd-on-income-inequality.html


OECD has a new report out on income inequality. The report concludes:

Today in advanced economies, the average income of the richest 10% of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10%. Even in traditionally egalitarian countries – such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden – the income gap between rich and poor is expanding – from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. It’s 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom, rising to 14 to 1 in Israel, Turkey and the United States and reaching more than 25 to 1 in Mexico and Chile.

Why should we care about income inequality?

Rising income inequality creates economic, social and political challenges. It can jeopardise social mobility: intergenerational earnings mobility is low in countries with high inequality such as Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, and higher in the Nordic countries, where income is distributed more evenly. The resulting inequality of opportunities will affect economic performance as a whole. Inequality can also fuel protectionist sentiments. People will no longer support open trade and free markets if they feel that they are losing out while a small group of winners is getting richer and richer.

An interesting finding from the analysis is that one reason that income inequality has increased has been a diversification of the labor force, with globalization playing a minor role:

[R]egulatory reforms and institutional changes increased employment opportunities but also contributed to greater wage inequality. These reforms were carried out to strengthen competition in the markets for goods and services and to make labour markets more adaptable. The good news is that more people, and in particular many low-paid workers, were brought into employment. But the logical consequence of more low-paid people in work is a widening distribution of wages.

What does OECD recommend? Better jobs.

The most promising way of tackling inequality is through boosting employment. Fostering more and better jobs, enabling people to escape poverty and offering real career prospects, is the most important challenge for policy makers to address.

Boosting employment may help lift the bottom, but it does not address issues at the top. The OECD tiptoes around the issue of taxes and the super wealthy.

[principled]

Marchesa

Sadly, most of the engineers at RR were knocking on for tea-time.

This is certainly true. I was involved in many of the education and training programmes for these companies and was always concerned that most of the guys were as old as me! This was the legacy of the 80s when apprenticeships and anything to do with technology were passé and the new world was services and banking! The other issue was that many finance directors seemed (seem) to think that high-end skills could be learnt overnight and so just kept putting off training younger people. A false economy.
Although this is still true to some extent, my "contacts" tell me that apprentice and young graduate recruitment is on the up in the high tech end of the business. The problem is getting enough applicants with a suitable level of maths and science to start with.
On the downside, as you pointed out, many uni engineering technology depts are being kept alive by foreign students,. This can make the recruitment of young UK engineers problematic. China graduates over 300000 and India over 100000 annually. Obviously, their populations are much larger but the size of the team designing a widget is the same anywhere, so the ratio of engineers/population isn't always the best measure to use.
Nevertheless, I was left on a high after the programme and am thankful to the BBC for showing that there is a career alternative to the "City".
P