I'm apalled by this ! Jaguar (etc) was sold to the Indian owned company Tata (one of the biggest and most diverse companies in the world)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7789436.stm

Ford consistently refused to significantly invest in Jaguar, in my opinion a company relying on its historic past as opposed to the creation of decent modern cars. The last decent Jag was built in the 50s.

And now the Govt is talking about bailing them out....with my money, just because there is a global recession

This world has gone mad

 

The new XKR is a cracker! They represent what Britain can do when it can be arsed, as do Aston Martin and Lotus.

We should do everything we can to protect brands like that from being owned by foreigners or going bust.

 

But its already owned by foreigners - so it should be their responsibilty to support it (or not) - not the UK tax payer.

Its not a public company

 

15,000 jobs versus 30,000 at Woolies.

I don't hear them offering Woolies a bail out.

 

here here, let it sink, why should we support them, all the profit should they ever make one again goes back to india, not back into our economy.

Would we bail toyota out if they go belly up just because the make loads in the midlands? cant see it.

This former british collony guilt shite gets on my tits.

 

Tata, I suspect are holding the govt. over a barrel.

They can pull Jaguar and Land Rover production to India in an instant, the saving made on wage costs will more than offset the cost of the move in a relatively short time.

Car workers in the Midlands, as we all know from endless Top Gear digs, are deeply traditional labour voters, as are the workers for the companies who supply them. The size of the engineering sector in the Midlands supplying car manufacturers is far larger than the 15,000 who actually work for Jag and LR and the Birmingham area is a traditional Labour stronghold.

If all those jobs went in a shoert space of time it would be catastrophic for Birmingham, the labour market would be flooded with people out of work.

Most sensible people guessed this might happen when Tata bought the companies, they have huge manufacturing facilities in India and a cheap and willing workforce.
The government did not appear to place any restrictions on the sale to safeguard British jobs (whether they could or not, I don't know) and this outcome was inevitable, especially when the market for luxury cars and 4x4s has all but ceased to exist.

I think Gordon't gone and got himself between a rock and a hard place.

 

and compare that to the distribution of votes held by Woolies workers across the country

 

Just found this

JAGUAR TO KEEP MAKING CARS NO-ONE CAN AFFORD

[I]THE government is lining up a multi-billion pound bail-out for Jaguar so it can keep making absurdly expensive cars that do 12 yards to the gallon.

Business secretary Peter Mandelson said it was vital Britain retained the skills and technology to produce pointless vehicles that cost more than the average salary to insure.

The Indian-owned company makes the pathetic Jaguar range of luxury cars, as well as the ludicrous Range Rover Sport, favoured by drug barons, footballers and the women that feed off them.

But Mr Mandelson stressed the government could not simply write a blank cheque for businesses that did not employ large numbers of Labour voters in key marginal seats.

He said: "There is also a huge chain of companies that rely on Jaguar's success. When one of these cars is actually sold, it then has to repaired at least six times a year. And of course you do have to replace all the bits that keep falling off.

"And then there's the billions that will be spent on road repairs, flood defences and treating the millions of British children who will develop chronic asthma thanks to the gigantic amounts of filth spewed out per kilometre by the Range Rover's magnificent V8."

He added: "Experts say the cars of the future will be bigger, uglier, thirstier and more expensive than anything you can possibly imagine. It is therefore right that we keep paying the working class people of Halewood and Solihull to churn out these things even if we end up throwing them into the sea."

Meanwhile the Indian government said last night that it was unable to bail out the car company because it had just spent its last

 

 

Let them go under, and dump Mandelson too, prick. This government seems to f***all but look at ways off giving my taxes away, Tata in India, millions to Pakistan for some reason etc etc. Time to call a halt.