Current Affairs EU In or Out

[Pienaar's gloves]

I think that chart you posted t'other day has it about right where labour are.

That's despite Corbyn being the leader. It's where most of the MP's would have the party be, at any rate.

The chart is from before the 2015 GE.

 

[Joey66]

@Joey66 growth isn't up mate, stop repeating it

I ve got wind so I can,t sorry!

 

[The Esk]

Your understanding is incorrect I'm afraid......

I don't buy that at all. Whilst the bidding process cost the industry £22 billion (4 times original) estimates, for an industry the size of telecoms it was a perfectly affordable investment in what was essentially a land grab.

Globally 3G cost $100 billion yet the market cap of firms fell by more than $700 billion in the 2 years after as investors confused the telecoms industry with the dot com boom and bust cycle.

By the way the £22 billion did not fall down the back of the no 11 sofa, it was spent on education and hospitals, they having been starved of investment in the Conservative governments 79-97.

 

[Joey66]

So the citizens of Germany, France, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Northern Italy, the major Iberian cities have no purchasing power? Is that what you are saying?

Italy banks need bailing out so can't see the as a purchaser in the future you mention France they are in poor economic growth the german banks are under in investigation the deuchsbank so no the EU is not flourishing the Germans buy a lot of cars from us they export to us more than we export to the EU by approx 20 percent!
So apart from Germany it's a sad picture really lmo!

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Your understanding is incorrect I'm afraid......

To be fair, Marconi weren't the only telco to go belly up back then. I still fondly remember the likes of Lucent and Nortel. That Lucent went under despite having Bell Labs at their disposal is perhaps a sign of the strange times they were.

 

[peteblue]

I don't buy that at all. Whilst the bidding process cost the industry £22 billion (4 times original) estimates, for an industry the size of telecoms it was a perfectly affordable investment in what was essentially a land grab.

Globally 3G cost $100 billion yet the market cap of firms fell by more than $700 billion in the 2 years after as investors confused the telecoms industry with the dot com boom and bust cycle.

By the way the £22 billion did not fall down the back of the no 11 sofa, it was spent on education and hospitals, they having been starved of investment in the Conservative governments 79-97.

If you refuse to believe it fine. The money was indeed spent and I see you are again blaming the conservatives. It was Brown, pure and simple......

 

[peteblue]

To be fair, Marconi weren't the only telco to go belly up back then. I still fondly remember the likes of Lucent and Nortel. That Lucent went under despite having Bell Labs at their disposal is perhaps a sign of the strange times they were.

It was a time of massive growth for telecoms, until this idiotic and wholly destructive act ripped the sector to pieces with the Chinese and others picking up the bits.....

 

[joey_macmo]

I ve got wind so I can,t sorry!

Not like you to try and deflect from your lies/mistakes

 

[The Esk]

It was a time of massive growth for telecoms, until this idiotic and wholly destructive act ripped the sector to pieces with the Chinese and others picking up the bits.....

So how should the issuing of 3G licences have been handled?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

In other news, you have to like this from Newsnight

 

[Foot Long Hot Dog]

Nicely wiki'd.....now if you want to know what actually happened then you can listen to someone like myself who worked as a senior Director with Marconi or you can just go and wiki anything you want and try and score points. The problem you face is that only a couple of dozen people actually knew what happened and I was one of them.....

As you will only believe wiki, try this for size.......

The Telecoms crash was a stock market crash which occurred in 2001. It is sometimes confused with the Dot Com crash which happened at around the same time. Unlike the dot com crash however, the telecoms sector relied on long engineering research and development cycles, and the development companies on the telecom operators buying software maintenance contracts and upgrade paths. The dot com boom was caused by people investing money in ideas that were unrealistic.

Limited license auctions

At the beginning of 2000, mobile network operators in Europe, were offered auction of the 3G radio spectrum.[1] A similar auction had been applied in the United States the year before and had to be re-run when the winners defaulted on their bids.[2] Gordon Brown,[3] the minister responsible for the auctions (the then Chancellor of the Exchequer), used the same New York based firm that set up the failed/re-run auctions to host the auctions in the UK and paid 750,000 pounds from the public purse for them to do so.

The nature of the auctions was designed to increase competitive pressure on bidders by offering fewer licenses than the number of operators likely to bid and in some cases using sealed bid auctions. This put the telephone operators in a difficult position, because if they lost the auction they were out of the next technological phase of the business. They therefore took risks and made high bids, incurring large debt. In the UK auctions raised £22.5 billion[4] (GBP) and around £30 billion (GBP) in Germany. Some estimate the damage caused by the auctions of telecom spectrum (previously administration fees were charged for spectrum usage --- with public service conditions such as emergency cover bundled with the usage certificates --- with the raison d'être being public service provision and that profits from the companies proving the service would be taxable) to be as high as 3 trillion dollars worldwide.[5]

Debt and subsequent loss of stockmarket confidence

The stock market lost confidence,[6] partly due to the concept that telecoms were similar to dot com (both were categorised as 'high technology' in the listings) and share prices tumbled. As they did so the ratio of debt to assets based on share price changed making the telephone operators effective credit rating look insecure.

The telecom developers were now in a quandary. They had invested heavily over the years in research and development to keep pace with changing technology, and the telecom operators were no longer in a position to pay the maintenance and upgrades on the ordinary landline equipment, let alone buy the new.[7] Within a year 100,000 jobs were lost in telecoms support and development across Europe with 30,000 coming from the UK.[8]

I didn't quote nor view wiki Pete.

I'd have thought a Director of the company wouldn't feel the need to either tbh like.

You missed out the bit where they spent $7BN buying over valued US telecoms equipment firms mate

http://www.economist.com/node/771833

 

[peteblue]

So how should the issuing of 3G licences have been handled?

They should have done what had always happened, passed across the spectrum to our national carriers for a nominal fee. The Uk telecoms manufacturing industry would still be here employing tens of thousands of people, these were hi tech jobs requiring top technical talent as well as providing manufacturing expertise and jobs in Liverpool and Coventry in addition to those other tens of thousands we employed around the world. The industry generated huge sums for the government via taxation and put the UK at the top table of Global companies......but just thrown away.......

 

[The Esk]

They should have done what had always happened, passed across the spectrum to our national carriers for a nominal fee. The Uk telecoms manufacturing industry would still be here employing tens of thousands of people, these were hi tech jobs requiring top technical talent as well as providing manufacturing expertise and jobs in Liverpool and Coventry in addition to those other tens of thousands we employed around the world. The industry generated huge sums for the government via taxation and put the UK at the top table of Global companies......but just thrown away.......

I'll respect your opinion given this is/was your field of operation but I've heard different stories from others, particularly relating to the management of GEC/Marconi under Simpson and Mayo.

 

[peteblue]

I didn't quote nor view wiki Pete.

I'd have thought a Director of the company wouldn't feel the need to either tbh like.

You missed out the bit where they spent $7BN buying over valued US telecoms equipment firms mate

http://www.economist.com/node/771833

I included the wiki bit just for you because you didn't seem to be accepting my word.

The US companies were indeed overvalued but they brought different skills and products to our company at a time when telecoms was going through unparalleled growth.

But hey, just believe whatever you want......

 

[peteblue]

I'll respect your opinion given this is/was your field of operation but I've heard different stories from others, particularly relating to the management of GEC/Marconi under Simpson and Mayo.

Thank you. Don't get me wrong George and John could be both brilliant and not so. Mayo in particular had the most amazing ideas but we all felt that it was a game to him, a way to push up the price of the company before trying to dispose of it. George Simpson was different, he was a builder of companies and one of the nicest people you would ever meet. I remember just after he'd been made a Lord and so of course I asked him, so what do we call you now, George he said.......the biggest mistake was after selling Marconi Electronic Systems to BAES for just under £8Bn, monies were amongst other things returned to shareholders and then when we bought the American companies we paid cash. But Mayo had an ego the size of a Planet.....