The end of MG Rover

I was once made redundant and it wasn't a good experience, so I can sympathise with the Rover Workforce. I've also been too close for comfort on a number of other occasions, and my future is far from certain. Still, the Rover workers are better off than many others that have had suffered a similar fate. At least the UK car manufacturing industry is doing well, and many will be able to find work at another car plant. The coal miners, steelworkers and ship builders weren't so lucky. Having said that though, its likely that for most of the older workers, today will the last day that they will ever work. And as I saw with my father, when he was "encouraged" to take early retirement, the shock of what has happened will never really go away.

Its easy to see why Rover failed. They got stuck in a vicious circle of not being big enough to develop new models and update the plant. This meant that their cars, whilst originally being as good as anyone else's (after all they were really BMW's), slowly but inevitably slipped behind the competition. But that's not the whole story. The real issue was the decades of under investment, management incompetence an union trouble that preceded BMW's involvement. BMW realised that Longbridge was too broke to fix, and got shot of it. But even then most pundits were saying that unless the Pheonix group found a new partner, Longbridge was still doomed. And so the inevitable has now passed. How cruel that its the sons that are having to pay for there father's failings.