On 14/04/2021 21:40, fred wrote:
On Wednesday, April 14, 2021 at 1:34:57 PM UTC+1, Steve Walker wrote:
On 14/04/2021 10:11, Clive Page wrote:
This article on the BBC business news
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56741000
is an astonishing bit of PR for the Dyson organistation, and I've sent
in a complaint to the BBC as follows:
This article is nothing more than a public relations piece for Dyson and
has no place on the BBC website. There was no questioning of his
astounding claims which means this is not a serious piece of
journalism. You need to post a retraction.
For example: "we can employ people from all around the world". EU
membership had no effect on the UK's ability to employ people from all
around the world, only from the EU who could in the past come here
freely. The new points-based system may be allowing him to hire
highly-paid engineers but that could have been brought in while we were
an EU member.
He also claimed 'Dyson's British suppliers "didn't want to expand with
us".' - that is an extraordinary claim which should have been questioned.
Many of us know why Dyson is against the EU: it is because it brought in
efficiency standards for vacuum cleaners which meant that his models
with 1500 Watt motors had to be phased out. Other manufacturers with
more efficient models had no problems. Dyson chose to make these
inefficient models in the far east from where they could be sold
anywhere in the world (now including the UK) except in the EU.
On the vaccine: he claimed "We weren't part of the European development
of the vaccine. We had to develop our own... a world record-beating
vaccine produced in record time, and that's because we produced it."
In fact there was nothing in EU rules that prevented us from doing that
and our development started while we were still subject to EU rules in
the transition period. The success of our vaccine effort is absolutely
nothing to do with Brexit.
That is the only thing that you've said that I might disagree with. I
think that if we had not been leaving the EU, we would have been
persuaded (like Germany [and the Netherlands IIRC] were), to abandon our
own efforts to procure vaccine supplies and to rely on the EU
procurement effort.
Not so. There would have been nothing stopping the UK paddling its own canoe within the EEC
There was nothing to stop Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy
either, until pressure was applied and they fell into line. Indeed it is
reported that the German Health minister was forced to apologised for
the four-countries' attempts in a €śhumiliating tone,€ť so that Ursula von
der Leyen and Angela Merkel could make the €śgrand gesture€ť of letting
the EU take charge.