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Missing the (Air)bus

April 11th, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Life · No Comments · Life

The more serious papers, and especially their business pages are following the story of BAE Systems wanting to sell their stake in Airbus, but I don’t think it is really interesting the general public – apart from those whose livelihood depends on it of course.

I think this is a shame, and not just because of the risk to all those jobs in Wales and elsewhere. By the way, forget about all the assurances given by Airbus/EADS. They would not be closing anything down in the short term, but you can bet any expansion would be in France and Germany. When the whole thing was set up the manufacturing was spread around for political rather than manufacturing or commercial reasons, in the same way that the European Parliament has to keep moving house to keep different member states happy.

Apart from all that, I just think it is very short-sighted of BAE Systems. They obviously want the cash from selling their stake in Airbus to be able to fund expansion into the US. I really think that our our future as a country depends on aligning ourselves with Europe and not the US.

With the Airbus A380 we finally have a product with the potential to compete with Boeing and for Europe to compete with America and I like the idea of the British being part of this new industrial power and not baling out just when it might come out on top.

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