Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

and how exactly do you know that I am the only one on here who understood it? Have you actually canvassed the forum members? Boy that was quick!
As for translation...I do charge a fee. Well we OAP's have to make a quid(or few) somewhere.

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

OK..what Tealeaf on about?.. apart from the last sentence?
1) This was/is a PFI style contract.

2) That involved not just design and build the trains, but also finance and maintain over a 30-year life cycle.

3) That meant the Frog-Kanuks had to have lot's of dosh up front to pay for the initial design-build phase.

4) Which means they have to borrow from the banks

5) But the banks won't lend 'em 'owt, because their balance sheet ain't worth a case of tinned dog turd.

6) Which means they were screwed from day 1 in the bidding process.

7) Which in turn means that if the Labour government had at the time had got their act togeather and put the tender documentation right, none of this nonsense would have arisen in the first place.

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

what is it you don't understand?
And don't you have the ability to google on your computer?
I'm sure you could work it out if you put your mind to it...but you want me to do it for you...well tough luck buster. Give your brain something to do.

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

No, that would be "Canucks":rolleyes: But Bombardier are headquartered in Montreal in la belle province. They make aircraft, all kinds of train stuff, great personal watercraft (the "Seadoo"), wonderful snowmobiles ("Skidoo"), etc. They have a research and testing facility just west of Kingston in Loyalist Township. And Quebecois are not French; they are Canadien.:alright: They are descendants of the French who came to Canada many moons ago.

By the way, the Royal 22e regiment du Canada were the only French speaking troops to do any fighting in Afghanistan.

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UK's last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

The first gulf war was nothing to do with oil you dumb cluck, it was about the invasion of a sovereign state, much in the way Germany invade Poland in 1939.

If it had have been about oil then Saddam would have been ousted during that campaign not 10 years later when George backed by his lap dog Blair, authorised the second gulf war, which if you care to remember was sanctioned on the back of a pack of lies about WMDs that didn't exist, and the notion that Iraq could launch a nuclear attack on Britain within 40 minutes, a load of lies dreamt up in Downing Street:(

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

I don't know who is worse....cmonstanley or Mancie. I just like to think of them as Dumb and Dumber.

It probably is the case that Bombardier, as a global entity, is worth billions; but it's UK(EU) subsidiary ain't worth much. Siemens is worth far more than Bombardier internationally and it's main EU (German) operation is worth far more than Bombardier (UK).

The problem with EU bid rules on public sector tendering is that cross-subsidy and financing from outside the EU is not allowed (it's a Franco-German plot to keep out the nasty yanks). Therefore Bombardier UK has to raise the initial finance themselves without resource to it's Canadian parent. That means the banks are going to charge them an awful lot of money, an interest cost built into it's bid submission, a bid which turned out to be far more expensive than that of self-financing Siemens.

It's all a load of bollocks, of course, but it's something we have to live with while we're in the so-called EU. The best thing we can do is to get out, but failing that we should play by the same rules as the scumbags across the channel, which means, for intstance we don't automatically advertise in the OJ (Official Journal of the EU) every time a major engineering project needs undertaking. Currently, a half of such adverts are from the UK....a totally disproportionate number. if we want a job done in the UK, then just give the work to a British company and stuff the rest of 'em.

Re: 1300 Bombardier (UKs last Railway stock producer) jobs being lost
 

The other way around it is to be so specific that only brit firms are eligible to tender for the contracts.......this what many French or German firms do to circumvent the rules........another way is to break the contract into many small parts so that it flies below the radar of the EU rules.
We are daft, we apply the rules to the letter...which is pretty much why this contract is going abroad...sad isn't it?

I really don't think Mancies believed that I knew what you were talking about.........but as I said, I don't always put in the window what I have in the shop....and I have more oil in my lamp than to translate just because he is to idle to either use his brain, or to google the answers.