What can you buy that's made in Britain

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Bjorn Toulouse

Bjorn Toulouse

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Given what's happening on the 31st, I tried to start buying British.
I bought a an Oxford Parka £180! ......made in Bangladesh
A Cello TV £130 (assembled in uk!) parts from China
A Jumper £190

Gave up on a Jeans (Bought a pare designed AND made in Italy)
Boots designed and made in Italy

What can you actually buy that's made here? (food and drink exempt)
 
It will stay on topic. ;)

Don't forget to use the report button if people don't stick to the question in the OP.
 
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Our burglar alarm was made by a company who manufacture in Manchester. They still get some of their components and moulded plastics from abroad though (we had the engineer out yesterday and he was bemoaning the impact COVID has had on getting alarms and spare parts in).
 
Modern manufacturing combined with JIT transport etc unfortunately precludes many products being made in a place as small as the UK, especially considering we have switched to a service industry based economy over the last number of decades. We also have a very long history of importing things we want to use, it's a very British trait to use things from far off lands ( see tea, spices, wheat, etc etc)

I imagine there must be a bunch of high end, smaller manufacturers though that are made exclusively in the UK, perhaps some tailors and shoe makers? I'm just a jeans and t-shirt man though so I have no idea on that front . When I was into hi-fi music equipment there were a lot of good small high end UK brands like Linn about, although of course the vast majority of the actual components will be made elsewhere.
 
Hanglow said:
Modern manufacturing combined with JIT transport etc unfortunately precludes many products being made in a place as small as the UK
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It comes down to money, I think. Look at the wages paid in various places globally. Chap mentioned a parka jacket from Bangladesh. The average monthly wage there is about £120. Here in the UK, it's about £2,600 (over a 20x differential, source: worlddata.info).

Edit: Here you are, since I've had a quick look:

https://www.cabourn.com/products/everest-parka-shop-special-black
Only £2,500, despite the wage differential. Bargain! athumb..
 
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ATMs are made up here in Dundee, or at least they used to be (I’m not sure whether they are concentrating on the software side from their U.K. offices these days).
 
A lot of quaternary services will be British but there are caveats to that too. For example there are plenty of decent marketing agencies but they'll use Amazon AWS or Google Cloud Platform to store data and some services which can't be automated yet get outsourced to other countries.

There are some good British musicians so buying their music would be "buying British", however again if it's streamed there's the caveat that you may not know where the server is based and the company you stream them through may not be British. If you buy the CD or vinyl you may wanna check they were produced in the UK too. You could go on Bandcamp and buy the MP3 directly to listen on your PC or phone, I think the artist gets 90% of the sale (or at least a way better deal than streaming on Spotify), but Bandcamp isn't British.
 
Bjorn Toulouse said:
What can you actually buy that's made here? (food and drink exempt)
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There seem to be various places advising on such things. Try for example:

https://makeitbritish.co.uk/made-in-britain/
"Make it British supports a community of UK-made brands. Founded by Kate Hills in 2011, Make it British promotes amazing British-made brands and helps businesses get their products manufactured in the UK (8<).
 
I purposely purchased
AP Lockheed clutch slave and master cylinders for my old landrover although not sure they are still a UK owned company.

More expensive but excellent quality, I'm prepared to pay more but the quality has to be good.
I will however only buy SKF bearings for instance but then I have got a bit of Swedish :D


I looked at buying a Wileyfox phone a few years back as its
"A British company"
Unfortunately they are manufactured in China so I didn't bother.
 
Your food shopping.
Your bank account.
Beer.
Whisky.
A Henry vacuum cleaner
A formula 1 car
An AV mixing desk.
A Raspberry Pi.
A burglar alarm.
An electronic motor drive.
A gps tracker for your girlfriends car
a 3d printer controller
A hologram projector
An automatic barrier for your driveway.
A drain inspection camera
A top end hifi system
A communcations satellite
A milking machine
A gps golf tracker
An industrial xray machine
An explosives sniffer

I have no need for anything else in my life.
I have removed the exempted products
 
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