The problem with posting a poll on a Tuesday about what readers would like to see in the Budget is that you tend to get very few votes after the Chancellor’s speech on the Wednesday. So, with the fallout over George Osborne’s measures still resolving itself, we had a relatively low response count of 324 to last week’s poll. Of these, the largest group, with 28 per cent of responses, wanted to see better support for apprenticeships and training. Only slightly fewer, 27 per cent, opted for measures supporting low-carbon energy: they may have been pleased by Osborne’s announcements concerning small modular nuclear reactors. Next came those backing investment in transport infrastructure, on 17 per cent; these respondents will be interested in an upcoming interview with the chief engineer of the Crossrail 2 project, which as expected was confirmed. The 13 per cent of respondents who wanted the Chancellor to protect the steel industry by changing the way rates are charged on plant would have been disappointed. Interestingly, only 4 per cent of respondents wanted to see the climate change levy increased, which did actually happen. As we indicated in the article accompanying last week’s poll, this increase was to offset the scrapping of the carbon reduction commitment. This does lead us to wonder what the response would have been if the option given in the poll referred to the commitment scrapping rather than the compensatory levy rise.
As ever, we’d like to continue to hear your opinions on this topic.
The chancellor must reduce taxation on North Sea oil
Also modular nuclear technology is relatively cheap and very useful
All the listed suggestions are good, but we must support manufacturing across the board or I fear we will have no future in engineering.
Bring engineering back to the UK, come out of the EU to remove their total control over our economy including the import/export tariffs they impose, then develop engineering for today and the future.
He has already backed Brighton Main Line 2 (BML2). Let’s see it funded.
Fundamental UK need is for investment in long-term infrastructure.
I’m afraid that the poll questions are totally loaded in support of the CCA / global-warming madness that have already wrecked our power and steel industries and are well along the way of killing-off our petro-chem industry. Is The Engineer on a self-destruct but planet saving route?
The last 40 years have seen minimal investment in power, railways, roads etc. The only sectors that have gained seem to be financial and construction of property: almost understandable (easy profits) under a Tory Government, but we have also had Labour miss-rule so where next?
The poll question is to do with the Budget, which has nothing to do with the climate. The poll responses, as clearly indicated, are all taken from comments sent in to us by various bodies with interest in the manufacturing and engineering sector. The Engineer made no attempt to load them in any direction.
Two of the questions were phrased such that the AGW hypothesis was contained in them (second and sixth), we do need energy system investment, but it needs to be economical and long-term, e.g. nuclear.
I quite agree with you
we hear this said time and time again – but ” no one listens” – seems to be not in keeping with the Gravy Train Ethos
EU law prevents us from supporting the steel industry. This is why RedCar steel plant couldn’t be saved.
EU law is used where it suits, e.g. Austria querying our nuclear plant subsidies. The other EU countries seem to use subsidies for all sorts of technology especially to win export orders…. to the UK, almost all of our “Unreliables” (wind, solar, waste burning and biomass boilers) have come from the EU, virtually none from the UK. I think that I may be heading for the Brexit, but am still not there.