We can't be that bad, chaps!
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DENIS HOWELL, former Minister of Sport. Disaster, Flood and Drought, is an appropriate co-sponsor of an all-party lobby to press the case of the British vehicle components industry. Its campaign to safeguard the jobs of British workers against the depredations of beastly foreigners coincides with one by Volvo to tell the public that if it were not for the company's incursion into the British market, some 300 British component manufacturers would be more than £100m worse off this year. At least one — Automotive Products — has been trading with Volvo for 50 years.
Volvo's position is, of course. exceptional. Apart from buying vast quantities of British materials, the company has invested more than £30m in its Irvine factory, where a third of all Volvo goods vehicles and all Volvo double-deck buses sold in the UK are built.
Vehicles from Irvine are also earning valuable export orders for Britian, even from Scandinavia. In fact, Volvo has created work for thousands of people in this country.
The use of many British components in Volvo vehicles, which have a reputation for quality, suggests that the products of this self-denigrating country cannot be as bad as it would have people believe. Britain has not yet produced a test-tube goldfish but there are other more useful things that it can do as well as anyone.