What you're pointing out then Thom,is that our government want us to bail out inflated companies that have burnt-out because they were just plain greedy,and now the public has to pay for it? Yet again..

Does the idiot in number ten think that will work? Its a viscous circle,its not sustainable (like most of their ill-conceived ideas),the manufacturers are not going to dig themselves out of it with this.

We need,once again,a government who have the balls to protect their public and tell these companies where to go,and let them suffer for their own mis-management.

This is quite a radical free market view, so in this vein would you support the collapse of the banks? would you support the underprovision of health care? the whole point is that by supporting what little is left of what was once a internationally renowned manufacturing sector, the government is helping to support the economy. The point is, its a provision in supporting the industry to help get it on its feet. With the pound so week supporting manufacturing is just the right thing to do! What happens when all these people loose their jobs? Mass unemployment? Now if if we are talking about unsustainability i am sure that takes the biscuit! The reason the a car industry has taken the public eye is because we perform on a world stage, we produce foreign cars, ship to foreign economies, therefore if we start to crumble then this can be perceived as having global repercussions in the sense of direct knocks to global perception about the strength (and therefore investablilty) of the UK.

why should the banks get bailed out? if the banks put money aside (like average joe does for those 'rainy days') they wouldnt end up shit creak would they?! There is no point in investing money into a failing business, unless you stand a good chance of turning it around, and the british car industry isnt one of them. Yes, short term it will cause a mass of un-employment, but this wouldnt be the first time, and wont be the last (remember the coal mines closing down?) Was it the end of the world? probably not, and did the majority find jobs again, yes.

As for the cost of un-employment, its utterly insignificant when you consider the UK give the EU 40 million pounds a day!

the biggest problem with the uk is we rely on other countries for far too much, food, cars, fuel, all could be sourced in the UK, but why bother when its cheaper to get it from abroad! The flip side of this though is that we don't support our own economy! As soon as you stop doing that, things start going wrong

In the 1970's the then Labour Government pumped around £3.5m into the ailing British Leyland

car company.That is almost £3b in today's money and now they are pumping more money

into an industry that since the early 80's has been dying seems a total waste of time to me.

Mrs Thatcher,in her wisdom,shut down Ravenscraig,the only profit making plant in British Steel

at the time,simply because we were "jocks" who always voted Labour.So why should this

current Government bale out the Motor Industry now...? Everyone said when Mrs Thatcher started

shutting down the mines,the steel industry and the shipyards that we would never recover and that

is so very true....Look at this country now...what are we good at now? Fighting...yes,but only if our

armed forces have the proper equipment to do the job in hand and they don't even get that...

When Hitler was about to invade Britain in the 1940's he called us "a nation of shopkeepers"....

not now though...we are a nation of shop workers with ASDA,TESCO,B&Q and the others employing

almost 1/4 of the British population.In 1999 Gordon brown sold half of the UK's gold reserve

while the price of gold was at an all time LOW....and he was the fooking Chancellor at the time.

and we wonder why things are going tits up now....

No-one voted in an election for this muppet,so why should he be the Prime Minister of the UK...?

We are one of the most heavily taxed 5 countries in the WORLD.....That speaks volumes for me!

FFS you can't even die and leave your house to someone without "Inheritance Tax" being added.....

RANT OVER....

This issue and the bail outs happening in this country and Canada where I've just returned from pisses me off

big time. So much so i can't even articulate an intelligent response.

The car companies, GM being the main one, have been incredibly greedy, the workers are paid too much, the execs get too many bonuses and now it's all come crashing down on them. I do feel for workers in the car industry and if all the thousands of people employed in the business are made redundant thats going to be costly as well...but why should just banks and the car industry be the ones to be bailed out? What about everybody else?

Mean while (deep in to the recession) the tax payer is also paying for MP's gardening expenses, second homes and 5th jaguar. Corrupt bastards.

Slightly off topic and ill propbably get slated but....

Well LDV have gone!!!! so that means no more shit vans & minibuses.

Its just a shame about their workforce being made redundant.

And before anyone says "why are the shit", i drove one for 4 months for my then work, even with the radio at full blast you couldnt hear it over the engine, and it rattled, squeaked and made every other annoying noise possible, and motorways were just scary. worse of all it was only 2 week old when i started driving it.

Have to say, its sad to see them go, another local company gone, but our school's got an L reg LDV Pilot minibus and its awful, NA diesel engine, noisy as hell, no power whatsoever. As soon as you hit a slight hill it was down to second. They bought a new LDV recently though and that seems 1000 times better. Not saying the company deserves what its got, I was just adding to what had been said, it's sad to see another midlands engineering/manurfacturing company die.

On another note, does anyone read practical performance magazine?

This month's issue's got another rant about this scheme near the front, and there's a picture of an r reg 6n and a caption that reads something like " disgusting old banger, needs to be scrapped" Sums it up really.

Over 60,000 cars have been already been scrapped in since the scheme was announced in April.. bad times :(

all bollocks if u ask me. be sad to see so many classic and rare cars become a cube.

Clarkson for Pm