I'm not allowed to give you details until some exhibition in a few weeks' time

I can't remember the last time we had quite so many new products and technology articles arrive in seven days, but I suspect that it's something to do with the Hanover Fair last week. Every major manufacturer must be aware by now that as soon as it announces a product, a vast, silent audience out there reads about it almost instantly via the internet. Yet still many of them delay perfectly good new introductions for months, so they can announce them at a trade fair all in one go. How many times have you heard an irritated sales rep apologise: "we have a product to do that, but I'm not allowed to give you details until some exhibition in a few weeks' time"? All part of the Sales Prevention Policy, I'm sure.
The reason, as with so many such things, is historical, although it'd be hysterical if it wasn't so annoying. Twenty or thirty years ago, few manufacturers mailed us all directly, and obviously there was no internet. The only way they could tell the world about their great new product was at a trade fair or through magazines and newspapers. Attracting the attention of the press was a challenge, naturally. However, there'd be plenty of reporters at the big trade fairs, so why not make your big announcement there and kill two birds with one stone? There was a problem though: all your competitors would be doing the same. So you needed to make your announcement bigger and better than the rest, and for the manufacturers which could do it, that seemed to require announcing more new products than anyone else.
At one Hanover Fair I remember a sensor manufacturer thrusting 18 brochures into my hand, each on a different new product. I just felt sorry for the poor guys who'd spent ages designing product number 18 in the pile. I also wondered how many of those products had spent 51 weeks on the shelf waiting to be introduced at the next trade fair. What a waste.
In 2005, the world is a different place, but this still goes on. You know why; because "that's the way we've always done things". Hanover Fair is huge, and a fantastic event, but how many of an individual manufacturer's potential customers actually go? 10%? 1%? It just seems more, because the people are physically there. It would have been easy to have got the information out to the other 90% or 99% through other channels weeks before, but hey, we're only customers. We can all wait. There are managing directors and the competition to impress.
Smart manufacturers no longer let these events dictate when and how they present themselves to their customers. But too many manufacturers still aren't smart.

Is it really better in terms of job security to be "domestically owned", whatever that means?

There's an obsession with "ownership" of businesses in this country which irritates me a lot. When a business "falls into foreign hands" it's perceived as some sort of national setback. It is not. When jobs get transferred overseas, it might be, but what would you rather see? A Japanese company opening up a plant here, or a British one opening a plant overseas? I'm not even sure what we mean by British or Japanese in this case anyway, but give me the employment opportunities in the UK every time.
The families of MG Rover staff were yesterday appealing to the government to somehow step in and save the company. I desperately hope it is saved; we surely all do. More than 10,000 jobs at the company and its suppliers are in the balance. But let's not pretend, as some people are doing, that MG Rover is the British volume car industry. I know our readers at the UK sites belonging to BMW, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan, Peugeot, Vauxhall and Toyota might think differently. They, along with a few famous niche manufacturers, represent the "other" 93% of British car production. No other European country has nine (or even eight) volume carmakers.
Businesses operate where it makes sense for them to do so, without sentiment. Is it really better in terms of job security to be "domestically owned", whatever that means? Governments should be supporting and investing in manufacturing jobs in their country, whoever owns the business. The nationality of the shareholders and board members shouldn't cloud the issue.

The election will not be won or lost on issues relating to industry

So here in the UK the General Election has finally been announced, and (Royal Weddings apart) we're all set for four weeks of politics dominating the news. Overseas readers will find it amazing that in this country, which usually tends to have 'snap' general elections called at a month's notice, most of the public still finds the whole process a bit tedious! I think a dose of the six-month (or longer) run-ups to an election commonly found elsewhere in the world would prove an interesting experience for most British voters.
The election will not be won or lost on issues relating to industry. The BBC's website offers a nice comparison of the parties' policies, but among the many subject areas you can compare, "manufacturing" is not one of them. However, despite the loss of a large number of manufacturing jobs under the present government, a poll at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers' website asking "Which party do you think provides the best policies to protect and develop engineering in the UK?" shows a substantial lead for Mr Blair's party. This is a sign, perhaps, of the electorate's wider acceptance that Labour can (and has) run the economy successfully.