We're not only welcoming electricians from Germany, we're positively reliant on them

This week there have plenty of bemused commentaries on the subject of UK industry having to import people with technical skills from continental Europe and beyond, in much the same way as the medical profession has been required to do so for many years. Headed by a number of major construction projects, there are increasing UK demands for technicians and engineers, which have coincided with the steady drop in the number of suitably qualified young people being produced by our own education system and employers.

Retired bankers in Surrey will be spluttering over their morning tea and Daily Telegraph to read that we're not only welcoming electricians from Germany or railway engineers from India, we're positively reliant on them. Unfortunately it was their greed-is-good culture of the eighties and nineties which created the problem, giving no encouragement to employers who wished to train apprentices. I find it amusing that the people who complain loudest about government interference with the way companies work are usually the people with the political mindset which also objects to us being reliant on other countries' talents. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. German companies are required to train apprentices, which is why we have to pay to bring those skilled people here. Meanwhile, our young generation queues up for an audition on the X-Factor.

Tibet: more ambitious than the moon?

Right, firstly, the "NASA going back to the moon" story. Let's skirt around the politics and assume it really is going to happen. Does anyone else feel, like me, slightly disappointed that more than forty years on, the best idea out there is a bigger better version of what was done before: "Apollo 2.0", as it were?

The real advances in space engineering since Apollo have been in satellite launching, reducing the cost of getting small payloads into orbit. By building the whole thing on the ground, NASA will need the biggest launcher ever, which is a nice bit of flag-waving, but doesn't take advantage of enough of the developments which have taken place since Apollo. Why not build it in orbit, and use what we've learned in the meantime?

Back on earth, it's worth reading about an incredible civil engineering achievement which is currently under way: the railway from China to Tibet. A wonderful piece of journalism rightly given six pages in The Guardian newspaper this week (see link below) quotes the travel write Paul Theroux, who once wrote that the Kunlun mountain range is a guarantee that a railway will never get to Lhasa: "That is probably a good thing. I thought I liked railways until I saw Tibet, and then I realised that I liked wilderness much more."

But next month, three years ahead of schedule, Chinese engineers will complete that line to Lhasa. Commercial services are scheduled to begin within two years. The political and environmental implications are enormous, and what this project says about Chinese engineering is equally fascinating. You'll need an undisturbed coffee break for this one.

Our little email newsletter for engineers

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The Japanese are testing their "Scaled Experimental Supersonic Transport" next month

I've written before about the embarrassment of having to explain to my four-year-old that we used to be able to fly from London to New York fast enough to "arrive before we left", but that his Dad's generation mucked it all up and you can't do that any more. Men landed on the moon before we even had colour TV to watch it on, but, er, we can't do that any more either. Somewhere along the way we decided that art needed no justification other than progressing the achievement of the human species, but science ...well, that had to pay for itself, preferably by next Tuesday.
So I'm delighted that my son may be able to fly supersonic after all when he goes off on his university gap year in 2019 (we'll conveniently forget the fact that neither he nor his Dad will be able to afford it). The Japanese are testing their "Scaled Experimental Supersonic Transport" next month over the Australian outback, the first step towards building a new passenger aircraft which would make even Concorde look pedestrian. The engine has already been tested to Mach 5.5, and the unmanned plane they're testing will be launched by booster rocket and flown at Mach 2.2 before parachuting back to earth. I'm not holding my breath that this'll eventually lead to a commercial product, but we must all surely wish the Japanese team well. You never know, perhaps my son's current career plan, which (naturally) is "to be an astronaut and go to the moon" may be back on the agenda one day too

At least most of your suppliers have probably got rid of the "skip intro movies" from their websites

Looking back over several years' worth of these editor's columns is, as you'd imagine, quite entertaining. But not in a "wasn't technology quaint?" way. No, more frustratingly, it's completely the opposite: most of the things which I was appealing for five years ago on behalf of customers still haven't been done today.
Sure, at least most of your suppliers have probably got rid of the "skip intro movies" from their websites. But other than that, most manufacturers' internet activity probably consists of a website which is a company brochure/catalogue and, er, that's it.
Where's the stuff which would be really helpful to have on a website, like manuals, eDrawings, interactive selection applications, certificates, and other stuff you don't want to have to ring up the company to find out if it exists? Unbelievably in 2006, how few of your suppliers have an email technical bulletin with which they keep you up-to-date? How many have an RSS feed for technical updates which you can plug into? This is all simple stuff, the absence of which might have been explainable five years ago, but not now.
In almost every case, they aren't serving their customers properly online (or taking advantage of the wider market available) because somebody senior just has no idea what's going on out there. At these companies, online customer support, not to mention online sales and marketing, is being treated as just another item which has to be squeezed into the marketing budget somewhere, like it's an extra brochure to be printed. In 2005, this is nothing short of astonishing.
What's happened is the equivalent of a huge new retail park having been built out of town. Every shopper goes there now, and not just the local ones - people are travelling vast distances to visit it. It's heaving with people, all the time. Not only is shopping at this new retail park easier than back in the village, but the retailers there have the facilities to serve their customers better, with more stock on display, and decent in-store advice and facilities. No wonder 90% of shoppers only go to this one vast site now. In their new stores, the smaller retailers look much more professional, and the bigger retailers come across as impressively as their customers expect.
Back in the villages, the bored shop staff tell the shop owners that it might be a good idea to stop imagining the customers are going to come back, and to stop wasting resources on all sorts of sales initiatives which haven't worked for years. Perhaps they should spend these savings on a proper unit at the retail park. "Nonsense", says the shop owner, "that's not the way it happened in my day. Anyway, we're at the retail park. I paid the chap round the corner to make a poster to put up there, telling shoppers that we're still here! Tell you what, let's pay some kids to go and put a few leaflets through people's doors."
But nobody was at home.