staying in the EU hasn't exactly helped the British Motor Industry. Ford Transit production moved from Southampton to Turkey after the EU Euro 190 million to Ford to build the Turkish plant.
Jaguar and Peugeot moved production to Solvakia due to state aid much of which comes from EU Development grants

Who's involved in building the new JLR plant in Slovakia though? British firms.

If we had the skilled labour and lower costs, we could compete.

Leaving the EU won't make that change.

We do now have lower costs. The UK (outside of London) is remarkably cheap these days.

Skilled and willingness to work is the issue.

Average Net Salary in Slovakia is Euro 738 per month. Net Salary on the UK Legal minimum wage based on 40 hours a week is about 1200 Euros

Difficult to compete in costs with Eastern European countries. Also difficult to compete with skilled labour when EU development grants are funding training in those countries

in 2013 Slovakia received more that 1 Billion Euros more that it contributed to the EU

Minimum wage vs Slovakia surely is higher?

Willingness to work isn't a problem in the UK? Surely? We've got millions of folk who aren't employed who are just desperate to graft for a living...right?

No?

Oh. Best blame some immigrants then.

Pretty the UK doesn't have any shortage of people willing to take jobs in industries like car manufacture.

So if you're JLR, owned by a non-British, publically listed organisation you would build your plant in the UK and spend more money operating it than you had to, just....because....well....it's nicer? Or the brand is 'British'?

Out of interest is there a direct link between EU grants to a nation then being used for something like this? I suppose the positive if so is that it keeps the manufacturing in the EU rather than losing it elsewhere in the world.

It cannot be direct as it would break the state aid rules. But there are many ways the state can help without the rules.

Example... you can build a plant in some cheap ass part of town. You wouldn't naturally want to build there as there is no associated infrastructure... No problem, the government will build all that for you... trains, ports, roads, power upgrades.

In effect the subsidy is there as you got the land cheap, and cheap labour - but it's not direct aid and it would be classified as development. You might even get some cheap power.

UK's infrastructure is creaking badly - look at the M1, very slow, narrow road with roadworks on substantial portions of it for over 10 years. Airports are at capacity, little spare capacity in the power grid. It's actually a bit of a worry. But we do have a lot of Costas These are concerns.

Assumed as much.

The M1? Who cares, it only goes up North.
I worry less about the roads but more about the power in the UK. I honestly don't see much in way of genuine solutions other than things like Hinkley.

Even Egypt has more installed spare capacity (as a percentage) than us (although no gas to put in the plants!). Ideally you want around 20% spare on the grid, although this rarely happens (Japan must have had more when they were quickly able to sustain power when they closed off the nukes).

OK, so what's to blame? Lack of investment? Desire? Politically unpopular to build plants? Surely not a lack of choice of different kinds of power?

In a word: democracy

Democracy is and always has been a bitter pill. It requires informed participation by the electorate and honesty amongst the elected. Not an easy thing to accomplish..

I sometimes wonder if democracy will evolve into something different in the future. Have you ever noticed that in no sci-fi movies do they have democracy in its current form? What would be a big enough disaster created by democracy to force a paradigm shift? Is it Trump?

Typical left wing sentiment. Don't like the outcome? Claim democracy is broken.

It would have to be a radical change in the socio-economic frameworks for an alternative to democracy to come along for the western/developed nations. And we have not seen it happen. And no, it isn't Donald Trump.

I've not been called left wing before - that's new.

I wasn't talking about brexit actually, but you're obviously stuck on that still and will be until the true short term results of the vote become clear. Yes I would have voted remain (if I could have obviously), but I respect the voice of the people (regardless of how misled they were) and now the country needs to move on. Long term brexit is probably just as good an option as staying in the EU. It's the 10-20 years in between I'm worried about..

Democracy (the proper kind) relies on people being intelligent, informed and to have an opinion enabling them to vote on everything. Nobody has this pure form although Switzerland comes closest due to the number of referendums they have. The more popular type of democracy relies on the people voting on political platforms and then you have elected officials who are supposed make decisions on matters accordingly.

This is all well and good, but it is a system which is susceptible to manipulation by external forces and not least corruption. Then once in a blue moon the politicians are like 'oh shit this is an unpopular decision let's allow the electorate to decide (read:take the blame) on this' and obviously this is completely ridiculous (I'm not talking about brexit remember) as the majority of the electorate know jackshit about, well, anything.

You say Trump isn't the trigger, but if he gets elected and in a fit of childish rage sends a nuke at some country who 'insults' him that may well be the end of democracy as it stands in the US.