So, Rovers gone bust then!

I think simply condemning the people for not buying British all the time isn't really a good policy myself. As Impjimbo says these days everything's foreign, you don't see all that many British products.

The world's a different place now than it was in the 60s and 70s. Then foreign cars were a lot more unusual, and there were still plenty of people who ridiculed and feared foreign cars and products. Also in the 60s there were many more British models to choose from, from a huge number of manufacturers, and less foreign models to choose from as a number of manufacturers, eg a number of the now popular Japanese brands, did import here, but the cars weren't hugely popular, while many of the good value South-East Asian brands there are now (Daewoo, now a branch of Chevy but still producing in the same factory) and Hyundai simply didn't exist back then.

The result of there being less British cars to choose from, and more foreign cars to choose from, is that naturally a higher proportion of the cars we buy aren't from Britain, and a lower proportion are. This isn't necessarily a sign that we're all malicious anti-patriots who are sabotaging British industry, it's just that whearas years ago someone looking for a new car might have considered a large number of British models and possibly a few foreign ones, nowadays foreign cars are more numerous, so logically someone looking for a new car is more often going to look at a foreign car than a locally made one.

Now, considering that Rovers were inarguably behind their rivals in a number of areas, (eg updating their model ranges, the models themselves, I mean how exactly is the Citirover or the Streetwise to supposed to be a competitive car in it's respective marketplace) this further increases the chance that someone will pick a foreign car as opposed to a British model. Now, I have no doubt that in some ways MG Rovers were a match for the competition. But the only way they were going to make everyone in Britain buy one of their cars is if all their cars were truly fantastic, and eclipsed all rivals in all areas. This was certainly not the case.

I believe that blind patriotism is a dangerous thing. It helped Hitler to get millions more people to support him than would otherwise be the case; it has helped George W Bush to convince the American people that they alone were the glorious defenders of democracy in a world of evil terrorists and as such must support all his ridiculous greedy wars over oil and personal grudges; it almost caused World War Three during the Cold War several times by clouding the judgement of powerful people on both sides of the Iron Curtain; so surely no good can come of the British people being so filled with blind "We're Number 1! We're Number 1!" inducing patriotism that everyone believes everything made outside the UK is the work of the devil and inferior at that, and that we all have to buy things that are British simply because they're British so they must be good. That sort of delusion would result in us being ripped off royally I reckon, because big companies, while it would be nice that they weren't going belly up, would realise that they could get away with selling us all sorts of inferior cack, simply because we'd buy it over a superior foreign product anyday. Besides that a belief that everything we do is superior to everything foreigners do is nothing but ignorant and disgusting fascism, so I certainly don't believe that we should all be convincing ourselves that we're better than the competition simply by virtue of nationality. If the people chose not to buy Rovers, that was their choice. It is a great tragedy that a lot of jobs have been lost at Longbridge, but I blame greedy management who've bolted with all the cash, bad management decisions that have been going on for decades past, and Rovers products just not being attractive to the buyers, regardless of how good they were, (the Imp was very poorly marketed and had a bad reputation, as such it wasn't attractive to the buyers, it was a brilliant car, but it was still a brilliant car that wasn't popular with consumers).

I don't blame freedom of choice.