Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one.
Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are:
1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource.
2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address.
But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence.
This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?
2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other countries to do the same.
The current situation, according to [1], is that there is a higher import tax on components than on assembled boards.
This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import duty.
To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products - we can just drop the import duty on electronic components.
Maybe a better way to tackle this would be to balance things up by imposing a weight based import duty that we shall call the enviromental TAX. This would be the way to address this and also balance out the whole import/export aspect, especialy if every country sat down and looked it from a impact perspective. But in a way that if you import a product in component and in part form that they both at least cost the same import TAX wise, that would be a start at least.
But at the very least the current situation is only accomodating with large plants like Sony's who are able to talk to goverments about TAX breaks and deals to actualy make a plant and the cost of import viable. This needs to be addressed as a whole and allow even medium sized companies to compete, so that even little people have some hope.
Sadly until enough people that people listern to speak up this situation will just stagnate on as it is. I'm full of hope this news item may eventualy put some momentum behind the needed changes and at the very least get them on the table in goverment so they start to look at the issues.
Hmmm, you raise a fair point in that, when you look at the import/export tax offset then its a whole new area in regards to importing compenents and manufacturing in the UK and then exporting. Not sure if import/export TAX works like VAT in that you can offset VAT you pay against what you charge, though I suspect paying import TAX and then exporting that item and expecting some kind of offset would make sence.
Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are:
1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made more aware of this local resource.
2) TAX on a made product compared to the bits to assemble said product. From the current standing it is more cost effective to make products outside the UK as apposed to buying in those parts seperately and in bulk and making the product localy TAX wise, this is again another area the UK goverment has to address.
But the reality of bring some types of manufacturing back localy, even if driven by some of the lesser reasons makes sence.
This all said I would love for a Pi with more ram and also love a couple of network ports, make a lovely firewall unit then without messing with USB network adaptors. I'd also like USB3. So with that in mind maybe there is scope for a model C and D, idealy a model you can upgrade a little bit more in those respective area's. But if I had to pick anything overall it would be a little bit more ram. But there is nothing stopping me making my own board and modifications (skills pending), like most out there probably thinking about. Open Hardware schematics on github and group effort - anybody aware of any plans or projects along those lines?