WTF! :crazy:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5519737.ece
Well, I don’t think this is a bad thing? If it was the motorcycle industry (and we’re brothers to the car industry remember) was in similar dire straights and people couldn’t get finance for their new bikes, the industry could collapse and the only people to lose out would be us as bikers as it would set back manufacturers decades.
I’m theorising here, but I would expect this to mean we might not get any new bikes, dealerships would shut down, parts would become hard to source and eventually you just wouldn’t be able to operate your bikes as you know it today.
If the car industry goes down the pan, it’s a fair assumption to expect the motorcycle industry would suffer as well, and we don’t want that, do we?
Trouble is that Labour have historically thought that throwing money at a problem solves the problem . . . they’ve done it time and time again over the past 50 years. This is another example . . . who in their right mind is going to buy a new car right now on finance if they think they may be unemployed in six months time. Just making loans available isn’t going to help anybody. They need to address the underlying issues not the symptoms, but again symptom management is a Labour speciality, ignore the hard facts causing a problem and just put some cash into the symptoms.
I wonder what they’ll do when the various other industries which employ significant numbers of people complain about falling sales, inability to obtain credit etc. I guess Brown will give them more tax payers money . . . ready for us to have to pay all this money back in years to come. There’s nothing for nothing.
So what is the answr to the credit crunch Steve?
Oh, but there is! The Tories have spent the last couple of months putting out one policy statement after another which basically goes along the lines of: “We’re going to put extra money into this/cut people’s taxes/insulate everyone’s homes/etc., and we don’t need any extra cash to do this because we’ve worked out a whizzy way to pretend that it will be paid for by future unquantifiable savings”
The real problem is very simple… You can look at it in every way you want but cars are on of the only manufactured products that has increase in price (in relative money) over the last 2 decades.
However, it is also one of the manufactured product that has the least progress in term of technology.
How long do we expect people to pay the stupid price that have been impose by manufacture network? Clearly not very long as cheap and easy finance is no longer available, people are waking up.
Cars are now going for years and years without major problems (OK may be not the one build in UK ;)) so why are we expecting people to change car for a new as often… It just does not make sense.
If I knew that I’d not be sat here now 
What I do know is that putting all of us in ever deeper debt when debt is what caused the problem in the first place, isn’t going to help, especially if the debt is being used to finance things we don’t need.
I totally agree with D675 above - I thought the free-market was supposed to regulate itself? It appears that it has regulated itself - in that we all have all the cars/consumer items we need and we don’t need to buy any more for the time being - and yet the govt. are trying to perpetuate the credit bubble which generates mindless and unescessary consumerism and which got us into this mess in the first place.
If we spent 50% of the money we spend on motoring by investing in a nationwide/comprehensive transport network of buses and trains - or even a super modern groovy suspended monorail system linking small towns to larger towns to citys - it would improve the environment and peoples quality of life within the decade (less congestion, damage to the environment, less road accidents) instead as taxpayers we are perpetuating an illusory economic cycle which has run itself into the ground - which is madness.
Yep - the motorcycle industry would take a hit and sportsbike development would slow down - a bit. . . but then who needs a new gsxr with re-designed engine internals and styling every year - maybe every three years, but every single year? + plus with a better transport infrastrucutre and say 40% (at a conservative estimate) less cagers on the road motorcycling would be a more pleasant experience for the hardcore who choose to stick with bikes (and are not riding them because getting from A to B in a cage has become impossible due to gridlock).
There is also pleasure to be had from keeping an older machine on the road (like people used to do years ago) - you learn useful mechanical skills and really get to understand your machine - and it’s easy tracking down cheap spare parts from breakers via the net - which means you’re recycling - which is also placing less strain on the environment and resources. I’m not advocating a Mad Max type world where we’re all riding hybrid bikes built out of scavenged parts 
(although it might be a laugh ) - just gearing down a cog or two from the frenetic pace of the consumer economy that has ended up consuming us over the last 20 years.
We might have less money in our pockets - but perhaps we’ll work less hours and have more time to spend with our friends and family - which might lead to a more human society than the dehumanising ‘constant growth economy’ that dominates our lives at the moment.
Piaggio have just got €150 million of new investment in new technology. I am sure the other bike companies will do the same - the long-term survival of bike companies has always been based on mass produced cheap efficient machines for the far east and third world. Expensive toys have never been where the real money is in the bike industry.