Since the last takeover, the new management has kept the workers in jobs. No investment in new product, so the product lines are even further out of date than before. Any new arrivals have been either facelifts or new models already under development which have been finished, albeit with reduced development budget.

The Chinese want a takeover to gain some European R&D experience and the Rover name still carries some cachet overseas. As with all deals with the Chinese, though, they will expect a "sweetener" and that is what neither the management nor the government are prepared to pay.

My suspicion is that Tony Bliar will save the day some time soon with a lot of heroics and spin and it will be several years before we find out how much of our money went into saving those jobs in the short term.

I would spend the same sum investing in subsidies and retraining for the thousands of workers at Longbridge and the supply chain and let the dying duck go. Mis-use of pension funds should be made an offence - if the pension fund had not been used as the R&D budget, a lot of the workforce would happily take early retirement.

There is no future for bulk manufacturing in a country where the hourly rate of pay exceeds the weekly wage in South East Asia.