British steel- I'm being abit thick here. Please explain.

@oldman farming is in a major crises flooded with cheap EU imports particularly in the wake of sanctions on Russia. The EU will not disclose which 6 countries are flouting the animal welfare laws in pork production but they still allow them to export cheap meat to the UK.

More importantly though, theres a plentiful supply of affordable housing, so I’m sure it’ll be fine

Doesn’t seem to be dissuading EU migrants though. SE housing prices refiect wages and employment opportunities.

jambalaya – Member

Northwind – the point is making is not a critical industry.

Sure, we can build everything we need out of money.

Doesn’t seem to be dissuading EU migrants though. SE housing prices refiect wages and employment opportunities.

Wheres everyone going to keep their lawnmowers now then?

the point is making is not a critical industry. Its a low level, bottom of the technical/manufacturing food chain business. The future is “value added” manufacturing and/or design and technical innovation

Rubbish it is a critical industry in that if you want to build ships, cars, industrial plant etc you need steel. TATA sell value added products, it isn’t all bottom of the food chain stuff.

Steel manufacturing has been in decline for decades,

In terms of people employed yes, in terms of quantity produced no so much.

Steel manufacturing has been in decline for decades

really ?

Dave has just been on the Radio saying that he’s ‘ruling nothing out’. As it was on the radio it was difficult to tell if he was stifling a yawn. Sounded like it

I’m saying that in reality he’s ruling everything out that might involve actually doing anything other than ‘leaving it to the market’. Despite the market being clearly rigged.

So as PT closes and the local businesses go down like dominoes, and all thats left on the high street is bookies and pound shops, they’ll build a Business Park on a piece of brownfield land. Having paid a London consultant £3 million to come up with this ‘solution’. It’ll be full of quickly thrown up industrial units which will sit empty, but given an emotive name that symbolises the regions history. There will be a sculpture depicting a steelworker. Another man will come in from London to the local Job Centre Plus, for a couple of weeks, to ask if they’ve thought about careers as care workers or Baristas?

PT will then be forgotten about, and abandoned to its fate, the government feeling that they’ve ‘done their bit’. The local drug dealers will rub there hands with glee at the prospect of the combination of quiet desperation and redundancy cheques. Now thats entrepreneurial capitalism at work!

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keep posting, keep deleting 😳

very stong feelings about this but with family directly involved best to keep quiet!

I think your contribution will probably be better informed than ours.

Tell us what you think ferrals

So as PT closes and the local businesses go down like dominoes, and all thats left on the high street is bookies and pound shops,

You forgot the chemists. Lots of chemists. Methadone doesn’t hand itself out you know.

We have 4 Lloyds Pharmacies within 500 yards of each other.

the point is making is not a critical industry. Its a low level, bottom of the technical/manufacturing food chain business.

Don’t be ridiculous. I’m all for having an interconnected world, and unlike many lefties, can see some of the benefits of globalisation (not to mention the problems). But at a strategic level, if a nation is to ensure it’s continuing existence, security, and standard of living, then there are some things it needs to be able to do by itself. Making steel is one of them. I’d argue it’s a much more important strategic necessity than having nuclear weapons, and could be ensured for a lot less than is currently spent on Trident.

I suppose next you’ll be telling us that we don’t need to generate electricity ourselves, or collect and treat water, or grow our own food?

binners – Member

I think your contribution will probably be better informed than ours.

Tell us what you think ferrals

not that involved to actually know anything, just work at site.

@daz Err, we already can’t grow enough food for ourselves.

Is the UK legally allowed to subsidise UK steel production?

Port Talbot and round to Swansea Bay is a jaw droppingly beautiful place, or rather if the assorted industrial plant wasn’t there it would be. As a post indstrial location it could be spectacular. A huge amount of vision would be necessary to transform it though, and I don’t think we have that vision.

Err, we already can’t grow enough food for ourselves.

I didn’t say we grew all of it, but we grow an awful lot. Are you suggesting that we don’t need to grow any food ourselves?

Are you suggesting that we don’t need to grow any food ourselves?

Not once the new Port Talbot Soylent Green manufacturing facility is up and running.

Are you sure it was Dave, Binns? After earlier post, I decided to catch the bit of Newsnight I missed last night. No Times journalist on the programme and missed the comments that you quoted. Hmmmm…..a trend is appearing here 😉

Dear old Vince was a bit vague – steel is no longer strategic but I would be disappointed to see it disappear (v helpful Vince, thank you) and the lady academic who referred to Mr Tata. Odd that an academic who is an expert in the field doesn’t know who runs Tata these days. Poor old Newsnight is a shadow of its former self

Err, we already can’t grow enough food for ourselves.

Are you suggesting that we don’t need to grow any food ourselves?

No.

No.

So what exactly was your point in the context of needing to protect strategic industries?

So what exactly was your point

My point was that “we already can’t grow enough food for ourselves.”.

PT will then be forgotten about, and abandoned to its fate, the government feeling that they’ve ‘done their bit’. The local drug dealers will rub there hands with glee at the prospect of the combination of quiet desperation and redundancy cheques. Now thats entrepreneurial capitalism at work!

Depressingly accurate. And ‘doing their bit’ in Wales consists of the Government using public money to dole out massive ‘development fund’ payments to corporations, who will bugger off as soon as they’re offered a better handout elsewhere.

My point was that “we already can’t grow enough food for ourselves.”.

So totally irrelevant to the subject at hand then. As long as we’re clear 🙂

Phew, I think I skim read everything and no one mentioned the futility of the blast furnace and primary steel production.
There may be a route out of this, leave the primary making to the developing nations, India will soon be churning out steel cheaper than the Chinese, and concentrate on recycling, the future should be in electric arc and secondary steel production according to some learned folk:
Institute of Materials, say.
Trouble is the blast furnace is a major symbol and politicians love gathering around symbols for some halo effect in a “no bad news” sense.

So totally irrelevant to the subject at hand then. As long as we’re clear

You keep leaping up the ladder of inference, why is it irrelevant?

It’s interesting how quickly the lessons learned in WW1 & WW2 have been forgotten.

If Britain is going to continue its 300 year path as a warlike nation, it’s inevitable we will be isolated and desperate for resources again, and if we don’t have them on our shores, then defeat/surrender will be inevitable unless we use nuclear weapons.

An embargo would see us shrivel up and die.

@Jambalaya All the German plants I’ve visited point to a different reality – namely that they’re good at defining and controlling a process so that they can make huge volumes of something with little variation, consistently and at high perceived quality. They also have better employment laws (for the workers) and seemingly employers that believe that “we’re all in this together”. Another key point is that again, IME, German factories get continual and substantial reinvestment in equipment and in employee training to maintain their competitiveness.

not forgetting other lessons not learned…

…how do we let regions become so economically and socially dependent on industries in which we have no natural competitive advantage and in which we are marginal players (and price takers). It beggars belief – and yet where is the anger at those who are responsible.

Lets hope some real thought was given to the so-called recovery plan for all those concerned.

Very scary outlook for pensions (British Steel Pensions) – that could be a real nightmare if/when Tata walk away.

@veeduba yes agreed, my point is the Germans are better than us at manufacturing high end products so their steel industry is more central to their economy

@tmh I’m glad Cable looked the buffoon he really is. Total waste of space.

I’d much rather we where self sufficient in food and focused on farming than industries like steel production. All this talk of Nationalisation from Labour etc is laughable, its against EU rules.

Rubbish it is a critical industry in that if you want to build ships, cars, industrial plant etc you need stee

@dragon that was my point, we don’t really build ships or make cars do we. Ship building is dominated by South Koreans etc, car manufacturing is all foreign owned businesss – they are going to buy with no particular reference to the UK

Well Vince was struggling a bit, true, but his basic point was valid – the need for a temporary solution that could/should involve state support – the problem was the lack of detail. Eagle was the same on the first night and Javed also looks lost (in more ways than one). Not a pretty sight all in all

I’d much rather we where self sufficient in food and focused on farming than industries like steel production.

So other than the fact that they mostly vote tory, what is it about the farming industry that makes them so important where the steel industry isn’t? The reality of this is that Cameron, like most tories, measures himself against Thatcher. On that score, he’s done the privatisation of key national industries/sectors, he’s had a war or two, he’s tried (unsuccessfully) to throw his weight about in Europe, and now he’s determined to add the deliberate destruction of labour supporting working class communities. Sadly I doubt anything or anyone is going to get in his way.

….and now he’s determined to add the deliberate destruction of labour supporting working class communities

Good grief! 😯

Good grief!

Spare us the mock outrage. I think we all know how this is going to end.

Why aren’t the ‘out’ lot jumping up and down saying if we were out of Europe these pesky euro rules about national companies wouldn’t count?

I’d also forgotten about what ids said the other week. How many Tory votes come out of pt?

The reality of this is that Cameron, like most tories [and Blair], measures himself against Thatcher. On that score…

he’s done the privatisation of key national industries/sectors – ? really – the threshold must have been low, if that’s considered a success???

he’s had a war or two, – ? seems pretty unsuccessful re Syria etc

he’s tried (unsuccessfully) to throw his weight about in Europe – actually a bit better there if not up to Maggie’s rebate

and now he’s determined to add the deliberate destruction of labour supporting working class communities. – like Maggie he must have mystical evil powers to pull that one off

So hyperbole apart – what his score? 1/10 or is that a bit harsh?

Binners keeps whining about London People (as always). If they’re so useless, why is it that no-one wants to live in the provinces and you provincial people can’t keep your own industries going? It’s an Indian owned steel company that doesn’t have any significant footprint in London.

o other than the fact that they mostly vote tory, what is it about the farming industry that makes them so important where the steel industry isn’t?

Well you could look at global population growth against the limited size of the arable belt and come to a conclusion that there is going to be a worsening issue for food supply?

Or you could take steel where there is a colossal global oversupply in significantly lower cost regions that looks set to continue for the long term.

You have a steel shortage, things don’t get built. You have a food shortage then people starve. The government can’t impose import tariffs on cheap steel from overseas to protect our industry. Even if they did then the knock on effect through the speciality manufacturing businesses which have more of a future than those that produce the basic material would, potentially, have an equal or greater impact on the economic health of the nation.

Whoever is calling for this to be nationalised is bonkers, despite the unfortunately devastating consequences for those affected. It’s a dead industry in the UK with no rational reason to preserve it.

@Jambalaya All the German plants I’ve visited point to a different reality – namely that they’re good at defining and controlling a process so that they can make huge volumes of something with little variation, consistently and at high perceived quality. They also have better employment laws (for the workers) and seemingly employers that believe that “we’re all in this together”. Another key point is that again, IME, German factories get continual and substantial reinvestment in equipment and in employee training to maintain their competitiveness.

+1

A few years ago I worked for a British cement/concrete/aggregate company which had plants all across Europe, but as it was run as a bit of a ‘federation’ HO left decisions at a local level. The investment ‘allowed’ in Germany was quite amazing compared to that allowed here, along with the Management approach. Very much run at a local cultural level, no idea now that the Mexicans are in charge.

Binners keeps whining about London People (as always).

Who are these ‘London People’ I’m whinging about then? All of them? The blokes? The black ons? Or just the ones called Colin?

I’m whinging (chippy northerners eh?) about an uber-centralised London-centric system of government that nowadays barely even bothers to pretend to give a shit about anything that happens outside the South East

And no…. saying ‘Northern Powerhouse’ once every couple of months is about as credible as the ‘We’re all in it together’ or ‘Big Society’ phrases we used to hear, until they became so patently laughable, and utterly devoid of substance, that they were quietly dropped.

The whole Northern Powerhouse cobblers is totally vacuous, and is just an exercise in blame-storming for the slashing of budgets to northern councils thats about to happen (it wasn’t me who closed down all your local services, it was them!).

Still… its nice to get a mention every once in a while and know we’re in Georges thoughts from time to time. I doubt we’ll be hearing any of them mention Port Talbot ever again, after this weekend

*doffs cap*

A Jambaquote

@oldman farming is in a major crises flooded with cheap EU imports

which is utter utter bobbins

I know of one “farmer” who has just invested 6 million quid, crops 7000 acres gets a million a year subsidy and is making a fortune. Cares not one jot about the environment or the long term sustainability of the land he is cultivating.

If you had said there is a crisis in the dairy and pork industry you would be right but as usual you paint everything in huge brush strokes. If you want to be taken seriously wise up and get your facts straight.