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

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

Ooooh! Colin! I can’t stand that guy.
To be honest he’s the only reason I haven’t sold my reasonably priced mansion and moved to that London. How very provincial of me.

You are not an Urban Jungle cat, I don’t think.

7000 acres

isn’t the average farm size in England about 150 acres ie that’s a pretty ‘kin big commercial farm and probably in the minority.

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

yes it was, David Cameron had a pre-prepared Q&A on the radio this morning, he said he didn’t rule anything out but that in his opinion nationalisation is not the long term solution to help British Steel.

Thanks PR – it was a joke BTW!! 😉

If steelmaking in the UK disappears completely, we will have a bit of a puzzle as to what to do with scrap.

Legitimate businesses – the ones making the “clever stuff” posters keep banging on about – will possibly have to pay to shift the stuff. Certainly it will create environmental problems because it will have to be exported for recycling.

I can see other potential environmental and nuisance issues with regard to the abandonment of scrap.

Isn’t most scrap sent to China anyway? Shipping is dirt cheap because all the containers are going back empty.

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 blah blah blah

Idk how you’re whining about a London-centric anything when the company that failed is a bunch of provincial factories owned by Indians and failing to make products that can be sold on the world market. London didn’t come into its failure one way or the other.

Thanks PR – it was a joke BTW!!

I’ve read it again. it was very cleverly disguised. 😕

that nowadays barely even bothers to pretend to give a shit about anything that happens outside the South East

Given past and likely future voting patterns, that would be very odd behaviour for any politician.

despite the unfortunately devastating consequences for those affected.

Do you even realise what that means? We’re not talking about everyone getting a nice redundancy package and then tootling off to a new job after having a bit of a holiday. If you’re interested go and have a look round some ex-pit villages or towns where the majority of the population are addicted to alcholol/drugs and have been on benefits for 20 years, and where any semblance of community cohesiveness is a distant memory.

Do you even realise what that means?

No…..they don’t realise.

It’s a provincial issue for provincial people.

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.

very unrepresentative and completely meaningless example, like using Tesco as an example of a shopkeeper, and I bet if this person were real they’d probably be taking full advantage of all agri-environment schemes.

Ha ha which scheme would that be, he doesn’t need to be part of any stewardship schemes, has had a heated discussion with his CSF man about tearing out hedges.

Jambawomble said all farming was in dire straights, it isn’t.

Idk how you’re whining about a London-centric anything when the company that failed is a bunch of provincial factories owned by Indians and failing to make products that can be sold on the world market. London didn’t come into its failure one way or the other.

Given past and likely future voting patterns, that would be very odd behaviour for any politician.

I do sometimes wonder if I actually live in the same country as some people on here. The Tory party has never given a rats arse about anywhere outside the south east*. Ask anyone who lived through the last round of industrial decimation in the 80’s. They actively enjoyed that! It was an act of vindictive political vandalism.

But now, with Scotland gone entirely nationalist, the Lib Dems extinct, UKIP dividing the white working class vote in the former Labour Heartlands,, Labour itself an unelectable, faction-riven shambles, and the Tories proposed boundary changes/Gerrymandering designed entirely to deliver fewer non-Tory MP’s, we’re seriously staring down the barrel of a permanent Tory hegemony

I can’t think of a time when they’ve been less inclined to care less about what happens to the likse of Port Talbot. And they never bothered much to even pretend that they ever did. God help us!

* apart from the odd outpost in Cheshire and Yorkshire

Well we can agree to disagree – voting stats are pretty clear IMO though

History tells us that ideas of political hegemony are quickly squashed. The Tories are doing there usual trick over Europe and are well versed at screwing up power (as are Labour)

Fair point. The masterplan was spoiled a bit now Dave has to deliver the referendum he never wanted, or ever thought he’d have to produce. And before the self-serving mop declared himself in the other camp, in a bid to nick his job

But it kind of proves the point as well. What do you think the Tory party is presently more concerned about? 40,000 jobs about to be lost in areas they couldn’t ever really give a toss about. Or having their long trailed bunfight with each other about Europe?

I’d say the 40,000 steelworkers jobs have barely even registered with most of them. And I don’t think anyone in Port Talbot, or anywhere thats been at the receiving end of Tory ‘Industrial Policy’ in the past, will believe the government are going to do a bloody thing to help them. That speech, complete with concerned furrowed brow, was made purely for consumption by South East Daily Mail readers, to make it look like they were taking the issue seriously. Does anybody believe they’re actually going to do anything? Is anyone that gullible?

Port Talbot will be left to rot, like all the communities reliant on former mines, steelworks, and heavy industry that were decimated in the 80’s. Back then there was the odd token gesture or crocodile tears by the like of Heseltine. I can’t see this lot even bothering with that!

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/cameron-assumes-steel-workers-just-become-male-strippers-20160331107633

I don’t know – I am not that bothered about the Tories. As discussed before, I find that they (politicians) have little impact on my situation.

PT is very different however and I hope that they have a plan – not looking good so far, as no one seems to be coming up with much detail other than some sepia-tinged nostalgia for the industry. The people involved directly and indirectly need a lot more than the platitudes that have been served up so far by all politicians. Like you, I fear the worst. A very grim future indeed.

History tells us that ideas of political hegemony are quickly squashed.

This. A few months before the General election I was certain an SNP/Labour coalition was a mathematical certainty at a time when the economy was likely to pick up and therefore the Tory party were literally finished for at least a decade.

Now it looks like Labour are finished.

But the Tories economic policy is ****ed because of the crisis over the Budget and they could fall apart over Europe.

You just can’t tell.

The one thing hardly any seems to be factoring in to the public view of Government response is that whatever they say to the public / in the media forms part of a negotiation with Tata e.g.

“We’ll nationalise it” – will result in Tata playing hardball in any negotiations – and any onward sale would almost certainly be a distressed sale likely forcing the government to provide even more incentives to the final purchaser.

“We don’t believe in nationalising it” – potentially forces Tata to negotiate or make some contribution to facilitate a transition period.

etc.

As per usual, Jeremy Corbyn swanning over to Port Talbot and announcing to the world that the government should pony up £500m a year just weakens the negotiating position with Tata, not that these minor commercial considerations would even be on the outer edges of his political radar.

The Belgian government has just been forced by the EU to reverse a £200m plan to save a steel works there so the options available to the government here are likely to be similarly limited – and in the end come down to how long we want to spend £1.5m a day to sustain a business that will never be viable, or whether that money would be better spent facilitating a faster transition to the secondary steel market which others have referenced above.

If the steel works isn’t ‘saved’ to some extent and if we do vote to leave Europe, I’m terrified at the thought of what will happen to S.Wales. So much employment is based on EU funding and Cameron has already statd he won’t replicate that if we leave Europe. One or the other being a possibility is bad enough but having both hanging over our heads at once is incredibly depressing.

If you’re interested go and have a look round some ex-pit villages or towns where the majority of the population are addicted to alcholol/drugs and have been on benefits for 20 years, and where any semblance of community cohesiveness is a distant memory.

I’ve seen those granite towns with nothing but a rugby club and a blockbusters and it’s heartbreaking.

…but the alternative is to pay them and their descendants to do ‘something’ to keep them out of trouble forever. That’s a great plan, but let’s make the “something” a business with a future which has a hope of becoming self funding.

I said simply “farming” as overall farming is in crises.

We in the UK as citizens just don’t do enough to buy-British and support our fellow citizens. As I said earlier STW is as a grpup very happy to buy online to save 1p (see earlier thread) rather than support the lbs. This attitude is pervasive but posters here think the government should act when they do not..

Coal. That’s finished in many places in the world, carbon targets and encironmental concerns have done for it. Trying to score political points is daft, the miners made things worse for themselves with strikes in the 70’s and resultant power cuts which eroded what public support they had. Add that to a major shift away from coal as a fuel and you have the current situation.

Jammers old chap… Speak for yourself. I think you’re making a massive sweeping generalisation saying people don’t support their LBS. I do. And so do an awful lot of people on here. As well as shopping local to support local business.

I’m self-employed and I live in a small town with a proper sense of community, where there is a massive amount of support for local business, tradesmen, and self-employed people. A proper network.

I just don’t believe the cynical ‘there is no alternative’ neo-liberal bollocks, I’m afraid. And I’m far from alone. A lot of people have had enough of it!! And want an alternative

Me too and buy British/French etc, prepared to pay extra for local quality inc for food. However that thread was very depressing with so many on here having zero interest in supporting a lbs / uk business and jobs. We as a country are obsesses with the lowest price and I have to say have little sense of community when it comes to price.

I thought Kenneth Clarke spoke perfect sense on today’s World at One on Radio 4.

just don’t believe the cynical ‘there is no alternative’ neo-liberal bollocks

Great, if you’ve thought of a solution nobody else has just drop an e-mail to the relevant civil servant and the 40,000 jobs will be saved for good.

You’re missing the point once again. I’m not saying that I have any answers.

The question I’m asking is have we as a society learnt nothing? Are we, as one of the richest countries on the planet, going to just abandon entire communities to a bleak, dismal desolate future of social disintegration, purely on the back of neo-liberal dogma and ideology, just like we did in the 80’s? Having seen what’s happened to those communities?

I don’t even know why I’m even asking the question

Of course ‘we’ are.

How utterly depressing

I’m not saying that I have any answers.

So your “beleif” that there is an answer is based on what? Hope?

We all hope. But the reality is nobody (including the Unions and Tata who know more about this than anyone and the politicians who can win public adulation if they solve this) has come up with anything yet. I’m not sure I’d be so confident there’s a solution that nobody’s thought of.

Hopefully your groundless belief will be correct…

@binners you are right in one regard, we could have a buy British policy for steel for construction … except that’s not allowed. I absolutely get the personal and community arguments but its about the £££. The business is losing £350pa (Port Talbot) now, that could be £500m pa next year. If there where tarifs on Chinese steel they would just drop the price further, no one has deeper pockets than the Chinese. The notion that tarifs on steel imports would do anything but polong the inevitable is naive. Once steel was a new technology, we had it and we produced what we and our export markets needed. Now steel is old hat and can be made just about anywhere and certainly cheaper in China where there are low wages and no environmental controls.

What I really don’t get is that in this globalised free-market utopia that as promised as the holy grail of capitalism, one country can flagrantly subsidise its own product, putting all their competition out of business around the globe, and yet the evangelical promoters of this economic model all sit idly by and say ‘well we can’t do anything, as it’d be against the rules.”

Its fairly apparent that the Chinese are gleefully waving two fingers at ‘the rules’, with complete impunity. Yet they’re being rigorously enforced for everyone else?

Is it because the global economy is bricking it about the Chinese economy slowing down, so they’re prepared to let them do pretty much anything they like to stop the whole neoliberal house of cards coming crashing down? Again?

And if 40,000 people in Wales have to lose their jobs? Well… as Thatcher herself said… ‘A price worth paying’?

Its ok. This answered my question.

yet the evangelical promoters of this economic model all sit idly by and say ‘well we can’t do anything, as it’d be against the rules.”

It’s not just the “evangelical promoters”, everybody has failed to work out a solution. The Politicians of all parties, the steelworkers Union, every commentator. Everyone is standing idly by.

…but as the article above points out – recycling steel is easy and effective – so even the Chinese are ****ed here. Demand for ‘new’ steel won’t increase forever because we’ll be re-using so much of it.

Port Talbot has been a dead man walking for years, and Tata is keeping Ijmuden for a reason. If the UK votes out of the EU, it is dead. The UK have been fighting anti dumping tariffs which shows what the tories really care about.

Plenty of steel plants, and by implication voters and politicians, in Europe which would welcome the removal of UK competition with a few tariffs.

Everyone is standing idly by.

That’s not quite true is it? The labour party and unions have proposed a plan of temporary nationalisation, followed by restructuring and appropriate tax breaks and other financial support leading to eventual re-privatisation. Now I have no idea whether this will work but it is at least a plan. However as Binners said, this has already been ruled out as it doesn’t fit with the ideological dogma of neo-liberal economics. A tory govt is never going to nationalise a real industry on a matter of principle, irregardless of whether it might work.

Dazh, there is a bug difference between empty rhetoric and a real business plan.

Leave aside the word “nationalisation” and what exactly has been ruled out?

Dazh, there is a bug difference between empty rhetoric and a real business plan.

This.

Now I have no idea whether this will workI’m well aware of the clear flaws in this crowd pleasing nonsense but it is at least a plan. However as Binners said, this has already been ruled out as it doesn’t fit with the ideological dogma of neo-liberal economics.is obvious bollocks.

Corrected that for you. If it was as easy as that Cameron would have jumped at it. Saving a whole industry is a massive vote winner. I suspect the tax breaks and support are illegal, and if restructuring could save the day Tata would have done so themselves and pocketed the cash.

We are awaiting the fallout from this
Like the steel industry we are competing with the Chinese and other overseas markets dumping cheap film into Europe

If it was as easy as that Cameron would have jumped at it.

I’m quite happy to accept that the labour plan may be more about being seen to be doing something, and lets not forget they aren’t in power so can’t actually implement anything, but do you really think Cameron would nationalise it? Really?

And here’s a question, without wanting to start another bank bailout argument, if supporting struggling industries is illegal, why wasn’t the partial nationalisation of the banks ruled out in 2008 on legal grounds?

And THM, seeing as you appear to be in a position to know about these things, just what in your view do you think the Cameron, Osborne and Javid are doing about this? Other than doing an enormous gallic shrug of the shoulders?