Government's pathetic steel industry lashup

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jock3

jock3

Private Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2012
Say goodbye to the UK steel industry. This pathetic government are letting our centuries old steel industry die.

There are more issues here at stake than just the profits of huge multinational Tata; whose profits last year were a staggering $590m US dollars. For instance:

- the shocking human rights abuses in China
- the effect on UK steel communities
- the strategic importance of a steel industry for any modern economy
 
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jock3 said:
Say goodbye to the UK steel industry. This pathetic government are letting our centuries old steel industry die.
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Globalisation dictates our steel industry has been fucked for a long time. Indian paymasters are up against the chinese same as anywhere else. I think your ire is misplaced.

Now, its all about the support for those losing their job, and the supply chain for that part of the world.
 
emerald green said:
Globalisation dictates our steel industry has been $#@!ed for a long time. Indian paymasters are up against the chinese same as anywhere else. I think your ire is misplaced.

Now, its all about the support for those losing their job, and the supply chain for that part of the world.
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Correct. I suspect jock would not oppose the policies really behind this and in fact would probably support them.
 
I think the UK should nationalise the plant for short term purposes because these things are cyclical and the U.K. should have a steel plant. However, I found it laughable captain Corbyn on telly tonight.
 
The UK steel industry has been nationalised before; just after the war, so all the government need to do is reverse Mrs Thatche's privatisation from the 80's.

We must learn the lessons of our ravaged former mining communities. The Tories won't because they are ideologically opposed to nationalisation.
 
jock3 said:
The UK steel industry has been nationalised before; just after the war, so all the government need to do is reverse Mrs Thatche's privatisation from the 80's.
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Well that and find the £1m per day the port talbot plant is reported to be losing...and if it's losing that under Tata of all people, we can safely assume it would lose at lot more run by the state.

It's another problem of globalisation - I'd like to see a government or party of any stripe coming up with a strategic response to globalisation. In fact they should all be working on it together.
 
jock3 said:
The UK steel industry has been nationalised before; just after the war, so all the government need to do is reverse Mrs Thatche's privatisation from the 80's.

We must learn the lessons of our ravaged former mining communities. The Tories won't because they are ideologically opposed to nationalisation.
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Should the government borrow the money to keep the jobs in place?
 
Is banned said:
Found the dosh nae probs fir the banks K!!!!!!
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Big big difference though mate. If they hadn't bailed out the banks there would have been anarchy as it would be me and you penniless through no money at the cash machines with nae food to feed our bairns....
 
Smurf said:
Big big difference though mate. If they hadn't bailed out the banks there would have been anarchy as it would be me and you penniless through no money at the cash machines with nae food to feed our bairns....
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Iceland managed to send all the bankers to jail and they turned out all right. You would have thought that "The broad shoulders of the" UK government could have handled things more in that way than they way they did.
 
Dub said:
Iceland managed to send all the bankers to jail and they turned out all right. You would have thought that "The broad shoulders of the" UK government could have handled things more in that way than they way they did.
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Agreed, however...

Money would still needed to have been put in on a colossal way?
 
Dub said:
Iceland managed to send all the bankers to jail and they turned out all right. You would have thought that "The broad shoulders of the" UK government could have handled things more in that way than they way they did.
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The Icelandic banks lent to foreigners - many of whom were wiped out. Britain after the new labour years, was the most indebted population in human history if you added up government, institutional and private debt - most others Countries were fucked in one of those categories.

It's worth remembering it was the far right - in the ultra capitalist, small state, not BNP sense of the term - who wanted to let the banks fail. It was social democratic viewpoints that prevailed precisely for the reasons smurf gives. I can if you like recommend some long but very readable books on the subject from inside the American version of the same situation - where the bush government, no right on London borough council, recoiled from the right wing view on it.

The patter about saving fat cats is bullshit - it was a sadly inevitable by product, not the purpose. Anyone refusing to get that is just in the end making themselves into a subject - refusing to understand the way it all works.
 
Smurf said:
Agreed, however...

Money would still needed to have been put in on a colossal way?
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I guess the simple question would be; why not give the colossal monies to the people at risk instead of the banking institutes? What's the downside to doing that? Protecting the people and their money instead of the banking institutions that created the havoc?Punish those who cause the problem instead of allowing them to continue, even get bonuses ffs! Folk could use other banks not deleted from the system.Or create a new one based on different principles.
 
southfieldhibby said:
I guess the simple question would be; why not give the colossal monies to the people at risk instead of the banking institutes? What's the downside to doing that? Protecting the people and their money instead of the banking institutions that created the havoc?Punish those who cause the problem instead of allowing them to continue, even get bonuses ffs! Folk could use other banks not deleted from the system.Or create a new one based on different principles.
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I agree to the extent I feel a huge opportunity was wasted to completely change and restructure banking as we know it. However, I think in amongst all of this we sometimes forget the huge amounts of money the banking industry pays into the UK exchequer that helps pay for our public services...
 
Smurf said:
I agree to the extent I feel a huge opportunity was wasted to completely change and restructure banking as we know it. However, I think in amongst all of this we sometimes forget the huge amounts of money the banking industry pays into the UK exchequer that helps pay for our public services...
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Honestly don't know how much they pay, but a rapid google suggests not gigantic numbers compared to what it should be:



Banks' profits recover, but they are paying less in corporation tax - Telegraph
 
That's less than I thought as financial services in the City of London pay in around 65 Billion a year in tax receipts.
 
Smurf said:
That's less than I thought as financial services in the City of London pay in around 65 Billion a year in tax receipts.
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Financial services paid that in total if I'm reading correctly, not City specific. 50% of that number is employee taxes too, so everyone in The UK employed in financial services included in that number.
 
I know the two are totally unrelated but india gets about a million a day in overseas aid from the UK...

surely a UK govt could lean on an indian govt could lean on tata - if the uk govt gave a flying fck.

also tata tenders for some pretty big UK public service contracts...surely the govt could lean on them if they wanted.

TCS establishes UK centre as part of Home Office contract

http://www.tcs.com/news_events/press_releases/Pages/TCS_multi-million_pound_contract_UK_Home_Office.aspx


....or the govt is happy with chinese steel ...not like the tories have form or anything

Boris Johnson rejects claims over billion-pound Chinese property deal | Politics | The Guardian

Big questions for Boris over billion dollar property deal - Channel 4 News
 
Smurf said:
I think in amongst all of this we sometimes forget the huge amounts of money the banking industry pays into the UK exchequer that helps pay for our public services...
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Ah, that old chestnut. "But we NEED them, they're the WEALTH CREATORS."

How about this for an idea - we cut them down to size, and then force them to pay absolutely everything they're due by closing every fcukin loophole. I bet you'd get the same amount of cash out of them, with the added bonus that a) we'd no longer have to put up with the tediously erroneous perception that the sky would fall in if they weren't running the world, and b) we could start demystifying this lot and exposing them as the glorified bookies they are.

Honestly - folk talk like 2008 events are simply inevitable from time to time, in the sense that there's literally nothing can be done to prevent them. When in fact, there is plenty could be done, there's simply no political will to do it, and the country is full of docile apologists who think financial services is some sort of indispensable sorcery necessary for the survival of our society.
 
aggie said:
Ah, that old chestnut. "But we NEED them, they're the WEALTH CREATORS."

How about this for an idea - we cut them down to size, and then force them to pay absolutely everything they're due by closing every fcukin loophole. I bet you'd get the same amount of cash out of them, with the added bonus that a) we'd no longer have to put up with the tediously erroneous perception that the sky would fall in if they weren't running the world, and b) we could start demystifying this lot and exposing them as the glorified bookies they are.

Honestly - folk talk like 2008 events are simply inevitable from time to time, in the sense that there's literally nothing can be done to prevent them. When in fact, there is plenty could be done, there's simply no political will to do it, and the country is full of docile apologists who think financial services is some sort of indispensable sorcery necessary for the survival of our society.
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There's no political will because they're in the pockets of the financial industry. Whether it's politicians being major shareholders in the institutions, being given financial sweeteners, the promise of a directorship on leaving government or plain old 'getting disappeared if you don't do as you're told'. The world's hit men need to make a living too you know.
 
aggie said:
Ah, that old chestnut. "But we NEED them, they're the WEALTH CREATORS."

How about this for an idea - we cut them down to size, and then force them to pay absolutely everything they're due by closing every fcukin loophole. I bet you'd get the same amount of cash out of them, with the added bonus that a) we'd no longer have to put up with the tediously erroneous perception that the sky would fall in if they weren't running the world, and b) we could start demystifying this lot and exposing them as the glorified bookies they are.

Honestly - folk talk like 2008 events are simply inevitable from time to time, in the sense that there's literally nothing can be done to prevent them. When in fact, there is plenty could be done, there's simply no political will to do it, and the country is full of docile apologists who think financial services is some sort of indispensable sorcery necessary for the survival of our society.
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Do you wish to see the state cut down to size commensurately? The banks fund the state which is why they were encouraged to become such swollen monstrosities.

They absolutely should be cut down to size, but that also requires a vast reduction in the size of the enforced state. You can't have one without the other.

2008 was indeed inevitable and so are the series of crashes to come which will culminate in the end of the welfare state as we know it. We cannot indefinitely use banks and the credit they issue to compensate for the unsustainable way we live.

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Beagle said:
There's no political will because they're in the pockets of the financial industry. Whether it's politicians being major shareholders in the institutions, being given financial sweeteners, the promise of a directorship on leaving government or plain old 'getting disappeared if you don't do as you're told'. The world's hit men need to make a living too you know.
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There's no political will because the whole state system depends on it.
 
aggie said:
Ah, that old chestnut. "But we NEED them, they're the WEALTH CREATORS."

How about this for an idea - we cut them down to size, and then force them to pay absolutely everything they're due by closing every fcukin loophole. I bet you'd get the same amount of cash out of them, with the added bonus that a) we'd no longer have to put up with the tediously erroneous perception that the sky would fall in if they weren't running the world, and b) we could start demystifying this lot and exposing them as the glorified bookies they are.

Honestly - folk talk like 2008 events are simply inevitable from time to time, in the sense that there's literally nothing can be done to prevent them. When in fact, there is plenty could be done, there's simply no political will to do it, and the country is full of docile apologists who think financial services is some sort of indispensable sorcery necessary for the survival of our society.
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Their net contribution is far greater than North Sea oil revenues? Piss them off they'd just up sticks and bugger off. Not so sure that would be good for Scotland or the UK. The world is too global now for us to change much if anything, sadly.
 
Smurf said:
Their net contribution is far greater than North Sea oil revenues? Piss them off they'd just up sticks and bugger off. Not so sure that would be good for Scotland or the UK. The world is too global now for us to change much if anything, sadly.
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I thought after 2008 there was to be new UK regulation; the banks were meant to have been "broken up" such that none of them could ever be too big to fail. i.e. The casino investment banking arm was to be separated from your common or garden Joe Bloggs savings account element. Has this happened? Why not? Genuinely no idea but this was meant to have happened to prevent 2008 ever occurring again.

The U.K. manufactures jack shit these days and is now totally reliant on a bloated, inflated banking sector. Blaming globilisation for not even trying in every other industry is a crock of shit IMO. Why not try and put all our eggs in one basket in one particular area? Thats pretty much how every other successful country has pulled it off.
 
Dub said:
Iceland managed to send all the bankers to jail and they turned out all right. You would have thought that "The broad shoulders of the" UK government could have handled things more in that way than they way they did.
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Regulation of banks was pathetic, and probably still isn't great. But the Icelandic thing isn't well understood, or a good comparison. They jailed 27 (or 29, I forget) bankers for stuff that would have seen them jailed here, too - mostly insider trading. The stuff our banks did would not have seen our bankers jailed were they Icelandic.

Likewise they have a small, nimble economy that was relatively easily re-tooled and restarted. I'm not sure there would have been quite the support for letting the banks go under had everyone realised that would involve their pension disappearing and probably a twenty-year depression.

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aggie said:
Ah, that old chestnut. "But we NEED them, they're the WEALTH CREATORS."

How about this for an idea - we cut them down to size, and then force them to pay absolutely everything they're due by closing every fcukin loophole. I bet you'd get the same amount of cash out of them, with the added bonus that a) we'd no longer have to put up with the tediously erroneous perception that the sky would fall in if they weren't running the world, and b) we could start demystifying this lot and exposing them as the glorified bookies they are.

Honestly - folk talk like 2008 events are simply inevitable from time to time, in the sense that there's literally nothing can be done to prevent them. When in fact, there is plenty could be done, there's simply no political will to do it, and the country is full of docile apologists who think financial services is some sort of indispensable sorcery necessary for the survival of our society.
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I agree with most of what you say but I think it's harder to solve than you imply. You suggest "cut them down to size" and "close loopholes", but what are you going to do when the inevitable capital flight occurs? When pension funds and institutional investors and indeed anybody, really, starts shopping elsewhere because they need to get returns to their investors.

You can look at your plummeting tax revenues and make the cuts, and say 'we do things differently here'. But globalisation does make it nigh on impossible for a country like ours to do what you're asking, I'd suggest. And not because bankers are clever sorecerors who we need, but because capital is so fluid.
 
Hibee Kev said:
I thought after 2008 there was to be new UK regulation; the banks were meant to have been "broken up" such that none of them could ever be too big to fail. i.e. The casino investment banking arm was to be separated from your common or garden Joe Bloggs savings account element. Has this happened? Why not? Genuinely no idea but this was meant to have happened to prevent 2008 ever occurring again.
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Some of them are: RBS has sold Coutts, citizens bank and is spinning off Williams and Glynn. Lloyds spun out TSB. There's probably others.
The U.K. manufactures jack $#@! these days and is now totally reliant on a bloated, inflated banking sector. Blaming globilisation for not even trying in every other industry is a crock of $#@! IMO. Why not try and put all our eggs in one basket in one particular area? Thats pretty much how every other successful country has pulled it off.
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ok if globalisation is not the main issue, how are you going to manufacture things and then sell them when the cost of making them is so high compared to elsewhere. Would you pay 1000 pounds for a smart phone when you could get one for a few hundred?

Do you buy British made shoes at 300 quid and upwards? In trainers you have a straight choice - new balance made in the Uk are over 100 where their others are half the price. Do you reckon most shoppers would go for the former?

In the USA, manufacturing jobs are coming back on shore because fracking makes energy so cheap it compensates for higher labour costs. We could always take that approach, but the alleged Labour Party is probably not so keen.

This will be moot soon anyway as technology displaces labour full stop.
 
HenryLB said:
Regulation of banks was pathetic, and probably still isn't great. But the Icelandic thing isn't well understood, or a good comparison. They jailed 27 (or 29, I forget) bankers for stuff that would have seen them jailed here, too - mostly insider trading. The stuff our banks did would not have seen our bankers jailed were they Icelandic.

Likewise they have a small, nimble economy that was relatively easily re-tooled and restarted. I'm not sure there would have been quite the support for letting the banks go under had everyone realised that would involve their pension disappearing and probably a twenty-year depression.

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I agree with most of what you say but I think it's harder to solve than you imply. You suggest "cut them down to size" and "close loopholes", but what are you going to do when the inevitable capital flight occurs? When pension funds and institutional investors and indeed anybody, really, starts shopping elsewhere because they need to get returns to their investors.

You can look at your plummeting tax revenues and make the cuts, and say 'we do things differently here'. But globalisation does make it nigh on impossible for a country like ours to do what you're asking, I'd suggest. And not because bankers are clever sorecerors who we need, but because capital is so fluid.
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So, essentially, post-globalisation, the gig is fcuked. A boot stamping on a human face forever.
 
aggie said:
So, essentially, post-globalisation, the gig is fcuked. A boot stamping on a human face forever.
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Not - forever; until global labour rates reach equilibrium and the vision of socialist internationalism is fulfilled by global capitalism. Of course in the mean time the Chinese, Indians et al, are investing in educating millions of scientists and engineers while we produce sociology grads, so we'll probably still be stuffed.

It's also bleak only from our perspective - look at global poverty and the situation is vastly improving at the expense of western labour.
 
egb_hibs said:
Some of them are: RBS has sold Coutts, citizens bank and is spinning off Williams and Glynn. Lloyds spun out TSB. There's probably others.
ok if globalisation is not the main issue, how are you going to manufacture things and then sell them when the cost of making them is so high compared to elsewhere. Would you pay 1000 pounds for a smart phone when you could get one for a few hundred?

Do you buy British made shoes at 300 quid and upwards? In trainers you have a straight choice - new balance made in the Uk are over 100 where their others are half the price. Do you reckon most shoppers would go for the former?

In the USA, manufacturing jobs are coming back on shore because fracking makes energy so cheap it compensates for higher labour costs. We could always take that approach, but the alleged Labour Party is probably not so keen.

This will be moot soon anyway as technology displaces labour full stop.
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Sorry EGB can't selectively quote on my mobile. I'm not sure Re: the banks are you confident any one of them could be allowed to fail now without government propping up?

Re: globalisation well I'm just back from Korea which was already a decent economy but piled into heavy fabrication and is now reaping the rewards. Are you saying don't even try?

Your last statement is vague and nonsensical
 
aggie said:
So, essentially, post-globalisation, the gig is fcuked. A boot stamping on a human face forever.
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No. Although it's a significant challenge, one that your complete overhaul would have to take into account. I appreciate you weren't giving details, but I was trying to point out that it's not a manichean case of good against evil, or a simple case of deciding to do the right thing.
 
Hibee Kev said:
Sorry EGB can't selectively quote on my mobile. I'm not sure Re: the banks are you confident any one of them could be allowed to fail now without government propping up?
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no, I agree with you there - they can't be allowed to fail because the state and our society depend upon them. If you want banks put back in their box we need to massively shrink the state and change our way of life. I think that should happen because it needs to - but it will be a hard sell and not very pleasant.
Re: globalisation well I'm just back from Korea which was already a decent economy but piled into heavy fabrication and is now reaping the rewards. Are you saying don't even try?
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im not saying that, I just don't know how we do it. South Korea is good example to pick actually because labour earnings are pretty good - pretty much western levels. Then again they have a lot, lot less state spending to fund - and on average they work 35% more hours for those earnings. But nevertheless they could well be a model to adopt - if we want to work Asian hours, have an Asian approach to education and welfare etc. then that might work. Again, it will be difficult to sell politically though. Even more unpalatable they have very low rates of female employment by western standards and very high fertility rates - these factors are no doubt very good for their economy but difficult to imagine them being adopted here.

Your last statement is vague and nonsensical
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okay, less vague - the coming decades will see huge amounts of jobs automated, and therefore comparative wages won't matter anyway. Hopefully that also makes sense now too.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...fair-weather-friend-of-the-industrial-workin/

Spot on article about the Labour Party of middle class Marxists having feck all to do with labour interests.

Tata have pointed out that with UK green agendas, powering the plant costs them 25% more than would be the case in Germany and 50% more than France.

The agenda of the middle class left is hostile to labour interests. They would shut the mines these days.
 
Just a few words about globalisation: it represents the next and one of the final desperate phases of capitalism. From Marx: to overcome recession/slump, the ruling class will resort to "enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces" (and the lives of millions of working families) and "by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of old ones". New world growth will commence, but it will be feeble in comparison to previous phases. It will most likely be more regularly punctuated by short 'joyless' booms and sharp recessions.

This explains the cruel destruction of the UK's industrial base(and it's communities). It's time for socialist nationalisation, which would see the big banks and huge multinational companies that dominate our planet brought into democratic public ownership.

The enormous potential of the productive forces can only be fully utilised by abolishing national barriers and establishing a socialist world, which would see the economy democratically planned and managed by working people, in the interests of the majority and the environment.

A genuine socialist alternative needs to be built, fighting for decent jobs, living wages, social housing and welfare. Otherwise, racist, anti-immigrant ideas can grow, and also the electoral support of the populist and far right.
 
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