More than 3,000 jobs are set to be lost at the U.K.’s biggest steelworks as the U.K.’s Net Zero deindustrialisation strategy sees it set to become the only country in the G20 unable to make its own steel from scratch. The Mirror has the story.
The devastating blow was confirmed by Tata Steel following crisis talks with unions, who have not ruled out strikes in protest. The company has rejected an alternative plan put forward aimed at saving jobs.
The move has been described as a “crushing blow” for U.K. manufacturing and for the region’s economy. Last year Tory ministers agreed to plough £500 million into the plant to help fund a transition to cleaner steel production – but they have been accused of overseeing “managed decline”. Tata estimates the plant is losing around £1 million a day.
This morning Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon, home of the Port Talbot steelworks, called for more talks to bring the steelworks “back from the brink”. He said every home in the town is affected by the facility, and warned the job losses would be “devastating”. He said: “The multi unions have come together and put a plan on the table, which would actually be much more of a bridge rather than a cliff edge to the changes that we know that have to take place within our steel industry.
“But instead of that, we’ve got a plan which has been cobbled together between Tata Steel and the U.K. Government, which is going to use £500 million of taxpayers’ money to make 3,000 men and women redundant and is also going to remove the British capability to make its own steel from scratch.
“We will become the only country in the G20 that is no longer able to do that. So that’s not the right way to go.”
The Mirror understands Wales’s Economy Minister Vaughan Gething approached Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch for an urgent call on the decision on Tuesday. But the department delegated the call to junior Minister Nusrat Ghani, who offered Mr. Gething 15 minutes next Tuesday.
The Indian firm will press ahead with their plan to close the last two blast furnaces at the plant, replacing them with an Electric Arc Furnace (EAC). That would mean thousands of job losses by 2027.
And EACs alone cannot make high quality virgin steel from iron ore, meaning the plant would be reliant on cheap scrap metal from overseas as raw materials.
If Stephen Kinnock thinks this is bad, wait till he sees what his own party has planned for the deindustrialisation of the U.K. under the guise of Net Zero. And note that Kinnock is only actually calling for the change to be done more slowly, not to be reversed: he and his party still support the idea of deindustrialisation. Sheer lunacy.
Worth reading in full.
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RIP the Britain we used to know! It’s now a faded relative of the Britain I remember in the 60s and 70s , its become lost, poor and vulnerable.
Import the third world and you become the third world!
Yes we are on our way out ! It’s all going to plan ! Can’t have this pesky rational good natured reasonably educated indigenous population putting a spanner in the works ! Everything we ever pioneered giving the world its best bits has been taken away from us !!!…
In the past this would have been a reason for national shame and humiliation and the tabloids and broadsheets would have been up in arms. Speeches in the house would have rounded on the government of the day and derided them and just maybe something would have been done. But now? Now we are a pallid version of our former selves, national pride means something else, and the very fact that we can’t make our own steel from iron ore using our own coal is a just a footnote in our reaching towards the ruinous and, dare I say, criminal Net Zero, the pinnacle of the most virtuous planet saving bollox that ever was. I doubt if all those Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion types have the faintest idea of what this means or care one jot for the 3000 men and women who will now have to find employment elsewhere in an already job-deprived area. Steel is inextricably linked with a country’s fortunes and we let it go just like this. Shame on this government for allowing this! Shame on them for following the yellow brick road to the wizard’s Net Zero delusion! Ta ta – that was a phrase used in my youth when we lived up north to say goodbye and so ‘Goodbye Steel’ could not be more pertinent. RIP Great Britain.
Makes you wonder if all those brave men and women who gave their lives for Britain’s freedom would have done so knowing what it would become?
Maybe the nazis would have made a better job of running the place??
Quite right, Dings. It seems to be the case that losing a war is actually a good idea when there’s a plan for reconstruction like the Marshall Plan. We were so in debt – planned debt – by the end of the war we’ve never truly recovered, just slowly slid down hill into the ditch. Our manufacturing base is virtually all gone – we make nothing – nothing big anyway. All over the world, you’ll find incredible old bits of machinery stamped ‘Birmingham, England’ and the like, that still works. Was that our finest hour then, making things?
It was all recoverable after the war whether broke or not. Industrialisation is something that makes wealth and has done so for every nation that has industrialised. Following WW2 we became a centrally planned economy along with increasingly belligerent unions. Germany and Japan did nothing more than focus on manufacturing better goods than anyone else while we had governments of both shades (underpinned by the Oxbridge Civil Service) meddling in businesses they were all supremely unqualified to have any opinion in. In addition, Germany, Japan and the US had healthy privately owned industries, while our leaders and unions did all they could to control the means of production. If winning the war was such a millstone then why did the US become the hugely successful economy that it is, or was?
Almost immediately following WW2 the Miles M52 project was cancelled without proper reasons given and some time afterwards our efforts to launch British satellites on a British rocket was also cancelled. The Black Arrow successfully launched the satellite Prospero into orbit and it is still going round the Earth. And then there was 1957 Defence White Paper that vaporised several aircraft projects. This sabotage has continued almost unabated right up to the present where successful chip maker ARM was sold to a foreign owner. The following quote was about the US, but I think it applies more so the the UK:
“Consistency never has been a mark of stupidity if the diplomats who have mishandled our relations were merely stupid they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor. The fact that not one single mistake has fallen in our favor I would suggest that’s not incompetence that’s people working to a script “
James Forrestal
I forgot to mention that the Black Arrow project has been, or was, the cheapest rocket development project ever, and it worked.
I first came across that quote in the book 180 Degrees by F Greenwood.
That reminds me of helping on the farm as a kid and the farmer had a lovely side-by-side shotgun from the Midland Gun Co.
Hating Jews is the new good thing! So maybe Adolf was a good man after all?
hey ho!
Mind you, he would have slaughtered Palistinians and gays aswell
Strangly, he envied the British empire, so that would make him a colonialist!
Blimey, what a tangled Web humanity has managed to weave!
With you so much, it was called national pride!
Which brave men gave their lives for Britain’s freedom?
A very important point: They didn’t give their lives, they were conscripted into army and forced into situations which were going to get many of them killed.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two years with reading through historic German sources about WWI¹ (both history works and fiction) and this makes for a seriously gruelling story when trying to see it from the viewpoint of the soldiers on the other side. The whole allied war in the west from 1915 – 1917 is essentially nothing but human wave attacks on defenders with quick-firing guns, rifles and machine guns in more-or-less improvised field fortifiations with increasingly insane prepatory artillery barrages which would invariable all end in extremly bloody defeats (in the sense that none of them reached any operative or even strategic objectives).
¹ For the first world war, such sources actually still exist. The complete archives of the German/ Prussian army with all the original documents about wars up to 1945 somewhat mysteriously ‘vanished’ in 1945. It is said they were all burnt as result of a bombing raid on Berlin but I don’t really trust this story as it’s extremely convenient for a lot of people that all of this is no more or is at least somewhere were Germans are guaranteed to be unable to access it (ie, somewhere in Moscow). That’s obviously just a conjecture on my part and there’s not a shred of evidence for this.
The effort that went into the tunnelling is mind blowing, pardon the pun!
No one who fought in the Battle of Britain was conscripted, and the 55 000 plus men who lost their lives in Bomber Command we’re almost all volunteers.
This is bovine manure. That’s not usually admitted, but conscription was introduced in Britain during both so-called world wars in order to cope with the enormous need for living bodies. Arthur Harris was particularly well-disposed towards his fellow countrymen, considering the overwhelming majority of his soldiers only good for drawing German AA fire onto them so that the few effective crews could get their job done. And then, obviously, literally trying to eradicate all marks of German culture from Germany by nightly firebombing and killing as many civilians as possible (millions of death were being dreamed of but never achieved) did as much for ending the second world war as it did for preserving the ‘freedom’ of Britain, namely, nothing. That was just an act of senseless barbarism and mass murder the British press had condemned in the loudest voices if the ‘huns’ had been doing it (who – this has to be mentioned for fairness – were exactly as determined to do it, but always lacked the technical means for it).
Most had already joined the army by choice, many signed up voluntarily when the war started, and shear logistics ment we needed more soldiers hence conscription, please don’t lesson their sacrifices!
We’d have a job achieving the same numbers nowadays
Yes we all understand the barbarity of elite lead wars but this doesn’t take away from the bravery of the ordinary soldiers involved on any side!
Sorry?
Yes they would. They can Rest In Peace. It was subsequent generations that have squandered their legacy and it is they who should hang their heads in shame. I’m looking at you Boomers.
A fine but horrid and cruel eulogy.
Lost
For
Words.
“Tata Steel Axes 3,000 Jobs at U.K.’s Biggest Steelworks as U.K. Becomes Only Country in G20 Unable to Make its Own Steel”
Firkin hell Fishy, is there no end to your talents?
I assume Fishy will advise the armed forces that their redundancy notices will be issued in a few weeks.
What an absolutely treasonous shower of shit in Westminster. It needs nuking with a full house.
Three thousand jobs in steel, how many supporting businesses will be lost? How many more thrown on the scrap heap? The car industry will be next.
But this is the green revolution, they just haven’t realised the opportunity deindustrialisation brings!
The Welsh Government:
“This Plan is the start of our journey to net zero and a greener, stronger, fairer Wales.It focuses on our second carbon budget (2021–2025).It also looks ahead to build the foundations for Carbon Budget 3 and our 2030 target, as well as net zero by 2050.”
https://www.gov.wales/welsh-government-net-zero-strategic-plan
Port Talbot:
For every tonne of steel made in Port Talbot, about two tonnes of carbon dioxide are pumped into the atmosphere. The upshot is that Port Talbot Steelworks, with its two massive blast furnaces (the country’s biggest), is the single biggest carbon emitter in the country.
All opposition to the BBC / Guardian / Government narrative (on Net Zero) is silenced and no debate allowed. The consequence is the loss of jobs, vital industries and impoverishment.
Welsh government – no limit to their levels of £uc4wittery.
They will end up with modern Wales being much as it was 200 years ago, except that there will be a lot pf derelict urban areas left over, and a smaller population to match. Industries associated with steel, coal, and oil refining were the lifeblood of much of South Wales until now.
“They will end up with modern Wales being much as it was 200 years ago”
Pretty much as I have been forecasting.
And England will inevitably follow.
And they will still blame Brexit!
Oh definitely.
The Welsh Government:
“This Plan is the start of our journey to net zero and a greener, stronger, fairer Wales.
By what damned perverted logic does putting 3,000 growing to 6,000 plus people with the ancillary jobs, out of work enable “a greener, stronger, fairer Wales?”
These people I am sure don’t give a shit about green, strong, fair, they just want the means to look after their families – JOBS!
Exactly. I have the misfortune of living in the socialist paradise. The politicians are useless, yet the populace have a pathological hatred of any political party except labour (or Plaid Cymru) – so nothing will change here unless something cataclysmic happens….. such as a large bomb dropping on Rhyl.. (Mind you – a large bomb on Rhyl would cause at least £30m of improvements)…..
Apart from matey from UKIP most in the Welsh Parliament (I’m in Wales) are complete human filth. Fifth Column Marxists.
spot on.
“For every tonne of steel made in Port Talbot, about two tonnes of carbon dioxide are pumped into the atmosphere.”
Thank you, Port Talbot, for contributing to a greener planet. I thought the Greens favoured their own colour? Atmospheric CO2 has been decreasing over the millennia to the extent that plant life was heading for extinction (under 150ppm). Thank goodness for the Chinese and other nations with their industries producing CO2 as a by-product for whatever it is they are manufacturing. And, oh, for a world with educated politicians.
Not long since the Chinese owned ‘British Steel’ announced it’s equivalent plan to shut down the same process in Scunthorpe.
Totally predictable, sadly.
I’d say I am hopeful for a phoenix to rise from the flames… but there aren’t even any flames. Flames were made illegal. Too much carbon dioxide, y’ see. Greta told us so.
Hell, even the phoenix produces carbon dioxide – it’s gotta go!
A political class that truly hate Britain. They are closing farms by stealth as well
British Steelmaking Won’t Survive Net Zero
– latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Please print and share
The British people keep on voting for this.
But then the vast majority are so fucking cretinous they let themselves be injected with experimental crap produced by known criminals in response to a disease so trivial that even according to bent government stats it was only a risk to those teetering on the edge of death.
Dear United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
it’s with extreme regret that I have to inform you that you’re being sold down the river by your demockratically elected ruling caste.
Regards, God.
‘Caste’ being a very well chosen description!
I assume that all the scrap that can be used in electric arc furnaces is currently being used somewhere in the world, therefore converting Port Talbot isn’t going to increase the amount of ‘green’ steel produced globally or reduce the amount of coal used in blast furnaces as other countries will increase their output of virgin steel. Even if CO2 was a problem this lunacy would make no difference to global emissions.
I’m also guessing that without a domestic market for coking coal the planned new mine in Cumbria won’t now happen meaning a deprived area isn’t going to see 400 new well paying jobs.
Fuckwits doesn’t come close to describing those behind this decision.
Fuckwits doesn’t come close to describing those behind this decision.
I think the American phrase laughing all the way to the bank is a much better description of what’s going on here. The people behind this know that it’s a scam, but they’re profiting from it.
The CCP are laughing at the West that is trying to dismantle itself by destroying all the elements that have made all more wealthier and healthier than the nearly all of the world’s population during all of history. China has over 1080 coal fired power stations with more on the way. They managed to flood global markets with cheep steel that pushed many western steel mills to the brink of closure. It is important to note that one reason why Nazi Germany was not able to overcome Soviet Russia was because Russia was able to move all of it’s heavy industry East and out of reach of the Nazis. Attached is a graphic showing global steel production. Sobering?
The UK and yanks helped by shipping them weapons etc. Their T34 Tanks were good though.
Now we’ll buy steel from India made by people on slave wages and powered by … coal, then shipped halfway across the world by … diesel.
All demonstrating the utter stupidity and corruption of our 3 major political parties.
Tata India does not use child labour of forced labour. Britain prohibited slavery in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843, in French India in 1848, British India in 1861. Tata’s roots go back to when one of the founders made a fortune selling Indian grown cotton to the British. We had the Cotton Famines caused by the complete halt of cotton imports from the US because of the American Civil War. After two years cotton came from Egypt and India. The Tata dynasty then set about making steel which they first did in 1912 and by 1939, it operated the largest steel plant in the British Empire. It would be another 35 years before Indian Independence and Great Britain did not do anything to stop or impede Indian indigenous steel production, and why would it?
Nut Zero in a nutshell:
Well done the Tories.
Well done Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, WWF, RSPB, David Attenborough, the Labour Party, the Welsh Government, the SNP, and my ‘favourite’ individual:
Greta Thunberg
“This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind. You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.
The UK, was very special due to its “mind-blowing historical carbon debt, (a reference to the country’s record as the birthplace of industrialisation). But this was also, because its claims of world-leading progress on cutting emissions are partly the result of “creative accounting” and are belied by the government’s plans for more high-emissions projects.
The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels, like for example the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports, as well as the planning permission for a brand new coalmine, is beyond absurd,”
Response from Michael Gove:
“Your voice – still, calm and clear – is like the voice of our conscience, When I listened to you, I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents’ generation, and I recognise that we haven’t done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create.”
You forgot Packham.
Interestingly Packham et al share are on the same page as Osama bin Laden:
“In fact, the life of all mankind is in danger because of global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations; yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistics speak of the death and displacement of millions of human beings because of global warming, especially in Africa”
To Thunberg and the Handwringer Gove. ———Tell your silly eco socialist scare stories and your phony end of the world crap to poor people in Africa trying to live on a dollar a day and bribed into not using coal or gas. Tell that to the poor children digging up you cobalt etc so you can posture in your silly electric car and force the gas central heating out of our houses….Then tell us the real reason this is being done in wealthy western countries. ——It has nothing to do with the planet. ——-Greta thinks it has but Michael Gove you know full well it has NOT. You know perfectly well that doing this is because you and all other stupid UN lackey politicians are fully signed up to the idea that the rich west has used up more than its fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground and you are prepared to take our prosperity away in this Sustainable Development UN eco socialist political scam
So Stephen Kinnock is going for the slow boiling frog approach. This has Agenda 2030 all over, you know, that think they prefer to call Net 0 for some reason.
TRT WORLD that Turkish channel needs to be called out, they have a section in their News called ‘Just 2 Degrees. I have never seen so much climate propaganda in one episode. They were interviewing someone from the WWF pushing the usual rush into poverty. I recall the WWF is connected to the UN & WEF.
Here is the RSPB with a ‘lovely’ picture of wind turbines. I guess they are not that clever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAAzBArYdw
Bird vs Wind Turbine FAIL !
Love the sub title ‘ meeting the UKs climate targets in harmony with nature’
There’s quite a few ‘green power house’ career openings forming for avian and chiroptera corpse collection operatives!
Doddle of a job! all the corpses are in easily defined areas, just below wind turbines! Successful applicants will be supplied with transport (electic quad pick-up vehicle) and a quality litter pickup stick!
The RSPB like many other captured institutes are useful idiots. They have no idea what they are on about.
“To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit, a luxury of worry-free and aimless people. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie’s aim”
Lenin
“To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses.”
L. Beria
“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.”
Mikhail Gorbachev
“I envisage the principles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.”
Mikhail Gorbachev
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true” Paul Watson Greenpeace Founder
Remember that Net Zero was simply waved through parliament with no questions asked by any MP. There was no discussion of cost (estimated to be in the trillions) and no discussion of whether it was even possible or even whether the technologies required could even be invented. ——Who in their right mind does something like this? Ideologically motivated people with one thing only in their mind and they will pursue this above all other things. Just as they pursue, turbines, smart meters, electric cars, heat pumps, travel restrictions, 20 mph zones, daft hydrogen projects, biofuels, encouragement not to eat meat, encouragement not to but new things but to borrow , etc etc etc. ——The entire political class are fully onboard with our impoverishment that pretends to be about the planet. Almost half of Tory politicians belong to a group promoting extreme net zero policies and ideas all funded by —-Green Billionaires. The Conservative Environment Network gets 80% of its funding from the European Climate Foundation, WWF Clean Air Fund etc. The whole purpose is to remove fossil fuel energy from Industrial Societies. The Climate Change Committee DEMANDS huge cuts in CO2 emissions and as the old song goes “You ain’t seen nuthin yet. B b b baby, you ain’t seen nuthin yet”——–This is only going to end very badly for us all, but even worse for children in the Congo digging up all the s..t we need for this eco socialist CRAP
Let’s flatten the the site and build thousands of homes for the invading illegals. Perhaps with its own Benefits office. Sounds like a plan.
Stephen Kinnock and the rest of the lot in Parliament won’t be losing their jobs, wondering how they are going to pay the rent or mortgage will they? Crocodile tears if Kinnock and all the Parties in Westminster wanted to they could stop this Net zero crap today, but they haven’t and they won’t because they stand to benefit personally from degrading the rest of the countries living standards.
What a Fucking Joke !!! ( had to swear )
Had to uptick Freddy.
Foremost Aberavon is no where near Port Talbot, but having said that what people miss is the fact that this plant will no longer be a steel producing plant, but a recycling centre. It is proposed to recycle imported scrap, with some of the most expensive electricity in the world, then try and sell it on the open market.
It aint gonna happen. Port Talbot and Sunderland will shut forever.
It is where the term managed decline morphs into constructive socioeconomic destruction or net zero if you prefer.
Oh the shame of it all – once we were a world leader now look at us! I’m sure our bestie Uncle Sam will be more than happy to sell us some. / sarc
We deserve everything that is happening to us. Every decision our government has made has been the wrong one except for Brexit and they didn’t make that particular decision we did and what did our illustrious political class do? They’ve done their best to ignore it!
We don’t make our own aeroplanes or ships or grow our own oranges.
Look up: comparative advantage and global trade which has been going on for over two thousand years.
Then look up autarky, and Fascist economics.
Such ignorance. I blame the schools.
I used to think Kemi Badenoch was a light in the dismal darkness of the political class. Now I know she is as bad as the rest of them.
Our net zero targets are fueled by Chinese coal.
It makes no difference to the climate which country the emissions come from