6,000 Steel And Oil Jobs To Go

[naomi24]

Despite Labour's manifesto promise of £2.5bn to revitalise the UK steel industry.  Turns out the money was only for green projects.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rd512v77qo

 

Labour is full of nasty surprises.  How many more to come?  

[nicebloke1]

Not wise, I just wouldnt waste time on past, and done to death debates.

[naomi24]

There's a sudden change of heart.  

[Togo]

Important information! The new and exciting low calorie, eco loon friendly, electrickery furnaces can only melt not smelt! They can only recycle steel or metals that have already been smelted. They cannot produce new or virgin steel and cannot produce the high value and much sought after high grade steels that are required for construction, rail, or defence projects!  We will need to import those products(from places that do still use blast furnaces) if they will sell it to us. We will probably need to prostrate ourselves before them first mind. Then when the Countries that still do make proper steel decide that they would now like to do all the recycled steel as well then they will. Because they will be doing it cheaper than we can.  

[theshedman]

Many don't seem to like things that put the EU in a bad light.  Don't ever let the truth get in the way of bad mouthing the UK.

[ynnafymmi]

Presumably all the German and French deep coal mines closed down long ago,was there ever mass strikes to keep these coal-mines open?

[max137]

This all began under the Wilson government and the unions in the seventies,and companies failure to invest in modernisation,loss of shipbuilding,machine tool industry.motorcycle manufacturig etc.

[Old_Geezer]

Private companies should do their own revitalising if it is needed. Otherwise they ought not buy a company they are incapable of managing. Perhaps they can issue new shares and give the government the first option ?

[New Judge]

“Wrong again Naomi Brexit caused all this and Brexit was brought on by a Conservative Govt,,what a short memory you have.”

No it didn’t.

The writing was on the wall for the UK’s steel industry as soon as it committed to “Net Zero”. That would have happened with or without Brexit. 

This is no surprise and is not principally down to the new government. The country refuses to burn coal. This is essential for steel making and the rump of the industry which might survive involves arc furnaces. These simply melt down scrap steel and the result is low quality stuff.  Any of the steel business that might have survived here in the face of competition from overseas was doomed. Instead, all it is doing is off-shoring its steel-related emissions to places abroad, principally China. China burns more coal than the rest of the world put together and has, either under construction or in planning, coal fired power stations which will add twenty times the UK’s entire electricity demand to its grid capacity

Meanwhile Grangemouth oil refinery is to close and instead become an oil and gas import facility. Once again, this will not reduce country’s consumption of oil and gas. It simply means that instead of having its own sources in the North Sea, it will rely on imports to meet demand. Mr Miliband has seen to it that North Sea gas and oil extraction will wither away by refusing to issue new licences.

The country is in the hands of lunatics, and they are not confined to Labour; the Tories were almost as bad when it comes to “Net Zero” zealotry (though they didn’t have Mr Miliband to contend with). Stopping emissions in this country but importing the materials made elsewhere by the processes that have been stopped here is madness. Similarly stopping local oil and gas production but importing that stuff from half way round the world is similar lunacy. And don’t even start me on the  14m tons of timber, freshly felled in Canada and the USA every year, processed and shipped 5,000 miles to be burnt in Yorkshire.

“Private companies should do their own revitalising if it is needed. Otherwise they ought not buy a company they are incapable of managing.”

To make steel you must burn coal. All the “revitalising” in the world will not alter that and this country has decided it won’t do it.

A government spokesman said: "Decarbonisation does not mean deindustrialisation and government will continue working in partnership with trade unions and business to support good, stable jobs and deliver economic growth."

Quite so. As long as the industries being “decarbonised” do not depend on a reliable source of high quality steel.