To think its a no brainer to renationalise British Steel

[feellikeahugefailure]

We need steel, it's just being killed by cheap dumping. Would be foolish to let it go under and not produce any steel in the country.

Also the mistakes with remploy show that it will probably cost more in benefits if the business close. Not to mention more long term affects on mental health from people that can't ever get back into work.

Would decimate the local area, not just the workers but the knock on affect of the workers not spending their money in the local area. One pound earnt could be spent 10 times.

Itsalldyingout

Thank you for your very informative post.

The over-manning on the managerial side - is this the unions at play demanding jobs for the boys or just sheer mismanagement by Tata?

I do support you.

i find it utterly appalling that the UK could be the first major economy in the world to lose it's steel-making capability.

Without steel we are defenceless.

We could import steel in peace time but could then be held hostage on price / tariffs by the steel-producing country and an EU that may not act in the UK's interests to ensure we have the steel supply we need to service thise industries you mentioned.

But in war time we may as well surrender as we could not guarantee that we would be able to physically import steel into the UK during hostilities. We would be defenceless.

And I noticed you mentioned the quality of the steel. I have heard that steel quality varies. China has a habit of doctoring its produces, like their milk scandal. Are we seriously considering using Chinese steel of possibly dubious quality to build our next nuclear reactor?

That too scares me.

itsall It is so important that people who are there, who see and who will be living with this are heard. My grandad was a miner in the Rhondda. I have seen at first hand what happens when you take away the sole economic driver of a whole area. People in diversely economic activity areas just do not get the impact.
I liked the "Trident costs 12 billion and will protect X jobs. Steel costs 1.5billion and protects Xx4 jobs" post on fb.

Springing DH works in a non industrial field that is involved in quality. One manufacturer they deal with started using a Chinese steel product but have had to stop because it was rusting inside 2 years.
China is a master of PR. Or double think.

I understand issue is with government itself, but there are lots of conflicting views coming out of EU as to who wishes to pursue "market economy status" for China. Can't say I trust any of it, there are reports saying it will be civilisation suicide for Euruope to proceed with ultimately losing steel production.

However nationalisation goes against anti intervention rescue policy state aid rules for EU ( which is what BBC are reporting on).

Giddy yes it is worrying.

Their stock exchange is openly assumed to be not the real picture; more what they wish to project.

Doublespeak by all concerned.

As repeated many times on this thread, we import all the raw material for steel production - if people want to stop us having steel, they can, regardless of whether we have steel making capacity in this country.
Also repeated, only half of the Port Talbot facility is loss making, there is profitable steel made there to, which will be retained.
Small points: most Range Rover and Jaguar products are now aluminium, not steel. Many workers get full pensions at 55 not 60.

And by full pensions, I mean 2/3 salary, so around £30k a year.

carol your repeated pension point is irrelevant when you realise that fred the shred and so many others in banking retained theirs having failed so miserably.

I've not read the whole thread but the steel industry, as far as the UK is concerned, is dead. The government throwing money at it will not help and will be a waste of taxpayers' cash. Yes we need it and we can get it, now from China, for cheaper than it would be to produce

Fred the Shred is pretty irrelevant, because the problem isn't ex employees drawing pensions, but paying the pension contributions for people still in work.

If Fred was still there getting pension contributions which made the bank unprofitable you might have a point, but it's not the same situation at all.

AreBags, the U.K. steel industry is not dead, and it's not going to be. It's just going to readjust back to making high value, highly technical products that fund the high wages UK workers demand.

One of our main economic focuses in the UK is the fact that in science and engineering we have some of the most highly skilled people and technologically advanced processes. Things that other countries just can't do. That is not going anywhere.

Haven't read the whole thread but just on the off-chance it's not been mentioned already, the only solution to cheap Chinese steel is to slap a large tariff on it like the Americans do. 200 odd percent. It keeps the local steel companies competitive and future proof. The EU has been trying to pass similar legislation but a certain country has been dragging it's heals. Yip, you guessed it.. The UK.
Cameron won't upset the Chinese and thinks that the death of the British Steel industry is a price worth paying.
He forgets one obvious detail though. The cheap Chinese steel will become disproportionately expensive when the local competition has been euthanased.

Forgot to mention, the price increases as a result will have the same effect on many manufacturing companies resulting in them no longer being financially viable resulting in further closures and job losses.
The Chinese have played a blinder.
Slowly deconstructing the opposition and Cameron and Co are left scratching their heads/arses.

We, the people of Britain, bailed out the fat cats of the Royal Bank of Scotland...so why shouldn't we now support the hard working men of Wales?!

Itsall, you are probably one of the few posters here really entitled to be listened to.....well done and thank you for your insightful post!

JohnThomas, do you have any idea the knock on effect steel tariffs would have? Particularly on the construction industry?

18,000 people are employed in the steel industry. By comparison 2.2 million people are employed by the construction industry, and the construction industry would be decimated by steel tariffs. And we're in the middle of a housing crisis anyway, it's in nobodies interests to make construction prohibitively expensive. And it's one of the few sectors growing and preventing us from slipping back into recession.

It's a ridiculous proposal, no government is going to do it. A few thousand people might lose their jobs and that's sad, but it is nowhere near as cataclysmic as hundreds of thousands of people in construction being laid off which could have a huge effect on the whole economy.

It's typical simplistic leftist politics, just a knee jerk response without consideration of any long term effects. Oh, and of course, the left loves a romanticised unionised manual worker smeared in dirt, probably in a male voice choir. But if you wear a hard hat and drive a white van and you're not unionised you're far to real for them and they suddenly stop giving a shit if you're in a job or your family can eat or even if you drag the whole economy with you. Because you probably deserve it for reading the sports section of 'The Sun' or something.

will become disproportionately expensive when the local competition has been euthanased.

And FFS, how many times does it have to be said: production for low quality steel products is relatively cheap and easy to set up - we did it when the demand from China ramped up. It would be pointless China putting up prices as if they did other countries would just restart production. This assumption people are making that once production of low grade steel ends it can never restart or only with great difficulty are completely wrong.

Ok Billsykes you're living in cloud cuckoo land if you really believe that steel prices will not go up as a result. The effects will not be immediate but a measured approach by the Chinese to see off any new competition where necessary will ensure they dominate the market. Like everything else that has gone before and we now have to import the prices have sky rocketed.

But we won't have to import. That's the whole bloody point. We will not stop making high quality, high cost steel products. We never have.

Put it this way, we stopped making low quality steel products. As soon as China started demanding them at a premium price we quickly and easily set up production for that type of steel again. The demand from China for that sort of steel has gone and so that sort of production has been mothballed. But should China choose to ramp up the price for that sort of steel there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't start production again. We've already done it once in response to Chinese demand, it's demonstrably possible. We would not be in the situation of being forced to take inflated price steel from China.

With respectsort of, you don't know what you're talking about.

"It's typical simplistic leftist politics, just a knee jerk response without consideration of any long term effects. Oh, and of course, the left loves a romanticised unionised manual worker smeared in dirt, probably in a male voice choir."

Bill I had time for some of your arguments till you posted this.

Also none of arguments include the fact that Tata would happily see all of the British steel jobs go in return for not having competition with its dutch plant. Recent reports in the FT suggest that the company is just going through the motions of a sale and that it won't really happen. All of the jobs are at risk.

Even the currently discussed investment (only for the Scunthorpe plant) will only take place if there is a good level of government support.

There are many, many reasons that the UK steel industry is in this situation, and it has not been helped at all by the government who are willing to let this industry wither in order to appease the chinese.

So fine lets take the right wing approcah let the business go, what are you going to do with Port Talbot and the 4,000 workers? Or are you going to use the typical right wing argument that if you are left jobless and poor by outside factors it is some how your fault.

There will be a need for serious investment in the area then, by the Government, which I doubt will be nearly enough to be effective and as with other industries which have gone, I think we will regret losing this production capablility in the future.

But then its alright for the right wing, they either inherit their money or are born comfortable, their hard work and personal choices mantra is bollocks, you then get the dimwitted middle classes voting for them because they are aspirational voters when really the wealthy make it harder to succeed the lower down you start.. So the right wing, are either rich and greedy, or middle class and stupid, which one are you?

So, does anyone have a reason why its a bad idea to renationalise? Anyone, Anything?

Not about imposing tarifs on imports, pensions, anti leftie bollocks or anything about the 1970's being a difficult time of transition from the WW2 mindset to modern times.

Just answer the fucking Q because I've been wading through 7 pages and asked 3 times.

Is there any arguement for or against based on just economics, not partisan politics?

Isn't most of economics based on a partisan view of the world?

Asking for an unbiased view on this is like askkng for an unbiased analysis on Brexit.

Sadly, not a chance - economics is often wrong, and often biased.

The argument against nationalisation is essentially that the Port Talbot plant is unviable, that we will not be losing the ability to make high grade steel (which we actually might) but that it is the cheap steel capability that we are losing.

They would also point out that we don't have iron ore in the UK, or the resource to supply coke for the coking plant and in that case other countries have a higher comparitive advantage when producing cheap steel so we should leave it to them.

Therefore any nationalisation would be a burden on the Government for an unecomical plant which is destined to be unable to compete in the long run.

Thats their argument, in a nut shell

So fine lets take the right wing approcah let the business go, what are you going to do with Port Talbot and the 4,000 workers? Or are you going to use the typical right wing argument that if you are left jobless and poor by outside factors it is some how your fault.

My approach is that I would far prefer to see 4,000 people out of a job in the steel industry than hundreds of thousands in the construction industry with further hundreds and potentially up to 2 million with their wages decimated AGAIN. I would rather see the rest of the economy affected by only 4,000 job losses and the knock on effects for other people's jobs reduced. I don't want to see housing become even more prohibitively expensive when they're already crippling people.

But as the left wing has proved time and again they couldn't give two shits if working class jobs are culled or their wages trashed unless those people are in unions and pay a portion of their salary to the Labour Party.

It's always sad when people lose their jobs. But it's ridiculous to suggest that 4,000 people's jobs should be saved by introducing tariffs which would destroy the jobs and wages of countless others.

Thank you lurked101 . I actually understood that (economics is not my strong point)

So the debate is what would it cost to keep the plant open, what could it manufacture, vs what will having 4,000 people on benefits cost.

Elsie because it would cost a huge amount of money for no benefit which would be better spent on stuff like nurses and schools and hospitals and shit.