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.

itsalldying i assume that was typo, unless your grandfather was born in a mine. All I am saying is that life in this country today is better for everyone than in was in the 70's, when the unions held sway. That is all based on free trade and globalisation. There are problems with the way this goes and improvements that can be made, but harking back to the past, with nationalisation and men dying at work is not the right answer.

Is it better carol? For everybody? When life expectancy is decreasing?
Life in South Wales was a hard working life up until the 80s but it was reasonably paid.
You sound like someone who has never seen what's left in the pit villages and hasn't understood how that feels when a vibrant, busy community has its heart ripped out.
Economics is one thing, but understanding the very long term effects is different. What price the future of a whole region?
People in the South East have no idea and it makes me despair.

And btw from all of that emotion you choose to nit pick about a typo?

My grandad was working underground after he'd had half a lung removed. The union get him moved above ground. Not the NCB. He went underground on his 14th birthday. They didn't trouble the pension fund much in those days.

*Can I just say springing, I've worked in both private industry and public services and found the nepotism was far more common in private rather than public.

I also think that the private sector "efficiency" points are rather over blown in comparison in public sector inefficiency, genuinely the only time I've ever experienced "management consultants" in the public sector they were foisted on us by central government and were nowhere near worth the money they were paid, it was the same when we had them in private industry years ago, someone somewhere needs their decision justifying with an independent report and so it must be thus.*

Well obviously Lurked if you run Jones and Son you're going to make sure Son is looked after

the first question at the Civil Service interview used to be "Do you know anyone who works in the Civil Service". That as your opportunity to reply "Mummy, Daddy, duster, auntie " etc. you then passed the 'one of us ' test.

The Civil Service was swarming with management consultants. You were lucky to have escaped the,m. There were even management consultants running their own teams of management consultants. Utterly bizarre. All because the Civil Service felt ill-equipped to make their own decisions ( wanted someone else to bone when the shit hit the fan).

"All I am saying is that life in this country today is better for everyone than in was in the 70's, when the unions held sway"

There are many that would disagree there carol, life in terms of material goods may be better but people had protection at work, there were no such things as 0 hour contracys, one income was enough for a family there are a lot of things about the 70s that were worse, but a lot that were better.

I've never heard of that sort of recruitment in the civil service tbh spring, seeing as in the 1970s you had to pass fairly rigourous exams to get in, and have a good degree! But again both you and Carol seem to worship at the dais of small government and free enterprise so are never going to believe that anything good can come from Government. I've also never met a civil servant who was afraid to make a decision, I've met several politicians who want civil service decisions "overseen" though.

I'm sure there are bad points from both, but it is not where near as black and white as you make you.

lurked101 Couldnt agree more with this answer.

Some of my family are low and mid ranking Civil Service, and apparently caroldecker you havent heard of LSE. the London School of Economics. The college you have to study at if you want to progress in the Civil Service...your comment is ridiculous even for the Foreign Office jobs.

My apologies, Carol. Yes, a typo. I meant 40 years at the face. Though from the age of 7 he helped underground with the ponies. He was born in number one, the house right next door to the pit, along with his four brothers. All lived their working lives at the face. All died of lung damage, my grandfather having lived the longest. All may as well have been born in the pit.

I don't believe anyone who hasn't worked themselves or had a relative working in heavy industry can have much of an idea of what it's like. What it's like to see the men in their lives come home filthy, even though they've had a shower at work. The dirt is ingrained. Their clothes are soaked with sweat and they're exhausted. Yet they keep going. They believe it's good, honest work and enjoy the camaraderie. However, as well as being hard work, it's also dangerous. There have been many injuries and deaths over the years. Maybe that's why it's so close knit. It must be a similar type of experience armed forces go through where their lives are in the hands of the men next to them.

My brothers and I had a chance to leave as our father wanted us educated, believing we would have a better life. Life being what it is, we've all ended back here. Our choice. So yes, life is better now than in the 70s as only the lucky few like ourselves had the chance of a better education. We also "have" more.

What we DON'T have that we did have in the 70s is a life where family is key. I remember my mum being home with me. She taught me to cook and we had family mealtimes. Mum would help us with our homework and put us to bed with a story every night, encouraging us to read. We were lucky (considered rich in those days) as we also had a cleaner. When my mum went back to work through choice, I would either go to my nan's or the cleaner (a lovely lady who taught me to sew). I ALWAYS felt like I was surrounded by family.

The unions weren't always the problem in the 70s. The government and world economics also caused a lot of trouble.

In the 80s women were more or less expected to work - most wanted to. we all knew strong career-oriented women who wore power suits and shoulder pads. They achieved success that women before them never had.

Now we have something that's wrong - and has been going that way for a while. Women still work, but we are somehow we are sliding backwards. We seem to be further away from equality than we were in the eighties and girls these days just seem to want to be reality TV stars or WAGs. I wish I could wave a magic wand over every little girl and give her the choice. Having it all seems to be a myth.

As women we can have everything except respect in so many areas of life.

I've done a bit of everything in my time (I get bored easily), and seen life from a lot of perspectives. For all the money and wealth in the financial sector, there is little real satisfaction. From what I see here and now, satisfaction and happiness is a real family where the men go to work and earn decent money that allows their partners to bring up their children in their early years. Much like many families back in the 70s, where dad would work day shift and mum would do the swing shift. Kids would have grandparents to go to if either parent wasn't around. From what I remember (with what I am going to be accused of having - rose-tinted spectacles), kids would be out playing, being taught simple basics like having a bit of respect and even the Green Cross Code!

What do we have now? Choice? Not really. At least not for many. We HAVE to go out to work, leaving so early we rely on breakfast clubs to feed our children. Home so late our kids are in after-school clubs. Teachers over-worked, threatened with violence by young kids that are almost feral. Burning out and leaving the profession. The same applies to the health professionals in the NHS. A&E on the weekend is a nightmare, full of abusive drunks. No wonder doctors and nurses want to leave.

No respect.

I'm aware that I'm a new member and that I'm going to be flamed, and I don't mean to make sweeping generalisations, but I do believe that a family unit, where one parent stays at home for a few years to bring up children is better for the children and society. A plant like Port Talbot pays the men well enough that it allows their partner time away from their own, usually not as well paid work, to do this. Even if one parent isn't at home, a grandparent is usually close by to help out. They interact with the children and keep them safe and happy.

The pressure on mums to go back to work after minimum maternity leave is enormous. If the larger wage earner earns enough to allow the other to stay home, they should be encouraged to. Not pushed back to work for the sake of the economy.

Again, I was lucky. My ex earned enough to keep us so I didn't have to go out to work until my youngest was 7. He worked extremely hard, but they all do. They do it FOR their families. I'm thankful to the steel works for allowing us that choice. I would wish that for any family.

When I look at "problem" places, I can see they're mainly areas of deprivation where industry has died, leaving no real jobs for the men. This puts pressure of families, they split up, the mums have to get low-paid jobs to support the children as the dads (family generalisations here), have left the area to look for work or are on benefits themselves, trying desperately to keep their heads above water and their bodies off the streets. There's a reason homelessness has increased. Meanwhile, the kids are left to their own devices, often led astray to a life of petty crime and drug abuse.

Do we want that for even more communities? How would the well-off members here cope if it happened to them? And if there is ONE thing in this life I have learned, it's that you're never THAT far away from an event that will change your life and ruin it forever.

Those who think it should rot and the men should go out and get another job (as it's so simple these days), should sit in their ivory towers and pray HARD that a turn of events doesn't mean financial (or family) disaster and a loss of the nice life they have. It can happen to anyone.

Oh, and just another thought, just because steel workers are considered as lower class by many (and I've rubbed shoulders with quite a few with that opinion as I was schooled for some years in a private girls' school. Like I said, I've been there, done that and get bored easily), it doesn't mean the should be treated like dirt. They're more honest and likeable than the majority of the politicians and entrepreneurs whose hands their lives are in.

Sorry for the ramble - a glass of wine really sets me off.

Springing, on the head again. I also did some time in the civil service. Yep, I was a careers officer's nightmare.

Lurked and Elsie - the civil service away from major cities was actually like that. I was introduced as my aunt's niece, patted on the back and given the job. Yes, I was qualified for the position I was given, but I would have had it even if I wasn't.As it was, they never even asked! Not what you knew, but who you knew.

Caught a piece on Sky this morning, outlining the pension obligations of any buyer. They are massive. They would have to agree to pay all the final salary schemes, most of whom are no longer working. Will have a dig for figures - can't recall off top of head.

I don't see why the final salary schemes, most of which were accrued during an era of nationalisation aren't paid by the government. The people who earned them, were offered them etc were government employees.

On the nepotism thing? I see much, much more of it in terms of people with connections in private industry even now but it may have been possible in the regions in the civil service back in the day.

Have not read the full thread but to make a couple of points. There is a safety net, funded by a levy on the whole UK pension industry, to look after the pension liabilities of Tata/Port Talbot. No any serious buyer will be going ahead if the pension fund is not ring fenced.

The possible interested buyer this morning was making apparent sense: modernise, replacing the old blast furnaces with more efficient arc furnaces; lobby very hard on the energy side to scale back the green energy subsidy which the UK is pushing harder than any other country worldwide despite contributing only some 2% of CO2 emissions, make much more use of reclaimed recycled steel instead of exporting it to Turkey and India, and concentrate on manufacturing the high-value added types of steel. It is probably more difficult to do than to say, but it sounds sensible. I don't doubt some jobs would go, and many more would change, but better that surely than the sort of industrial wastelands left behind after the disaster that was the coal fields.

There seem to be some rose-tinted spec-wearing posters about on here. I am not convinced that nationalisation is the answer, as I am old enough to remember the "good old days". As late as 1986 (when I bought my first apartment) BT told me I would have to wait two years for a phone line! It came as a hell of a shock after AT&T, who could sign you up and have the phone in and on next day in the USA! British Rail managed demand by pricing it off the railway........ and I heard that from one of the senior executives who ran old BR. You must all be much younger than me!

I agree things weren't all rosy, I'm quite old too! But current Rail firms get more subsidy (in real terms) than BR ever did.

I wouldn't have nationalisation as a long term solution, but short term in order to make BS more viable to buy out, and to protect against Tata just closing the plants because it suits them to eliminate the competition for their Dutch plant.

Everyone I never mentioned the civil service, I have heard of LSE and it is not compulsory for the civil service.
In terms of employees, most public sector and private sector are the same - a few good eggs, a few bad apples and the majority muddling through to make a wage.
The difference is that private companies tend to travel in one direction, unless it fails and then they change leadership and try again.
Public sector is driven by the whims of elected politicians, who change on a regular basis and do not know what they are trying to achieve. Look at the changes to the NHS, schools etc.

Bill - When the mines closed the government paid large subsidies to companies to open up in South Wales and employ ex-miners. They did, took the money, employed the ex-miners for the minimum 3 month trial, then sacked them. Some firms did this many times, sometimes moving sites and re-naming their company.

Oh, and just to add insult to injury, one particular firm that moved premises (at the government's cost), moved it's canned product with it. It was then shipped out to Boots, Tesco and a few other national retailers, who all refused it due to short dates. The returned products were brought back in where a few trusted employees worked night and day over the weekend to remove the dates from the bottom of the cans. Next working day, the employees came back in and ran what they thought was newly produced product through the dating process. The newly stamped cans were then sent back out to the retailers and sold on to consumers.

How much will setting up another scheme like this cost again, just to be abused by unscrupulous companies and the evil gits that run them?

Huge waste of money. No benefit to local area or economy. More tax payers money then paid out to keep them, and the knock on affected people on the dole and associated benefits.

Some of the chocolate teapot managers at Port Talbot are earning £100k already. Another huge waste of cash. TATA really should have looked at what the management was costing. If I was in charge and my plant was losing money like that, the first place I'd be looking is at the people I employ to run the place properly.

Interesting that the Welsh government is offering money to the next owners. If they and the UK government had helped out with energy cost taxes etc., we wouldn't be so deep in this shite.

TATA put forward plans to make the plant almost self-sufficient with an onsite power plant and numerous other suggestions that would have modernised the plant, several years ago, but gave up because of lack of support. All of a sudden, the right buyer comes along and money is flung at him.

To the person who asked: the raw product is iron ore, though a lot of scrap metal is used, depending on what grade is produced. If they change the blasts to use scrap, they'll most likely import scrap metal, too, if they really ramp up production.

Steel is such an underrated product. Yes, you get your cheap grades that we automatically think of like the cheap, made in China cafe cutlery we all know. But the higher and more specialised grades that the plant can produce with little notice are in things we don't notice or even realise exist. It really is an amazing place. If anyone who thinks it should just shut would go on a tour of the plant and see the work that goes into the amazing process, and stopped to talk to the guys that matter, I'm pretty sure they'd change their minds and support it instead.

And I'm pretty sure that a ruthless (in the right way - while still treating the workforce properly) owner took over and had government support to start with, it wouldn't take that long to get it back into the red, producing CLEAN steel. Same goes if the place was nationalised and run with the right management.

Lurked - men from Port Talbot went out to show the Dutch plant, and more recently the Indian ones, how to produce steel properly.

They're a bit gutted they bothered now. The difference a decent management system makes...

The basic fact is that any NATO country will need some self-sufficiency in steel production should there ever be another world war, and surely the UK has learned its lesson from WW2 that being in debt to the US for 60 years is not a good way to fund your major acts of aggression. There is a medium to high potential for major conflicts whilst there are Putins and Kim Jong-uns in this world.
Therefore there will surely be some sort of govt solution.
Excellent posts Giddy.

blody how can we be self-sufficient with no iron ore production?

Plenty of scrap about in out throwaway world of today. Scrap is already being used in some production.

If they upgraded the blast, using scrap would be no problem at all.

During WW2, people were asked to donate metal. Anything and everything was taken from small items like pans to huge gates. My nan told me about brass buttons and curtain rings being used for shell casings in the factory she worked in.

What would be wrong with importing iron ore to make our own steel anyway? We produce our own crops and livestock yet still import chicken from Thailand and beans from Africa.

It should be nationalised. Aside from all the thousands of jobs at stake, it is a national security issue. We need the ability as a country to produce important resources such as steel for ourselves - so we aren't dependent on other nations. If we lose the steel industry we also lose all the hard-won knowledge from it - to build that up again would take generations.

They're actually breaking even as it stands today (according to a managerial source).

GoldenApples - yy. Some departments have to sign the Official Secrets Act as some grades are used in the military. For our own troops protection, the metal formulae needs to be kept quiet.

There is a major problem - when an ignorant chancer chancellor like George Osborne can tel his fellow citizens that the country must balance its books - BUT that it will be at the expense of the poorer parts of society whilst he gives his wealthy friends tax CUTS.

Sajid Javid seems to have been over promoted and is not up to the responsible job he was entrusted with (apparently promoted on the recommendation of George O)
Holidaying in Australia with his family when he should have been at the recent TATA board meeting in India when they were deciding whether or not to keep their UK steel manufacturing !

What a cheeky, disrespectful to all concerned, irresponsible attitude from Osborne's man !

Allocation of resources in the world today is largely done by measuring likely Profit as being likely financial Income minus likely financial Cost.

A problem for the world is that financial Income and particularly financial "COST" are simplistic and inadequate measures
regarding the true allocation decision's Benefit / Cost to human society.

World economists and accountancy bodies need to address this problem ASAP

Recognising Carbon as a cost has been a good start but very poorly implemented.

If steel making is so dirty that it is damaging people's health then that obviously needs modernising, but not having a job has a personal /family cost
when a whole community experiences that then that can have a devastating impact as a community and national and cultural COST.

There is a myth that the market knows best.
Surely the worldwide failure of the financial system in 2008 and thereafter proved otherwise !
The "MARKET" was exposed as being inadequate as currently constituted.

It was only saved by Trillions of £ $ etc worldwide - of governments' monies being pumped in to prop up the various "too big to fail" financial institutions.

What is the true cost in terms of human happiness of not fully employing the talents of our young (and older) people of working age ?

Interestingly the SNP has within the last few weeks signed a £10bn memorandum of understanding with the Chinese agreeing that they will supply rail products. Largely, um, steel. And largely cutting out industries based in England.

Nobody seems to have made much of a fuss about this. But then I suppose it's not in the interests of the left wing to make capital against itself.

Bill nothing the SNP does would surprise me ...they are not left wing - they are anything that they think will get them elected so they can work on swinging an independence vote in their favour....
Their 'left wing' policies were designed to attract Labour voters ...as Scotland was Labour stronghold. (If it had been a Tory stronghold I believe they would have completely different policies). They won't actually do anything except superficially to actually help the poorest in society - they need to keep them miserable, so they can blame Westminster and push for independence...
The deal was kept quiet -it was Labour that pushed for it to be made public.
(I'm not a Labour supporter but I do really hate the SNP)

Oh the joys of politics and how a few people in power see the little people.

Anna Soubry, for example. Defending Javid's jaunt to Australia happily calls the place of employment of so many the "ruddy" works.

Not really very pleasant to hear the plant and all the workers being spoken of with that kind of tone. Definitely seems to be an "us and them" attitude there.

Chinese steel won't stay cheap once all the steel mills around the world are closed.

I used to work in the industry. (Mining, steel and heavy metal manufacture) so I think China has a deliberate strategy to make the world dependent. Once you lose the knowledge and infrastructure for some industries they will never be revived.

As a military strategy and offset against welfare costs, steel making can be in the national interest even at no profit.