Ta-Ta To Tata Steel

[Hypognosis]

Breaking news on BBC, now. Another closure.

I searched AB before posting and found this thread, which says far more than I ever could.

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question867011.html#answer-10009414

[mushroom25]

how come the AB sweary filter hasn't turned scunthorpe into an innocuous bowl of fruit or something?

[Svejk]

A lot of the blame rests with the idiot Brown. I knew when he was flying around the world signing us up to every cockamamie treaty the ecoloons could dream up that it would come back to bite us on the ***.
The man just loved saving the world(larf) and, of course, accepting all the back slapping plaudits that went with it.

[Hypognosis]

@svejk

By the ecoloons reference, I take it you refer to the cost imposition of stuff like cleaning up gaseous emissions, wastewater treatment, carbon footprint and everything up to and including land remediation after they level an old plant?

I also recently learned (TV news) that our steel mills are stuck with the kind of electricity prices which were fixed at a level to keep nuclear power afloat. The Chinese can just erect a new coal plant every week and smelt far more cheaply.

Note: aluminium ore smelting eats electricity but steel furnaces are heated by coke, I thought. I am scratching my head as to what difference electricity costs would make to steel manufacture, unless it's the hammers, presses, rollers and the rest which are run on motors.

However, we, unquestionably, cannot compete on wages, if the playing field was level in all other respects.