Tata Job Losses: Hundreds Of Port Talbot Steel Jobs To Go

[mikey4444]

As discussed yesterday, hundreds of jobs will be lost here in South Wales.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-35339153

Be prepared for floods of crocodile tears from Tory politicians, both sides of the Severn Bridge.

[youngmafbog]

Are you seriously saying Tories dont care about this?

This is a terrible thing, why are you trying to make political capital on it?

[dannyk13]

I'm afraid Mikey never misses an opportunity to decry the Conservatives.

[jno]

if the Tories care about it, let's see if they do anything about i.

[Baldric]

I was under the impression that it was Tata Steel introducing the Job Losses and not the UK Government.

[ToraToraTora]

Well TATA is an indian company, I don't see how the government has any sort of control over it. Perhaps your Labour MPs in Wales can help?

[TWR]

This was British Steel until It was allowed to sell it out the same as everything else in the Country.

[TWR]

B.S, Leyand, Jaguar, Land Rover, need I say any more? cheers.

[andy-hughes]

This is the inevitable result of China manufacturing its own steel, thus simultaneously removing itself as a major world customer, and turning itself into a major world supplier.

The rest of the world steel producers cannot compete, and economic forces take over.

In a matter of time, all steel production in the UK will cease - tragic, but inevitable, and there is nothing any government of any persuasion can do about it.

[Bathsheba]

How sad. Have only driven through Port Talbot on my way to Swansea, and thought it was a dump. Will be even worse now :(

Bathx x

[TWR]

Block the Importing of Steel Andy, put the Steel works back into UK Ownership to save Employment.

[Svejk]

As I said on the other thread, the beloved EU have rules against subsidising steel production.
It's, partly, uneconomic because of energy price hikes and carbon caps that one, Eddie Miliband, signed us up to. You need to look closer to home for the problems facing British industry, mikey.

[andy-hughes]

TWR - //Block the Importing of Steel Andy, put the Steel works back into UK Ownership to save Employment. //

Blocking the importing of steel in order to maintain production in the UK is an admirable sentiment, but sadly it has no place in the sentiment-free world of economics.

If Joe's bakery down the road sold you a loaf of bread for a pound, which he baked himself, and Andre's bakery down the road sold you a loaf of bread for twenty pence, which imported from France, how long would you, and everyone else, be willing to sustain Joe's bakery before simple economics won over sentiment, and Joe's bakery went to the wall.

Tradition and emotion make headlines and documentaries, they do not make economic sense, and that is the force that governs where people buy things.

[mushroom25]

//Tradition and emotion make headlines and documentaries, they do not make economic sense...//

it didn't make sense in the 1970s and 1980s either but it didn't stop the miners and their labour supporters demanding just that, to the extent of precipitating a year-long dispute, the recriminations of which are still being felt 30 years later.

[andy-hughes]

mushroom - ////Tradition and emotion make headlines and documentaries, they do not make economic sense...//

it didn't make sense in the 1970s and 1980s either but it didn't stop the miners and their labour supporters demanding just that, to the extent of precipitating a year-long dispute, the recriminations of which are still being felt 30 years later. //

Indeed - and there will be disputes and strikes following this announcement, and the ones that follow that signal the end of all steel production in the UK.

Human nature dictates that these decisions will not be implemented without a fight, but implemented they will be - and that is a tragic inevitability.

[Togo]

Cornwall used to be the major supplier of Tin world wide. Swansea the worlds biggest Copper smelting area (using ore mined on Parry's Mountain on Anglesey). Blaenau Ffestiniog supplied most of he slate used for roofing world wide, and was called the roof of the world. Britain supplied cheap wool and cotton, after the Industrial Revolution, again a global trade. All have met their demise as the world turns and times change. The people of Britain, and Wales in particular have always shown admirable fortitude and powers of recovery from these set backs and, I am afraid, will have to again in Port Talbot and other steel dependant areas. We do them no favours by patronising them or appealing to the latent forces of 'victimhood'. You might as well blame Abraham Derby for developing iron smelting as blame 'The Government'. Some of you will know that I am from an area that has suffered just such terrible social change brought about by world changing market forces. Pity is just as bitter a pill to swallow as are, false 'answers', which ignore the real reasons, and prolong the despair. Mainly touted to prove a point not worth considering.

[mikey4444]

Thanks Ed.

[Svejk]

tittle-tattling again, were we?

[youngmafbog]

Suppression; the prime tool of the left wing.

[Baldric]

///put the Steel works back into UK Ownership to save Employment///

First thing is you have to find someone who wants to buy them, and don't suggest the Government or you'll just end up with a repeat of the Miners problems with the taxpayer propping up an uneconomic business until the inevitable happens.