HS2 our fully nationalised railway has cost a fortune and will never reach the North as planned. The Post Office sends taxpayers large bills for its losses and put key employees in prison based on false charges and a botched computerisation programme.
Today Mr Reynolds, Business Secretary, has total powers to run British Steel, a company owned by the Chinese. So far he has co operated with the steel workers to exclude the Chinese management. Mr Reynolds has no experience of running an industrial business. He has presented no business plan to Parliament and has no announced budget to pay the huge losses reported for the current business.
I have been responsible in the past as a company chairman for a steel rolling mill and other industrial plants. My advice to Mr Reynolds is
1. Make employee safety and employee engagement your first task.
2. Understand you need more orders for british steel than the Network Rail order. Construction and defence orders need increasing with ways of offering high quality and better value for money. Customers need persuading. They do not owe you a living
3. Understand you cannot make this work without much cheaper energy. This business has been pulled down by the needless closure of UK coal mines and by the mad pursuit of dear energy. The current nonsense that gas prices are the problem overlooks the painful fact that electricity in the UK is four times the price of gas per unit of energy. Net zero ideologues think closing steel furnaces, coalmines and fossil fuel power stations is good news. They deliver us into the hands of China as we need to shift to imports.
So Where is your business plan?How much will it cost? How do you avoid spending money now which could go to the Chinese owners? How can you run it against the wishes of the owners? Are you going to force the owners out? What legal liabilities will rest with UK taxpayers? Why was there nothing in the new Act about the split of the money once you start paying bills?
The Act is a botched mess. The draconian powers against the owners are coupled with complete muddle on who will in future be responsible. You cannot be in charge on odd days when you fancy it or see a need to intervene. You need to sort out who is in charge and what the plan is urgently with the owners.
April 13, 2025
Good morning.
And that, Sir John is the Achilles heel. As you well know, steel production is a high intensity consumer of energy and raw materials. It is difficult and dangerous work and you simply cannot turn on and off the furriness like a light switch.
But successive governments have backed this one into a corner, not that this should absolve them on any blame. For what were they doing in opposition if not hold the government to account ? Too much time taking the knee and pandering to woke nonsense I would argue.
This government is no government at all. It is just a semi-unruly rabble of ideologues and social justice warriors. Totally out of their depth.
April 13, 2025
So we have a man who isn’t a solicitor running multi billion company which has probably been asset stripped and neglected by its current owners.
We are shipping coal 10 000 miles when we have it under foot and wi8be paying 4 times our competitors energy costs.
It’s probably cheaper to use bank notes as fuel because its goung to be a real money pit just like HS2 and Hinckley point.
April 13, 2025
And the absurdity of Drax burning imported wood (young coal but more far CO2 per Joule of energy!
April 13, 2025
Minister Reynolds has just said on Sky that the Cumbrian coal is not suitable for the Scunthorpe blast furnaces. He added that in any case current government policy is to not increase CO2 emissions in this country or indeed to pursue a process that will increase emissions anywhere else in the world.
Reply sounds like the end of blast furnace steel in UK then.
April 13, 2025
That’s funny because during the planning process the point of opening the Cumbrian coal mine was for use in steel production. Sounds like another failed solicitor talking.
April 13, 2025
And the end of importing coal, steel, gas, all manufactured goods. Everything that ‘increases CO2 elsewhere in the world’.
It’s painful watching this.
April 13, 2025
Except of course that we had the possible opening of a new mine with just the right coal only a relatively few miles away but was closed down even before it could be opened. Dogma over national interest from our politicians who have caught the net zero illness.
April 13, 2025
So Importing coal by sea isn’t increasing CO2 emissions elsewhere. There’s no wonder he failed his solicitors exam.
It looks very much like the government is going to close the place down and sell the land for housing which no one can afford. Another open goal or Farage. Badenough is obviously asleep at the wheel.
April 13, 2025
So, a brief comment on the effects of privatisation is not permitted on this topic.
April 13, 2025
As usual with this ‘administration’ it is going off at half cock .The same with cuts to aid, welfare and oil licenses
April 13, 2025
Indeed my advice to him is to appoint you or someone similar to advise, fire Ed Miliband, disband all the climate change committee and fire Chris Stark’s and his “mission control” farce and the GBenergy farce and fully ditch Net Zero. It seems the “I am not quite solicitor” Business Sec.read politics at Manchester and has not run any real business so not very encouraging! Not that even full solicitors are very good at running things in general.
Give the go ahead to that Cumbrian coking coal mine too. Drill baby drill, frack and mine too when economic to do so too.
April 13, 2025
‘Give the go ahead to that Cumbrian coking coal mine too’ – you sound like Arthur Scargill!
Are Tories now meant to be supporters of the 1980’s miners’ strike? Was Mrs Thatcher a globalist?
I’m genuinely confused.
April 13, 2025
We know.
April 14, 2025
Meow!
April 13, 2025
“Nationalisation normally costs taxpayers dear and ends in failure”. It certainly does just look at the NHS, the rail tracks etc, the BBC, Post Office, Police, Jails, NHS England, the vaccine regulators (how are the criminal investigations going), most of UK education, the passport office, land registry, HMRC, London under Khan… but then the Governent are hopeless at regulating things too.
April 13, 2025
A nationalised company effectively doesn’t pay any tax, as it’s just handing back to the government some of what they give out in subsidies. So when it comes to steelmaking, perhaps nationalisation is the only way it can be done in this country.
April 13, 2025
‘Private police’
– This is England not USA.
Do you think that people who still watch Dad’s Army (which is great) are going to want ‘private police’ on their doorsteps. Although private police didn’t really take off in the USA until the 1960’s, it’s still sort of part of their culture going back into the 19th. We never had cowboys and Indians and gangsters like in the USA. We have the English bobby. Things are changing. But we don’t want to change this country so much that it becomes unrecognisable.
And this is still easily the best country in the world to live in (and it’s also great to travel around in as well on holiday and at the weekends). Why can’t people just CHEER UP for a change.
April 13, 2025
In many places and for all but very serious n the only thing you are likely to get at all is private security in the UK. Unless you do a hurty tweet that is!
April 14, 2025
This country is already unrecognisable to anyone born before the turn of the century.
April 13, 2025
Lastly, Lifelogic, another reason people reject your UTILITARIANISM is because this destroys the CHARM of British life. Sure people must work hard and have work ethic. But at the same time, if we’re over utilitarian then this destroy the charm of British life. It’s hard to describe but it’s like you’re trying to get rid of a kind of British Dad’s Army charming and humorous attitude to life with an overly intense utilitarianism which is foreign to the UK. It works in the USA much better because America is a relatively new country. It had to create itself. And full of people who left America from poverty to make it big in America. That is why America in a sense is far more utilitarian than the UK. And why people in this country, overall, will always reject your kind of overly intense, overly logical and efficient, utilitarian views about politics (not being personal about you but about your politics). It’s alien to the British. It’s foreign.
April 13, 2025
Mr Reynolds, the darts player, has been handed a hospital pass on an international rugby field. He will need all the professional business help he can get from a Cabinet who have never run a welk stall.
At day one it has all the qualiities of a disaster getting underway. It seems that the Chinese were deliberately on a path of closure, so we owe them little.
As you say we need power at a quarter current costs, at first by government dictat, but then by ending nett zero. We then need coking coal. There is a ship load in Immingham for starters, pay for it and release it. Set up a new interim supplier while at the same time reopening the Whitehaven project. Bring in a managemant team of say 6 from Nippon Steel to assess the Scunthorpe site and put a figure on bringing it up to international speed with a timetable.
Find someone who can advise on the correct way to start a conversation with the Japanese, because there is a wrong and right way to go about it. Initially Mr Reynolds should approach Nissan and Toyota for an introduction to the japanese steel industry. It is very important to get it right from day one.
April 13, 2025
I smell a new Quango on the way…. Essential Industrial Management Office… or such. Staffed by….
April 13, 2025
Peter agreed, it will be yet another ineffectual organisation, that will be run by ineffectual appointed managers who have no skin in the game, so another expensive failure is on the cards, just like so many other State run organisations.
Why is it that Mp’s can never seem to appoint skilful and knowledgeable managers ?
April 13, 2025
@Berkshire Alan. Why? Because they fill such appointments from a pool of cronies. Skillfull and knowledgeable managers tend to shy away from the shenanigans and toadying needed to be a member of such pools.
April 13, 2025
You need a better acronym. Try
Steel Turned Up Furnaces For Ed’s Department.
April 13, 2025
Thanks, I was trying to think of one that suited – Steel Holding And Ferrous Trade Establishment Department.
April 13, 2025
Indeed help from the Japanese prob. makes sense.
April 13, 2025
We know how to run steel and iron and heavy industry. The Japanese come to Manchester and marvel at the ship canal and the factories where the Industrial Revolution was born.
Do you think anyone can tell JR how to run heavy industry?
April 13, 2025
When the Chinese company bought the steelworks, did they realise that the UK government was run by ecoloons who would try to power the factory using wind and solar while closing coal and gas and blowing up power stations? They may sue for compensation of the same ecoloons expect to buy the enterprise for £1.
April 13, 2025
Stred,
I think they bought to eliminate British Steel and create a dependent customer in the process. Their last actions were to prevent the purchase of coke and ore, so there is little doubt in my mind.
April 13, 2025
+1. Is there a wider lesson there somewhere?
April 13, 2025
It’s the British government which is trying to eliminate blast furnaces in order to save the planet by 2050. The Chinese are on a learning curve to find out just how stupid the British are.
April 13, 2025
Indeed. Perhaps they will now finally ditch some of their CO2 devil gas religion. Kemi is still backing it though!
April 13, 2025
The Chinese “bought” it to see if there were any steelmaking secrets that they had not already stolen.
April 13, 2025
The mood yesterday was clearly that the government was right to take emergency action to prevent the closure of a strategic national industry. The steel measure was rapidly passed, sent to the Lords – where it was voted through without amendments – and received Royal Assent in a matter of hours.
All this guff about energy costs is just that – guff. The Scunthorpe blast furnaces do not use electricity or gas, but burn cheap coke; the usual suspects are trying to spin their lunatic anti-net zero zealotry as a reason for the problems. The last administration should never have let Jingye buy British Steel in the first place; we only have their word for the alleged £700,000/week losses. Chinese-made steel imports are cheap because they also regard steelmaking as a strategic industry – and heavily subsidise their product.
The proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station will need about 350,000 tons of steel. The expansion of the grid, involving thousands of miles of new pylons, will need another ~345,000 tons. Wm Hare and Severfield plc together use another 5,250,000 tons of “H” profile steel girders in general construction. So long as the Scunthorpe plant can produce suitable grades of steel with good yield (strength) and weldability characteristics the business is there.
Total demand for steel in the UK was 7.6 million tons in 2023. (source https://www.uksteel.org/steel-news-2024/key-stats-2024)
Reply The government has a huge majority so the bill passed on a very short timetable because that was the view of the majority. The Conservatives were rightly critical and wanted the extreme powers given to the Secretary of State to be time limited but the government refused.
April 13, 2025
Could I point out that, as at Talbot, the ecoloons were negotiating with the Chinese to stop producing CO2 in the blast furnaces and change to electric scrap melting furnaces powered by windmills. And even blast furnaces need lots of electricity to power the machines and rolling plant. Presumably importing coal produces more CO2 that using local coal.
April 13, 2025
‘Sakara Gold’ Of course it’s the ‘net zero’ zealots who have caused this plant to (nearly) shut down. They don’t like the co2 it emits. They have blocked mining for the coal/coke.
Net zero, climate change and Ed Miilband working together to de-industialise Britain and increase Co2 through importation.
April 13, 2025
As usual you are making up data to support your net zero zealotry. Electricity represents about 8% of the total cost of traditional steel making and the cost of that electricity is double that of EU steel makers. This is because UK has a high percentage of expensive massively subsidised renewable power. In addition of course we have to import coking coal from Japan because you disapprove of it being mined in UK. Oh and traditional steel making DOES use lots of natural gas so you made that up too.
April 13, 2025
Mr Renyolds, like the rest of the Government (plus most other MPs and I expect the entirety of senior Civil Servants) has no experience of running any kind of business, let alone a traditional industrial one.
They have failed to identify the security importance of retaining a virgin steel plant in the UK. Their negotiations with the Chinese have failed so now they have panicked and they’ve rushed to be seen to be doing something to try and save the Scunthorpe Steel Plant, whilst the rest of their policy agenda is geared towards destroying what remains of our manufacturing industrial base on the alter of Net Zero.
No-one could run a successful nationalised industry under those conditions. And certainly not the Muppets we’ve got in Government.
Of course, their actions have nothing to do with the imminent Local Elections. Although they cancelled most of them in Eastern areas to prevent Reform from winning big, they failed to block them in the north, NE and Red Wall and they know they’re going to be hammered.
April 13, 2025
The altar of net zero is to alter our lives. Sometimes autocorrect throws up serendipitous changes.
April 13, 2025
Many were surprised at the speed at which Starmer moved to take control of the last operating blast furnaces in the UK. For all their bluster the Conservatives voted in favour, so did the Lords and at about half five the King gave Royal Assent.
The Chinese owners are clearly a shifty bunch. Fortunately, the APNR system at the gates of the Scunthorpe plant had already been programmed to deny their cars access – before they turned up at 0800hrs to shut the blast furnaces down
An all-round first class result and all credit to those involved, including the Humberside police, who took time out from checking people’s Twitter accounts for bad grammar while WFH and attended to prevent a breach of the peace. Shame they couldn’t do the same when one of my friends in Hessle was burgled over Xmas
Reply No evidence they were going to shut the plant yesterday. Wait and see if there are legal cases or Chinese claims against the government over this. The government was warned many weeks ago and could have taken action on a normal Parliamentary day. They allowed talks to break down. More normal to sort these things out in a negotiation.
April 13, 2025
SG : “The Chinese owners [of Scunthorpe Steel Works] are clearly a shifty bunch.”
I was surprised to read this from you, SG, as you appear to be so keen on our country relying for its electricity (and eventaully all our energy when the transition is complete by 2050) upon Chinese supplied wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and the metals and minerals for generators, motors and cabling and now even the steel for the wind turbine columns. As well of course for transport (evs), heating (heat pumps), glass, chemicals, fertiliser….
April 13, 2025
In that the business’ production of steel was vital to our defence, the Govt should have had some means of control much earlier to ensure it was maintained in UK hands.
The messy outcome existing now is the consequence of earlier incompetence and uncorrected mistakes. The present government is similarly incompetent, prone to creating added risks and more dangers.
April 13, 2025
The Labour party running a steel manufacturing plant! What can possibly go wrong ………..
April 13, 2025
OA
What’s the problem, they have a limitless amount of taxpayer money to subsidise its running.
It will run as efficiently as other government controlled departments and industries !
April 13, 2025
Actually they don’t. We are just about in IMF territory. Few more boatloads of ‘A-listers’ arriving in Kent and the whole ship could go down.
April 13, 2025
Whoever gets to own or run the operation needs to appoint a CEO who understands the industry and a CFO who understands the numbers. They need to provide them with enough financial headroom to do the job and the regulatory framework that makes it possible. Does the government understand the implications of all this? If they do, do they have the will and political capital to make the changes needed? I doubt it. British Steel will be another money pit.
April 13, 2025
Some things in UK should never have been privatised like water the railways and the ports and here I would include steel making – it is as strategically important as the Royal Navy itself and you wouldn’t want to privatise that? But for anyone in doubt about these matters only look to the the USA where they have outsourced most things of national importance like for instance merchant shipping and the pharmaceuticals supply – they then let the Panama Canal go and now today there’s a row back trying to correct everything in a few short years through Tariffs however for computers and iPhone there’s now been a change of course – making it up as they go along – the whole thing is a mess.
April 13, 2025
It’s NOT a mess. The commentators have no idea because they are so far behind the curve.
April 13, 2025
Steel shouldn’t need nationalising, it should just be competitive in the hands of a selection of private companies. If it’s considered strategically important, restrict the share ownership to UK nationals and require the companies to be registered in the UK.
Beating up your own side with taxes, whilst leaving imports exempt is another own goal.
April 13, 2025
Any steel that gets made will use imported iron ore, imported coking coal, and imported energy. Unless those three are addressed why not just import the steel directly ?
April 13, 2025
Perhaps those who have managed to close our industry don’t want us to be able to manufacture anything that could be used to defend us? They Chinese don’t defeat nations by fighting – they squeeze you and then suck the blood out of you, then they own you.
The Chinese run a number of schools in the U.K. BTW, teaching the Chinese syllabus. They call themselves ‘Hong Kong’ syllabus because that does not scare the horses. St Bees in Cumbria, a public school which is 500 years old, is now one of those foreign institutions teaching our children the joys of communism.
April 13, 2025
https://www.audible.com/blog/quotes-art-of-war
5. “To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
April 13, 2025
The net-zero thing is student politics and the government needs to grow up quickly
April 13, 2025
Or they need to own up to what they are trying to achieve through the net zero ploy.
Here is an informative video produced by the “Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung NYC office”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELfaaMLmhus
It should be student politics, but it isn’t.
April 13, 2025
In June 15, 1215, over 800 years ago, something happened in England that was to shape our country for the rest of our history: MAGNA CARTA!
That’s a huge difference between Putin (and to a degree, MAGA) and us in the UK. We believe in the Rule of the Law. And it was this Rule of Law, protecting merchants in trade and others, that gave people the confidence to create a culture, civilisation and strong, intricate and advance economy that differentness us between Putin’s Russia and, to a degree, the harm that Trump is doing to the American economy with his Christmas-Monopoly-like tariffs.
And Magna Carta (and many, many, many, many other things) is the reason why the UK is the best country to live in (despite all our problems) in the world!
For God, Family, King and Country!
April 13, 2025
King John, who had been imprisoned for some time in London, was forced to come to Runnymede by the Barons and their army. He was forced to sign the Great Charter (in case Dave Cameron reads this – he did not know what Magna Carta meant).
We only believe in the Rule of laws that were made by a body authorised by the British People to enact laws. We have fought for 800 years to win the freedoms that the Glorious Constitution (written but not codified) grants us. But we have been asleep at the wheel and allowed the Parliament, Monarch and the Church to trash it and with it, Britain.
We will pay an almighty price to recover Britain and our authority over those who rule us by consent.
April 13, 2025
Sir John
100% agree with you.
It would help also if steel for UK’s defence was made in the UK and not used to prop up foreign Governments.
April 13, 2025
Then again the Starmer Crew appears to be doing a white wash, the want to keep the Chinese Government controlled Jingye and force the UK Taxpayer to buy their raw materials. i.e. Labour/Parliament want to keep the UK Taxpayer funding the Chinese Government so they (the Chinese) can keep holding the UK to ransome
April 13, 2025
Another example of how effective HMG is in the market place.
I’ve never run a steel mill either, but I wouldn’t take any other step to restructuring this business until I fully understood the costs involved and any political complications.
Presumably the Chinese took over the mill because there was no justifiable business case to keep it running up losses for UK shareholders.
In that case, without massive new orders the mill will still be unable to operate at a profit. I suspect the minister is going through the motions to make it seem that HMG care about the loss of jobs and the loss of steel making. In fact it’s more theatrics.
At the end of the day – and it’s already been written in the sand, the UK Will lose our ability to make steel, lose countless skilled jobs to the benefits office, while our requirements for new steel will either be satisfied from abroad at great cost or not at all!
As we are officially in decline it will likely be up to the recycling industry to provide what steel it can for as long as it can.
April 13, 2025
Two great strides towards the NWO achieved:
Scotland’s Digital ID Scheme has set loud bells ringing –
The UN approved the first global carbon tax yesterday, which would require all ships worldwide to use a less carbon-intensive fuel mix or else pay for excess emissions from 2028.
This gives the UN tax raising powers, something it has sought for too long, making their world government goal a closer reality, meaning they will not have to depend so much on national governments to support them, and so the UN can proceed with more power grabs.
We don’t need or want either of these ……
April 13, 2025
Not sure how the UN plan to enforce it.
April 13, 2025
‘Needless closure of UK coal mines’. Pot Kettle Black and a memory lapse perhaps.
April 13, 2025
Scargill and Hestletine closed British coal mines.
April 13, 2025
In making steel we have the skills and an experienced work force. We also have the raw materials. Yet the Government is unable to bring them all together to produce a high class, competitive product. Something has to change lets hope the Government grows up and does something sensible otherwise we will have another “nationalised” financial mess
April 13, 2025
The trouble with Nationalising a widely produced product even for National Security reasons, it still has to compete on the World stage. The bank of the hard-working Taxpayer is limited, itself isn’t able to keep pumping its limited resource, ‘money’, in to things that don’t produce a viable reinvest able return.
The UK has suffered to long from what turns out to be bogus investors, investors that are themselves State Sponsored. Those whose bias is naturally the protection of their home market. All take-overs, purchases of UK enterprises, from those that on the face the evidence have other motives, need deeper scrutiny. Expanding by rationalisation and common overlap, economies of scale – there is no such thing. Most of the time it is a purchase of a competitor for either their assets or to take them out of the market place. End result limit choice, to increase profits. Growth of business is about customer/consumer satisfaction and fulfilment not the bottom-line. The bottom-line, the profit takes care of itself if the former is the priority.
With the Steel Works in Scunthorpe the business should be handed to the workers. Its not the stretch that some would in their own personal ego World think it would be. The guys, the community, that are there could do an infinitely better job than all the other proposals – never forget. All the taxpayer should come up with is short-term loan guarantees. Government has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t understand business. Government has one thought, and one thought only, that is to win the next election. Everything and everyone else is cannon fodder
April 13, 2025
The real Elephant in the room is ‘NetZero’ a policy of punishment and retribution by Government and Parliament. It highlights the lack of brain power bordering on pure stupidity we get from the UK Government and Parliament.
For a Nation to change direction and still compete with Nations that have a different view and direction, costs a vast amount of money. That money has to be earned! That is earned over and above the money needed for other projects, day to day projects. For Government and Parliament to say lets Tax, Penalise and Punish the Nation to get our way, is clearly not a Government/Parliament working for those that pay and empower them, that is a government and parliament that’s hates with a vengeance its People and the Nation.
There was no plan, just some dumb idiot thought it would be a great sound-bit to act as some perverted election platform. Showing how poor, and ill-equipped our Government and Parliament has been no one said how much and how do we generate the additional money? We have a Parliament and Government that is stuck with “The emperor has no clothes” disease, frightened of itself and freighted of its people.
So now we cant afford the ‘energy’ to produce the goods to produce the money needed for the Countries Future – all because Government and Parliament refused to think. How can Steel Production, the UK’s Defence Industry exist when it is Government/Parliaments policy, that has become set in stone to make it uneconomical.
195 Nations in the World and the UK Government and Parliament because of ego wants to punish the UK, to be different, to make out they are on a different Planet – all because of personal ego. The whole thesis behind their project is blown out of the water because every move they have made has made the World situation as the sell it considerably worse – they have done the exact opposite of the lie they have told
April 14, 2025
The British Establishment has volunteered the British people to be the sacrificial lambs for the UN’s Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 …. de-industrialisation, wealth redistribution and enforced lower standards of living for “the peasants” but not for them, natch.
You can watch Charles addressing the WEF and giving it his full support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCbk1c4Z8XE
April 13, 2025
“They deliver us into the hands of China as we need to shift to imports.”
That is of course the plan and the reason for CAGW and its “solution”, Net Zero. It seems the Civil Service have messed up on the timing as the closure of Scunthorpe should have been after the May elections. The closure of our coal mines, North Sea Oil and the ban on fracking is designed to drive industry offshore so we are dependent ipon China, including for all our energy infratructure – wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and the metals and minerals for motors, generators and cabling etc.. The cost of energy will remain high so as to impoverish (socialism depends upon making/keeping people poor) and electrification is designed to control people individually though the use of smart meters. Note that the HoC ES&NZ Committee are continually discussing moving the exhorbitant costs of renewable electricity onto gas “to balance the costs of energy and encourage the take up of evs and heat pumps” and for the demand for electricity to be severely curtailed. What ever happened to PM Borealis Johnson’s Net Zero Strategy – Build Back Greener with “electricity at the flick of a switch from abundant, cheap British renewables….”?
April 13, 2025
Hi sir John
Did the conservatives give British steel millions of pounds a though of 46 million pounds comes to mind the uk is always years and years behind the rest of the world held back by the EU and still are probably holding us back we sell our businesses off to foreign companies they pick the best parts and then close them down
what training do our MP’S get for their jobs NHS transport, .business and on and on
All for knighthoods
John you always seem to talk sence about all you talk about why did you not get further in governments?
April 13, 2025
How can a company owned by a Chinese entity be managed by the UK Government? Either the UK government owns and manages it or it does not.
April 13, 2025
Ed Conway has an interesting at length report on his substack of his recent visit to Scunthorpe, where he discovered that the Chinese management has already halted procurement of new supplies. If any of these run out then the blast furnaces must be shut down, which would be irretrievable without a complete rebuild, which in practice would mean final closure. Workers are eking out the remaining supplies to try to keep the plants operating. The emergency procurement of a cargo of coke from Japan will take over a month to arrive even via Suez, the shortest route, but fresh supply of iron ore and limestone is also urgently needed. It will be touch and go whether the furnaces can be kept going.
April 13, 2025
If only we had a ready supply of coking coal under our feet.
April 13, 2025
@Dave Andrews – the Business Minister was asked that exact question by the media following the Steel bail out press conference. To paraphrase his response, ‘using UK Coal was against the UK’s NetZero plans, and the Government is endeavouring to source it from Foreign producers elsewhere in the World’
April 13, 2025
Need to remind people, the UK is the best country in the world to live in.
The UK is NOT Russia, nor America, nor the EU, nor anything else.
This country is far from perfect. But it’s so EASY to pick out what is wrong and forget what makes this place such a great country to live in.
April 13, 2025
656 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …
April 14, 2025
Don’t know much about Steel but as act of patriotism, I think we should do our best to hang onto our last steelworks anyway we can. I’d love to think that one day we make our own British made and branded and owned cars (petrol and EV – and quality in terms of performance, reliability and design as well as for the mass market instead of niche market) and related tech with even just a bit of our steel in those cars. And even if the majority of those parts are imported from abroad. That would be a 1000s times better than no cars like this at all. And then we slowly build on that including related technology. This isn’t just about patriotism (cars not just steel) but also deepening our economy and raising productivity and high quality exports.
April 13, 2025
It is a disgrace that the Chinese were ever allowed to buy British Steel. It is another stupid decision from the last Conservative government.
Labour needs to appoint a top-quality, experienced Chief Executive who knows the steel industry and give him or her the finance and freedom to run the business properly.
But based on past Nationalised Industries, I don’t hold out much hope. The Labour government could and should have solved this problem earlier, but they are too busy following the Net Zero religion to realise the entire UK industry will be closed down by it.
April 13, 2025
Just watched a video of a British police officer warning a local that asking an immigrant to ‘speak English’ could be considered a hate crime.
This has to STOP!
April 13, 2025
off Topic.
The number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel has reached a new record for the first four months of the year. Some 656 people arrived in 11 small boats on Saturday, taking the total number of people crossing in 2025 so far to 8,064, according to provisional Home Office figures.
Less than half-way through April, this is already higher than the 7,567 people who crossed the Channel over the first four months of last year – a record high at the time.
April 14, 2025
Each criminal migrant costs us at least £50,000 a year. So that’s £403,200,000 this year alone.
April 14, 2025
And completely agree with Sir John and others: HS2 daft (and to tune of billions). And not an act of patriotism but of folly. Patriotism must pay for itself (unless it’s something that isn’t going to break the bank).