Many of you will have seen the recent news regarding the closure of SSI, Caparo and Job Losses at Tata. The current threat to our industry is very
serious and threatens the existence and future of steelmaking in the UK. While imports from China are a major threat, in the UK we pay energy prices
that are double that of mainland Europe. The USA has put anti-dumping measures in place within 3 weeks, which has closed off the US steelmarket, while
in the EU it is anticipated that a dumping review will take at least 12 months. The industry may not last that long.
The industry is not looking for handouts, simply a fair deal, fair energy prices and real selling prices - not the Chinese subsidised prices that are
below the manufacturing cost and currently flooding the UK.
Please take a moment to sign the petition below, it is time for the government to either stand up and support the foundation manufacturing industries,
or turn the UK into a giant service centre.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108944
Signed, you have my deep understanding I am an ex British Coal employee
Done,what i dont understand is,why the prices of steel here to people like me are still high while quality is rock bottom :-(.
Done - if we lose the steel industry we'll have more of you Northerners coming down here looking for work! 
Signed.
Russ, at least we'll be able to come down and show you how to drink proper beer and not that tops shandy stuff!
Done.
quote:
Originally posted by russbost
Done - if we lose the steel industry we'll have more of you Northerners coming down here looking for work!
Done
done i work on tata at scunthorpe
thanks everyone who has signed
Signed
Done!
Signed and shared - still breaks my heart when I visit the mining village which was thriving when I grew up. Post Thatcher it's a shambles, we need heavy industry even if it is dirty and dangerous!
Signed
Signed. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on what should be done? Subsidise and leave private? Nationalise? Import tariffs on
steel?
Sadly we have a rightwing government blinded by ideology. They will do nothing, because they don't believe in state intervention.
quote:
Originally posted by big-vee-twin
Signed, you have my deep understanding I am an ex British Coal employee
quote:
Originally posted by davidimurray
Many of you will have seen the recent news regarding the closure of SSI, Caparo and Job Losses at Tata. The current threat to our industry is very serious and threatens the existence and future of steelmaking in the UK. While imports from China are a major threat, in the UK we pay energy prices that are double that of mainland Europe. The USA has put anti-dumping measures in place within 3 weeks, which has closed off the US steelmarket, while in the EU it is anticipated that a dumping review will take at least 12 months. The industry may not last that long.
The industry is not looking for handouts, simply a fair deal, fair energy prices and real selling prices - not the Chinese subsidised prices that are below the manufacturing cost and currently flooding the UK.
Please take a moment to sign the petition below, it is time for the government to either stand up and support the foundation manufacturing industries, or turn the UK into a giant service centre.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108944
Thanks everybody for the support. I'm a Port Talbot steelworker, but did spend some time last year at Scunthorpe on Queen Anne. All our thoughts
are with everyone across, Redcar, Scunthorpe, Dalzell etc - we are all one big family and we all share the pain.
Despite being a steelworker myself, I think everybody knows that the glory days of big volume steel manufacture in the UK is gone and will never come
back as long as China etc keep pumping general purpose steel out with low wages etc.
Where the UK steel industry excels is in top quality cutting edge steel products. Steels that are stronger, lighter, more formable, better surface
finish etc. For example car manufacturers want steels that are formable, galvanized and with a perfect surface finish that required no prep before
painting. Coated steels with a 25year guarantee. New steel grades for undersea pipework, wind turbines, special corrosion resistant steel for railway
electrification gantries and grain orientated steel for transformers etc.
But, it is difficult to achieve the above when we are in a common market but our own government but taxes and levies on us that no other EU country
has to meet. Steelmaking is an energy intensive industry and the by-product of manufacture is CO and CO2 - that is the basic chemistry and currently
there is no other viable manufacturing route anywhere in the world. By all means I could understand the government pushing for green technology if it
existed, but as it stands now - all we are doing is pushing the industry off the island to other countries where pollution is of no concern - so much
for one big planet!
[Edited on 20/10/15 by davidimurray]
Done and just spent an hour signing all the other petitions too lol!
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Signed. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on what should be done? Subsidise and leave private? Nationalise? Import tariffs on steel?
Sadly we have a rightwing government blinded by ideology. They will do nothing, because they don't believe in state intervention.
Done
We haven't been left of centre for 30 years! Blair was more centrist than others but still a neoliberal thatcherite. Ie deregulated banks,
privatisations, PFI nonsense.
The ideology of left or right has no bearing on the reality of climate change, though rightwingers seem more likely to be sceptics. Here's a left
wing solution - proper state investment in infrastructure such as tidal schemes.
George Osborne is quite happy to nationalise the energy sector - sadly, he'd rather it be owned by the French and Chinese governments! If state
owned EDF can build nuclear plants, why can't we? Ideology, that's why.
quote:
Originally posted by plentywahalla
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Signed. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on what should be done? Subsidise and leave private? Nationalise? Import tariffs on steel?
Sadly we have a rightwing government blinded by ideology. They will do nothing, because they don't believe in state intervention.
Blame the old left wing goverments instead. They were the ones who started us down this path of useless renewables with massive expensive subsidies that have made our energy cost so prohibitively expensive.
They are also the ones who signed up to EU treaties which make your 'state intervention' illegal under European rules. We are not allowed to give government subsidies or impose import tariffs. These are things that can only be done on a European level and we will always be outvoted by smaller european nations who don't have domestic steel industries and love the cheap imports.
quote:
Originally posted by plentywahalla
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Signed. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on what should be done? Subsidise and leave private? Nationalise? Import tariffs on steel?
Sadly we have a rightwing government blinded by ideology. They will do nothing, because they don't believe in state intervention.
Blame the old left wing goverments instead. They were the ones who started us down this path of useless renewables with massive expensive subsidies that have made our energy cost so prohibitively expensive.
They are also the ones who signed up to EU treaties which make your 'state intervention' illegal under European rules. We are not allowed to give government subsidies or impose import tariffs. These are things that can only be done on a European level and we will always be outvoted by smaller european nations who don't have domestic steel industries and love the cheap imports.
done
quote:
Signed, you have my deep understanding I am an ex British Coal employee
Done
I was trying to spread the blame around a bit instead of laying it at the door of this government. They are trapped by a combination of climate change
and European politics that have been established by various governments for good reasons over the past decades.
If you sign up for the benefits of a a globalised economy then you have to live with what else it brings. Our present good economic growth is based on
our exports of high quality, high value goods into world markets such as China. We put that at risk if we start to try and isolate and ring fence our
industries.
There are a lot of things that our government can and should do, but intervention whether by nationalisation, imposing tariffs or subsidies, is not
it.
quote:
Originally posted by plentywahalla.
If you sign up for the benefits of a a globalised economy created ou have to live with what else it brings. Our present good economic growth is based on our exports of high quality, high value goods into world markets such as China. We put that at risk if we start to try and isolate and ring fence our industries.
quote:
There are a lot of things that our government can and should do, but intervention whether by nationalisation, imposing tariffs or subsidies, is not it.
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Signed. I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas on what should be done? Subsidise and leave private? Nationalise? Import tariffs on steel?
Sadly we have a rightwing government blinded by ideology. They will do nothing, because they don't believe in state intervention.
quote:
unless its in the financial industry.
link.
Indeed a funny link.
There seems to be a theme of privatising the profits whilst socialising the risk. We see that with the banks, the nhs (sued when a private provider
did botched jobs in NHS hospitals), and also in this new nuclear plant, where Gideon boasts that no public money will be used to build it but
we're on the line for 17bn in guarantees.
quote:
Indeed a Indeed a funny link.
There seems to be a theme of privatising the profits whilst socialising the risk. We see that with the banks, the nhs (sued when a private provider did botched jobs in NHS hospitals), and also in this new nuclear plant, where Gideon boasts that no public money will be used to build it but we're on the line for 17bn in guarantees.
quote:
Is it just me that is a bit worried about letting the Chinese build a nuclear power plant in the UK? I'd feel a lot safer if it was built by British engineers.
Done.
I watched a program last night about (global) recyling and how china is the main buyer for it so its no suprise they can undercut everyone else when
rather than starting with getting raw materials out the ground they just reprocess and sell it back to us at a huge profit.
Like it or not they're very smart.
[Edited on 21/10/15 by Mr Whippy]
Signed
as a 40yr veteran of the scunthorpe plant
someone has blown the candle out at the end of the tunnel
contract worker are not counted in the 900 job losses , so it will be alot more
this is only news worthy for a short time , many thanks for all that have signed
who picks up the bill for demolishing the redcar site ????
us as tax payers
sad time to be in engineering
Isn't a petition too late now? If its anything like what happened to the pits and shipyards round here the government couldn't give two hoots!
Signed.......It's Tragic, the state of our manufacturing industries....
The"Great" has gone, from Britain !! 