Tata Steel has been pushing for hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money from the government’s Project Birch fund to convert Port Talbot from blast furnaces to electric-arc furnaces, which are powered by electricity rather than coal. In return, ministers have been offered a stake in the plant.
The future of the steel industry — in particular Britain’s ability to make molten iron and steel from iron ore and coal — hinges on those talks.
If arc furnaces are installed then we lose that ability to make virgin steel. Thus obviating the argument for subsidy.
Also, the barmy direction that the govt’s “energy strategy” appears to be taking tends to suggest that it’s going to be damned-difficult to make any steel on dark nights when the wind isn’t blowing!
All your industry is going. Net Zero means no industry.
Then it’ll be too expensive to make steel.
Like it was for aluminium smelting.
I have often wondered why certain industries are supposedly vital to National life and others treated like..well private concerns of no interest to the State. In general, the rule seems to be, that if any Romantic Novel, of the Catherine Cookson variety, might have been set around said industr,y its in the club.
Can you picture a sweaty man emerging from the working environment, kissing the feisty and yet utterly feminine heroine and saying something like ” Ai Maggie we`ve won..!”( snog /cascading Titian locks /crashing waves / train into tunnel )
Fisherman- yes
Miner -yes
Steel worker – yes but only raw steel not precision engineering
Banker – God no
Media Analyst- I think not
Hair dresser- Be serious !
Farmer – Now we`re talking
IT Consultant – Hardly
Financial Se vices / Pharmaceuticals/Media /Education ….Nope
Or lets just say than anything profitable and actually of any use for the future is out.
Sorry Maggie
PS I met Catherine Cookson .. seriously, years ago ( she was very old even then) and snobbery aside she was a natural story teller with a really gift for place and time
And who among us does not admire a really gift…!?
It’s the panda bear theory. If the industry is on the verge of extinction, we must do everything we can to keep it going. Soon I expect to see blast furnaces at the zoo, refusing to copulate.
“I have often wondered why certain industries are supposedly vital to National life and others treated like..well private concerns of no interest to the State. In general the rule seems to be that if any Romantic Novel of the Catherine Cookson variety might have been set around said industry, its in the club.”
Thats easy. Our psyches are the product of millenia of evolution. Firstly the one’s that are considered heroic are the ones that are fundamental to human existence. Food, energy, and basic materials (ie timber (see lumberjacks) and steel). Without them we are either dead or struggling to withstand the forces of nature. Secondly the heroic careers involve a high degree of physical effort, danger to the individual and fighting against the elements. We do not lionise PR executives because in their absence from society we would still survive fine (probably better in fact), and its hardly heroic to write nice things about people and say how wonderful they are. Heroic workers need to in some way making a personal sacrifice to give society something. Sitting in an air conditioned office doesn’t cut it.
Idiots believe whatever Gov’t/”Experts” & BBC says, green=good, C-19=Black Death, face mask=safe
New Stats – STDs up by over 200% : This will be hospitalised*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrjbRWZ3eyg
It’s pretend social distancing because it’s a pretend pandemic
Some people believe a face nappy is gonna give them all the protection they need against virus & germs, so now they have kinky love with a face mask. Would explain a rise in STDs
* Another cost of lockdown. Clinics/NHS Closed = no treatments = more serious problems….
…and deaths
…and Dictator Hancock’s laws are good – 5b
Piers Corbyn Arrested – Again
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/09/06/latest-news-126/