After 150 years, is this the end of steel making in this country?
Corus will be moth balled with the loss of 1600 jobs and once again the Teeside company's future lies in the balance.
I have already experienced some difficulty in buying some types of steel from suppliers and have been told that overseas manufactures give priority to larger consumers of steel like China and in some cases it is hardly worth bothering with the UK.
As long as the UK can purchase cheap products from abroad most people will have little worries about where steel comes from. But if the political climate changes, if overseas suppliers become less cooperative, if any form of sanctions are applied to the UK then we will have very serious difficulties. Setting up new steel plants and finding the skills to operate them will take a long time and will be extremely difficult if not impossible.
Steel is vital to manufacturing, many services and our defence systems; the navy no longer use wooden ships!
Given the choice of pumping billions of pounds into our banks or securing our steel making ability I think its a no brainer!
Our government needs to wake up, smell the coffee, steel is vital to our future prosperity and safety.
What worries me is not just that it is not always possible for one to obtain the specific metals needed for one's business. The highest quality known and needed to maintain one's own high standards is necessary. However, until all small businesses unite as one to input a mind-set for all politicians, it may be impossible to return to where the state where we once were. On Question Time last Thursday one could not help but feel that the workers at Teesside were getting very little in return from the panel for their concerns expressed. The Old Testament Apocrypha contains words that there is, "For everything a season, a time to die; a time to plant and a time to dig up that which has been planted". The sad thing is that since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago there has been too little thought given to the fact that mechanisation has taken too many people out of the work chain for the sake of profit.
ReplyDeleteOne cannot agree more with Bob Jackson's concern about not just the loss of jobs but also of skills and the quality of the steel required for the job to be done at the highest standard. Sad to say, one could not have come away from Question Time in Middlesborough 18th February with the feeling that the panel was not really listening.Since the Industrial Revolution, which was a most exciting time for the world, has anyone given a thought to the fact that mechanisation of an industry has left many workers on the scrap heap - even the great Religious Work Owners - Titus Salt, the Cadburys, Leverhulme cared for their workers and their families but what of those their mechanisation cast out? When we cast aside some of our best industrialisation do we ever think about the queue of little operations which are also affected along the way. Who will care for them? The Church? The State? not arrff!!
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