[Closed] British steel- I'm being abit thick here. Please explain.

I think it is impossible to make steel profitably in this country at this time. Cant see a management buyout being successful as the money needed is eye watering.

Very grim times for Port Talbot and the surrounding area, the knock on effects in the area will be enormous.

pretty sure the management of the steel plant would be better placed to answer that question. I guess since they run the place they would be able to work out how it could become profitable. On radio 4 they said Tata in the UK are losing a million a day, sure that can't be right and if it is they are very lucky that they have agreed not to close the plants immediately.

RBS lost ~£5 million a day last year and thats state owned...

Very grim times for Port Talbot and the surrounding area, the knock on effects in the area will be enormous.

Enormous doesn't begin to cover it. The town where I was born and still live was booming and prosperous when I was a kid but since the steel industry "collapsed" in Scotland and the steelworks closed in 1992 the whole town has been decimated.
24 years later it's never recovered.
These poor people have a long road ahead and have my unending sympathy.

Mrs Feet works for TATA in Shotton. It's not going to be a good few weeks 😥
TATA have been losing money hand over fist for years. The Chinese and Russians have flooded the global market with cheap steel and the UK just can't compete with he prices.
Don't know where this puts a UK co that just can't compete on price.
It looks like the plant in PT will close unless the UK refuses to import cheap stuff and starts using its own steel.

perchypanther - Member

Very grim times for Port Talbot and the surrounding area, the knock on effects in the area will be enormous.

Enormous doesn't begin to cover it. The town where I was born and still live was booming and prosperous when I was a kid but since the steel industry "collapsed" in Scotland and the steelworks closed in 1992 the whole town has been decimated.
24 years later it's never recovered.
These poor people have a long road ahead and have my unending sympathy.

The government need to deiced, quickly, whether they want a Northern powerhouse or a Northern Shithouse. The same, effectively, applies to Wales too.

IMHO the Chinese are dumping and the reason their government subsidies this is a huge fear of political instability resulting from unemployment. FWIW, looking at this impartially, china are themselves having many steel works closures - Google for "China rust belt".

Strategically, as well as locally (as you say, places where steel creates a large share of the jobs will seldom recover) there needs to be swift action. The rest of the UK manufacturing economy does need some security of local produce to remain in the game, as much as I hate subsidies.

Large industrial plants tend to be "sticky-down", as in when one shuts, the land either goes derelict or is re-approriated (housing or retail) and it is very, very difficult to get planning permission to build new plants, not to mention often prohibitively costly in any case to construct to meet new building and planning regulations.

It looks like the plant in PT will close unless the UK refuses to import cheap stuff and starts using its own steel.

The other difficult issue to deal with here is that other industrial users of steel (who employ more than the UK steel industry itself) have an interest in getting cheap steel. In other words, slap tariffs on steel imports and you probably end up hurting the wider economy more.

I leave out the strategic implications of not having a steel industry in the UK in my comment above. I'm not sure why we still operate in the same market as the Chinese do - is there a value chain to move up or is the process so well defined that its difficult to get any technological comparative advantage?

Its losing a million a day. But in comparison, how much will it cost the country to have an entire areas economy completely decimated, with the resulting dependency on benefits, implications for health, etc, etc, etc........?

But the government won't do anything because its ideology dictates that the state doesn't intervene to bail out industries...

Except when it does. Like when it involves their mates. In which case there are limitless public funds available...

Well 365 million a year is a fair bit... Then you still need to find customers for over priced steel.

Ravenscraig?

Note sure if that is what perchy was talking about specifically but I can attest that it is an accurate description of what happened in Lanarkshire.

There is a lot of anger towards to UK Gov regarding this. The Chinese and Russians don't adhere to the same manufacturing standards/health and safety/staff wages/and countless other costs. So it will always be a cheaper option.
The Govt has been happy to allow the import of this stuff into the UK market. Can't see a way back now.

[i]On radio 4 they said Tata in the UK are losing a million a day, sure that can't be right and if it is they are very lucky that they have agreed not to close the plants immediately. [/i]

I've worked in the aluminium industry and in simple terms costs are usually very stable whereas the selling price is usually linked to the [b]Metal Price[/b].

At the time our bonus was linked to profitability and when the cost-of-sale was about $950 and the Metal Price was $1000 we got no bonus. One year the Metal Price was nearer $2000, and our bonus was 37% of gross salary. Costs hadn't changed.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/commodity/steel

This graph seems to explain it, although no idea what occurred before 2010.

[i]There is a lot of anger towards to UK Gov regarding this. The Chinese and Russians don't adhere to the same manufacturing standards/health and safety/staff wages/and countless other costs. So it will always be a cheaper option.[/i]

I would imagine that our electricity prices are a far bigger problem, especially with the various green taxes and large-user conditions.

It's not a new problem, I seem to recall the steel for the Riverside stadium in Middlesbrough which is a short walk from the steel works was built using German steel as local was completely uncompetitive.

The lack of production capacity also hurts the recycling ability and will lead to steel being shipped half way round the world to be reprocessed just to be sent back again.

I think there is a strong case for nationalising the industry, unfortunately I can't see it happening.

Ravenscraig?

Yup. I worked there after it closed as a security guard. My older brother started an apprenticeship which he never got to finish. My dad worked there for a time in the joiners workshop. My father in law was a steelworker. Every house in the street where I grew up had at least one person in it who was directly or indirectly employed by the steel works.

In the space a few years my town went from a buzzing, prosperous happy place to an utter shitehole of an urban wasteland.

Which is a great pity because it's actually a nice place if you can see past the devastation.

Now the only shops in the town cater for people who don't have jobs. Nobody who lives here and has a job shops here.
The town is now just a bedroom for workers from Glasgow and Edinburgh because property prices are so low. You can buy a flat for less than the price of Ford Focus if you're so minded.

My heart goes out to people of Port Talbot who have the same fate in their future.

Its losing a million a day. But in comparison, how much will it cost the country to have an entire areas economy completely decimated, with the resulting dependency on benefits, implications for health, etc, etc, etc........?

+1 Even if it is £365million per year, if it keeps a whole town's economy afloat it could be a bargain. They can then focus on job creation outside steel. It's easier to sell potential investors with a skilled, motivated, employable workforce, than an unemployment black hole.

Also once you turn the oven's off the refractory collapses as it cools, so even if you can put the whole workforce on gardening leave, you still need to keep the plant warm or it costs more to re-start it. This was the issue in Redcar, the negotiations were so fraught because the staff on site were eeeking out the little coal that was left on site trying to keep the fires lit.

Like when it involves their mates. In which case there are limitless public funds available...

Any "real world" examples of limitless public funds being made available?

I was working on an MBO before Xmas. It sharpens the mind when it's your own money. Investing in a capital intensive (no longer labour intensive interestingly) business in a grossly distorted industry doesn't sound that attractive hora does it? The news last night had little specific in term of how a recovery plan was going to work.

Guess you take a view on steel prices, assume a £1 acquisition cost and liabilities of £400m pa, a future exit price and discount it back. Ballsy stuff when every global steel producer is in pain. A case when public and private sector should be engaging their collective wisdom.

Any "real world" examples of limitless public funds being made available?

Were you living off-planet for a couple of years around 2007/8?

Difficult to know where to start really, but [url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8262037/Bank-bail-out-adds-1.5-trillion-to-debt.html ]this might help[/url].

Maybe you should just Google 'UK Bank Bailout'?

I'd sit down though. You may be in for a bit of a shock

No I was deeply involved with banks at the time, why?

Remind me of the limitless public funds made available to friends?

[i]Any "real world" examples of limitless public funds being made available?[/i]

Pretty much any project run by the Govt?

He's one, £8bn

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/feb/22/mod-weapons-project-8bn-waste

And here another +£150m, pretty much every year for DEFRA and the EU payments, plus doubled now that Scotland also does them:

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240242763/What-went-wrong-with-Defras-rural-payments-system

Bless.

THM. You are funny. You really do demonstrate, along with dear old Jammers, on a constant daily basis, that you lot in finance just inhabit some weird, other-wordly parallel universe, that has no comprehension of life as lived by the rest of us mere mortals.

For pure comedy value, you're almost worth the tens (or is it hundreds) of thousands of pounds you've cost each and every single one of us. But that doesn't fall into the catagory of 'limitless though?

Big?
Bigger?
Very big?
Absolutely ****ing enormous?

Which is it that best covers it?

😆

binners - Member

Any "real world" examples of limitless public funds being made available?

Were you living off-planet for a couple of years around 2007/8?

Current Chinese competition is state subsidised.

Closure of these plants is, effectively permanent.

The cost in terms of ongoing unemployment benefits paid out, plus numerous serial failure "enterprise" schemes, which likely only make various quangos fat is not inconsiderable or easily definable.

Thanks for the link and the complement binners. However, can you still help me with the specific point - a real world example of unlimited public funds being made available - we can leave the friends bit for now and just focus on the first bit.

Now not far away a government did make an unlimited commitment which effectively led to their default, but still struggling to find a recent UK example.

Looking forward to your assistance....thanks in advance

From the comfort of a comfy chair, I can recall posting on here that (to take a specific micro issue) Darling was lying when he said that deposits were safe. They were not. Only a portion of them were protected. Pays to be accurate when you are talking about other peoples' money.

Is there any big need for steel in the UK?
How much production is left requiring lots of it?

12 years ago in Denmark i was making steel chimneys for the UK, one for Corus redcar ironically, using steel from Sweden and Finland.

Kind of reminds me of Kellingley colliery, which used to supply coal to the Ferrybridge, Drax & Eggborough power stations, all within say 20 miles of Kellingley. Cheaper to import coal from Poland (?) than supply it within the neighbourhood. Bingo, no more Kellingley.

THM so what would you call the bank bail out?

as the costs of production are so much lower due to energy, labour and other environmental costs its time to level the playing field + stop shipping pollution, etc overseas.

expecting producers here to comply to the standards we've set is fine but then too allow them to be undercut by external producers because we only look at what we are doing here is at best lazy

Time for a taxation based upon Carbon or set maximum embodied carbon levels for commodities sold in Europe

unlimited

I agree with Binners, to all practical intents and purposes £850billion (or whatever it ended up costing) was 'limitless', because there never seemed to be a cap on it, money was thrown at the problem until it stopped being a problem.

Or to put it another way, keeping the steelworks open for the next 2300 years would cost about the same as the bailing out the banks.

Another interesting Radio 4 programme called The Untold and hosted by Grace Dent was a short documentary (I suppose I'd call it that) about Sanjeev Gupta (and his family business) and Liberty Steel in Newport. They're working on a much smaller scale and are buying in slab rather than making liquid metal, but it certainly seems as though the setup is aimed at integrating the whole supply chain* and making it sustainable. They also own a local power plant.

*this is what has been happening in this sort of industry for a long time now anyway, but it seems to me that there's a point that a complete value stream integration become unwieldy and parts of the business get spun off (Rio Tinto did it with Alcan, then subsequently Hindalco did it with the upstream parts of what was Alcan, as two examples). Owning the whole supply chain means that costs can be spread across the business and the loss-making side (if there is one) can be supported by the more value adding sections (in metal processing it's the finishing end that does this). Tata did this to a large extent though as it owns everything from blastfurnace to final sheet (in PT's case). Not sure if they owned or had stakes in iron ore or coke production though.

In a completely different area, Rolex own almost all of their supply chain.

(I like that 2300 year analysis Thisisnotaspoon :-))

Biscuits, anyone..?

Bike Park Port Talbot could be quite nice. Big sand dunes of the back for playing around on fat bikes - and plenty of interesting architectural features to build some totally way sick lines off of.

Jus' sayin.. 😀

I'd strongly support some kind of cash injection with public money for the following reasons:

1) It has made money in the past
2) It's a strategic industry
3) British steel is decent quality and we know what we buy, there are plenty of bad stories around far east firms shipping steel with forged certs etc.
4) It'll cost the public more in the long run if Shotton, PT etc. shut.

However, the caveat to giving the money would be that there is a plan to get customers and make money (say over 5 year period). Also the one thing British Steel has always done badly is marketing, so since the UK has some of the best in PR and Marketing, lets use them to give the steel industry a leg up globally.

[img] [/img]

THM - heres a picture of Gordon Brown dumping huge (but not limitless) quantities of taxpayers money into an absolutely *** huge pit marked UK Banking Sector.

As someone who works in that sector though its just nice to see the typical contrition, humility and gratitude, and displaying such empathy with people in other industries facing financial difficulties 😆

This is the reality of Globalisation. Just like your own shopping habits, you find something cheaper elsewhere, you buy it. The Chinese in this case are offering steel at discount prices, our own product can't compete. No different to Coal, cars, motorbikes, clothing. Decent wages and a strong pound mean we're gonna be importing stuff instead of making it ourselves. And since we've sold off the control of the manufacturing base we'll just have to stomach it.
Makes me think we're back in the 80's, unloved Tory government, strikes, EU membership, terrorism and the Falklands back on the agenda!

ollybus - Member

This is the reality of Globalisation.

Good summary of what is going on in China right now and why, from their POV, it is also a difficult issue: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-01/death-and-despair-in-china-s-rustbelt

THM

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/05/government-has-no-idea-about-cancer-drugs-funds-impact-mps-say

and

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26785-the-uks-cancer-drugs-fund-does-more-harm-than-good/

and finally, what's the bloke who set the fund up doing these days?

http://www.consultancy.uk/news/3085/andrew-lansley-takes-on-health-role-at-bain-company

I agree with Binners, to all practical intents and purposes £850billion (or whatever it ended up costing) was 'limitless', because there never seemed to be a cap on it, money was thrown at the problem until it stopped being a problem.

Upvote that.

Port Talbot alone loses £360m per year. Is that a good use of tax payers money year in year out ? The business is worth less than zero.

As above China has massive overproduction which they are not scaling back and are exporting their very cheap steel to the EU / UK. The EU has done nothing to challenge this.

As posters above have said we all are happy to buy from the cheapet online seller and buyers of steel are doing the same

Banks. Had more banks failed the whole UK economy would have been in very very big trouble, more more pain than was actually suffered. If steel production goes the impact on the UK overall will be relatively limited. I know we've been round this a million times but the bank bailoit averted a far worse recession than the one we experienced.

+1 Even if it is £365million per year, if it keeps a whole town's economy afloat it could be a bargain.

In which case you're talking about having people work in exchange for state benefits.

If we're going to do that, let's make it an industry with a future in the UK (which may or may not be steel) and lets roll it out for everyone who gets benefits.

Surely we have too take a longer term view? The Chinese government must be losing billions upon billions by dumping all this steel onto the world market at below what it costs to produce.

So... for how long is that sustainable? This surely can't go on for long? Or do the laws of economics not apply to China?

Well yeah but they can subsidize by selling us all the plastic shit we used to make....

Hang on.

Except when it does. Like when it involves their mates. In which case there are limitless public funds available...

From which we have determined that the bank bailout occurred undera different government, was not unlimited, and did not involve so-called mates. And with piccies, complements

When The govt closed Consett it was making a profit. Some things are done just to punish people who don't vote the right way.
£365,000,000 a year losses with a workforce of 4,000. The company could pay everyone £45k a year not to come to work and still halve its losses.
Anyway, I thought our steel industry was uncompetitive because it was nationalised/ridden by ineficiency/ hobbled by the unions and that selling it off would lead to a modern, efficient, sustainable industry. Well, perhaps not.

In which case you're talking about having people work in exchange for state benefits.

If we're going to do that, let's make it an industry with a future in the UK (which may or may not be steel) and lets roll it out for everyone who gets benefits.

That would be communism :-p

TBH, I do think that for some industries nationalization is a good thing, either because they're symbiotically linked with the economy (banking), make large sums of money and however private they are can never exist outside the country (oil and gas, power generation etc), or strategically important (transport, why are motorways nationalized, M6 toll excepted, but railways privatized?).

Surely the real problem is so called free trade?

It's not a level playing field. We can always buy cheaper from countries which have lower or no environmental controls and poor working conditions.

If we are going to insist on high environmental standards from our local industries, we shouldn't penalise them by allowing competition from those who don't meet those standards. There should be a way to adjust for that and make it a level playing field, and if that means tariffs based on the environmental savings, too bad.

We're too concerned about protecting the multinationals idea of free trade, and not concerned enough about what's fair for our local industries and workers.

Too many of our politicians are in the pockets of those who benefit from destroying our industries.

Otherwise we end up exporting our jobs, our industries, and our economy, which we have.

Port Talbot alone loses £360m per year. Is that a good use of tax payers money year in year out ?

I don't think that's true, it is for all of Tata's UK operations, which is more than just PT.

I'd say in the whole scheme of things for a strategic industry that employs a skilled workforce then it isn't that costly and eventually the global economy will turn around. These plants have made money in the not too distant past.

As posters above have said we all are happy to buy from the cheapest online seller and buyers of steel are doing the same

At the bottom end of the market yes, but not at the top end. The big problem is the users of the higher quality steels aren't buying right now. Construction and the O&G industries who were big buyers are putting stuff on ice. The fallacy that manufacturing can pull you out of a slump is evident.

It's not a level playing field. We can always buy cheaper from countries which have the lower or no environmental controls and poor working conditions.

If we are going to insist on high environmental standards from our local industries, we shouldn't penalise them by allowing competition from those who don't meet those standards

This times 100

Its losing a million a day. But in comparison, how much will it cost the country to have an entire areas economy completely decimated

I think this is a good point but I doubt Gideon and co will care much. In the grand scheme of things it's a small amount compared to what we spend on other 'stuff' in this country, the price of a few metres of new motorway, a tiny fraction of annual nuclear decom spend, etc.

Ravenscraig

My mum worked at Ravenscraig! They loved living down there, not sure what it's like these days.

If steel production goes the impact on the UK overall will be relatively limited.

We would become toothless, Jambers think of the bigger picture, would you really want our boys going into battle in tanks made from cheap steel, do you want cheap steel in bridges, railway lines, steam pipes !!! steam can be pretty deadly stuff.Shall we just throw our standards out because the money jugglers in their glass and [b]steel[/b] towers say the impact is limited. I work in an industry were quality steel is essential, I don't know anyone buying Chinese steel yet, god forbid when the last of the British steel runs out.

How can a country that has been totally reliant for both survival and prosperity on their own production of quality steel allow this industry to die ??

It's not a level playing field. We can always buy cheaper from countries which have the lower or no environmental controls and poor working conditions.
If we are going to insist on high environmental standards from our local industries, we shouldn't penalise them by allowing competition from those who don't meet those standards

Large government infrastructure projects and frameworks are bound by European law to advertise contracts within the European union. Procurement departments do have the facility to award contracts on a mixed basis of quality and price. The quality factor can and often does include Environmental and social standards. I believe the government has recently made the social and economic part of the decision even more flexible.

A lot of steel for government projects comes from Arcelor mills in Europe, not China.

Clearly, at the moment it's not enough. My heart goes out to these communities, the human cost of economic decisions is tragic and the negative consequences can last for generations. 😥

The thing is its not just the direct jobs at the steel plants but all the tertiary companies that rely on the steel works for a large proportion of their income.
I'm not sure of the exact figure but I think it was for every one person working in the steep plant two more relied on it for their job.

From which we have determined that the bank bailout occurred under a different government, was not unlimited,

Where did we establish it wasn't unlimited? You saying it wasn't, doesn't make it a fact. The government turned the public money taps on, then kept them flowing through QA, so that the banking industry is still on a publicly funded life support machine today.

How is that not unlimited?

Which government it occurred under is frankly irrelevant. Their almost evangelical neoliberal worship of the financial sector, and the craven indulgence of its every whim was identical across the political spectrum.

As was the complete abandonment of the Manufacturing industry which has led us to where we are today

I live in Neath, close to Port Talbot.

The effect of the closure at Port Talbot will have a very big impact on the South Wales community. Its not just the steelworkers, but all the suppliers, contractors, money spent by the steel workers in the local economy.

I haven't got an answer to the dilemma that is faced by Tata and the work force, having been through a similar experience in the aluminum industry ( big aluminium rolling plant at Rogerstone).

Interestingly, or not, Tata UK and, I think, all bar one other UK steel producer, are falling foul of US anti-dumping regs and look likely to be hit with an anti-dumping tariff of around 36%

no_eyed_deer - Member

Biscuits, anyone..?

Bike Park Port Talbot could be quite nice. Big sand dunes of the back for playing around on fat bikes - and plenty of interesting architectural features to build some totally way sick lines off of.

Jus' sayin..

Are you familiar with the location of Afan Forrest Trail Centre? That was the one they built to try to regenerate that area when the mines closed 😉

I personally don't think the next few weeks are going to be too kind to the Steel Industry, it doesn't have the pull with Westminster that the Banks did - they sunk £8bn into RBS, of which George Osborne is happy to get £4Bn back (because he's a slimy toad of a man who will happily sell us all short to help his mates out) and another £37bn in 'free money' for it to lend.

What won't help TATA staff is that they're largely based in PT I think, which of course is in Wales, and the Welsh Assembly is run by Labour, the Tories in Westminster wouldn't give the WA the steam of it's piss to help it out as any bad news in Wales reflected positively on Westminster.

@jambalya I know we've been round this a million times but the bank bailoit averted a far worse recession than the one we experienced.

For who?

For who?

Presumably anyone with a UK bank account, and anyone owed money by anyone with a UK bank account.

Where did we establish it wasn't unlimited?

It wasn't - go to any set of UK financial stats. Its clear.

You saying it wasn't, doesn't make it a fact.

Likewise. But the proof is in the pudding. Unlimited public funds were not made available. It is quite easy to quantify the size of the "investment" and the subsequent policies designed to re-coup some of it. You can even go to the National Audit Office to see how much has been re-couped and to what extent there has been a transfer from taxpayers to the financial sector - its quantified precisely because it was limited.

The government turned the public money taps on, then kept them flowing through QA, so that the banking industry is still on a publicly funded life support machine today.

Again (like tax) this is factually incorrect. Q[s]A[/s]E does not work like that - QE creates an equal asset and liability for a bank - it is not free money and is not about banks (directly) anyway.

Which government it occurred under is frankly irrelevant.

Agreed. Odd that you raised the issue and mixed the governments up at the same time.

Anyway - this doesn't help the poor people of PT. For some reason my earlier post was changed. but FWIW I do not work in banking and I do have considerable sympathy for the plight of the workers at Tata and in the surrounding economy.

For who?

We should have shot a few thousand bankers, but letting banks just disappear was never an option.

Don't worry there's a plan, a local enterrpise body will be set up to help the redundant steel workers piss away their severance pay on opening doomed from the off coffee shops and hair dressers and artisan shite weaving workshops. Bit like th model that worked so well for barrow.

As was the complete abandonment of the Manufacturing industry which has led us to where we are today

"complete abandonment" - not only inaccurate (again) but a considerable sleight on the UK's successful manufacturing industry. In terms of output we are the 8th largest manufacturer in the world and our per capita production is 3x that of China which is the second only to US in terms of total manufacturing output.

Why the need to keep making factually incorrect statements?

It wasn't - go to any set of UK financial stats. Its clear.

Go on then, show us a source that says "the limit is £XYXbillion, if you're not sorted out within this budget and by AA/BB/20CC the taps are off and you're left to fail".

And even if that statement does exist, the fact we've nationalized several banks, and gone through multiple rounds of QE would suggest that if it's not working, we'll just go round again.

My mum worked at Ravenscraig! They loved living down there, not sure what it's like these days.

The site was all set to become a "new town centre" after the dormant period had lapsed to allow all the toxic land to recover. Then the crash happened.

There's a few pockets of new housing on the site, put up in the last few years, but largely still empty.

In terms of output we are the 8th largest manufacturer in the world and our per capita production is 3x that of China which is the second only to US in terms of total manufacturing output.

And thats been aided by successive governments fixated with the financial sector how exactly?

My point is that there has been no manufacturing strategy of any description for decades. Its been left to get on with it. Or not.

Can you give me a single example of government policy being geared towards helping the manufacturing industry? All I've seen is, at best, total indifference, and with Tory administrations: open hostility, as it would aid frightful working class people who live in horrid dark places where they don't even have a Waitrose

Can you give me a single example of government policy being geared towards helping the manufacturing industry?

for starters and an easy read

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-profit-bank-bailouts/21010

And even if that statement does exist [it does], the fact we've nationalized several banks,[2 plus recapitalised another 2] and gone through multiple rounds of QE would suggest that if it's not working, we'll just go round again.

Hmm, QE is something completely different and as above, is not free money for banks. What indications are there that we are about to nationalise/re-capitalise any more banks?

Why did the UK's largest bank contemplate re-locating?

R&D support
Enterprise zones
You mentioned corporate tax rates (albeit not completely accurately)
Direct support for O&G industry

and that's just for starters...

Why did the UK's largest bank contemplate re-locating?

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/15/hsbc-uk-banks-bankers-prosecution ]Is anyone gullible enough to believe they ever realistically did?[/url]

Yes, the central banks in the relevant companies, the regulatory authorities and many of their employees and their senior management would have been acting illegally if not, given that they informed the markets that they were reviewing location.

I accept, that you mght know better than all of them though....[slide 15 of their last annual presentation to investors suggests otherwise however]

Can you give me a single example of government policy being geared towards helping the manufacturing industry? All I've seen is, at best, total indifference, and with Tory administrations: open hostility, as it would aid frightful working class people who live in horrid dark places where they don't even have a Waitrose

Binners, you persistently weaken your own arguments with this infantile Tories are evil rubbish. In any case, there are plenty of policies targeted towards manufacturing (grant schemes, tax credits of various sorts etc.), the issue is whether they are ever effective. What do you expect from the government? Dirigisme?

Do I have to inform the appropriate regulatory authorities if I say I'm going to find a cure for cancer then walk on water before 4 o clock this afternoon? Who do I speak too?

No why? Any relevance to the topic in hand

Binners, you persistently weaken your own arguments with this infantile Tories are evil rubbish

Indeed, lots to criticise the current government without making things up. But let's see what, "if anything", they come up with here ie, re Tata

Any "real world" examples of limitless public funds being made available?

Here's another one. Commitment to spend two percent of GDP on military toys. Currently around £40 billion but no limit on what it could rise to:
[url= http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/budget-2015-decade-of-commitment-to-spend-2-of-gdp-on-defence-praised-by-us-10376373.html ]Defence spending commitment[/url]

The UK government couldn't give a toss about manufacturing. The only things they'll fund in Wales are roads to England and the military:
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-35475585 ]RAF Valley future secured[/url]

you persistently weaken your own arguments with this infantile Tories are evil rubbish

Here's about nine square miles of cursed earth that says, from my point of view, that it ain't rubbish.

Evil.

People of Port Talbot - This is your future......
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This was the past....
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I don't care about what they did for banks. I don't care what they did for miners.

All I care for is that there are people in Port Talbot who lived there for generations - who know nothing other than British Steel - who will have their lives turned upside down because of a momentary blip in the life cycle of an industry.

In 10 years time, when normality resumes to world trade, what happens to all those people in Port Talbot who no longer have a living, or no realistic prospect of finding a new living?

We are talking about human beings. Not the balance of financial pro's and con's.

In [s]10[/s] [b]24[/b] years time, when normality resumes to world trade, what happens to all those people in Port Talbot who no longer have a living, or no realistic prospect of finding a new living?

Come to Wishaw and have a look for yourself. It ain't pretty.

Real world capatalism...don't you just love it...such a humanistic and empathetic way to live our lives....

I thought Osborne's plan was just too get the Chinese to come in and help us pay for reinvestmennt of this kind of thing, all for a 'modest' fee a few years down the line, it's worked really well for Hinkley-point 😉

Ultimately the government doesn't want to upset Osborne's ridiculous targets so I can't see the government doing what's needed to help out steel

Tho they did renationalise the loss making Network Rail last year on the quiet, to make sure all the privatised rail complaints shareholders were happy

People of Port Talbot - This is your future.....

They don't need patronizing bollocks likes this, that whole region was based on heavy industry, most of which is now shut, with the BP Chemical plant going back in 2004.

Come to Wishaw and have a look for yourself. It ain't pretty.

In fairness Wishaw was never pretty, even back then.