Where now for steel?
Excellent article from Paul Mason and on Newsnight last night.
It was a sick joke, the level of expertise of Ken Clarke, he once drove past the Port Talbot steel works.
Why oh why does the BBC insist on wheeling out long past their sell-by date has-been politicians who have nothing useful to say?
Paul Mason raised something I was not aware of. We tend to think of steel being old industry, he has shown the high level of information content.
It is as he says, steel a heavy energy user, and yet we have no energy policy, other than bail out stranded assets of oil companies, push fracking and build a nuclear power plant at Hinkley point (which is obsolete before it has even been built).
Steel is a strategic industry.
US makes steel. Why are they not having a problem with Chinese steel?
Because they do not kowtow to the Chinese.
Only today, we had Charles De Lusignan, from the European Steel Association, on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, state that the UK had not done all it could and, indeed, had been instrumental in blocking a European Commission proposal from 2013 to remove restrictions on higher tariffs on dumped Chinese steel.
That we bailed out the banks, is no excuse to bail out steel. We should not have bailed out out the banks. There is though an important difference, steel, manufacturing, generates wealth, banks are parasites that drain wealth from others.
No one gives a shit, least of all the EU, but then this is to be expected from the EU, an unaccountable, democracy-free, corrupt dictatorship.
If, the steel plants are viable, it would help to have the report that was produce placed in the public domain, then we can all see what is possible.
A cooperative structure, with government help to make it possible, is one option.
A network of coops, will cooperate with each other, and see further than short term profit.
We are entering a post-Capitalist era, a low energy, low carbon era, and yet the government has no strategy in place to manage that transition. Without a transition strategic, what we will see is catastrophic collapse as we are seeing with the steel industry, and will see with the banks when the next collapse occurs.
