FlyTheNest

Patrick Wintour ‏@patrickwintour 20m20 minutes ago
The 2015 election polling fiasco. The verdict by the official inquiry. http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3789/1/Report ... evised.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Patrick Wintour ‏@patrickwintour 16m16 minutes ago
Poll inquiry "herding may have contributed to the surprisingly high consensus between pollsters in the final polls of 2015 general election"

Tom Boadle
‏@TomBoadle
Cameron flies back for emergency govt talks, but neither the Chancellor nor Business Sec will be there #SaveOurSteel

Speaking of shambles....it appears that business secretary Sajid Javid won’t be back in London until this afternoon (or later) to tackle the crisis despite cutting his trip to Australia short yesterday.

The Times has the details:

The business secretary had boarded a flight to Australia, where he was meeting Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, hours before a board meeting at Tata’s headquarters in Mumbai to decide the future of its British steel operation. He touched down during the Tata meeting on Tuesday evening.

Aides claim that they gave “serious consideration” to aborting the trip but he decided to continue because no firm decision had been made. Less than 24 hours later he decided to head home but missed the last flight and spent another night in Sydney. He will be back by mid-afternoon today at the earliest.

It also emerged that ten civil servants from the business department were attending a “resilience” training course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art yesterday.

rebeccariots2 wrote:90,438 signatures

Owen Smith ‏@OwenSmith_MP 7m7 minutes ago
Another day, another report about this Government's poor treatment of disabled people: http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_56fbf ... ef5bffc18b" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

The committee’s report said that while it is encouraged by reductions in backlogs and delays for claimants in receiving decisions, there are “particular concerns” about the quality of assessments.

Unreasonable journey times, double-booked appointments and incomplete understanding of particular conditions, such as fluctuating and mental health conditions were all raised as issues when the committee heard evidence from witnesses representing Citizens Advice, the Disability Benefits Consortium and MIND, as well as the Department for Work & Pensions and contractors.

Local and regional variations in contractor performance were deemed unacceptable and the report said that a lack of transparency meant that claimants “do not have a clear expectation of the service they can expect”.

PorFavor wrote:

rebeccariots2 wrote:90,438 signatures

That was quick - I checked a little while ago and it was in the 80s.

Darren McCaffrey ‏@DMcCaffreySKY 17m17 minutes ago London, England
Ministers arriving at No.10. "Is this the end of Welsh steel industry?" @Anna_Soubry "I hope not". Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.

Peter Oborne ‏@OborneTweets 13m13 minutes ago
Peter Oborne Retweeted Jim Pickard
Good point this from the @FT

Jim Pickard
‏@PickardJE
Sajid Javid says that nationalisation is "rarely" the answer: yet the dominant Chinese steel companies are mostly state-owned.

denise roulstone ‏@deniseroulstone 12h12 hours ago
Protest planned outside Stephen Crabb's Haverfordwest office http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... ref=twtrec" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

Javid did at least attend a black tie dinner, before heading back to the airport. (Business Live, Guardian)

norman smith ‏@BBCNormanS 9m9 minutes ago
So "key" ministers at Downing St mini summit on steel are Welsh Sec, DWP Sec and Biz minister Anna Soubry

helen ward ‏@teshelen 9m9 minutes ago
Primary head takes up Nicky Morgan's call to be positive on @tes 'we are going to fight...in a very positive way' http://ow.ly/107qOO" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Robert Peston ‏@Peston 3m3 minutes ago
There are 130,000 members of British Steel pension scheme, sponsored by Tata & with £485m hole. This steel crisis is about more than jobs

Lonewolfie wrote:Morbubble afteralltinoon...

On steel...anyone remember Forgemasters?...from 2010...you'd think a longtermeconomicplan thingy would've catered for long term economic planning and investment...

The coalition government announced today it will be axing £2bn worth of projects, including a loan that would have helped a British engineering firm build steel components for next generation nuclear reactors.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told parliament that Sheffield Forgemasters would no longer be granted a £80m loan that was promised by the Labour government in March this year to help buy and install a 15,000-tonne forging press for developing large steel components for next generation nuclear reactors.

...and...

Business secretary Vince Cable confirmed that several key programmes supporting innovation and low carbon technology would go ahead.
These programmes include the £2.6m Bristol and Bath Science Park, £12m for the International Space Innovation Centre in Harwell, £75m for the Discovery Research Ship, £11.5m for the National Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) Offshore Wind Blade Test Site in Blyth, £18.5m for the NaREC Offshore Wind Turbine Test Site, £12.4m for Offshore Wind Demonstration and Development and £30m for Offshore Wind, Mitsubishi Collaborative R&D.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/governmen ... ress-loan/

...so how are the 'low carbon innovation key programmes' and 'next generation nuclear reactors' going? Hello? Anyone seen SlimyDaveGidiotJavid? No? Perhaps they're buried under all the 'green cr4p'

TBF, personally, I'm not a fan of 'loans' like this (direct investment/grants always seem more efficient to me) - but the advantage of governement investment is clear to the governments of other coutries across the world (Japan, France, Germany, Italy and China for example) and actually has facts and evidence to support the notion that it benefits the wider economy - and, whilst I'm not for nuclear power, perhaps one of our erstwhile hardworking journos could ask why, if 'noocleer' is so important to Gidiot and Clouncy, they cr4pped on a project that might've seen Britain exporting...'cos Exporting is GREAT, dontcha know)

Nice to know Clouncy's having a 'meeting'...will anyone in the meeting actually know....well, anything, really ...and of course, nationalisation isn't the answer - can't have guvmint munny going anywhere but Thatchers little airheads and their sycophants, now can we.

rebeccariots2 wrote:95,047 signatures

rebeccariots2 wrote:
Hard to believe that the Tories have had 6 years to get their 'march of the makers' going .... and here's the result of their efforts. Well maybe it's not hard to believe - but sadly much of the country did and voted for them. I am returning to an alternative vision of London and the South East being declared a separate state - allowing the rest of UK to get on and try to make policies that work for us.

norman smith ‏@BBCNormanS 2m2 minutes ago
Mini steel summit ends in Downing Street . Ministers restate support for steel industry. But what's the plan ???

rebeccariots2 wrote:

norman smith ‏@BBCNormanS 2m2 minutes ago
Mini steel summit ends in Downing Street . Ministers restate support for steel industry. But what's the plan ???

Plan - you expect us to have a PLAN? Go and ask Labour what their fully costed plans are - that's what the BBC and press are supposed to do.

Lonewolfie wrote:Where's George?....where've we heard that before? (Perhaps he's inspecting a bakery...in another of his cunning alter-egos, Pasty McPasteface?)

ephemerid wrote:In 2007, Tata bought Corus for $10 Billion; at the time the company was making $800 Million PA.
The company was alleged to be over-priced, but Tata apparently wanted to expand.
Tata borrowed that $10 Billion from Indian banks at a higher rate of interest than charged in the UK; they then borrowed a further $7 Billion.
It now has debts of $17BN which must be costing as much to service as Corus makes in a year.

If we bought Tata's UK interests for a penny, we'd be buying the debt too. I think that's why Tata want out.
It would cost us less to service that debt because we could borrow at BOE rates which are much lower.
It would save 40,000 jobs - if all those people claimed JSA alone it would cost £150 Million; add to that all the other support they'd be entitled to and you could easily double that.

We should also procure UK steel for our other manufacturing industries - it is beyond ludicrous that we buy steel from Korea to build a fleet of Royal Navy support ships, and have made a deal with a Swedish company worth £3.8 Billion to supply steel for Ajax armoured vehicles and a further deal worth £350 Million for warships with the same outfit.
There are articles galore online about what excellent quality our steelmakers produce. So why don't w use our own steel to build our navy?

There are many more on the poor quality of much of the steel imported from China. The UK imported 687,000 tonnes of Chinese steel in 2014, more than double what it imported in 2013. There have been reports of various problems (too technical for me to understand).
We also imported 5 Million tonnes from the EU; although the quality is fine, it's not much cheaper than using our own.

This is what I think -
We should buy Tata for pennies, and service the debts more cheaply;
We should procure only UK steel for our defence and infrastructure;
We should introduce a special low tariff for energy costs for the industry;
We should impose import tariffs, which so far the Tories have refused to do;
We should ensure that our steel industry doesn't disappear forever.

Javid will not do any of this. Osborne will allow China to do what it wants.

Steel will go the same way as coal for all the same reasons.
We have learned nothing.

Lonewolfie wrote: 97,859...about 100 a minute...so 100,000 at about 10 past 10?

StephenDolan wrote:There seem to be rather a lot of political commentators that aren't tweeting about the steel situation. The silence is deafening. Holidays didn't get in the way of the summer of Get Ed.

StephenDolan wrote:UK economy grows faster than expected - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35931968" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Hurrah, it's all going to the latest revision of the LTEP.


But wait. What's this buried towards the end?


'The deficit in the three months to Decemberwas £32.7bn, the equivalent of 7% of GDP, said the ONS.

For the whole of 2015, the deficit came to £96.2bn or 5.2% of GDP.

Both figures were the highest since official records began in 1948.'

StephenDolan wrote:Can we have examples of what 'everything we can' involves? Does it include changing the government's view on steel tarrifs for eg?

StephenDolan wrote:Can we have examples of what 'everything we can' involves? Does it include changing the government's view on steel tarrifs for eg?

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Peter Oborne ‏@OborneTweets 13m13 minutes ago
Peter Oborne Retweeted Jim Pickard
Good point this from the @FT

Jim Pickard
‏@PickardJE
Sajid Javid says that nationalisation is "rarely" the answer: yet the dominant Chinese steel companies are mostly state-owned.

It does seem strange / infuriating how often our government is willing to support the state industries of other countries (whilst usually ignoring that they are state owned).