The Great Redcar Stitch-Up

Sunday 13 December 2009

Wow. Looks like this one has got legs and started running, with new articles by Richard North and Christopher Booker.

If you're a bit late to the party, here's a quick resumé:
  • Redcar steelworks is mothballed costing 1,700 jobs directly with a further 9,000 indirectly at risk. The official reason is "lack of demand".
  • However, the Netherlands is building a new state of the art steelworks using EU money and government money. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown says he can't help Redcar because it "breaks the rules".
  • And Redcar owners Tata are also building a new plant in India with a capacity of 3 million tons, which happens to be exactly the capacity of Redcar.
That Britain is being screwed over by the Netherlands and India is bad enough, but it gets worse:
  • At a meeting Corus boss Kirby Adams blames EU emissions trading rules for the closure
  • the BBC are present at the meeting but don't report this
  • Redcar owners Tata gain £1.2 billion from carbon credits from closing Redcar and opening new plants in the Netherlands and India
  • Tata founded the Tata Energy Research Institute. Its director-general is Dr Rajendra Pachauri. He also happens to be chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
So 10,000 people in Britain are losing their livelihoods, an Indian company is gaining £1.2 billion and there isn't even any reduction in CO2.

The British need to wake up and realise that other people in the world don't share their sense of fair play. A new breed of politician is needed that robustly protects the interests of Britain. But could such a person get anywhere in our political system the way it is?
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5 Responses to “The Great Redcar Stitch-Up”
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Anonymous said...

The steel workers in Redcar can join me and thousands of other IT workers.

I've been made redundant from the last three jobs that I've had so that I could be replaced by Indian workers flown in to the UK specifically to replace me.

Although the Indians have the same take home pay as me, our government gives them a dispensation from UK income tax and national insurance. As they're technically working for an overseas company, my former employers bodyswerve employer's national insurance too. They can also forget about the working time directive, paid sick leave, maternity leave and all of the other problems British workers bring with them.

Don't talk to me about work permits - they don't need one. Don't talk to me about unfair dismissal either, it's trivially easy to get around.

13 December 2009 at 17:40
Anonymous said...

And let's not forget that Tata's own collected the Nobel 'Peace' prize, along with warlord Obama.

UN candy, perchance?

13 December 2009 at 21:11
Rich Tee said...

@Anon 17:40

Just confirms that the UK fails to protect the interests of its citizens like other countries do. I say this as somebody hoping to go into IT myself.

I do my best. A journey of a million miles starts with the first step.

13 December 2009 at 21:25
opinion prole said...

It's about time we had some robust politicians who stop wailing all the time about the plight of welfare claimants, grievance groups and losers of all kinds and who face up to the fact that the world is full of nasty people trying to grab our jobs, money and market share. What the UK needs is a swift kick up the backside and a reminder that if you don't compete in the big wide world you will end up as paupers. They have to work out what the UK is going to do in the 21st century to earn its living apart from teaching English and gambling with huge sums of other people's hard earned money. We have a man called Balls to laugh at but are there any at Westminster with a fully working pair?

15 December 2009 at 09:35
Pat said...

I believe that TATA also recieve a UN subsidy to help with the cost of building their new plant in India.

15 December 2009 at 21:23