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British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply
- codelikeawolf 2mo agoI immediately thought of the Judas Priest album and agreed that supplying heavy metal to the UK is indeed vital.
- fidotron 2mo agoTangent: disturbing to see the BBC thinking they're going to get far by paywalling quasi-randomly in North America. At least right now it's trivial to ignore.
- Closi 2mo agoDisturbing? In what sense? Other news sources are paywalled and UK citizens have to pay in tax.
- UnfitFootprint 2mo agoWait what? Is the NYT not paywalled somewhere?
- Arainach 2mo agoI'm not seeing this particular paywall, but disturbing in that the BBC is so awful and stupid at this, presumably. For many years I would have gladly paid the BBC $20/mo for some way to legally watch Top Gear and Doctor Who. That's it, just two shows and I'll give you more than I give Netflix. They never offered a single legal mechanism available to US citizens, so, well.....don't admit to crimes on the internet and all that.
- Steve16384 2mo agoHave you tried BritBox? It seems to show Doctor Who, but ironically, being in the UK I'm unable to access their site to see specific details.
- mrkwse 2mo agoIt was offered much later than iPlayer was for the UK, but to claim they 'never' had an option for US audiences is false when they have had Britbox for almost 10 years
- Arainach 2mo agoNot only was Britbox launched long after iPlayer and after I stopped watching both of the shows I mentioned (in fact, Top Gear in its 2002 incarnation was functionally off the air before Britbox launched), but the BBC sold their streaming rights to those two programs such that their modern incarnations were never, so far as I'm aware, available on Britbox.
- potatoproduct 2mo agoAn increasing proportion of UK citizens are deciding not to pay for a TV licence that funds the BBC as consumption patterns have changed. The BBC will be a zombie in 10 years unless they stop being emotionally driven and sort out their funding.
- inigyou 2mo agoGood. The BBC is no longer the shining beacon of objective reporting it once was. Let it die and be replaced by something better.
- GJim 2mo agoPresumably you get your news content from Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and UK News?
- n4r9 2mo agoFor what it's worth, I stopped paying the license fee because of how the BBC sucked up to the Tories in the lead up to the 2019 GE. From Newsnight displaying images of Corbyn that made him look like a Soviet stooge, to Laura Kuenssberg leaking postal vote ballot information, to Alex Forsyth saying that Boris Johnson "deserves" the election. People say that it's subject to complaints of bias from both sides of the spectrum, but I've yet to see comparable concrete pro-left examples.
- graemep 2mo agoThe annoying thing about the BBC paywall is that it is implemented by using different domains, so (for example here) people in the UK go to bbc.com instead of bbc.co.uk
- tikkabhuna 2mo agoDo you have that the wrong way round? In the UK, you go to bbc.co.uk (and bbc.com redirects to bbc.co.uk). From memory, in the US you get pushed to bbc.com.
- graemep 2mo agoI mean that, for example the link here is to bbc.com, and it does not recirect me to bbc.co.uk
- Steve16384 2mo agoIt redirects me fine.
- graemep 2mo agoI had JS off. If I turn JS on it redirects me. Not "fine" though as it loads the page on bbc.com and then redirects which is slow and annoying.
- flohofwoe 2mo agoTangent: disturbing to see many North American news sites thinking they're going to get far by region-blocking European visitors because they don't want to be GDPR compliant ;)
- ExoticPearTree 2mo ago[flagged]
- watwut 2mo agoThis bonmot sounded cool and fun years ago, but not anymore. It is actually OK and desirable for governments to help, to organize and to lead toward positive outcome. Governments should do more then just pay military, prisons and police. Deliberate destruction and expectation of nothing positive from the governments already caused enough damage.
- philipallstar 2mo agoIt never sounded cool and fun. It was government acknowledging its own limitations. Governments don't perform better if we all cheer them on. Right now a government (Russia's) is waging war on a country. Last century governments caused untold death in socialist countries (Venezuela, China, USSR) because they were trying to organise centrally.
- tempfile 2mo agoIn the spirit of fairness I have to note the untold deaths caused by non-socialist countries in Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, pretty much every country in South America...
- squigz 2mo agoOr even Western nations like America and Canada? How many people die every year from preventable causes? To exposure? To suicide?
- ExoticPearTree 2mo agoI never understood this selfish desire to stop people from killing themselves. What's it to you if a person jumps from a building or shots itself in the head? Did you ever think that they might have had actually good reasons for doing what they did?
- wewewedxfgdf 2mo agoPretty sure there's more than enough in Australia.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoIron ore yes, smelting capacity, don't know, but it's literally on the other side of the world.
- philipallstar 2mo ago> In March, the National Audit Office released a report noting that the Scunthorpe steelworks was costing the government about £1.3m a day. No, BBC, the government doesn't have money. It costs the net taxpayer that much a day.
- KaiserPro 2mo agoWhen I buy something, it doesn't cost my employer, it costs me. the pedantry here isn't helpful, as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use. I understand that frustration about frivolous spending. It would be better if the argument was on how we evolve and change the steel market here in the UK so its self funding. BUT! the whole discourse about "government shouldn't choose winners" is a bit flawed, because we have left it to business to invest in infra, and mostly they've just outsourced to someone else (who's government actually planned with an industrial strategy)
- philipallstar 2mo ago> When I buy something, it doesn't cost my employer, it costs me. If someone takes something from you by force and spends it, they're spending your money. > as its "not other peoples money" is a monetary system that the government lets us use The government doesn't "let" us use it. If we don't use it (e.g. by swapping services directly) then the government gets annoyed and tries to insert taxable transactions into that direct value swap. It makes us use it.
- p_l 2mo agoGBP is a fiat currency issued by government through government spending and destroyed by government through taxation, it does not cost the taxpayer it's at worst a bad allocation of resources or incentivization of resource allocation.
- iberator 2mo agoThe government has its own money. For example from national owned companies like airlines, mines, factories etc Richest countries have a lot of government owned companies. USA is just an anomaly because of Chicago school of economy. This is a common myth spreaded by free market freaks.
- msuniverse2026 2mo agoInteresting how they haven't repeated in this article earlier claims that the Chinese purchase of the steelworks was a strategic move to slowly destroy the blast furnaces by letting them cool under pretext of low demand.
- catigula 2mo agoThe state intervened to stop the Chinese from sabotaging their furnaces. Seems like an open and shut case unless you have 5 eyes intelligence sources.
- jingpostmedia 2mo ago[flagged]
- intheitmines 2mo agoSee also Chinese companies buying UK private schools and closing them down Original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/chinese-company-closing-schools-national-security/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/chinese-company-... https://archive.is/dRQsB#selection-2155.4-2155.79 https://archive.is/dRQsB#selection-2155.4-2155.79 Choice quote from the article Mike Parker, the school’s director of marketing, wrote on LinkedIn: “Whatever you read, this isn’t a VAT story. It isn’t a ‘falling rolls, unstoppable decline’ story. The truth is deeper and more complex and, eventually, the truth will out.”
- nephihaha 2mo agoUK private schools spent decades ingratiating themselves to Eastern European gangsters, Arab tyrants and the scions of Asian oligarchs probably including CCP kids. China-pandering has also undermined university education, although the individual Chinese students tend 5o be okay. I suppose you reap what you sow.
- nradov 2mo agoI don't know what happened in that particular case but worldwide declining birth rates will inevitably force many schools to close.
- Deukhoofd 2mo agoIt's probably not a bad idea. Steel is one of the things that an industrialized country needs to produce to protect its own sovereignty. Letting it shut down and just hope you'll always be able to import enough steel from other countries is a bad long-term strategy. You'd be left unable to fend for yourself.
- 0x3f 2mo agoYou can make this same argument about a great number of things. Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Indeed we got caught short of vaccines recently, and had some nontrivial consideration of running a military op against NATO member over it.
- Deukhoofd 2mo agoFood tends to be a lot easier to produce, and many countries do often subsidize their food production, as well as have mercantilistic policies to ensure food production is kept locally. Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"
- 0x3f 2mo agoI don't really care for farm subsidies either, but even ignoring that: it's quite a different level of intervention than compulsory purchase. Same with the vaccines. We didn't respond to that crisis by nationalizing AstraZeneca. My rhetorical point is just that steel gets special treatment probably because it's politically expedient. There are large, politically-relevant parts of the country that are still emotionally tied to the idea that we're an industrial nation. People under the age of 30 still go on about Thatcher and the miners. There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway?
- traceroute66 2mo agoThis reminded me of an article in The Economist published last year, April 2025: "Zombie politics: how Dead Man dominates British politics"[1] Two prescient paragraphs related to today's news: If British politicians worship voters who are no longer among the living, it is natural that they do the same to a version of the British economy that has long departed. “There are people in this country who love to talk down our manufacturing,” said Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, while speaking in Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) factory in Birmingham. During the 1970s, one in four people worked in manufacturing, like Sir Keir’s dad, who died in 2018. Now fewer than one in ten do. Manufacturing, a small part of the economy, plays a big role in politics everywhere. Britain is no exception. A speech at a JLR plant has become a rite of passage for any leading politician in recent years. Dead Man’s old job comes first for Britain’s politicos. The lives of workers in Britain’s services economy come second. True, manufacturing’s weak performance after the financial crisis is one reason for Britain’s woeful productivity growth. Yet politicians cling on to a primitive vision of it. “He made things with his hands,” said Sir Keir of his father. That modern manufacturing requires oodles of educated workers is ignored. Living graduates play little role in political discourse beyond politicians moaning that there are too many of them. After all, Dead Man did not attend university. Why should his grandchildren bother? [1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/04/09/zombie-politics-how-dead-man-dominates-british-politics https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/04/09/zombie-politics...
- raverbashing 2mo agoThis sounds good until you run out of steel and out of sellers as well
- mr_toad 2mo agoThe government is forced to sell steel at a loss, because all the buyers for whom this is a such a vital supply would otherwise buy cheaper imported steel, every single one of them. And ultimately all the ore and coke used to make the steel are imported anyway.
- p_l 2mo agoUntil something happens that disrupts the supply chains from abroad and suddenly there's an issue
- jarym 2mo ago2 things: a) Government plays a part in the cost of things - especially years of mis-investment around energy generation has sent British prices to the stratosphere and employment taxation levels greater than those 'cheaper' producers. b) The 'cheaper' producers are still _producers_ and thus have control - if they need to hoard their own supply they will, or if they need to leverage it for some political gain they might.
- patall 2mo agoThe same is, as far as I can grasp it, true for butter, bread, milk and eggs. Only there, it is already established.
- carterschonwald 2mo agoone of the most hilarious examples of how the current wh admins false protectionism, in my mind, is the crucible steel bankruptcy in jan/feb 2025. its a technological tragedy because it was the only facility im aware of globally that could actually manufacture steel based carbide alternatives at commercial volumes. idk if the relevant equipment is being operated by anyone post bankruptcy. powder steel equipment is a bit less destroyed when turned off, but i think the key blocker is that heat cycling a 3k centigrade furnace will age the material and cause cracking thatmakes it hard to resume the powederization flows
- patall 2mo agoI assume, ultimately western nations will have to adopt what already exists for agricultural goods for production as well. I am afraid it will end as a per-worker subsidy analog to per-area-of-land for lack of a better metric but in the end, that is what will be necessary if one wants to keep any industrial capabilities.
- bell-cot 2mo agoOne can argue whether, in abstract, this was a good idea. Back in the real world - any government or large org can do a genuinely good thing so badly that it would have been better if they'd done nothing at all. And it's been many a decade since the British gov't had much of a reputation for competence.
- zmmmmm 2mo agoOne more tiny piece of the global system of international order falling apart. There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. Now that is not considered safe. Now steel production has to be protected because nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way. It will happen slowly but piece by piece things will move and we will all pay a cost for it.
- petcat 2mo ago> There was a time when people would have felt safe enough to rely on the multiplicity of strongly allied nations with steel production capability. [...] nations that were previously considered reliable strategic partners no longer are behaving that way. Is this supposed to be referring to the US? Because as far as I know USA has never really exported much steel to the UK at all. It's an importer of British steel. Maybe it's referring to European allies? Or South Korea?
- wongarsu 2mo agoSteel production is on the decline in most first world nations. In case of a large-scale war there simply wouldn't be a lot of surplus to send Britain's way
- rsynnott 2mo agoWhat, again? (British Steel's predecessor was itself a nationalisation effort in the 60s.)
- lpribis 2mo agoThe UK loves to take various infrastructure and industries private and public depending on which government is in power at the moment. See also trains, water, etc
- hn_throw2025 2mo agoThe history is longer and more tangled than that. 1951 - Nationalised by Attlee (Labour) 1953 - Re-privatised by Churchill (Conservative) 1967 - Nationalised again by Wilson (Labour) 1988 - Privatised again by Thatcher (Conservative) 1999 - Allowed to merge with Dutch Hoogovens into Corus by Blair (Labour) 2007 - Allowed to be sold to Tata Steel by Blair (Labour) 2016 - Tata allowed to sell to Greybull Capital by Cameron (Conservative) 2020 - Takeover by Chinese Jingye under Johnson (Conservative) I worked there for three years in the mid 90s. Personally, I think it should have been left alone after 1951. But it is arguable whether ideologically driven militant unions would have destroyed it in the 1970s and 1980s.
- nickdothutton 2mo agoThe 2 remaining blast furnaces need about 500m to 750m GBP spending on them within the next 2-5 years or they are just scrap themselves. UK Gov has ditched plans to fully fund the armed forces (would have meant a lot of new warships etc), which would have provided orders for virgin steel from such furnaces. It's hard to see how this has a happy and sustainable ending.
- cliglot 2mo ago> There is plenty of surplus labor available with the right economic incentives. Instead the “Economic incentives” go to the Chinese owners who then learn that Americans are not interested in working in a sweatshop and instead rely on third parties to supply them with illegal workers and engage in white collar crime. I’m suspicious of “re-industrialization” pushes because everywhere I’ve ever lived it’s resulted in at best a foreign company given massive tax breaks to create a few hundred low paid button pusher jobs and maybe a handful of better paying technician jobs.
- derelicta 2mo agoPerfect! Now do the same for the banking and financial sector, the chemistry industry, big pharma, energy, water
- tonyedgecombe 2mo agoWe did do that for banking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescue_package https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescu...
- metalman 2mo agoit makes strategic sense to retain the full verticaly integrated industrial capacity to make anything. but financialy , Britain has zero chance of bieng competitive on the open market
- yanhangyhy 2mo agoyeah, free trade. chinese save a shit company and then UK force take it.
- nikau 2mo agoMeanwhile Australia's last remaining manganese plant shut down last night...
- defrost 2mo agoIt wasn't economically feasible, the owners wanted out, no buyers stepped up. Numbers wise it was ~ 1.6 million tonne per annum in a global market that demands ~ 20 million tonne per annum, as a smaller producer in Tasmania with other factors dragging down it wasn't competitive with South Africa, Gabon, and Ghana. Australia’s only manganese smelter to close, administrators say - https://www.mining.com/web/australias-only-manganese-smelter-to-close-administrators-say/ https://www.mining.com/web/australias-only-manganese-smelter...
- nikau 2mo agoright - but in the context of this thread, manganese is a vital ingredient to smelting iron - so Australia seems it is no longer self sufficient.
- defrost 2mo agoIt still has shuttered plants to do all manner of things - in the event of an actual need to boot these up again, it can be done.
- nikau 2mo agoI wouldn't be so sure about that - as an example, I know at least one Victorian refinery is being torn down and scrapped as seen by my own eyes.
- defrost 2mo agoI can reel off a list of plants being torn down for scrap also. The question is, does that actually mean there is no way to get a smelter up and running in the event of a critical need within a useful timeframe. Bear in mind, right now today, Australia has multiple shuttered lithium production sites that went up in anticipation of a much greater battery demand than actually occurred, and have since been shuttered. In a similar manner the same is true for other mineral supply chains. The link to mining.com was a nod to the historic ebb and flow of Australian exploration / production and the kinds of things that get hashed out at the Diggers and Dealers mining forums. In terms of "critical resources" - we have them in the ground, and we have a lot of smelting technology that we can draw on / repurpose. What Australia does lack, for now, is next level up processing - eg: hard rock lithium spodumene concentrate processing, currently outsourced to China and Malaysia, only recently barely begun here.
- tmtvl 2mo agoThe government is the only entity which can gain money from running a business at a loss. For example: running trains at a loss will reduce car traffic, thus reducing losses from traffic jams and reducing road maintenance costs. With steel the government can recoup losses from producing cheap steel through steel-dependent services like roadworks, the military, public housing,...
- inigyou 2mo agoYet the privatised water companies are still pumping raw sewage into rivers to save money and make more profit?
- goobatrooba 2mo agoI had not realised UK still had mining for iron ore, but it seems it's even a net exporter [1]. In that case it really makes sense to keep such a strategic industry alive as both the up- and downstream companies would suffer if it's shut down. [1] https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/iron-ore/reporter/gbr https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/iron-ore/repo...