Saturday, October 19, 2013

"Second Rate Britain Needs To Be More Like China" Mr Osborne? Do You Remember Sheffield Forgemasters?

It really beggars belief that George Osborne can make comments about Britain being "second rate" and that we "should be more like China", has he forgotten what he and his myopic government did to Sheffield Forgemasters back in 2010 when they first assumed power?

Sheffield Forgemasters (SF) is a world leader in it its field and is also the oldest steel producer on earth; most other countries would have made it a national icon and bent over backwards to help, but not the Conservatives, not David Cameron, not Nick Clegg, not George Osborne and not Vince Cable, instead they decided to renege on a loan promised to them by the previous Labour government.

And Osborne has the nerve to accuse us of being "defeatist and unambitious"?

The government said that they would not loan the £80 million needed because Forgemasters were a private company; so are the construction industries that the government is currently underwriting with public money, so are the banks who this government are underwriting loans for, to give to people who cannot afford them to place as deposits for mortgages they cannot afford. Public money can be found for all manner of private companies and public money can be found to subsidise all of the private companies who benefit from the 100,000 people on government workfare schemes forced to work full-time for around £70 per week JSA, but public money could not be found for vital industry that this country needs and in the north of England too?!

Forgemasters manufactures massive specialist precision components for the nuclear power industry and parts for Polaris submarines. It is strategically important to the UK as it holds an ASME certificate (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) that enables the making of new generation nuclear power plants that are required the world over, parts that will definitely be required by the Chinese to build the nuclear power station that George Osborne wants them to build in this country.

Such a vital contract would have made billions for the country and provided hundreds of quality careers and apprenticeships.

Before 2010, Forgemasters spent two years raising £140 million to build a 15,000-ton press to forge huge precisions pressure vessels for nuclear reactors. The previous Labour government had promised to loan SF a further £80 million to buy vital parts for the press. This money would have been paid back to the Treasury with dividends. It would have put Britain right at the forefront of new green nuclear power technology, which in turn would have supported both national and local economies and the subsidiary companies supplying Forgemasters too.
“Somewhere along the line in Britain there were bits that were great about British industry that we allowed to wither. George Osbonre 18/10/2013

Thanks to the "withering" of Osborne, Cameron, Clegg and Cable,  in 2011 Forgemasters gave up trying to fund the 15,000-ton press and the orders were lost! 

And George Osborne goes to China visits a few places they want him to see and comes back and blames us for being short sighted and he has the audacity to trash the attitudes of people in this country? You cannot make this incompetent shower of buffoons up, you really can't

Since osborne and the Treasury reneged on the loan, the only other company capable of doing the work is Japan and it will not be big enough to cope with demand.

Now as Britain's coal-fired plants are being decommissioned Britain became incapable of building its own nuclear power stations.

So if China is allowed to enter this country and build a nuclear power station, from where is it going to get the nuclear power reactors so vital to its function?

How narrow sighted are this government that decided to pull the plug on a promised loan which would now have probably seen that company expanding and taking on staff and apprentices and he has the cheek to say this:
Dismissing suggestions that China has a “sweatshop” economy, he said he wished Britain would be more like the communist country. 

“I also feel a bit like, my God, we’ve really got to up our game as a country, and the whole of the West has to understand what is happening here in Asia,” 
I also find it absurd that just a week ago George Osborne was referring to Ed Miliband's policy plans as "Das Kapital" and here he is this week singing the praises of the People's Republic of China!

In Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron were castigating Labour Leader for being "Red Ed" and "Marxist". This ridiculous coalition government should learn what it really wants, preferably before they push us all of the edge of a financial cliff!

Osborne claimed, as he waited in Hong Kong for a flight home, that the positive attitude of the country during the Victorian era and while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister has been lost 
“I do think there’s an ambition in the country and a sense of optimism and 'can do’ which our country had in the Victorian age and had at other points in our history,” he said.

 We all know George wants to take the country back to the Victorian age and it is something this government have had particular success with. We have people working full-time for £72 JSA for Tory funding friends of the Conservative party. People will soon be forced to pick up litter all day every day for £70 per week. We have soaring use of foodbanks, escalating poverty, people in fuel poverty forced to choose between heating or eating; children turning up for school in inadequate footwear and clothing and starving hungry and it has been teachers who are feeding them. People who have never been in debt before are now suddenly receiving court summonses for non payment of council tax since the government cut their benefits, these are mainly people IN WORK but on low pay or part-time or zero hour contracts. We even have the Red Cross distributing food parcels to folk in Britain, something they haven't done for 70 years! What next Victorian debtors prison and workhouses? Or perhaps some of his rich mates have open fires where we can send little children up chimneys?

If George Osborne and David Cameron believe that China is doing so well and the UK really should be more like China then why is Osborne forcing austerity on the UK when China has done the extreme opposite and behaved like Keynes on speed? Now Osborne's draconian austerity measures have failed, he has taken to travelling the world floundering about for ideas and going cap in hand to the People's Republic of China while trying to deflect blame for his failures onto us, the unemployed, the poor, the disabled and the previous Labour government, while allowing his City friends and Tory party funders the bankers to get away with their financial crimes against this country's economy and other economies.  Recently while the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband was forcing the energy debate up to the top of the agenda and trying to help real families with energy costs by coming up with an energy price freeze plan, George Osborne was in Europe sticking up for his mates the banksters and their bonuses. Let's be very clear, Osborne is taking the sides of the bankers who caused the mess in this country and is going to fight the EU in court on their behalf  using taxpayers money to foot the bankers legal bills, while hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to use foodbanks and choose between heating or eating.

Let's also be very clear, having inherited a growing economy in recovery from the previous Labour Government, Osborne immediately imposed harsh austerity measures slamming on the brakes of the recovery which was already underway destroying the 2.7% growth they inherited from Labour and forcing the country it into recession. In the process of doing that Osborne pushed unemployment up and managed to lose the UK's triple A credit rating from two major agencies and several minor agencies (something he set his reputation on keeping). Osborne still hasn't managed to recover economic growth to where he inherited it in 2010.

This Tory led coalition government are wholly responsible for three wasted years, if they had followed what Labour were doing (a much more gentle version of China's economic policy) then there is absolutely no doubt that growth today would be more than double the 2.7% this government inherited from Labour and the country would not now be standing on the international stage profoundly embarrassed about the plight of poverty that hundreds of thousands of our citizens are now living in.

Osborne says that the Chinese economy is not built on sweatshops - how does he know? He has only seen and visited the places the Chinese government want him to see and visit, they will not be allowing him to see the thousands toiling away in sweatshops for slave labour making cheap shoddy goods that stock our pound shops to the brim and not just this country either, Spain is full of them too! In fact the Spanish government is so keen to allow the Chinese into their country (just like Osborne is planning to do with his giveaway visas on demand for the UK) that they have waived the taxes that the Chinese have to pay so they can continue to import container loads of cheap goods made in Chinese sweatshops for sale all over Spain, which is having a terrible effect on local Spanish economies who cannot compete.

Osborne stated that the Chinese economy is now made up out of high tech it is no longer an economy of sweatshops. Really? I have no doubt that some of it is, but the main bulk of Chinese exports is still in knock-offs and cheap stuff that fill our pound shops which are on all of our high streets stocked with goods sold wholesale to them for pennies, so how can China be anything other than filled with sweatshops? .

Ever since this government came in they have been forcing living standards down and destroying working rights. People are being forced to work for low pay in part-time dead end jobs and over a 100,000 are currently employed in government workfare schemes and are being forced to work in shops like Poundland for their JSA under threat of losing it if they refuse. Another scheme shortly to come in is the Tories forcing people to either work in these places, join a workfare scheme, or pick up litter for their JSA.

It seems that this has been part of the Tories plan all along, to force down wages and workers rights, to make it cheap for employers so the British economy of low paid and sweatshops can be run along the lines of the Chinese economy. To make it attractive for Chinese businessmen to come to this country and set up their businesses to tap into a ready supply of cheap slave labour.

China is also the country that is stocking the "Head Shops" with 'legal highs' that are now appearing on all our high streets. China is also the country that is supplying ice cream vendors, garages, university students and anyone else who wants to make some cash on the side by selling legal highs.

The British economy is not on a sustainable course of economic recovery, it is entering something we all came to know very well between 1979 and 1997 "Tory Boom and Bust". Growth is coming from a toxic mix of cheap credit, debt, and a government being profligate with taxpayers money in underwriting the banks to offer cheap credit to encourage people to take out loans they cannot afford to use as deposits for mortgages they cannot afford  and by the City of London being the money laundering capital of the world.

Why wouldn't the Chinese want to open their banks here?
Why wouldn't the Chinese be queuing up to grab and control Britain?

After all Cameron, Osborne and Clegg are selling it all off, we own nothing and what little we do retain will soon be gone!

I knew the end was coming for our NHS, that is being privatised and sold off to Tory funding private healthcare companies, but it's worse than that - much worse.

The Tories are selling off our country to foreign investors, the types that put millions into the coffers of the Conservative party, soon we will have no country, it will be an empty shell after the Tories fire sale of everything we hold dear, from British steel industries, to the NHS to our Royal Mail.



1 comment:

Nick said...

china has always been built on sweat shops and slavery they cant even keep their air clear in the capital
there is nothing at all that the Chinese could offer the uk or indeed any other country

it is still a communist state although that word has now been dropped

anything Chinese built has always been of poor value very seldom lasting five years the average before going wrong only three

the very educated Chinese prefer to work abroad to play safe as their food control is very poor and to live in this type of country poses severe health risks

George Osborne thou would never visit this country and never live in it so as usual his comment is null and void as he hasn't a clue about the Chinese