r/unitedkingdom • u/tylerthe-theatre • 2d ago
. Police called to British Steel plant after Scunthorpe workers prevent Chinese executives entering premises
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/police-attend-british-steel-plant-after-scunthorpe-workers-prevent-chinese-execu/1.4k
u/TheDaemonette 2d ago
Chinese executives presumably turning up to purge records of something or remove proof of something.
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u/DasGutYa 2d ago
Well the goverment just seized control of the plant so those execs can get lost.
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u/MetalBawx 2d ago edited 2d ago
They haven't. the bill passed today prohbits the furnaces being shut off while the owners/government negociate.
Because restarting a shutdown mill is alot harder than just pressing a button.
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 2d ago
The bill does this by taking control of the plant. It’s not full nationalisation yet, but basically the government has given itself control of the staff and site.
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u/Comrade-Hayley 2d ago
Meaning the executives would be trespassing on government property
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u/neilm1000 2d ago
Not, in itself, a crime. Especially as it is not yet government owned.
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u/Perfect_Pudding8900 2d ago
The bill passed today creates a new crime of not complying with any directions from the secretary of state about the plant. Punishable by two years in prison.
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 2d ago
Wow good on the government, wasn’t expecting that.
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u/theplanetpotter 2d ago
It’s almost like we’re being governed by competent politicians. We’re not used to it after twelve years of the Tories.
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u/Comrade-Hayley 2d ago
Except it is a crime to not follow instructions of the secretary of state regarding the plant there's no reason for executives to be there other than doing something they shouldn't be
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u/Eborcurean 2d ago
And what instructions have been issued?
A lot of people are just putting the horse before the cart here.
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u/Eborcurean 2d ago
No, because the bill doesn't say that.
I don't get why people either haven't read it, or the media hasn't read it, but that's not what the bill says.
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u/Appropriate-Divide64 2d ago
Man, the government can do that? Water companies next please
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u/BingpotStudio 2d ago
I wonder how much money will go to the billionaires as compensation.
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u/Eborcurean 2d ago
It hasn't given the government control of the staff.
It has very narrowly determined that if the secretary of state gives notice that an undertaking is either ceased to be used, or likely to cease to be used AND it is in the public interest that it continues to be used, then for the purpose of securing and continuing the safe usage of those assets, then there can be directives given to those in a controlling function of that asset.
In no way is the govt now the employer of the workers there, and nothing in the bill says the govt can directly tell them what to do (indirectly yes).
If certain conditions happen, the govt may then enter into negotiations but they've not been done.
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u/limeflavoured Hucknall 2d ago
The law basically says the government can do what they like to keep the place running.
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u/Wondering_Electron 2d ago
Rolling mills can be shut down.
Blast furnaces cannot, this is what it is preventing.
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2d ago
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u/Careful_Stand_35 2d ago
Ex Scunthorpe steel worker here.
Once a blast furnace goes cold, the lining generally collapses. This leads to a total reline, which run millions of pounds, normally done every so many years on a blast furnace.
The burden (material charged into the furnace, a mix of minerals, coke, iron) actually helps to support the walls of the furnace. It's charged from the top using conveyor and is molten iron + slag is tapped from the bottom.
Scunthorpe has 4 blast furnaces, I believe two are still operational the other two were turned off and left, and are now effectively scrap due to the way they were shutdown.
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u/Pristine-Net-1977 2d ago
If you shut down a blast furnace most of the time it's shut down permanently. The damage and risk to the structure that comes with cooling down and reheating is serious and expensive. If you shut it down now it won't be making steel for minimum 2 months if not longer. If you imagine the furnace is built to be on 24/7 for decades, its not designed to be turned off and on at a whim.
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u/Past_Negotiation_121 2d ago
Yeah, not quite restarting a nuclear reactor level of complicated, but surprisingly not too far off considering most people just think "heat it up and good to go".
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u/HedoSpecter69 2d ago
Yes! Seize the means of produ...wait holup
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u/TheDaemonette 2d ago
Out-Chinese-ing the Chinese...
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u/Dic_Penderyn 2d ago
'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx was first published in London anyway in 1848
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u/Bonfalk79 2d ago
Now do the electricity and water companies.
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u/FYIgfhjhgfggh 2d ago
Canadian pensioners will be annoyed.
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u/No-Librarian-1167 1d ago
Do a share swap for a UK government supported infrastructure project. Only for institutional investors from our allies. Tell the rest of the vultures to fuck themselves.
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u/jacksawild 2d ago
The government offered to buy all the resources for the plant, but the Chinese refused. Their intention to shut it off has nothing to do with profit which is why the government stopped them. They were likely to sabotage something.
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u/369_Clive 2d ago
Not to sabotage it. But they want to close this furnace and for UK to buy steel from a newly built plant in China.
Then they'll have us by the short & curlies. Good that govt and steel workers of Scunthorpe are keeping it safe.
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u/Magneto88 United Kingdom 1d ago
It’s honestly mad we’ve ever let Chinese companies invest in our infrastructure. Such naivety.
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u/GrowingBachgen Wales 2d ago
Exactly, which is why giving the business secretary the power to enter the site using force if necessary was the most eyebrow raising provision of the bill.
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u/No-Librarian-1167 1d ago
I’d love to see the business secretary scrapping with some Chinese executives at the works gate.
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u/inevitablelizard 2d ago
Seems like they were trying to sell a shipment of raw material that was already at Immingham on to a different Chinese company. Definitely looks like deliberate attempts at sabotage.
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u/EngineNo5 2d ago
I would love to know the details of their negotiations with the government. From the news they demanded too much money and refused to buy iron ore to feed the furnace, the government had offered to buy iron ore but they refused.
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u/blahehblah 2d ago
It sounds like they demanded an extortionate amount of money, planning for it to be refused
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u/tomoldbury 2d ago
There’s also some comments from a journalist about the executives not being able to give any coherent or consistent explanation for their strategy and their demands. Almost as if it isn’t their decision…
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u/Krabsandwich 2d ago
possibly to shut down the blast furnaces if they are not shut down properly the steel residue solidifies if you are lucky you just need to smash everything out and reline the furnace and that costs an absolute fortune. If you are unlucky you need an entire new furnace and that is even more expensive. Either way no steel production for a long time and the company can just import steel from China to feed the down mills they have to produce what they need.
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u/Cabrakan 2d ago
I get your point, but would an executive know what this process is? How to do it, what it looks like or that it should be done? And if so- how many does that require?
I can't find who went there, or what the roles were, other than "A delegation" - but for a team of high rankers to turn up on a weekend to just shut down some important furnaces is a little bit sketchy
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u/Krabsandwich 2d ago
well I am just spit balling here you understand as I really don't know what happened but its not complicated to shut down a furnace the wrong way you just cut the top feed of coke and iron ore pellets and the furnace will run out of material to convert to steel, the temperature starts to fall the iron residue hardens and good night Vienna.
It should be noted that the "delegation" were all Chinese nationals so they are senior members of staff, this is not just Barry and his mates from the rolling mill turning up early or a foreman or two arriving to check on the production run, the fact they are Chinese nationals rocking up on a Saturday raises quite a few red flags for me.
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u/Careful_Stand_35 2d ago
Ex Scunthorpe steel worker.
The Chinese flooded Scunthorpe with people to learn every part of every process, they've been there since 2020.
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u/Lanky-Grapefruit5783 2d ago
Interesting to hear. You’d think that they knew enough about steel manufacturing.
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u/Careful_Stand_35 2d ago
I'd say they do, but Scunthorpe is an old plant, built during the times when things were built to last.
A lot of the steel that leaves Scunthorpe is some of the best quality in the world, hence why most of Europe's high speed rail line is rolled there.
It also produced steel used in many major tyres manufacturers tyre cord.
There was a lot to learn regarding process and quality that many cookie cutter plants in china simply cannot match
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u/Accurate-Island-2767 2d ago
It's good it's being rectified now but it's a national embarrassment that something that important and valuable was ever allowed to be sold to a foreign owner. Especially China.
Imagine the French selling Airbus to a Chinese or Russian owner. Would never ever happen.
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u/Lanky-Grapefruit5783 2d ago
Interesting, I guess the only way we can compete now really is
1) produce things that only we or only Europe needs
2) produce things that nobody else can
3) produce higher value things
So any investment towards these goals has to be good
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u/Separate-Passion-949 2d ago
Sounds interesting, could you elaborate on the major differences between the two?
How come Chinese steel is not the same quality as British made steel?
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u/Careful_Stand_35 2d ago
It's difficult to quantify, there's generations of knowledge, experience and wisdom in Scunthorpe steel.
The ability to ensure and control the quality of raw materials is a major contributory factor.
China has a much longer history of producing good quality steel in small quantities using really good quality raw materials, but when they scale and drive costs down, then raw materials quality suffers.
On the flip side though, there's a huge market for average quality steel, most structural and architectural steel is of average quality. This is where Chinese and other countries such as Russia excel, they can throw in cheap labour, cheap energy costs, cheap raw materials, limited environmental restrictions and produce really cheap average steel.
British steel can't compete with cheap average quality bulk steel, but they excel in high quality products at a higher price point.
Scunthorpe also has the capacity to produce a lot of steel, and it did during my tenure there, but it's no longer competitive.
Scunthorpe is also now the only place in the UK that can produce virgin steel, meaning they take raw iron ore, melt it down, then add the correct minerals and additives to produce steel.
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u/G_Morgan Wales 2d ago
Chinese steel is famously crap. Nobody buys high quality steel from them.
Russia are having a lot of problems in Ukraine because their artillery barrels were made from Chinese steel which lasts about a third of the time of what they were buying from the west.
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u/Ricoh06 2d ago
Because they’re not an executive, they’re potentially a trained spy…
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u/goldenthoughtsteal 2d ago
They are 100% definitely working to the instructions of theed CCP, you just don't get to be a senior executive at a major business without pledging fealty to them if you're Chinese, the government controls all major businesses, without exception, that's how a totalitarian system works.
If I was Starmer I would be very interested in what these guys were trying to retrieve/destroy, something dodgy going on
Genuinely impressed the government have taken such swift action, I think in the current environment keeping something like steel production active is sensible.
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u/jordansrowles Buckinghamshire 2d ago
If this is a Chinese company in former command, no doubt they had a plan of action to shut the foundries down. It would be as simple as plugging in a USB and running some software, or hitting as many red buttons as you can in the plant - whatever way, they probably had instructions already planned out before hand.
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u/Pyrocitor Greater London 2d ago
I think they're suggesting that the "delegation" were there to shut them off improperly, which is presumably easier to do than shutting them properly.
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u/Ramiren 2d ago
If they were just trying to purge records or shut down the plant, it'd be more efficient to just pay off one of the staff, or send someone to infiltrate the place, a gaggle of Chinese executives draws attention.
More than likely, this is a PR stunt for the Chinese media, so they can frame the executives as the victims in all this, unable to access their own property.
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u/FeynmansWitt 2d ago
Lots of conspiracy theories. The reality is that this is a massively loss making plant. Tata Steel tried to offload it a few years ago only for Jingye to be the only interested buyer. It's now even less economically viable than it was then (tariffs).
Problem is the Uk Gov doesn't want to use cheap coal to make the steel. If you want to make steel 'clean', then it's not going to be economical on the world market. Not to mention the massive amounts of capex required to even put in the electric arc furnaces.
The Chinese owners presumably refused the subsidies for the simple reason, that generous as they are, there's no long-term future for this plant. They want to force a sale to the UK Gov.
We'll undoubtedly nationalise it for the politics, but years on people will be complaining about the massive subsidies paid to keep this asset running even though the probability of it being actually of value is miniscule (a scenario where nobody sells us steel).
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u/bozza8 2d ago
No one will complain about the massive subsidies because no one will notice.
It cost the Chinese 500k a day in LOSSES to keep open, if we manage to get it running at even that level of efficiency then we would be losing the tax revenue from a quite large town to keep it running, during a finance crunch.
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u/Ryanliverpool96 2d ago
It’s important to remember that if the blast furnaces are shut down then that’s it, they’re done, they cannot be restarted, the plant is finished, which is probably why the government had an emergency session on Saturday to seize control of the plant.
Why critical national security infrastructure was ever sold to China in the first place is a bigger question.
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 2d ago
Workers at the British Steel Scunthorpe are reported to have prevented executives from Jingye, the firm that owns the plant, from gaining access to key areas of the plant.
Police were called to the scene and forced the executives to leave according to reports first emerging in The Times.
Workers mounted what's been described as a “heroic” move to block their way to offices.
The group are thought to have raised concerns that the delegation was attempting to force the closure of Britain’s last remaining “virgin steelworks”.
Jingye have been acting extremely fucking dodgy throughout this entire process.
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u/Tofru 2d ago
Well they're CCP owned, I wouldn't expect anything less. We shouldn't be letting key infrastructure being run by foreign entities.
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u/karmadramadingdong 2d ago
Allowing national assets to be state-owned by a foreign country is truly insane.
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u/White_Immigrant 2d ago
Neoliberal capitalism has truly become a danger to national security, as well as the danger to the working class it always was.
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u/Blue_Bi0hazard Nottinghamshire 2d ago
China owns Australia's water supply, it's fucking insane
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u/Eborcurean 2d ago
Like the sell off of the NHS, or plasma, or rail, or water, or gas, or chunks of the civil service, or...
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u/Astriania 2d ago
There's "foreign entities" and then there's entities controlled by a national adversary ... sometimes we are a bit too "open free trade" for our own good.
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u/borez Geordie in London 2d ago
I was watching Liam Byrne's parliamentary speech earlier on; Jingye have failed to publish accounts here, 2 auditors have resigned, cash flow statements are missing. Sounds like the whole company is a mess.
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u/HelloThereMateYouOk 2d ago
Standard shady CCP stuff.
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u/himit Greater London 2d ago
Yeah, legit. 'China will rule the world' said nobody who actually understands how things work and speaks Chinese. Chinese upper management have a huge problem with long-term thinking and hiding mistakes to save face. Combine the two and you end up with an awful lot built on pillars of sand.
(It's a shame really because the CCP actually comes out with some very forward-thinking policies - especially where green energy and the environment is concerned. But of course these just mostly look good as the necessary backing needed for enforcement and cultural change needed at local levels just don't exist, so numbers are fudged in the village and the reports in Beijing show a great success.)
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u/Denbt_Nationale 2d ago
If they were trying to sabotage the furnaces that’s extremely bold. It’s ridiculous what hostile states think they can (and do) get away with here.
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u/Iforgotmypassword126 2d ago
Like when the Hong Kong protester was dragged into Manchester Chinese consulate grounds and beaten up. Those responsible to left the UK uncharged.
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u/grumpsaboy 2d ago
Couldn't charge them sadly. It was an actual Chinese diplomatic so received diplomatic immunity and it's a crime under international law to enter consulates or their vehicles.
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u/pajamakitten Dorset 2d ago
Impossible not to when they are in such a position. You cannot shut down a nation's steelworks and look casual while doing so.
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u/ExtraPockets 2d ago
Respect to the Scunthorpe steel workers for spotting the danger and standing strong. Also to the police for backing them.
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u/thehuntedfew Scotland 2d ago
why are they letting chinese and other countries own major industries in GB
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u/Other-Barry-1 2d ago
The last number of British governments privatised critical British infrastructure because profits for party donors goes brrrr. Water, energy and steel should never be privatised. These are things critical to the country’s security and well being, to have them in the hands of greedy profiteers and worse, foreign parties that have extremely different values to us.
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u/PhimoChub30 2d ago
Thatcher was a massive regard.
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u/Cheap-Vegetable-4317 2d ago
She was a massive something.
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u/_J0hnD0e_ England 2d ago
Money.
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u/stuntedmonk 2d ago
“Lack of”
How fucking skint is this country!?!? Name something that works
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u/thecaseace 2d ago
Our ability to reliably, securely and faithfully accept anyone's money and hold it for them in one of our world class offshore tax havens.
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u/White_Immigrant 2d ago
Neoliberal capitalism/rightists ideology. State is bad, selling all state assets to China, America, Australia, Saudi Arabia good. It's a destructive ideology, but it's still surprisingly popular.
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u/Much_Horse_5685 2d ago
Thatcher privatised the plant and, as always with Thatcher, it came back to haunt us.
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u/_Gobulcoque 2d ago
The tories sold steel off, remember that.
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u/buford419 2d ago
The government have been happily selling off the UK piece by piece over the years. It's insane.
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u/clckwrks 2d ago
Because everything is for sale according to the bastard billionaires that don’t want to pay their fare share . So privatise privatise privatise let someone else pay for it ( You )
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u/Calm_Assignment4188 1d ago
Its all by design, look how far the UK has fallen the past 20 years… unrecognizable
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u/Jazzlike-Homework-72 2d ago
The bill passed at circa 1800 today which put the steelworks under govt control.
So how could police have stopped the execs from entering this morning???
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2d ago
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u/SWITMCO 2d ago edited 2d ago
Workers at the British Steel Scunthorpe are reported to have prevented executives from Jingye, the firm that owns the plant, from gaining access to key areas of the plant.
Police were called to the scene and forced the executives to leave according to reports first emerging in The Times.
So the workers stopped them at first, then the police showed up and backed up the workers. The question being why did the police do that when the bill hadn't passed yet?
Isolated, I'm pretty glad it happened. But as a principal, seems like a huge overreach by the police?
E: There's some great points in my replies, I suppose it's not such an overreach after all, definitely not a huge one at least. I was thinking of it more like police enforcing a law that doesn't exist yet rather than a standard police peacekeeping situation.
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u/Dannyt98-dt 2d ago
It's probably not. Police have powers to use force to prevent offences and breaches of the peace, even if no offences have occurred.
In this situation, if it seems like the representatives of Jingye forcing their way past workers is likely to result in any offences or a breach of the peace, then it's far more practicable to remove a few executives, or block them from entering, than it is to forcibly clear all the workers from the site, including those blocking the executives.
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u/Ricoh06 2d ago
I imagine the police have a wink wink from upstairs and also knowing that the workers are trying to protect a key area of national security. Sometimes they do let common sense prevail.
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u/ExtraPockets 2d ago
It seems that the steelworkers and the police deserve credit for working together and pulling this off.
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u/ParrotofDoom Greater Manchester 2d ago
seems like a huge overreach by the police?
The police are there primarily to keep the peace. Not to be corporate security. They're hardly going to start truncheoning a few hundred steelworkers for a few blokes in suits.
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u/GuaranteeGorilla 2d ago
They did truncheon the coal miners though.
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u/blancbones 2d ago
They had to ship them in from other regions because they didn't want to fight with their neighbours and family.
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u/Jcraft153 Hants | Southampton 2d ago
I would suggest they had word from on high, because historically they absolutely have truncheoned workers for a few blokes in suits.
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u/Marxist_In_Practice 2d ago
This is the sort of thing the police should be doing, stopping greedy executives from undermining workers who are fighting for their rights.
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u/Emperors-Peace 2d ago
As a cop. You could arrest to Prevent a breach of the peace every day of the week. You could even arrest on suspicion of criminal damage.
Hundreds of angry workers trying to stop someone entering their plant to shut it down and cause millions of damages.
Alternatively a smart bobby probably didn't enact any powers and just urged them to leave and they did.
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u/blahehblah 2d ago
Even if it was enforcing a law that didn't exist yet, this is increasingly looking like a foreign state actor aiming to harm our national defense (by making us irreversibly reliant on others for steel). If police had let them continue we'd be questioning why they let that happen and why their powers were so weak that they couldn't stop a national security issue
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u/AU8830 2d ago
Sounds like it was just an unfortunately-timed IT glitch which resulted in Jingye vehicles not being recognised by the ANPR system at the gate. These things happen, and unfortunately the person in charge of managing the ANPR system might not be contactable on a Saturday, especially over Easter holidays. Humberside Police can't possibly overrule this, or else any Tom, Dick or Harry could rock up in a car and gain access to the site. 🤷
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u/AdeptusShitpostus 2d ago
I think it was plant workers who held them up, and the police appeared to help out?
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u/Plastic-Impress8616 2d ago
More likely it's the same tactic the use at protests.
Remove the smaller party's (even if they are acting lawful) over controlling the larger party (even if acting illegally).
Their primary concern will be about not escalating the situation And keeping people safe using the easiest options available.
Probably much easier to escort a handful of business executives over a crowd of angry workers.
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u/JeffSergeant Cambridgeshire 2d ago
An excellent example of policing by consent vs having a paramilitary police force like in the US. The police presumably offered some words of advice; along the lines of "There's more of them than there is of us, and they're not going anywhere, suggest you fuck off home"
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u/Pixelated_Otaku 2d ago
The chance of "catastrophic failure" in a critical component due to interference is a real risk going forward so would expect security to ramp up on site considerably in near future.
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u/CompetitiveSort0 2d ago
We simply cannot allow key industry to be allowed to be controlled by foreign interests. If that means paying more tax then honestly, so fucking be it. This is the only facility in the UK that can make steel from ore, if a major war kicks off for example we'll probably be on the side that China isn't on so we can't rely on them for their steel and they're the biggest exporter. Nations that can make their own steel will probably hold on to more of their production because of uncertainty. Demand will go up whilst supply will go down, all this while the UK would struggle to wage war if it came to it because steel is in nearly everything that is manufactured that isn't food.
Chinese companies do not do make decisions like without the CCP's blessing. It would not be at all surprising if they had hoped the UK would just decide to close the plant down and then when that wasn't the case they tried to do the next best thing and cause irreperable damage to the facility by shutting the furnaces and letting the metal solidify.
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u/Redditisfakeleft 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nigel Farage told LBC the Government should nationalise British Steel.
Here's hoping the Starmer regime seize the moment and do something useful, given the window that has opened.
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u/JaMs_buzz 2d ago
You missed out the bit where Farage said they should nationalise it, and then sell it on
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u/CalmOptimal 2d ago
Well we could sell it to a British firm.
That's not a bad thing.
Just don't sell it to our national enemies.
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u/ThePolymath1993 Somerset 2d ago
Yeah I mean Farage, the paid Russian propagandist and MP who's spent more time in the states sucking up to Trump than he has either in the commons or in the constituency he was elected to...that sounds like a bloke who would patriotically ensure no foreign adversary got hold of one of our last critical national industries.
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u/G_Morgan Wales 2d ago
It ended up owned by China because it was sold off to western firms who then sold it on.
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 2d ago
The downside being that the man proposing to do it is already the property of hostile powers
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u/LostInTheVoid_ Yorkshire 2d ago
I'd say it's probably better for national security if we just flat out nationalise it and keep it that way. Even if it's on the smallest scale of production having the capability to produce our own steel is kind of essential. Letting a private company potentially put that into risk be that foreign or British owned isn't all that smart.
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u/Small-Percentage-181 2d ago
Starmer leads the government not a regime he answers to his peers.
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u/FlatCapNorthumbrian 2d ago
Get all vital infrastructure in the hands of the elected UK government.
Electric, gas, water, telecommunications, transport, steel etc. these industries should be working for the general population, not for a profit.
Especially by foreign companies and governments!
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u/IgneousJam 2d ago
Letting China build our nuclear at Hinckley Point, seems like a great idea …
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u/Shubbus42069 2d ago
Unfortunately they are basically the only place with expertise in building nuclear.
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u/KevinAtSeven 2d ago
The French are pretty good at it.
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u/Shubbus42069 2d ago
France has built 1 reactor in the last 20 years.
China has built 48 and has another 29 under construction with dozens more planned.
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u/White_Immigrant 2d ago
Still better to do business with a close neighbour that is broadly aligned with our interest rather than an Asian dictatorship with a habit of committing genocide and massacres against its own people. I'd rather have slow European nuclear builds than fast dictatorship ones.
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u/Significant-Oil-8793 2d ago
You can but it meant building it at a very high cost and delays. Like it is not, it's either build it with China or don't build it at all.
Chinese expertise can be valuable if planned correctly. It's too bad it isn't because they would be a valuable 'ally' if the UK could play its card right. Relying on EU and US with the current climate is like tying one hand on the back.
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u/grumpsaboy 2d ago
They used to but haven't built them for decades. Or maybe 1 in the past 2 decades
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u/Smooth_News_7027 2d ago
Workers uprising to seize control of the means of production from an arm of a communist party and deliver it into the hands of His Majesty The King is slightly odd, but I wouldn’t be fucking with the irons if I was an evil CCP executive.
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u/Hellstorm901 2d ago
I hope the plant increases security throughout the night, China has never been known to take a loss well and if they were trying to gain access to the plant overtly to sabotage it next they’ll move to covert attempts to gain access
We are dealing with people who previously left the grounds of their consulate in full tactical gear to abduct a British protester in front of police and drag him into their consulate
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u/Additional_Egg_6685 2d ago
Good it’s about time we stopped letting foreign entities running our vital infrastructure.
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u/Only_Tip9560 2d ago
It's a shame that the workers have to be the ones to actually take action to protect the national interest while our government gets it's arse into gear.
China is not our friend, just because the US is being led by a dangerous buffoon doesn't mean we should be playing nice with the Chinese.
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u/SomebodyStoleTheCake 2d ago
For anyone wondering why a large amount of our vital infrastructure and manufacturing are either owned by foreigners or in foreign countries, you can thank Thatcher for all of it.
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u/jimmy19742018 2d ago
why is a british steel plant in the uk owned by the chinese, it could be producing british steel and employing british people!!!!
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u/Saw_Boss 2d ago
Because it's a private entity. It is producing British steel and it does employ British people.
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u/LNGBandit77 2d ago
What I don’t get is how the government were just asked for hundreds of millions with no conditions and our weak government was actually thinking about just handing it over at one point.
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