Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

To make steel, you need iron ore, carbon and oxygen.



The problems with the steel industry started several decades ago when it no longer became cost effective to mine coal in the UK. In short, the UK steel industry will only ever be profitable during the short periods of high global demand.

Otherwise, it's a lame duck. The good folks of Redcar and Scunthorpe should have moved on years ago, but, like most northerners, they're stuck in a time warp. Get over it.

-=-=-=-=-=


What are the tax arrangements in Austria and China like for overseas visitors?

max - do we actually manufacture cars? ...... no, we add value by assembling the bits that are manufactured elsewhere, though i suspect that quite a lot of the electricals and similar are still produced in uk .... nevertheless, we're obviously very good and efficient at the assembly side, with the result that the country earns a huge amount from the industry


jimmy - estate agents do not pump up house prices, as the current soft london market shows ...... you can ask whatever you like for a property, but at the end of the day, there has to be someone who is prepared to pay that price ..... certainly some estate agents deserve their somewhat spivvy reputation, but the good ones do actually earn their keep

Estate agents might not pump up house prices, but I can certainly think of a few estate agents that I'd like to pump up. :o)

Iv'e seen them at work over the last few years cynic and most of them are slime bags .

I am friendly with one who i have dealt with , who is about the best of a bad bunch and i have come to the conclusion even he is a creep .
Your absolutely wrong on the fact that they don't pump up house prices as i have seen it first hand .

i don't know where you live, but prices obtainable in central(ish) london are down 10% or more on a about year ago ...... as i said, you can ask whatever price you like, but if no one wants to pay that price, you won't get it

i accept that one or two very well known agents over-estimate to the potential clients just to get a property on their books ..... after a month or so, they'll then go back to the client and effectively say "whoops!"

Perhaps, we should stop making "gunpowder", as it is cheaper to import from other countries.


-=-====

It is time to fall back on the "city", with its profitable businesses to finance the UK.

But, now that China is up and running, how long will it be before China learns to build offices and how to use computers and think of shifting the "financial centre and services from London" to Beijing?

Perhaps, they have a crafty plan!

Crafty Bs. these Chinese.

Just look what they put in their soups.


-=-=-=-=

Mind, I am sure they will offer Osborne a tip or two after he services them.

Bend over Dave, it is your turn next!

unlike most of you here, i have made the effort to edit this article into something more concise

China invests £5.2bn in UK projects
Chinese investment group SinoFortone plans to invest more than £5bn in the UK.
It will invest £2bn in Orthios Eco Parks to develop waste power and food stations, initially at Holyhead and Port Talbot in Wales.

The company also said it would invest in developing an amusement park in Ebbsfleet, Kent, reports The BBC.

Development of the amusement park should begin in 2017 and should be completed by 2020, SinoFortone said.

The two power plants in Wales will be developed over the next three years, after which the technology will be rolled out to China and developing countries.

The modular plants take waste heat from power stations that will be used to warm water for king prawn farming. The UK currently imports king prawns.

Other types of seafood, such as Dover Sole, will follow while the process can also be used to help grow vegetables.

The system is also designed to capture carbon dioxide emissions.

The 299 megawatt Holyhead plant in Anglesey will employ at least 500 people, as will the 349 megawatt Port Talbot plant in south Wales, Orthios chief Sean McCormick told the BBC.

Thousands more people will be employed building the plants, he said.

In exchange for the investment, Orthios will source between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of the materials and components needed to build the plants from China.

=================

OK all you grizzlers ......

while i too have misgivings about the massive inward investment - it happens to be from china at the moment - there are very obvious benefits in job-creation at the simplest level

so would you rather not have the investment and then bitch like crazy about the gov't not doing enough to create jobs?

would you applaud ANY gov't that decided it was a "good idea" to subsidise (waste huge sums of money some would say) the steel industry when there was no obvious long-term foreseeable benefit in so doing?

No.

Due to a rush to the emplace a rotten ideological economic policies, by this incompetent bunch of neo-cons, it has been 6 years wasted by serial incompetent government actions, which Cameron and Osborne are now looking for an escape route from their own creation

cut the crap fred and try to write something sensible that is not imbued with your ideological splenetics

and "no" is in relation to what?

Well you seem to know a lot more about crap than I do.

You swallow enough of it and then regurgitate it.

oh well done fred! ...... several chapeaux for that brilliant witticism

for once, try commenting without ideological crap and about the present day and not history

You would understand even if I could take you seriously.

Go back to your barrow.

Read and consider implications of actions taken by your government:

Doctors, teachers, the police – public servants are demoralised

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/18/doctors-teachers-police-public-servants-demoralised

It is very brief and sums up what is happening as a result of barrow boys' dogma.

Labour 'hasn't a hope in hell' of winning elections, says resigning peer
Lord Warner, the first Labour parliamentarian to resign from party after election of Jeremy Corbyn, says party must change tack

About Lord Wally:

On Twitter, former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott said Lord Warner had in the past proposed charging people to use the NHS, adding: "No credibility. No great loss."
And shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith suggested the peer had "been leaving us for quite a while".

"He voted with the Tories a couple of years ago, under the last Labour leadership, to privatise parts of the NHS," he told BBC 2's Newsnight. "He is somebody who has advocated charging for the NHS, charging to stay overnight....I'm not sure we will miss him too much."

inevitable response, but i believe Warner is well-respected in HoL and of course has no need to kowtow to JC and his appointed (and annointed?) flagellants

Not inevitable at all fish face.. but the truth, and respected by who exactly in your humble?

HoL itself - no that's no answer ...... can't remember i must confess ..... there is much to be said for an unelected chamber as they cannot be bulldozed as easily

aha!
it was from today's guardian, which is scarcely a poodle to the conservatives .....

The Corbyn team may dismiss Warner's resignation, but they will be wary of saying anything that alienates other Labour peers, partly because Warner is widely respected as an assiduous peer and expert on health care reform. Few Labour peers have any sympathy for Corbyn and unlike Labour MPs are not subject to his patronage.