Yes, because government run institutions like the Army and the NHS don't work, do they?
Aren't NHS medical workers in a constant state of protest over low wages and bad working conditions? I know the doctor/nurse brain drain from Canada and the UK to the US used to be really bad. I haven't seen what the statistics are recently. [0] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/02/19/uk-nhs-doctor-s...
Honestly, a lot of it is related to pretty obvious attempts at dismantling the NHS by Westminster
This 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 o…
It’s only possible for Dead Man valorizing politicians to be elected because much of the electorate worships the same. They all have parents too, naturally.
> 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.
GBP 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.
It'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.
You 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.
Food 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"
The 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.
Until something happens that disrupts the supply chains from abroad and suddenly there's an issue
This 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 o…
This sounds good until you run out of steel and out of sellers as well
Half of all steel in the UK is imported anyway, and there are many places to obtain it. Unless the UK goes to war with most of the world at the same time, it’s not going to have trouble getting steel.
This 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.
It 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.
As a counter example, a government (Ukraine) is defending against the Russian invasion and is looking more and more like it might win that fight. Would they be better off without a government?
Good. The BBC is no longer the shining beacon of objective reporting it once was. Let it die and be replaced by something better.
Presumably you get your news content from Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and UK News?
For 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.
It'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.
You 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.
The food example, is the exact reason for large farming subsidies in the European Union. These were implemented as a founding initiative, due to the experience of food shortages during the second world war.
A great number of things could be considered critical. Due to the nature of when access could be cut off, the main thing countries likely worry about being able to access, is things humans need to stay alive, and things needed to wage war.