Shipping steel to Teesside like Taking Coals to Newcastle


http://www.itv.com/tynetees/

Judging by the lack of response to this, the rest of you are as apathetic to this 'tragedy' as I am. I know from experience it's not nice to lose your 'secure' job after decades in it, but what did people working there expect? From the moment the works was taken over by an Indian company anyone with half a brain must have seen this scenario coming one day. And anyone who hopes they may reopen one day really are living in cloud-cuckoo land. The owners will never sell, and allow competition to make what may well be a better quality product, against their own interest elsewhere in the world.

Living down here it's hard to explain to people the devastating effect this will have on the Teeside economy. It's hardly like it was bouyant to start with.

What are all the people who worked there (and in supplying industries) going to do now? The Government can hoy billions at the bankers but what are they doing to create any kind of industry/commerce to fill the gap?

I work for corus at the Hartlepool Mill and at the moment each bit of corus is on its own regarding the workforce we are all suppose to work for the same company but its not like that in real life. Im one of the lucky one as our mill is pretty well run and still been making a profit during these hard times but you never know whats around the cornor and maybe Tata have bought Corus to take it out of the equation so they can have a bigger slice of the steel industry in the world. So i wouldn't be surprised if its all gone within 10years and steelmaking is mainly done in India.

At least them in there 50's will be well looked after if they have been there over 25 years what with full redundancy and works pension you talking alot of wonga!

Sad day for Teeside today but it hardly got mentioned in Hartlepool! And if they are wondering why aint we with them it can be said that they werent with us when we were fighting for our bonus Tata took off us!!! which we did win back!

That's why I thought the talk of industrial action YESTERDAY was laughable, do the unions really think other workers around the country will risk their jobs for a doomed plant.

Today I heard one bloke of 58 whinging about how can he find work as a 75 ton tipper driver around here. For fooks sake take the money they will have to pay you and either retire, or take a part time job doing something else, you will be one of the lucky ones.

But wasn't that because it was an easy life? ie completely overmanned.

Unfortunately those days are well gone, we really do have to work for a living these days.

My first job, as a 16 year old, was in HBC's Highways Dept as a Wages Clerk, we worked in the morning, and played cards all afternoon in the winter, and football and cricket in the yard in the summer. I joined the RAF after a year, because our job's were going to be transferred to Middlesbrough under the new Cleveland reorganization. So my protest against working in the Boro, was to move to Lincoln, Hereford and East Anglia.

Here's a Pools related one in the 70's...I was an apprentice and all the lads were waiting for a particularly humourless gaffer to go home early so we to could also go as we were going to see Pools and had agreed to meet up in the Stranton pre match, then run by Alfie Smithson. The said gaffer was hanging back and as it got to one O'clock, the lads were starting to look uncannily like one of them black and white war films, sweating with tension as they mentally willed his departure.
He should have smelt a rat but didn't and eventually jumped into his car and drove at a funereal pace down towards Brenda Road ... at this point, the tension was released, they all got quickly changed, a la James Bond and revealed best gear under buttoned up boiler suits. My lift, who shall remain nameless, was never one to rush and the mass departure of cars would put a Top Gear test track to shame as they did their very best to emulate a Le Mans 24 hour race start on a Sunny Saturday in September....they had travelled hardly any distance, only to the crest of the incline next to the main stores when they all braked violently, did the fastest three point turns ever and I believe one accidentally invented the handbrake turn, roared back and parked in a sea of slag dust and abandoned their cars like bomb disposal experts who've heard the bomb start ticking ... over the crest of the hill tootled a two tone Anglia doing about 15 mph ... he'd forgotten a manual and had returned to pick it up...or had he ?
Meanwhile, twelve sweaty lads are jammed in the bogs hoping he doesn't want a pee. he left and they followed, twenty minutes later .. and much more warily this time. We lost by the way.
Working there, really was attending the University of Life.

best job i ever had till two pipes whacked me fecking crane driver