By Jamie Dunkley, and Rowena Mason,
UK Telegraph
The Indian-owned steel maker said levies on heavy manufacturing were partly behind its plans to close or mothball part of its Scunthorpe plant, where 1,200 jobs could be cut, as well as a further 300 roles at its sites on Teesside.
Tata said it had been forced to make the cuts in its loss-making long products division because of the downturn in the construction sector, where it supplies steel.
Karl-Ulrich Kohler, chief executive of Tata Steel's European operations, said: "The continuing weakness in market conditions is one of the main reasons why we are setting out on this difficult course of action.
EU Push For Green Energy Costs Another 1,500 Jobs
By Sarah O’Grady, Social Affairs Correspondent,
UK Express
PRESSURE on Britain to cut its carbon emissions cost 1,500 jobs yesterday – and they will not be the last, the Government has been warned.
Tata Steel announced the redundancies at its Scunthorpe and Teesside plants, blaming climate change legislation required by Brussels and the UK’s new Climate Change Act.
The prospect of higher energy costs aimed at reducing carbon emissions by imposing limits would push the price of British steel to uncompetitive levels.
Karl-Ulrich Köhler, head of European operations for Tata, Britain’s largest steelmaker, said: “EU carbon legislation threatens to impose huge additional costs on the steel industry.
U.K.'s phony war on carbon emissions
Terence Corcoran,
National Post
While cruising home the other night down Toronto's Don Valley Parkway, grappling with a decision to fill the car with either Katy Perry or Adele, I decided instead to tune in to CBC Radio's As It Happens. As luck would have it, I was just in time to catch the introduction to host Carol Off's next guest, a Mr. Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics. Mr. Ward's session was short, six or seven minutes, but he easily achieved the program's predetermined objective.
The segment introduction set the agenda: "In Canada, the land of freezing cold winters and wideopen spaces, the fight against climate change has been getting, well, a chilly political reception of late. But in cozy little England, it's another story altogether. This evening in London, Chris Huhme, the U.K. government's Energy and Climate Secretary, announced ambitious new targets for carbon emissions."
Ms. Off had no trouble getting Mr. Ward to fulfill his role, which was to portray Canada as a dreadful laggard in the global war on carbon, compared with the bold new policies announced last Monday by the British government. The coalition government of Prime Minister James Cameron had just announced what it proclaimed to be a plan to make it "the greenest government ever" and put Britain "at the leading edge" of a new global industrial transformation.
