Will Labour Preside Over...

He's given more to charity than this board cumulatively ever will. Specifically Great Ormond Street. But yeah, what a ******

He pays tax on his income where it's made, now has to pay UK tax on top of that on foreign income. He's not English and owes this country nothing. We courted him here with favourable taxes because we wanted his wealth and investment, we've now moved the goalposts so he's leaving, pretty easy to understand.

 

All these guys are just sociopathic ******* holding a gun to the nations head demanding they don't pay more tax or they will leave. The sums they have are obscene.

If you had his wealth (£35 billion) and spent £1 every second, it would take you about 1,100 years to spend it all, not including any interest paid.

This would take you back to 915AD where the Vikings had a victory over the Anglo-Saxons at Corbridge. (1-0, late winner from a corner)

 

Didn't you make a big thing about voting conservative? I don't want to be a dick about it, but what on earth did you think you were voting for if not the private control of industry as an absolute minimum? Even if Starmer's government had wanted to reverse this - and they don't - they wouldn't have been able to do it within two years. The damage done to industry in this country was structural, on purpose, and unfortunately done by the guys that you wanted.

 

lol. Poor lamb.

 

I agree with every word you've said....because, as I said earlier it's a strategic asset...particularly at this time of world peace uncertainty. I think it should be retained, its far more than 2000+ jobs, for me every single Govt funded contract, whether it be ships or submarines for the Navy, tanks and shells for the Army, rails for the railways or reinforcing bars in public buildings should be home produced Steel, yes, it may cost more than Korean or Indian steel but there is a balance, ..payback comes in keeping men and women productive in industry, keeping otherwise deprived areas of the country in work...and also retains a strategic capability and the skills to make things ourselves if, for whatever reason, we are not able to buy it in from overseas.

 

Think Jeremy Hunt started the non don tax exception abolishment to pre-empt the Labour policy they knew was coming.

Lakshmi Mittal's son and his wife gave the biggest gift of 15 million to Great Ormond Street.

 

I like how just because you give a tiny fraction of your wealth to charity, it means you don't have to pay your fair share of tax.

Without naming names, plenty of people have done lots of charity work over the years - it doesn't excuse them of anything.

 

The Sky jobs are the tip of the iceberg as AI takes over these kinds of jobs. There will be plenty more service jobs disappearing in the very near future. The steel closure isn’t just the jobs, it’s the entire industry…. And currently it won’t be replaced. We have shipped skills and knowledge overseas, and will very soon lose those skills and experience. We’ll not be a nation of shopkeepers…. We’ll be a nation of unemployed, relying on overpriced goods from overseas.

 

Exactly. There's also an assumption that he has a moral case to possess all that money, which in my opinion is doubtful. Billionaires shouldn't exist.

Some maths.

- £15m donation
- £35bn fortune
- Donation is therefore 0.04% of his total wealth
- Median wealth of someone in the UK is £125k
- 0.04% of £125k = equivalent donation of £50

 

Dude's 75 and not English. English inheritance tax is 40%. He's just stepped back from his business, why not retire in Italy or Switzerland where tax rules are more favourable and the weather's better.

Given the choice no one is going to choose to give away 40% of their lifes work.

As billionaires go he has a good rap-sheet a lot of charity projects especially considering that most of his wealth is trapped in company shares, so paper money, but not something he can access, of his usable money, he's given away quite a bit.

People knocking him just don't understand how money works. There's plenty of other billionaire's who are proper dickheads, it doesn't mean they all are.

 

In my view not being one of the "proper dickheads" doesn't give him a free pass to pile up £35bn. Your mileage obviously varies.

 

But he hasn't piled up £35bn though has he? The vast majority of that is the stock value of his company.

There's not much point having this conversation with you as you don't seem to understand how finance works.

Just because he has x amount on paper, doesn't mean he has access to spend that sum, far from it. As such his charitable deeds can't be viewed using the £35bn figure.

Of course he can do more, sell a mansion or two and give it to charity etc, but this guy is on the face of it, not a bad person. He was a new Labour party donor, and backs hundreds of charities with millions of pounds, annually.

 

There's no doubt various mechanisms for him to transfer out that stock value if he needed or wanted to make it liquid, right? It's certainly not inaccessible and of no actual intrinsic use.

Secondly, I'm guessing with £35bn he's got access to serious amounts of cash on hand.

What's his cash value then? Im happy to do the same sums with his liquid finance and his donation is still relatively pithy compared to the vast majority of people.

As I said billionaires shouldnt exist, nice or not.

 

It's about stopping production of pig iron from raw ore. I think most other places in the UK are producing steel from scrap metal in arc furnaces. Scunthorpe should be preserved as a strategic asset in case of darker times ahead.

 

Steel manufacturing in the UK is under threat though a combination of exceptionally high energy prices, foreign ownership of the main manufacturing firm, and their lack of any long term commitment to UK sites when it's simply a less profitable part of an international production empire.

The only future for UK steel is either significantly subsidised energy, or nationalisation as a defence/strategic asset.

Personally, as the world becomes more uncertain, and wars and collapse of international trading relationships seem to put access to imports at threat, I wouldn't feel comfortable for Britain to be dependent on the ongoing goodwill of other countries.

 

Now this is going to be an interesting test for the government. In the run up to the Brexit vote I did quite a lot of research as I approached it with an open mind. Whilst we were in the EU there were some very strict rules on bailing out/subsidising industries within the single market. In 2014/2015 the Chinese gov dumped a load of 200% subsidised steel on the world market. The EU couldn't agree a response (Eastern european countries spending (EU) money on infrastructure liked the cheap steel and blocked any action). Belgium took unilateral supporting action for their steel industry and were given a stiff fine (I seem to recall 250,00,000 euros) by the EU. The Cameron govt didnt help, in particular the Middlesbrough steel works that hitherto had been viable but of course he had a get out of jail free card that the EU wouldn't let them. And...the steelworks closed. I've previously been a member of RUSI and know that defence rankings factor in industrial capacity not just the size of a standing army (that can get churned pretty quickly). I support the view of others here that steel is a strategic issue. This is the first government that arguably has been legally able to support an industry in such circumstances for decades. If it's viable and is suffering from some extraneous political interference in its market, of course it should be helped through that crisis. In return it should be brought into public ownership or at least some stringent rules on salaries/dividends imposed for those at the top. Over to Keir!!