Here’s a Wild Idea. Number two . . .

Corruption and ineptitude are hidden by a smokescreen of complexity but the solutions are much simpler than you have been allowed to know

Saving British Steel – or any other industry for that matter

by Jon Davy

Instead of getting under foot and making life difficult for the nation’s producers, the government adopts an attitude of HELPING the nation’s industries and their managers and workers.

Let’s take British steel as an example. If it goes bust and the nation no longer produces its own steel, all steel will have to be imported from somewhere like China or whatever.

Moreover, once BS shuts up shop, all the know-how and experience and so on that built up over a century will be lost, the plant scrapped, the factories demolished and turned into car parks or something. It will be GONE.

This would be great news for China and very bad news for Britain, which will not only have to send billions of pounds out of the country in order to buy the steel we need (forever) but also thousands of former steel workers will be unemployed, adding to the nation’s social security burden.

PLUS we would have thousands of people on reduced incomes and less able to buy goods in the market place, which will affect the rest of industry.

PLUS there will be thousands of people not paying the taxes the government raises to pay for whatever the government uses our tax money for – missiles, bailing out banks or some such useless things – thus adding to the tax burden of the rest of us.

So basically it would be better to keep British Steel alive, producing steel, paying wages that then get spent in the economy, keeping people off the dole etc etc.

So if BS goes tits-up, how about instead of throwing in the towel and sitting around in apathy while lives are ruined, the gormless, chinless, spineless nobs and toffs who think it is perfectly all right to stand by and let entire industries be destroyed, the government snaps out of whatever political neverneverland it thinks it is living in, changes its ruddy attitude and does something creative and purposeful like this:

Compulsorily purchase BS from its current owners who have run it into the ground. Do so at a fair price given that it is a failed enterprise and the bozos who got it in that state should not just waltz off with their pockets full of dosh. The way to get failure, by the way, is to reward it, so we don’t reward failure.

How does the government raise the money to buy BS?

  • It does not borrow it.
  • It does not take it from tax revenues.
  • It simply prints the money and uses it to purchase BS lock, stock and barrel.

“Oh you can’t just print new money!” you say.

Oh yes you can! The government lets the banks do it all the time. ALL THE TIME. It lets them create money out of thin air then get it into circulation by lending it AT INTEREST to you, me, industry and the government!Then the banks rake in a tidy profit off of the interest on money they created out of nothing. It is the biggest scam in history and it is going on all the time except the government forgot to tell anybody about it. It is also the main reason why the economy never runs right, the country is bankrupt and businesses have a hard time.

So the government does what the banks have been doing for hundreds of years, it creates (“prints”) the money it needs, then instead of lending it out to people at interest, it just spends it by using it to buy BS.

When it buys BS it does NOT take on any of the debts incurred by the previous owners. They ran up the debts so they can pay them off – using the money they just made from selling BS to the government.

Having achieved ownership of BS, the government then appoints a manager to run it, someone with management acumen and experience of the industry – preferably someone from within the industry it has just bought.

The new manager is paid well for running it and he is rewarded for success through bonuses based on the company’s statistics. They would have to work out exactly what the company’s product is and based on that product what its main statistics are: tons of steel sold or some such thing, number of happy customers and so on, a range of basic stats that reflect actual production of steel and these would of course include gross income and net profit.

Right so, if the statistics are doing well and up-trending, the manager is rewarded with a system of bonuses. If the stats are going down or in a non-viable range, he is NOT rewarded. No more of this shelling out bonuses, dividends and so forth when it isn’t doing well, no more rewarding failure or incompetent parasites.

The manager’s job is reviewed, say, every year and an assessment of how well he is doing his job is based on those statistics. Not on whether he is a nice chap, wears the old school tie or can PR the hind legs off a donkey but on statistics. I don’t care what colour he is, what gender or religion he (or she) is, whether he is polite to the Minister, slagged off in the media or farts at board meetings, if the stats are good, he keeps his job. If the stats are shite, he gets the heave-ho and is replaced by someone else. If the company is not a viable concern and standing on its own two feet and needs further support from the government (see above) the manager gets the elbow.

The government’s only role in all this is investing newly created money in keeping it going until it stands on its own two feet again and in hiring and firing the manager. Hiring and firing the manager is based only on statistics, not on political opinion, public relations, articles in The Sun, upcoming elections, governments looking after their pals and cronies or any other ruddy thing except are the stats that measure success and viability up or down?

A company that produces a a desirable product and provides livelihoods for thousands of people is too important to be left to opinion or politics or the whim of some clueless bozo in a ministry.

The manager runs the company and does all the hiring and firing and reorganising within the framework of existing laws.

Under the new manager, BS is run as a not-for-profit. No more shelling out money to money-lenders or shareholders. Whatever profit is made after costs, upkeep and investment in expansion, is ploughed back into the company – ALL OF IT- and is used to invest in the people who created and sold the product and made the profit, ie, the WORKFORCE.

This is done by making every employee of the company a stakeholder and the profits are paid out as dividends to the workforce, on top of their regular pay. Thus every person who works in the company has a stake in it, is rewarded when it does well (by statistics – see above) is not some sort of expendable drone nobody gives a crap about but is part of a group in whose success he or she has a personal vested interest.

So lots of people keep their jobs, proper jobs delivering a proper product, the country keeps the industry that makes its own steel, the thousands who work for it keep on earning wages and spending them into the economy and thus helping all the other industries that survive by selling people their products, no more debt is added to the economy, no burden is added to the tax payer through dole handouts or loss of tax revenues.

The government could do a lot more to assist the success of BS through changes in the money system and taxation and so forth – a lot more – but that’s another story . . .

About Steve Cook 2171 Articles
Director, UK Reloaded

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