Friday
Mar072014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Goodbye industry
Mar 7, 2014 Quotes I recall the extinction of the European textile industry happening before my eyes as a young graduate at Courtaulds in the 1980s. Chemicals could go the same way. It could well be another European dinosaur.
Ineos boss Jim Ratcliffe tells the European Commission that the chemicals industry could be extinct in Europe within a decade.
Update on Mar 7, 2014 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
In the circumstances, you have to wonder why chemical companies like Boots, BASF and Unilever are sponsoring environmental groups like the Green Alliance. Perhaps we need to spell it out to them...
Don't do this. They're trying to put you out of business!
Reader Comments (58)
Sounds right. But what's the bother with that when you and your cronies are milking the system in ways that directly contribute to the death of real production?
Sounds right. But what's the bother with that when you and your cronies are milking the system in ways that directly contribute to the death of real production?
Mar 7, 2014 at 8:47 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake
That is the whole point. All these companies that are supporting the greens (shell is a good example but there are many others) are doing so for profit but it will be short term profit.
Having some "green" credentials etc is the best way for large firms to avoid being targeted. The phenomenon is widely known as "greenmail".
I would however remind them of the immortal words of Rudyard Kipling:
.....that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
For quick reference, the list of sponsors is on Page 34 of the trustees report. For the average greenie I expect "chemicals" are those nasty toxic things that give you cancer. Who needs them?
Meanwhile over at the Graun they're worrying that the economy isn't being killed off fast enough! (H/t Climate Depot):
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/06/not-even-climate-change-will-kill-off-capitalism
You missed out that other environmental PR group that Unilever sponsor: The Guardian.
It is indeed a stupid and short term strategy, akin to throwing someone off the sled to the slavering pack of following wolves every now and then, until - well, we know the rest.
In the words of the song:
Never smile
At a crocodile.
Those large companies are sponsoring these Green groups partly because they think it makes them more 'trusted' and popular, but also because they WOULD like to shut down manufacturing operations in the EU. It's expensive to make things here - all that health and safety, works councils, sick pay, benefits, pensions etc etc. Every sociopathic bean counter CEO has wet dreams about the wage arbitrage he can enjoy by moving all manufacturing to the more benighted regions of the world. That's what lowering tariffs and building huge customs unions like the EU is all about - crushing upstart competitors through complex regulation and increased barriers to entry and reducing the slice of the pie that goes to the drones in the hive.
Interestingly the wage arbitrage argument never applies to CEO pay. They are uniquely talented, you see.
Many people refer to the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley as eerily prescient - CCTV everywhere and a blissfully ignorant population.
However, I've found very few people in the UK who have read the works of Ayn Rand, specifically Atlas Shrugged.
From an industry-killing perspective, 'eerily prescient' also applies.
Our new 'Regulatory Class' seem to be intent on slowly killing us.
Where is our John Galt?
M&S killed textiles/clothes in UK before any of the green t*ssers were part of a stain on a pair of trousers. Sprinkle in a few mining/car strikes and here we are in near total t*sser land!
I wonder from time to time whether it would have been more fun with Hitlers gang running the place.
Nurse....pills please
Since most of the Green mouth pieces are English graduates, is anyone surprised that their actions are leading to a company exodus. These zealots neither understand the issues nor care about the consequences.
There's something pleasing about being a baby-boomer.
What shocks me, even now, is pussilamity of the so called 'West', their bought up cowardice before the most obvious facts. For, I will not 'round up the usual suspects' but diagnose precisely what is going on,here. Our 'Munich Agreement' is happening and I was wondering a lot about those backbenchers - were they John Bright? - but now we know. The same thing apperently happened with CND. How convient that we must commit to this suicidal self-denying ordinance of 'alternative' energy! I am no conspiracy theorist but there is a confluence of idiocies here and a slight smell of grapeshot.
When I studied chemistry many years ago ICI was one of Britain's, and the world's great chemical companies. In 2007 what was left of it was taken over by a Dutch company and broken up. All Europe's chemical firms will go the same way if the lunatics in charge of Europe's energy policies are allowed to continue in their jobs.
@ Joanna
Or:
Never look a polar bear in the eye (Zac Unger)
In the circumstances, you have to wonder why chemical companies like Boots, BASF and Unilever are sponsoring environmental groups like the Green Alliance.
If they don't pay the protection money there will be a trade boycott, just like the old days.
The empire is ending! Oh well, move on.
Courtaulds could be used as a classic example of how industry dies due to high UK energy costs, irrespective of the reason. It was a company that signed up to all the latest social conscience demands. It started recycling long before councils began. It did everything it could to reduce energy loss but in the end it couldn’t compete with China and the US for cost. The decay process was very painful and the atmosphere was toxic with bullying and politics. When redundancies were offered, everyone volunteered because it was preferable to staying. On the plus side, much of the equipment was ‘recycled’ in China so they could ship the products back to the UK. CO2 saved - less than zero.
Successive governments have been unconcerned by the demise of industry because they see it as dirty and primitive. They want us all to be employed in service industries. Of course those business are much more ephemeral and can vanish over night. As Iceland and its banking sector discovered. Courtaulds took decades to die.
For the chemical companies, green lobbying could simply be suitable cover for off-shoring.
@JackSavage good point we have to draw the line between pro-active corps and victims of Greenmail
.. This week I added Apple, & Virgin to my avoid list.... Which includes the COOP & the BBC, Munich Re, The Conservatives, any "Green Biz" & subsidy mafia. I don't have to mention pseudogreen corps luke Bodyshop & Lush cos why would anyone claiming to be green be buying from them, when their products are unnecessary and of higher impact than cheaper mass produced stuff ?
Whilst high costs are a factor, it is surprising that big comapnies ignore this. They are of course looking just at the way the EU stops competitors arising. This is odd because most big companies seem to be run by bean counters, obviously not fir to run anything.
Perhaps Europeans should start considering to learn Russian? America is not going to be be available to do a bail out this time. The Green parasite is not a benign parasite.
BTW the greens are succeeding aren't they, cos when a biz moves offshore that means its CO2 production has fallen ? ..end of sarcasm.. All those manic policies and the CO2 that they alledge will bring catastrophe doesn't change.
- to those saying corps want o offshore, what about the alledged effect of low energy price and tech which is bringing factories back home to the US where robits are still cheaper than Chinese workers ?
All roads lead to cheap labour. That bis one of the advantages of AGW for big business. Excuses to leave.
Delingpole has the answer to why the big companies are silent.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/06/Chevrongate-capitalism-finally-grows-a-pair-in-the-war-on-Big-Green
"Few corporate entities pump quite so much money into environmental causes as the Big Oil companies - Shell sponsored the Guardian's environment pages; BP invested heavily in renewables as part of its Beyond Petroleum rebranding under the card-carrying greenie CEO Lord Browne - because for years they have been running scared of the green movement, because they're big enough to wear the additional costs of green regulation and because it suits them to "greenwash" their image.
What none of them seems to have learned is that when you pay Danegeld to your natural enemy it only makes him greedy for more of the same."
I'm not sure why they think going green helps them. Nobody is fooled that they're anything other than what they are.
esmiff "Excuses to leave."
They don't need excuses, nobody can stop them leaving. Energy prices can drive business away, irrespective of employee costs. Also, a percentage of the salaries employees idemand is as a result of energy prices.
Seems the Chinese solar bubble is about to burst, too.
But there's more than energy
The Ineos guy had a soapbox on daily politics a few weeks ago, the point he made was they need certain chemicals as raw materials (ethane I think), and the issue was they couldn't always get it.
Jo Cobun interviewed him in the studio asked about price and the reply was "it's not about price, if you can't get the raw material you can't manufacture at any price".
This seem to be to difficult for her to comprehend.
She also didnt seem to grasp that energy, and it's price, wasn't the only problem
As to why oil companies are sponsoring green groups, there was some discussion about this on jonova a while ago. The line seemed to be oil companies produce often produce gas, they want to kill the use of coal in order to increase the take up of gas. And if there are only gas stations to backup wind that'll be good as when people finally realise wind doesnt work, the main alternative will be gas. Which would be nice.
The process seems to been going on all my life: Declining profitability of industry; more regulation; less investment; fewer chemistry students ("Chemicals" have been pronounced "bad" for decades. Now the school teachers themselves have grown up with this message); Whole chemistry departments were shut in university reviews. The list goes on. And on.
But there are always Prime Ministers who talk about the importance of science and engineering, yet know nothing of it. Gordon Brown comes to mind, but he was neither the first nor the last. In this environment it is, perhaps, not surprising that such a large number of people in politics and the media can be impressed by someone waving a computer model in their face and telling them that CO2 is harming the world.
The only good thing is that the stupid has almost nowhere left to go for the next target. Water and oxygen seem like the only remaining options.
"We face a systemic industrial massacre," said Antonio Tajani, the European industry commissioner.
Mr Tajani warned that Europe's quixotic dash for renewables was pushing electricity costs to untenable levels, leaving Europe struggling to compete as America's shale revolution cuts US natural gas prices by 80pc."
and
"A report by the American Chemistry Council said shale gas has given the US a "profound and sustained competitive advantage" in chemicals, plastics, and related industries. Consultants IHS also expect US chemical output to double by 2020, while Europe's output will have fallen by a third."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10295045/Brussels-fears-European-industrial-massacre-sparked-by-energy-costs.html
It's unnecessary to advance a conspiracy theory (though I'm willing to believe at least some of them) when the cock-up theory fits the bill at least as well.
Few 'captains of industry' are anything of the sort - however many bogus academic qualifications they care to invent to puff-up their collective self worth. Hardly any senior executives of our major companies have ever built a business from the ground up. Instead, they've progressed from third rate university courses into 'management' for large corporations, where the ability to wear a suit well and speak management pidgin English with sociopathic levels of convection trumps everything else.
The people running our major companies are just as likely to be take in by ecomyths as any other BBC watcher so we don't need to speculate about evil oil barons. Not when a fool like 'Lord' Browne can slither up the pole at BP and when once giant and respected corporations like ICI, Hewlett Packard, General Motors, GEC, EMI and so many more are run onto the rocks by successions of dumb 'executives' parroting the latest management school buzzwords.
These are often dumb people. They believe dumb things.
The mentality of the Posh Left is based on a comfortable position of entitlements.
They are not any different from the mullahs in iran or Hamas in Gazah: All initiative outside CommonPurpose meetings is dangerous to them except serving tables and cleaning houses the only fiatted industries they can agree with (as it serves directly THEM)
Their marxist affinity towards grand solutions to non-problems , think windmills for gerbil worming, has to be seen in this light.
There is but one solution to this parasitic slime and that is to dislodge their privileges and entitlements : The state has no businiess providing "services".
Uncle Badger, I assume you have been highly successful in your career. Prey do share your successes.
Reach (the EU initiative to make chemicals production impossible) has destroyed more jobs than were created by the EU "funding" of projects.
Funding should NEVER be authorised by parasitic slime : we should have lean smart high churn independent INSTITUTES for that. transparent by means of taxpayer access and input , via internet.
Modesty forbids, Steve. One thing I can reveal: I didn't help sink GEC. Nor any of those other companies I mentioned.
unclebadger: I agree.
Most of the big (all crony by definition nearly) corporations so called "captains of industry" have simply sold out all our stock and knowledge to Asia, for another round of golf and options. So much for their "deep thought" eh.
Antitrust is by far not strong enough, and growing cancerous cronies should be STOPPED rather than promoted. eventually these big companies get infested by the red tick, and start to wallow BBC speak.
An example: so called health care in Europe amounts to pushing nicotine patches and bribing EU comissioners for it.
Universities should be BARRED to do research with all companies with more than 100 employees. They do EITHER fundamental research, dfor all OR they do exciting edge research with SMEs OR they can DOWNSIZE.
Uncle Badger, how the mighty fall from high powered corporate jobs to spending days on marginal blogs commenting. How sad are we?
Someone help, ptw. Bliss him.
DNFTT, ptw is a troll
stevedeepthought: I had a post chiming in on EU+chemicals for example so how is that trolling by your "standards"??
I admit all your posts about the substance of the article only, lol
a societal economical anomaly like "green industries" has to be understood from the fact we employ 500K+ many at very high salaries, indefinitely, to "provide un/ill defined services no market wants". the nannystate poopers have no feedback in their ways.
Is like giving 500k+ people a hammer and then wondering (and creating fancy intellectual blogs) why so many people want to hammer up things.."why do we have such want for nails?? why oh why do we get hammered all the time?? let's create think tanks to research the value of why so many things are hammered up in society.."
Is stupid as well isn't it?
of course Gaiia must be saved from evil capitalists outside the quango..
Aerospace and cars will follow...
I mean the BBC has -tried- to do other things, they had for example courses at one stage to learn their workforce "how to sit on a chair"
But eventually they realised their core competence was to preach to the little people how they must shower less, in order to save Gaiia.
I can't see why anyone would think it's a "conspiracy theory" to consider one or more company acting to put companies out of business. Doesn't it happen all the time? It's part of business.
GEC were said to have 90 day or longer payment cycles to stress subcontractors, which GEC bought if they went bust.
Why do you think sainsburys run's adds saying their products are the same price as tecos but in some way better (eg for eggs they're free range).
http://savethebulb.org/eu-plans-to-free-imports-of-chinese-light-bulbs
So is it freedom we want, sovereignty and love Britain or stay in the EU and death by de-industrialization?
The super container port, 'London Gateway' has been built with Gulf finance and looking to Chinese container ships - Britain is good business for them. Reserve banking, a weak pound and an ongoing collapse of British industry means we import, suck in would be a better way of putting it most of our 'visibles', only the City keeps us afloat, in the future though - something will have to give, either we leave the straitjacket of the EU and go our own way, or we sink in a mountain of debt and fade away as a feeble backwoods province of the Brussels federacy.
We are a trading nation and we still manufacture many goods albeit putting bits together for global conglomerates owned by overseas nations - Japan and Germany spring to mind. In the UK, light engineering in spite of exorbitant costs is thriving but when one views the remnants of UK heavy industry; petro-chemicals, shipbuilding, steel, ceramics - there's not a lot left they've been bought out, outsourced and off shored.
Green taxes are madness, EU bureaucratic red-tape is onerous but when all said and done - since the seventies British politicians have bungled and prevaricated and failed - they don't believe in 'strategic' industries - but the USA, Germany and China still do - they support, subsidize and succour their big industry. Evidently, our Westminster politicians don't think strategically - globalization is all - so they think...............
Let us not forget the other part of the pincer movement - REACH. This is the EU direct acting Regulation that seeks to ban all "nasty" chemicals and to regulate the rest out of existence. On its own, REACH could well achieve the total destruction of the European Chemical Industry. With the addition of heavy cost pressure, its destruction is almost certain.
Economic theorists have failed to grapple with the fact that some high energy users can pass on increased costs to the customers, particularly supermarkets. Others, such as manufacturing industry cannot. In this issue I made posted the following comment at Joanne Nova's website at 23.39 yesterday, being unaware of the article published 100 minutes before.
[*?customers? BH]
Here in Canada I applaud the death of the EU chemical industry since 77% of our exports go to the USA. The better the US does (or less worse it does because of shale gas), the better Canada will do. May the EU rot in hell for all the left-wing propaganda it finances.
Strange thing to applaud, the loss of people's jobs!
It's not just that - it's often forced or negotiated as a trade-off for permits etc.
E.g - "You can drill X more wells if you finance a CCS plant" . So much useless technology is financed in this way.