We're afraid that we find this very amusing indeed

Others might be more disturbed than we are but we rather expect this sort of thing to be happening and thus the amusement at seeing the numbers so proudly displayed upon the web.

In the rumpus over the Port Talbot plant an organisation called UK Steel has been vocal and vociferent in their insistence that something must be done. That something, or those somethings, being that the taxpayer should pick up some considerable bill at the same time as all consumers are made poorer by forcing up the price of steel. A typical piece of their output:

Sanjeev Gupta’s plan to rescue the Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales by ripping out and replacing its blast furnaces would leave it twice as exposed to Britain’s high electricity prices, according to UK Steel, the trade association.

It found that while the arc furnaces are more modern and efficient, they are twice as dependent on electricity as blast furnaces.

The paper, published on Monday, increases the pressure on the government to offer more energy subsidies to potential buyers of Tata Steel’s UK business.

Subsidies: your and our money going to those producers. What amuses us though is a look at the UK Steel membership page. Where there are some 60 companies and locations mentioned. Fully 33 of which are Tata Steel, the owners of that Port Talbot plant.

Now of course producers can band together like this: freedom of association is an important right whether it be the workers or the bosses doing it. But this does show that we're rather a long way down the road to UK Steel really being Tata itself insisting that we've all got to chip in so that they can lose a little less money. 

We're not sure that this is really what we want to be doing you know but we are amused at the chutzpah on show.