Thursday, July 21, 2011

Cameron Adds Insult To Injury Over Bombardier Contract

This Tory-led government have pinned all hopes on the recovery of the British economy on manufacturing and exports, they have taken the most extraordinary gamble on manufacturing growing like it has never grown before even in the height British manufacturing at its best. Some have not forgotten that former Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, obliterated the steelworks, ship building, the car industry and closed nearly all the coal mines, decimating the manufacturing industry, while deregulating the City's financial sector forcing Britain to become virtually dependent on the financial sector, the result of this was the credit crisis and banking crash coupled with a global financial recession which has caused the majority of the recessional problems in the UK. While the Labour government did try to revive British industry it still did not do enough to stop the Tory rot eating into manufacturing and we were still too dependent upon the City. Now since 2010 we have a Tory-led government that has placed all their eggs in the manufacturing sector basket and yet the past two sets of statistics show the manufacturing sector is slowing down dramatically and with it the hopes of the British economic recovery, knowing this it's most strange that the government have acted in such an enigmatic way on at least two occasions which could have proved fantastic for British manufacturing right at a time when the country needed it the most.

  1. I refer back to the mess that this government made of  a promised loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, which incidentally is in the Sheffield Hallam constituency of Nick Clegg the Deputy Prime Minister.  In 2010 the incoming Tory government reneged on an £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters promised to the company by the previous Labour government. The company had also secured a further £100 million loan from a European bank which was promised to the company on the proviso that the British government also loaned £80 million, without the loan from the British government Sheffield Forgemasters also lost the promise of the loan from the European bank, leaving the company over £180 million short of the money it required for new technological investment. The loans were to help Forgemasters install a high precision piece of equipment that would have enabled the company to make parts for *green* nuclear energy. When installed, this machine would have been the only machine in the world to make precision parts of a certain size and would have put this British company right at the forefront of green nuclear energy technology. It would have supported the local Sheffield Hallam economy, it would have supported the UK economy as a whole, it would have provided extra jobs and apprenticeships, in fact it was  a pretty good deal for just an £80 million loan yet the Tories renege on that promise - why?  Well the government tried to give several reasons none of which stood up to scrutiny. One such reason given by Clegg was that this would have been a cheap loan which would have benefited the company directors and shareholders and that the company should look to the private sector for the loan, neglecting to inform parliament that the company had already secured £100 million from the private sector, Clegg went on to deliberately mislead parliament as he knew that the shareholders were in actual fact employees of the company and they had never take a bonus from the company preferring instead to plough profits back into investing in their company, Clegg was found to have mislead the House of Commons, yet  one year on the country is still waiting fr or him to acknowledge this. The second reason the government gave is because the country could not afford the loan which is another deliberate deception!  Not least because  the Tory chancellor George Osborne was pinning hopes of an economic recovery for the country on British manufacturing and exports and it would have been hard to find a more suitable business proposition than Sheffield Forgemasters, which fitted that description perfectly. If all had gone to plan and the present government had kept to the loan promised by the previous Labour government then British company, Sheffield Forgemasters would have been exporting all over the world. This being so along with all the other advantages of the loan surely it would have meant that the country couldn't afford not to grant the loan? A loan that was due to be repaid to the government and which made perfect business sense. Also if the country could not afford it why did prime minister David Cameron, give over a £100 million to Nick Clegg to waste on his vanity AV referendum project which was a complete and total waste of money?  Add to this the Andrew Cook factor and the whole thing takes on a more sinister and shady reason for the Tory government not granting the loan. Andrew Cook is a Yorkshire businessman who has made several failed attempts to buy out Sheffield Forgemasters. Cook also boasts to being the largest single donor to the Conservative party in Yorkshire. Andrew Cook - Mr Cook donated £500,000  to the Conservative party, along with the £54,000 worth of plane flights to David Cameron largest donor in Yorkshire and caused uproar when it emerged that Cook had successfully lobbied to prevent Sheffield Forgemasters from getting a government loan, which remains a highly controversial issue - Nick Clegg deliberately mislead the House over this issue.
    The man who donated almost £750,000 in cash and flights to Cameron's campaign started an email "I am the largest donor to the conservative party" and then went on to call for the loan to Forgemasters to be axed.

    Downing Street are unable to confirm if Cameron was personally lobbied.
    Question; Why? It is in the public interest, possible corruption of our government always is!

    Six more questions spring to mind

    a). Why was Forgemasters loan cancelled when other loans to business weren't?

    b). Was Cameron lobbied by Andrew Cook, the owner of a rival company to Sheffield Forgemasters and who has made several unsuccessful bids to buy the company in the past?

    c). And was Mr Cook, the Tory donor,  present on any one of the 23 flights David Cameron accepted from him?
    d). Why was the loan refused, when it so obviously more than met the criteria Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Vince Cable (remember him?) set to try and grow British manufacturing jobs?

    e). And what an earth was Nick Clegg doing allowing this to happen in his own back yard?

    f). Nick Clegg has still not  been reprimanded for deliberately misleading the House of Commons - why not, why has  he not gone to the House to apologise for this matter?
  2. DAVID Cameron sacrificed British jobs by awarding a contract to supply high speed trains not to Bombardier here in Britain but to Siemens in Germany and the to add insult to injury he bumped Bombardier off his recent trade mission to Africa. Colin Walton, boss of the Derby-based train manufacturer, was booked to join the Prime Minister on the trip aimed at drumming up business for UK companies.But on Friday, just 48 hours before he was due to set off for South Africa and Nigeria, Mr Walton was told he wasn’t welcome by the Tory government. Mr Walton had hoped to use the African trip to win work for Bombardier, which faces making massive cuts to its 3,000-strong workforce after losing out on a £3billion contract to Germany’s Siemens, yet after the Tories awarded the contract to Siemens David Cameron was to embarrassed to face Mr Walton on the trip. Why did this government do this to British manufacturing when our economic recovery is depending on manufacturing and exports? When quizzed about why the contract was awarded to the German company the PM claimed the tendering process forced ministers to give the work to Siemens, but the Mirror has produced a document showing they are free to award the work to the Derby firm, if they choose. David cameron and the Tory government have treated the Bombardier workforce with utter contempt and if that wasn't bad enough they then lied to each and every one of them, what a despicable way to behave, I hope they remember this come election day.
So much for encouraging British manufacturing, it's all lies, this government is all lies, it is corrupt at the very heart run by an arrogant conman ex spin doctor spiv, this government have reneged on virtually every single promise it has ever made, especially when it promised to be open and transparent, that is lies too.

David Cameron and the Tory government should no be allowed to get away with this blatant lying and deliberate misleading of people and they should be forced to explain the real reason why they gave away a contract that would have safe guarded thousands of British jobs. How can we expect the prime minister to effectively govern when he hires corrupt crooks and places them at the heart of government? There must be a reason why they gave the Bombardier contract to a German company and Cameron should be forced back to the House of Commons to answer to the workers of Bombardier the British people what he has done it is nothing short of a disgrace. No doubt at some time we will probably discover more sinister and "corrupt" reasons why the Tories decided to rob British workers of a contract that could have secured thousands of British jobs.

Yet again it is simple to uncover shady deals of a corrupt nature regarding this Tory government, the government who promised to be "open and transparant" and "whiter than white".

No comments: