North Sea Oil Decommissioning, 50 Oil And Gas Fields To Close

Here in the States Obama has proposed a $10 a barrel tax on oil.
That should probably be read as a $10 a barrel protectionist tariff on imports to the US.

Don't know when this will make the news..

a reply to: Kester

Now who would save us from the asteroids if they come barrelling towards Earth?? only rig jocks can save us!!

originally posted by: paraphi

originally posted by: LABTECH767
Another argument for why we need Corbyn, cameron would never step in and stop this criminal activity but Corbyn would and would threaten these oil conglomerate with forced re-nationalization of these assets if they did not play ball fairly,

To be honest, this is why Corbyn would never get into power. The tax payer won't tolerate propping up industries through nationalisation. The government cannot run the proverbial piss-up in a brewery, let alone a complex industry! The last time they tried we lost whole industries and threw away years of innovation and invention. Nationalisation is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

At the end of the day, what we have is lots some unprofitable capacity in the North Sea. The oil industry is obliged to close down, or moth ball affairs in good order. On Scottish Independence, one actually wishes it had happened because the UK tax payer may now be saddled with decommissioning costs, because the Scots won't volunteer.

Excuse me, I am old enough to remember British Telecom, British Gas (When it was British Gas) and The National Grid when it was the National Grid, British Rail (though Beeching had already done a number on the rail network's), The Water Board and Central Government control of council and local authority spending and guess what it worked perfectly well, in fact I would say these industry's worked ONE HELL OF A LOT BETTER than they do today, you could turn on your tap for instance and actually get potable drinking water without the need to buy a water filter jug or boil it all the time as the water industry today (mainly frencha and german owned - thanks tory's) constantly cut's costs to increase profitability or even causes flooding by not maintaining drainage ditches as effectively or regularly as they used too since they now work to a need only basis rather than redundant drainage as we used to have which could cope with more than we needed (given that need is based on estimate only), energy bill's are FAR above market rate due to our isolation as an island meaning a captive market rakateering monopoly and industry collusion, the land line phone network never needed privatisation and mobile would never have been publicly owned due to it's purely consumerist nature.

Indeed can you show me one single industry which has benefited from privatisation? even one and I am not talking about the mainly foreign investors whom reaped the reward of these erroneous and idiologically driven sell off's but are there any actually improved services?.

There are none of course but I await your answer on this, you are probably not old enough to remember but even council's used to run far more effectively with weekly street cleaning even in semi rural town's and villages when funding was controlled centrally though it has to be said that local authority's have ALWAYS been riddled with corruption regardless of which local candidate got him/herself elected and regardless of which party they represented because they had less money for frivolous business de stressing trip's to private spars in london for weekend break's for the local authority managers etc, I have family in the local authority whom have weathered both party's control and the coming and going of chief executive's so believe me I could tell a tale or two of how my authority is riddled with corruption and misapropriation of public fund's but would not do so as my nieces have to work there, the highest ranking members of the local authority's are on a freeby laden gravy train's much like the members of parliement are.

Hell even the Coal board was only destroyed because of Idiologically driven motivation's, we still have the best coal in western europe if not the world deep beneath our feet, clean burning low sulfur coal in deep seam's but of course you had a prime minister whom wanted to open up our coal powered fire stations to private importers and her husband just happened to have massive investments in dirty coal mine's in south america which produced high sulfur coal but could ship that crap in for penny's rather than pound's so to hell with local jobs and economy's she said or maybe he did since I wonder who really did wear the pant's in that house with it's private financial and personal tie's to Fascist dictatorships in Chile and Corrupt regime's in Africa.

You know I really DO want to see your proof that anything at all was better once nationalised for the sake of the British public, because Nothing was or indeed is (Except british leyland which could not survive without government ownership and was run wrong all along anyway).

The whole spin put on it was that Privatisation would reap a short term boost to the public fund's (Well guess what the government's whom oversaw the sell off's made sure that the bulk of that money was spent before Labour got back in?) and supposedly it would drive down prices for public services and utility bill's (what, honestly this is what they said to the public - that private profit motivated organisation's would be cheaper to buy from than nationalised and subsidised services and that private competiton was good for the economy, yeah right all our job's are in asia thank's thatcher).

And that bring's me to another thing, Subsidisation of industry - IT WORKED, it kept people in job's, it kept the economy rolling through bad time's and it help industry survive and our nation maintain independance.

Now don't get me wrong there were SOME industries that were wasting money and like I said earlier British Leyland is one stink in the bowl but beyond that I can think of no other publicly owned industry or rather in the case of BL as the case was company (The car production sector was never closed to private competiton this was not communism after all) which was bad.

Yes the trade union's were to a large degree out of hand but they were fighting an equally out of hand right wing enemy in a tug of war they were destined to lose but no one speaks bad of the other side because as Churchill said the victor writes the history (no matter how many bone's it is writen upon), how can you beat a bunch of crook's like bent politicians after all.

NOW Before you draw the new labour policys' into the answer I must also point out that NEW LABOUR was never LABOUR they were like the proverbial cuckoo in the nest and actually were a group of what can only be described as closet disenfranchised Tory's and right wingers whom could not get on in the Conservative party so decided to hijack the Labour movement and by the time the labour votors and traditionalists realised what had happened it was too late, hence why WE ALL VOTED FOR JEREMY and believe me a hell of a lot more will turn out to vote for him come the general election if he is strong enough to stick to his gun's even if many of us disagree with his defence stand point because this man has a heart and he speaks from a moral stand point, but hey guess what he will not be making tyranical decisions so even if he get's in we will likely still have our nuclear defence as well as a prime minsiter whom actually cares about the British people.

One other thing you overlooked is the fact these industry's also turned a tidy profit most of the time, especially north sea gas which POURED money into the public coffers.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
Excuse me, I am old enough to remember British Telecom, British Gas (When it was British Gas) and The National Grid when it was the National Grid, British Rail (though Beeching had already done a number on the rail network's), The Water Board and Central Government control of council and local authority spending and guess what it worked perfectly well, in fact I would say these industry's worked ONE HELL OF A LOT BETTER than they do today,

Clearly your reality was different to mine, but hey, rose tinted glasses are free. My experience in waiting the standard six weeks for a phone to be fitted and commuting by British rail on strike plagued trains that were falling to pieces never really made me support nationalised industries.

I am not defending privatisation, some of which I don't agree with, but I am saying the government cannot run complex services and industries. Besides, the current rail set up is a proxy public service due to the continued subsidies to keep it all running.

a reply to: paraphi

We shall have to disagree but I do remember many part's of the country's rail network being crippled by union action, it was not the fault of the government or even the way it was run though but really was a case of the unions getting it wrong and going too far, they lost public support because of it which at first as I remember WAS on there side but not after especially since it meant other people could not get to there job's and in some cases lost them as a result as well as harming other industry through there action, that is an undeniable point I will warrent but I do not accept it was the fault of nationalization but it was the fault of militant's whom were more communist than socialist who had hijacked the trade union movement at that time.

We never had to wait six week's for our phone either, it was installed within the week when we moved house so maybe that was a regional thing but we did live next door to the exchange, well almost and I do believe you.

originally posted by: paraphi

originally posted by: LABTECH767
Excuse me, I am old enough to remember British Telecom, British Gas (When it was British Gas) and The National Grid when it was the National Grid, British Rail (though Beeching had already done a number on the rail network's), The Water Board and Central Government control of council and local authority spending and guess what it worked perfectly well, in fact I would say these industry's worked ONE HELL OF A LOT BETTER than they do today,

Clearly your reality was different to mine, but hey, rose tinted glasses are free. My experience in waiting the standard six weeks for a phone to be fitted and commuting by British rail on strike plagued trains that were falling to pieces never really made me support nationalised industries.

I am not defending privatisation, some of which I don't agree with, but I am saying the government cannot run complex services and industries. Besides, the current rail set up is a proxy public service due to the continued subsidies to keep it all running.

A large part of the wait for a telephone was due to the analogue exchanges in place at the time. These days you can allocate or change a phone number, switch on or off a service with a couple of key presses. back then, it involved real people working out how to physically connect a line to the exchange and going there in person to do it, hence the long waits.

We still have rail strikes, I was on strike in '94 and came close a few times since.

Labtech isn't all rose tinted specs on this. Utilities and housing costs have skyrocketed since they were all privatised and the number of people working, earning decent money and paying tax and buying things has shrunk massively since mining etc was destroyed.

I bet the costs in benefits, failed businesses and social problems such as crime far outstrip the costs involved in keeping those industries working.