Should the blast furnace be saved?

sambaDTR

Well-known member
Obviously Big Ben, who is doing a decent job getting money into the area, is trying to build on the Brexit election to keep Tory seats in the North East. He wants to get as many jobs on Teesside as possible. Most people agree. However the Blast Furnace is part of our heritage, like the Transporter Bridge. We need it to be something like the Beamish Museum to celebrate why Teesside is here in the first place. If it wasn’t for Iron and Steel, Teesside wouldn’t be here. People came from all over, Ireland, Scotland etc. People died in order to build this area up. For the size of the furnace, surely they can build around it and preserve it? They certainly would if it was in London, such as Battersea Power Station which is still standing and part of a regeneration area. Maybe the Blast Furnace is a sorry reminder of who was in charge of the Country when the Steelworks was closed? Anyway, whatever, we haven’t got much history to be proud of so we should try to keep it.
 
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First of all, Ben isn't doing such a great job, the money coming into our are4a was agreed before he was elected and whoever got in will have had the same money. ben has wasted a huge % of the money he got by buying the hugely loss making airport, this year at least another £3m of our budget was gobbled up by the airport, and a minimum of that amount will be lost every year for the foreseeable. Bens office, which has only been open for 4 years, is now the most expensive political office in the North to run, he employs more of his mates and cronies than any combined mayor in the country. His job was to bring development to Teesside and as of today we have less than we had the day he was elected, we also have more unemployed than today than he was elected, and even if you remove those that lost their jobs because of Corona, we still had more unemployed in Feb last year than the day he was elected.

He can talk a good game, some people just believe the total nonsense he talks, he has the Northern Echo stitched up and the Gazette, he did that by employing the staff, therefor having mates of mates still in charge.
 
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Many made a good living out of it but times change and perhaps that’s what’s kept Teesside back when the rest of the Northern rust belt moved on post 70/80s , insofar as we’re always looking back . Dust ourselves down ( literally ) and Tear it down and move on
 
BSC was my first job out of school and did some work around the blast furnace fitting thermocouples. I would keep it personally, but don't feel particularly fond of it.
 
It seems to me that the people who are the most romantic about our steel industry never worked in it.
But the whole area is a legacy of the steel industry. Stickton was a smsll town before iron and steel for most of its history Norton and Yarm were more significant.
As a gateway to the Tees it can be an attractor for growth.
 
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