Saturday, May 11, 2024
Long distance politics
The walesonline website reports that First Minister, Vaughan Gething has travelled 4,500 miles to meet senior figures in Tata Steel in an effort to persuade them to adopt a different plan for the Port Talbot Steel works.
The only problem is that he has no money to put on the table to mitigate Tata's one million pound a day losses, and he could have had the same meeting a week before in London. The website says that:
Wales' new First Minister Vaughan Gething has defended flying to India for his first overseas trip since winning the top job, despite meeting an executive who was in London just over a week ago. Mr Gething flew 4,500 miles to Mumbai, India, to tell the company his views on the closure of the two blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks.
On Friday morning, Mr Gething met with Tata officials, the most senior of whom was T V Narendran, the CEO and managing director of Tata Steel. It comes just over a week after Mr Narendran was in London for meetings with steel unions, during which time he also did interviews with ITV, BBC and The Times.
A cynic might argue that the trip was put in place to distract from Gething's troubles at home.
Of course a meeting was necessary but why didn't it take place in the UK when the opportunity was there, and in what world does the Welsh Labour Government think that Tata was going to be persuaded to change their mind on the strength of Gething's personality alone?
The only problem is that he has no money to put on the table to mitigate Tata's one million pound a day losses, and he could have had the same meeting a week before in London. The website says that:
Wales' new First Minister Vaughan Gething has defended flying to India for his first overseas trip since winning the top job, despite meeting an executive who was in London just over a week ago. Mr Gething flew 4,500 miles to Mumbai, India, to tell the company his views on the closure of the two blast furnaces at Port Talbot steelworks.
On Friday morning, Mr Gething met with Tata officials, the most senior of whom was T V Narendran, the CEO and managing director of Tata Steel. It comes just over a week after Mr Narendran was in London for meetings with steel unions, during which time he also did interviews with ITV, BBC and The Times.
A cynic might argue that the trip was put in place to distract from Gething's troubles at home.
Of course a meeting was necessary but why didn't it take place in the UK when the opportunity was there, and in what world does the Welsh Labour Government think that Tata was going to be persuaded to change their mind on the strength of Gething's personality alone?
