UK government refuses to rule out redundancies at Scunthorpe steelworks
The business secretary has refused to rule out redundancies at the Scunthorpe steelworks, despite calls from trade unions to end the programme of job losses started by its former owners.Jonathan Reynolds said on Tuesday the plant might need to have a “different employment footprint” after the government’s takeover, even as he promised to try to save the plant’s two blast furnaces.Reynolds was speaking during a visit to Immingham docks to oversee coal and iron ore being unloaded on its way to the Scunthorpe plant.The government took control of the plant after finding out its Chinese owner, Jingye, was attempting to sell the supplies and hasten the closure of the furnaces.“What we need for the long-term future of British Steel is that private sector partner to work with us as a government on a transformation programme,” Reynolds said.
“That might be new technology, new facilities, that might have a different employment footprint,The staff here absolutely know that, they know they need a long-term future,”He added: “These blast furnaces have given this country nearly a century of service in one case, so they know they need the future, and that might be a different model, different technology,What they didn’t want was the unplanned, uncontrolled shutdown of the blast furnaces with thousands of job losses and no plan in place for the future,“And by what we’ve been able to do, working with the brilliant team here at British Steel, is secure the possibility of that better future – and I for one am confident that we’ve made the right decision to support the people here.
”Reynolds made his comments even as the GMB union called for an end to the formal redundancy programme, which British Steel began last year.Those plans could have meant the closure of both blast furnaces and more than half of the site’s 3,500 workers losing their jobs.Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national officer at GMB, said: “We are expecting the immediate threat of redundancies to be taken off the table, and we are looking to work with the secretary of state on planning the longer-term future for Scunthorpe and the steel making there.”Reynolds has the task both of securing immediate supplies to keep the furnaces running and looking for a longer-term bidder for the Scunthorpe site.Ministers want to find a private sector company to help the government pay for a new electric furnace at the plant, which forms the central part of British Steel’s £1.
25bn decarbonisation plan,Reynolds said over the weekend he would not “bring a Chinese company into our steel sector” again, but on Tuesday he appeared to change his mind and refused to rule out the possibility that a Chinese company could take over the site once more,“I think you would look at a Chinese firm in a different way but I’m really keen to stress the action we’ve taken here was to step in, because it was one specific company that I thought wasn’t acting in the UK’s national interest, and we had to take the action we did,” he said,Reynolds’ change of tone comes amid a broader push by the UK government to limit the political fallout from the crisis surrounding British Steel,Over the weekend, the business secretary refused to rule out the possibility that Jingye’s actions might have been part of a deliberate act of sabotage to undermine the British steel industry.
But by Monday, officials and ministers were insisting that was not the case, saying they believed the company had been acting purely out of commercial considerations,The government’s push to secure Chinese investment in British infrastructure has begun to alarm some senior figures within Labour,Liam Byrne, the chair of the business select committee, told the Guardian this week: “We must now be fiercely vigilant about just who is granted the keys to the industries and infrastructure that keep our nation moving,”
Mobile phones in schools can be an aid to learning | Letter
It is incredibly disappointing to read that so many schools in England have implemented an outright ban on phone use (More than 90% of schools in England ban mobile phone use, survey shows, 10 April). While student engagement and the addiction to phones and social media certainly need to be addressed, schools are more likely to support students’ development if they teach them how to use technology in ways that are healthy, purposeful and life-enhancing. A balanced, nuanced approach to phone use can still promote social interaction for children of all ages and encourage learning beyond the classroom.All students should be equipped to access quality information and transfer knowledge quicker in their pursuit of independent learning. If phones or tablets can help achieve that goal, maybe we should not be so quick to dismiss them in schools
Meta faces antitrust claims at trial over Instagram and WhatsApp ownership
Facebook parent Meta Platforms faces a high-stakes trial in Washington starting on Monday on claims it built an illegal social media monopoly by spending billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp, in a case in which US antitrust enforcers seek to unwind the deals.The acquisitions more than a decade ago aimed to eliminate nascent competitors who could threaten Facebook’s status as the go-to social media platform for users to connect with friends and family, the US Federal Trade Commission claims. It filed the case in 2020 during Donald Trump’s first term.The FTC seeks to force Meta to restructure or sell parts of its business including Instagram and WhatsApp. The trial poses the first major test for the FTC under the second Trump administration
‘A man approached him’: parents describe their children’s Roblox problems
David, a 46-year-old father from Calgary, Canada, initially did not see a problem when his 10-year-old son started to play on Roblox, the platform of user-generated games and virtual environments that has exploded in popularity in recent years, particularly among younger gamers.“We saw it as a way for him to maintain a level of social interaction during the Covid lockdowns,” David said, assuming his son was using the platform’s chat function only to speak with friends he knew personally.After a while, his parents found him speaking to someone in his room in the middle of the night.“We discovered that a man from India had approached him on Roblox and coached him to bypass our internet security controls,” David said. “This person then persuaded my son to take compromising nude images and videos of himself and send them via our Google Mini
Risks to children playing Roblox ‘deeply disturbing’, say researchers
“Deeply disturbing” research exposes how easy it is for children to encounter inappropriate content and interact unsupervised with adults on the gaming platform Roblox.It comes as parents shared their serious concerns about children experiencing addiction, seeing traumatising content and being approached by strangers on the hugely popular website and app.Roblox acknowledges that children using the platform may be exposed to harmful content and “bad actors”. It says it is working hard to fix this, but that industry-wide collaboration and government intervention are needed.Describing itself as “the ultimate virtual universe”, Roblox features millions of games and interactive environments, known collectively as “experiences”
Hell is other people who won’t wear headphones | Letters
In response to the article by Adrian Chiles (Where have all the headphones gone on public transport? The noise is eating into my soul, 9 April), I sat next to a guy on a flight who watched the entirety of an explosion- and gunfire-filled action film on his phone with no headphones. We’d spoken a little pre-flight and at the time I realised that that was my best chance to ask someone what the hell they thought they were doing. I also realised that if it went down badly, I had nowhere else to go.So I did what we all do, and sat and stewed in silence. I do regret not asking, and am filled with the same sense of wonder and disgust every time I’m in this situation on a bus or train
Legal Defense Fund exits Meta civil rights advisory group over DEI changes
On Friday, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) announced its decision to exit Meta’s external civil rights advisory group due to its concerns over Meta’s content moderation and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) policy changes.In January, Meta made a series of sweeping changes, including ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, getting rid of its factcheckers and changing its content moderation policies. These changes, which some saw as aligning Meta with the then incoming Trump administration, informed the LDF’s decision to leave the civil rights advisory group.That month, following Meta’s decision to its changes, the LDF joined a coalition of other civil rights organisations that were part of Meta’s external civil rights advisory group to express discontent with the company’s decision.“These changes are devastating for free expression because they will subject members of protected groups to more attacks, harassment, and harm, driving them off Meta’s services, impoverishing conversations, eliminating points of view, and silencing dissenting and oft-censored voices,” the companies wrote in a 14 January letter to Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg
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