ports - another import facility
WORKERS, SEPT 2005 ISSUE
P&O is proposing to re-develop the moribund Shell Haven refinery site on the Thames. Amid great fanfares the new super-container facility, costing in the region of £1.5 billion, will become Britain's largest port.
Each year 3.5 million containers will be brought in, a third more than come through Felixstowe, currently Britain's largest container port. Most of the imports are destined for London and the South East.
The P&O propaganda machine revels in the fact that no child will ever be short of that "must-have" Christmas toy again because of the volume that will be available from China, along with all the consumer goods High Street shoppers will ever need.
Nothing nasty, dirty or unpleasant is to be exported through the new super-port because Britain will not be involved in making such things.
If the super-port is an import facility, how long will British manufacture survive? Although 16,500 container handling jobs are created, how many hundreds of thousands of jobs will be destroyed? How long can a nation of shoppers survive?