It costs a lot of money to keep a plant in running order - even if they are 'mothballed', they cannot just be shut down like you turn a car engine off when you no longer need it.

It's not just steel plants - this is a problem for any industry that operates with some kind of furnace or industry that is costly to get up and running from cold.

I used to know a couple who ran their own glass blowing works and the furnace had to be kept going day and night as that was more economical on fuel, saved having to wait literally hours for the furnace to heat up, and saved the furnace from excessive wear and tear from being constantly heated and cooled.

I'd also assume that the figure is partly made up of loss of income and the inability to pay any outstanding loans or interest.

It has also been mentioned that in allowing Tata to buy the steelworks in the first place, it has allowed the specialst knowlege on producing high quality steel to be exported to India so that country could well end up competing to sell back to this country in the future if we don't maintain our own capacity.

Another observation - the issue about the import of cheap lower grade steel from China could have been blocked within the EU, but hey - guess which nation vetoed the proposal?

There's a lot more to this going on behind the scenes than is apparent and I wouldn't trust this government as far as I could chuck an egg at them, and my throwing skills are pretty lousy these days.