Following the Government’s nationalisation of British Steel, it has been announced that the John Lewis Partnership will run the business.
A government spokesman said ‘It’s a pattern we have seen in recent years where a National Institution runs an important Government operation, for example, Dame Judi Dench transformed MI6 under her tenure. She’d still be there if Commander Bond had reached her a bit quicker.’
Our political correspondent added, ‘This is a really shrewd move for Andy Burnham The John Lewis model of shared ownership and employee profit sharing is an excellent example of commercial socialism. Plus, the Government has said that their ultimate goal is to find private investors to co-invest in modernisation. John Lewis’s reputation of being a very safe pair of hands will land extremely well with nervous investors.’
When questioned about the rationale behind a retailer taking over the operation of a strategically important heavy industry, a spokesman for John Lewis said ‘If steel production ceases then it will be a while before the country's infrastructure starts to decline and people begin to notice. If Waitrose runs out of Duchy Organic sourdough at 8:15 on a Saturday morning customers behave as though civilisation itself has collapsed. Which just goes to show that, in modern Britain, the path from blast furnace to artisan focaccia is shorter than anyone ever imagined.
The spokesman went on to explain efficiencies which can be put into place immediately under this arrangement. ‘Steel manufacturing uses expensive lasers, ultrasonic testing and metallurgy laboratories for quality control. We plan to dispense with all of that. We have Margaret from Electricals. Margaret has been at John Lewis since 1988 and if Margaret says a toaster won't last, customers will quietly put it back.
Our customers have never had the chance to buy steel directly. We anticipate having a small range of plate, sheet and rolled steel available in store with the entire range online. This means that retail customers can now have metric tonne rolls of steel delivered directly to their homes within 24 hours. As far as we know, no other retailer worldwide does that – another first for John Lewis.’
It was rumoured that the NHS was also in the frame to run British Steel. This was apparently ruled out because both suffer from the magical belief that removing 10% of the budget will somehow increase output by 15% and that they both rely on enormous machines that everyone is afraid to switch off.
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