There are a lot of relieved people in Scunthorpe today.

One of the towns main employers, Corus, announced at long last what it intended to do.

Now for a bit of history.

Scunthorpe grew into a town from five villages because of Iron and Steel. For many many years the whole town was dominated on all sides by Iron works.

In the 70's and 80's the number works shrank to just one main site. Several miles across, but still one site. ( the Appleby Frodingham Works - inc the Anchor BOS plant). At that point it was still British Steel. And then came the Corus/British Steel merger.

Everything started off OK, but then the cracks appeared. Several months ago was crunch time. The company were making serious losses. Jobs were on the line. Everyone was worried.

Today's announcement is good for Scunthorpe. They are centering their steel production on three main sites across the country,Scunthorpe being one of them. However the good news doesn't go far. Scunthorpe has escaped fairly un-scathed. For now Scunthorpe is OK. I know this sounds bad, me crowing like this. But my brother works there, and he has just brought a house. A lot of my relatives, if not actually working on the site, work for companies that supply the company.

Other people have lost out badly. 1500 straight away, and maybe another 2000+ at Redcar if they can't turn it around. Ain't life lousy sometimes.?