New Energy Source

[Skydancer]

And now we have a huge reserve of coal that has suddenly become a very valuable commodity and no bloody mines left! Yeah way to go Maggie!:rolleyes:

Thanks for the destruction of community, ruin of peoples lives and now we can't re open many of the pits because they have shopping centres dry ski slopes and other realy great stuff built on top of them.

A resource we could make mega money from is now sitting under the ground totaly useless to us.

nevermind we can all go work in call centres (until they move to India) and shopping malls.

I despair. whatever happened to politicians taking a longterm strategic view.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Skydancer
And now we have a huge reserve of coal that has suddenly become a very valuable commodity and no bloody mines left! Yeah way to go Maggie!:rolleyes:

Thanks for the destruction of community, ruin of peoples lives and now we can't re open many of the pits because they have shopping centres dry ski slopes and other realy great stuff built on top of them.

A resource we could make mega money from is now sitting under the ground totaly useless to us.

Oh sure. Just think, last winter we could have sat in cold houses, reading by candle light, unable to watch the news on TV of miners pushing for a new wage deal of £2000/wk. We could have read the newspapers (assuming any were published) and read about the 30% inflation caused by wage settlements led by the miners. These days, we're even more dependent on electricity than ever before. So hey - let's trust our entire livelihoods to a powerful group of trade union militants. It worked sooooo well in the 1970s.

I remember the day when Heseltine had to tell the NCB that there was no market for their overpriced coal - it was simply cheaper to import from France. But oh! Scargill wanted the coal industry to be run as a charity organisation. Surely no-one could object to paying 83% income tax when the money was going to worthy causes such as multi-billion pound bail outs of loss making nationalised industries with quaint 19th century working practices, with no commitment to productivity?

Ah the 1970s - such nostalgia. Crap cars produced by disgruntled workers, strikes, train cancellations, power cuts, Christmas shopping by candle light, empty supermarket shelves, no fuel at the pumps, untreated roads in winter, the dead left unburied. Yeah! Take me back! The 70s were way cool.

[Skydancer]

Instead we'll trust our energy to foreign suppliers put ourselves at the whim of their price fixing, risk poisoning our small island for practical eternity with radioactive waste?

Oh yeah great policy!

[GRUNHERZ]

Beetle, surely zulu here ment the long term strategic directives moscow had to have been sending scargill and his bunch during that period about how to run the NUM and do the most possible damage to the UK economy.  Really, what other explainanition is there?

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by Skydancer
Instead we'll trust our energy to foreign suppliers put ourselves at the whim of their price fixing, risk poisoning our small island for practical eternity with radioactive waste?

Oh yeah great policy!

You do undersant wht why 20% inflation, monopolistic nationalized and subsidized industries, momopolistic trade unions and the sort of strikes, labor practicves, wage demands  etc the miners demanded are bad? No?

[Skydancer]

Oh boy.

Wouldn't it be more sensible to bail out and keep the industry in the short term rather than to destroy any self sufficiency we have and put ourselves at the mercy of energy supply from other nations? The destruction of the miners had nothing to do with some idiotic obsession with the evil communists! It succedded in putting thousands out of work ruining our communities, breeding crime drugs and despair, and to cap it all the redundancies that resulted ate up billions of our oil revenue in unemployment benefit payments. So we destroyed our chance to utilise our coal reserves and wasted our oil revenue in one go. Realy fugging clever that one!

Beetle wouldn't know as he lives in the "sod you jack I'm OK" tory southeast!

[GRUNHERZ]

Bail out the UK coal industry? As in throw more governent money down down the mineshafts?

Those communities deserved to be destroyed just as any community built on criminal extortion deserves to be destroyed. THey used their central position in the UK power generation system to exhtort billons from the governent and bloat their employment numbers needlessly by refusing to adapt new tecnologoes, working practices, higher efficency or embrace cost lowering. They just asked for more and more and when they didnt get it they went onm strike, disrupted the economy and brought down governents just so they get more.

Well Maggie put an end to that and broght them and their whole criminal enterprise down.  She saved yoir country by doing it.

Yet you still come here 20 years hence and ask for a bail out, you ask for more...

Maybe this is offensive to you becausde your family was involved, but step outside of that and just see the macro picture of what those guys were doing to the economy.  

I know you prolly cant do that, but I'm just telling its not personal its econimics.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Skydancer
Instead we'll trust our energy to foreign suppliers put ourselves at the whim of their price fixing, risk poisoning our small island for practical eternity with radioactive waste?

Oh yeah great policy!

You're overlooking a few things. We're not committed to a single energy source. If the fuel from one source is too expensive, we can shop elsewhere. Market economy. What we won't have is representatives from those energy supply sources coming over here to picket our power stations if we don't buy from them. In the 70s, we were held over a barrel - pay up or else we'll put your lights out. Those days are long gone. We have Maggie to thank for that, Cod bless her.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by beet1e
Christmas shopping by candle light,

Actually sounds kind of nice...as long as I had a choice to do it or not.  


Zulu: Hater of Freedom.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Skydancer
Wouldn't it be more sensible to bail out and keep the industry in the short term rather than to destroy any self sufficiency we have and put ourselves at the mercy of energy supply from other nations?  

 No. The militant miners had their chances and blew them all. Productivity was non-negotiable issue. Those bail outs were not cheap, and were the reason for punitive taxation, which resulted in loss of investment from overseas. You can't run an industry like a charity organisation, no matter what Scargill says.  

Originally posted by Skydancer

Beetle wouldn't know as he lives in the "sod you jack I'm OK" tory southeast!  

LOL the irony! Whose interests do you think the miners had at heart in their strikes of 1972, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1985? Ah don't tell me - they were doing it for the good of the people and the wellbeing of Britain.

[Chortle]

Solidarity wasn't on Thatchers agenda only personal greed, nicely demonstrated by the riot police waving their overtime money at the miners.

Those communities deserved to be destroyed just as any community built on criminal extortion deserves to be destroyed.

Since when has organised labour been criminal? Your not related to Goebbels by any chance?

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Chortle
Since when has organised labour been criminal?  

Since 1971, and the passage of the Industrial Relations Act, which outlawed secondary picketing, eg. miners picketing power stations and blockading rail routes (with "NUM official picket" signs which train drivers were reluctant to cross).

[Seeker]

Originally posted by beet1e
No. The militant miners had their chances and blew them all. Productivity was non-negotiable issue. Those bail outs were not cheap, and were the reason for punitive taxation, which resulted in loss of investment from overseas. You can't run an industry like a charity organisation, no matter what Scargill says.   LOL the irony! Whose interests do you think the miners had at heart in their strikes of 1972, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1985? Ah don't tell me - they were doing it for the good of the people and the wellbeing of Britain.

You're missing one small point; Beetle.

Maggy sold us a reduction of the coal industry; not an anihilation. Scargill's rallying cry was "she's lying! She means a total shut down!"

Now; I'll give you that the Tories swept to power on the back of overwhelming dissatisfaction with Labour's mismanagement of the Unions; and I'll grant you that Maggie was indeed given a popular mandate to diminish the role of the TUC in running the country.

However; instead of trimming the unions she demolished them.
Instead of reasserting a balance of power between the politicians and the prolitariat; she went so far the other way that Maggie herself bears responsibility for the 12 years hard labour you claim to suffer from.

Of all the things I expected from Thatcher; proving Scargill right wasn't one of them.

[beet1e]

Seeker - good post, but I actually blame John Major for 12 years Hard Labour.

As for Maggie demolishing the unions instead of just taming them, I guess she didn't know her own strength!

As for her "destroying" the mining industry, my recollection is rather different. MT's govt. created the circumstances under which the country could best survive a miners' strike - that much I concede. They made sure that the power stations were well stocked with coal so that there wouldn't be a rerun of power cuts as there had been in THREE winters (1970/71, 1971/72 & 1973/74). The last of these resulted in the three day week and the toppling of the Heath govt., so I don't blame Maggie at all for stocking up the power stations. Thus, the conditions were set for the mining industry to commit suicide, which it did in the 1984/85 strike. Because the pits were unattended, many deteriorated and were lost, and had to be closed permanently. Was the govt. to blame for this? The UK miners had priced their product out of the market, which is why it was cheaper to import coal from France. That's a situation the NUM miners created, not the govt.

[Seeker]

I'll agree that John Major and his cabinet of sleaze were the direct causation of Labours lanslide; but how come Major and his corrupt cronies were all the tories had to offer?

Because Thatchers almost Stalin like meglomania ensured that there was no viable competition in the Tory rank and file; and by inference no successors.

Maggies first incumbancy was exactly what the country needed to exorcise the idiocy of Foot, Callahan and Benn et al. I fully support the Tory line of no dole for buisinesses; and look to Benn's fiasco of Triumph Meridian to prove the point.

However; the subsequent terms she strayed further and further towards totalitarianism.

"The Lady's not for turning" became "the Lady's not for listening"; which is not an optimal charecteristic for a democratic leader.

She didn't just destroy the TUC as a force in politics; she destroyed the Conservative party too.

There's a few things I covet about the USA. A written constitution is one of them; a fixed term of service for the national leader is another.

It forces preparation for succesion.