Hatfield has last laugh on Thatcher.

mewbie_2

Mr_Falling_Star wrote: »

I live in a pit village and it still hasn't recovered since the closure in 1991 so nice one Hatfield!

As for Thatcher (where is the vomiting smiley?) can't stand the woman, there were ways and means of winding down a industry, hers was not the kindest one

Here you go matey.

setmefree2

mewbie wrote: »

If I wanted to read a book I'd join a library.

Mewbie you are a very naughty poster but you do make me laugh

bo_drinker

Wonder how many of the miners will be at Thatchers funeral, if only to dance on her grave. Don't forget she's having a state funeral, the money has been alocated already. Why??

beingjdc

tomstickland wrote: »

I don't really understand the "Thatcher destroyed industry" argument. Why would any PM want to reduce production output, unless something was just a way of wasting money?

Because while we had North Sea Oil, it was cheaper, and politicians are rarely capable of thinking more than four years ahead. Now that oil is running down, and we're reliant on foreign imports, whose price is very volatile. But once a pit is closed, it's very hard to reopen.

Running_Horse

Who is going to pay for the long term industrial diseases and injuries?

ad44downey

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

No, she's senile.

Mad Maggie will get her just desserts on judgement day I'm sure

amcluesent

>But once a pit is closed, it's very hard to reopen<

Naw, t'Lithuanians will be down t'pit in a trice, 'appens.

nickmason

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

And so here we are with 400 year supply of coal beneath our feet. We buy coal dug in Brazil which is shipped half way across the globe by boat, then a few hundred miles by train from port to power station. According to the Tories this is a more profitable solution to digging the coal up in a pit a few miles away from the power station. Mind you, once a deep pit is closed they're probably right - the cost of reopening them once the surface buildings have been swept away is prohibitive.

The reason why it was more profitable to pay all those shipping costs was because british workers wanted more money, substantially more, than those living abroad. And better conditions. And the country wanted more tax off them. All in all, it wasn't making economic sense.

The recent decay in sterling has, of course, probably worked wonders for making local coal more affordable.

And I agree with Generali etc - Thatcher would be chuffed to bits to see an economically viable industry - especially one that had been modernised from the frankly awful conditions at the time.

brummybloke

tomstickland wrote: »

I don't really understand the "Thatcher destroyed industry" argument. Why would any PM want to reduce production output, unless something was just a way of wasting money?

it is something some dont wish to hear, the truth can hurt but it is still the truth.

i would also have thought that these people who 18 years or more ago lost their job due to the industry changes, would have concentrated their lives or slightly more than hoping to put one over on the then prime minister who brought the UK up from the gutter where labour ( not for the first.. or last time) had put the country.

short or just very selective memories some people have.

nickmason

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

No, it was a vendetta. Heath took on the miners and lost. Scargill - insane demagogue though he is - was right that she planned a pit closure programme. Thatcher then turned the forces of the state on the miners and threw the rule of law out of the window.

One of the advantages that the Conservative party has had (and one that Tony Blair saw and adopted) is that it doesn't have a core ideology. It "owned" the idea of what matters is what works long before TB took it, and Thatcher wasn't waging a vendetta, she was simply clarifying that the government would not lose to the trade unions that had lost touch with reality and were trying to bankrupt britain, consciously or otherwise.

That is a rationale attitude that I'd support again.

I do find it strange - the purported moral superiority of the left, and the apparent acquiescence to that arrogance by the right. It's easy to throw money at problems, and to talk the talk. The challenge is to distance the emotions and deliver what's right.

I know villages that are being destroyed as communities, and yet the mainly right-leaning people there just take it, accepting that it's - as the lefties keep telling them - "fair revenge for the pits."