Hatfield has last laugh on Thatcher.

brummybloke

oddly i also remember power cuts in the 70's? how could that be? we had all those great coal mines at the time?

repeatedly trying to defend a political party who has messed up trying to force their extreme views to the masses who dont believe in them, at huge financial cost and burden on the people who work ( the very people labour despise) is your choice.

if you seriously insist that in 25 years miners are that stupid and thick that they cant do anything other than pine after an industry which for this countries resources, was coming towards an end, then the very people you appear to be trying to champion, you are insulting.

it is like those upper middle class lefties trying to defend minorities, thinking that they cant speak for themselves, i used to see it on a daily basis, it was so embarrassing, for me and for the person who was being 'defended' as if they couldnt speak or think for themselves. Maybe 30 years ago but it still happens to this day.

the simple facts is that if these mines were THAT great, private companies would have taken them all over and have been running them at great profit for all these years, employing all these miners who apparently have been deliberately ignored for any kind of retraining or help to find another job for the last 25 years.

they havent, a couple mines have been and not to great success.

labour let everyone into the UK who did not have correct papers and then let Blairs wife represent them all to stay in the UK, at huge cost to the tax payers, so once she has got them in, who will they vote for ? hmm i wonder? give people vast benefits which outstrip people working 40 hour weeks on basic wage? hmm who will they vote for?
change the way to record statistics such as education, job seekers, crime, so they all look far better than they are?
just some of labours tactics to stay in power, luckily people ( and im not embarrassed to say) like me who voted for Phoney B.liar the first time around having become sick of the conservatives stealing and lying, have seen that labour are 10 times worse, at least when the conservatives did it, they were out, they get promoted under labour.

the conservatives were crooks towards the end of their last spell, back handers galore, sweetners, sex scandals, lies and corruption, they were in too long and there had to be a change but then what....

i seem to remember mandleson has done more than this all on his own hasnt he?

hardly a labour idealogy is it?

trade unions in theory was a good idea, protecting the workers from unfare treatment, however like all good ideas such as the NHS, things get abused beyond all recognition of what the original templates were.

when the unions try and run the country as they were given the chance to under labour in the 70's, what do you do? let these morons continue their anarchy as they have gone the same way as the polititions due to the 'power' they now weild? but causing far more damage as they would rather things be bad than great, because if things are great, they are not in the lime light jutifying their jobs.

im not going to try preaching like i know everything, which is the normal stance of someone who is wrong, and im also not saying i am right. this is merely a rant by me and it isnt even directed particularly at moggylover

but when people try and use emotions rather than facts, there is no reasoning with them, just like the unions of the 70's.

moggylover wrote: »

Retrain for what dervish? There has been little or no investment in proper work in those areas in the last 25 years! They get sent on silly two-week Government training courses (for jobs which do not exist in their areas) but haven't the necessary core education qualifications to undergo OU courses and so forth nor the financial wherewithall to move elsewhere.


http://www.radstats.org.uk/no079/webster.htm


Long link, but if you want to understand how the stats for jobs versus available for employment get cooked then worth reading.

Zagu

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.

So it was a Conservative plot to close the mines? I'm afraid you are missing out some key facts.

"It is the nature of the mining industry that the time inevitably comes when a particular mining operation exahusts its reserves or otherwise becomes uneconomic to operate. As alluded to above, throughout its history the NCB had been steadily closing pits and making miners redundant. For much of its time in power Harold Wilson's 1960s Labour government had been closing pits at the rate of one a week (223 pits closed between the years 1965 and 1970) and the Wilson/Callaghan Labour administrations of the later 1970s had similarly closed some thirty-two pits between the years 1974 to 1979.

In this context the NCB's plans to close a further twenty or so pits in the mid 1980s was nothing more than a continuation of a pre-existing historical trend. Indeed one particularly left wing source offers the opinion that the Conservative government's plans for the industry in the 1980s were "nothing compared to the butchering of the coal industry that took place under the 1964-70 Labour government"."

I've no doubt that Thatcher viewed it as a personal achievement to break the unions, and much of the country were behind her. The country had had enough of being held to ransom.

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Thats not to say that all the pits were profitable or that non of the miners were crazed communists trying to provoke a general strike. But it became very clear that many of the "unprofitable" pits were actually very profitable. RJB mining bought quite a few which turned healthy profits for a further decade.

RJB probably succeeded as a private enterprise, which didn't have the constraints of a heavily unionised state industry. Since then I think that RJB has taken a bit of a nose dive.

I find it hard to believe that we have 400 years of coal reserves, but I think there is some debate as to how much there is.

Zagu

Tribulation wrote: »

Wonders how much money has been spent since on benefits etc for the aftermath of the numerous communities that she completely destroyed.

What are you suggesting? That the country should payroll communities in some philanthropic gesture to pacify a community? The truth is that industries constantly change, and to artificially support an industry is unrealistic, and unjust on the rest of the country. It also means that any new ventures will shy away from the area, as the manpower won't be available.

StevieJ

dervish wrote: »

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Remember everyone that ROCHDALE PIONEER has admitted to be a card carrying Labour and Union man as well as a previous communist.

Disregard what he says as it is vile-ridden and jaundiced against Conservatism.

Remember that Dervish is a xxxxxx xxxx, well you have all read his/her posts

dervish

StevieJ wrote: »

Remember that Dervish is a xxxxxx xxxx, well you have all read his/her posts

:rolleyes:

what is that supposed to mean?

Optimist

geoffky wrote: »

some of you remind me of the council house buyers of the times...thought they were tories because they had bought a council house.
.when in reality the tories are there to conserve the wealth and power of the elite....
they could not give a toss about mr and mrs average...anyone who thinks different is kidding themselves..

As opposed to the current government how ?

Rochdale_Pioneers

dervish wrote: »

:rolleyes:

what is that supposed to mean?

It means that its very easy to say "Poster X is a Y" and not bother to back up your namecalling.

Found where I admitted to being a communist yet.....?

mardatha

My dad and all my family were miners. By the time Thatcher had finished, there were broken homes, broken villages, broken minds. Miners being forced to "re-train" as Betterwear salesmen, miners being talked down to by silly wee girls who treated them like muck. There is a lot more of this to come now...so don't be so harsh on the miners - remember the magic word KARMA !

ess0two

Julu wrote: »

Nothing like being hundreds of feet under the earth for hours at a time, sweating buckets, working like a slave then looking forward to an early death!

Maggie did them a favour!

Yeah would be far easier to claim benefits and sit on my a rse all day.

Its what the majority of this country have missed out on,a job that requires graft.

chris_spackman

mardatha wrote: »

My dad and all my family were miners. By the time Thatcher had finished, there were broken homes, broken villages, broken minds. Miners being forced to "re-train" as Betterwear salesmen, miners being talked down to by silly wee girls who treated them like muck. There is a lot more of this to come now...so don't be so harsh on the miners - remember the magic word KARMA !

You are right there will be lots of hard times ahead but if it's got to end it's got to end.

Do unions have a different role today? They get paid a Kings ransom, live in nice homes etc do they give a toss about peoples jobs?

Years ago when i was a furniture assembler we had a guy come round from a union. Turned up in a flash car etc and talked like he wanted to get us to sign up for a membership rather than giving a toss about our jobs.

Unions do cause lots of problems. For example if a business wants to keep up with it's rivals and make things run better then it has to be that way. When you see the council workers going on strike that p11sess me off no end as some do see it as an easy way to try and get what they want.

As for people having to re train, that can only be better for them as today no industry is safe. If people went back to horse and cart what would you expect to happen? Car workers being given training for other work or sit around doing nothing. People should be lucky to have a job. Those without work would bite your arm off and put up with a pay freeze.