Gordon Brown: I made a big mistake on banks

Rochdale_Pioneers

chewmylegoff wrote: »

can you prove that using real numbers from the accounts of the relevant entities, adjusted for the level of subsidy the industry received, or have you just made it all up as part of a rant.

i'll give you a clue, it's the latter.

hang on, I'm talking early 90s not 1973. Its widely accepted that the remaining high volume pits were profitable, many of them being privatised and turning a profit for a decade or so afterwards.

Think about this strategically. Is it in our national interest to be utterly reliant on foreign coal when we had abundant reserves that could be mined easily and cheaply which we decided to bin? It simply cannot be true that coal mined in Brazil, dragged cross country, loaded and shipped half way across the globe then dragged a few hundred miles across Britain is cheaper than coal mined a few miles from the power station. Either our pits were vastly more expensive - and their profitability suggests otherwise, or the pits abroad are being massively subsidised - thus demonstrating a rigged market - or we have rigged the market against coal just long enough to shut our pits then been left with option other than foreign coal.

Either way, the notion that market forces made domestic coal less cost-effective than foreign coal and this being in the national interest is laughable.

ILW

The coal market was and still is rigged. Mainly by the daft EU legislation and the "climate change" lobby.

Losing_the_way

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

If you want to attack a Labour big mistake, set aside the easy to pick at tactical errors and look at the strategic ones. My biggest complaints about Labour revolve around the national infrastructure, and the complaint is that they continued disastrous Tory policies which now leave us screwed.

First and foremost is energy. When the sector was privatised by Mrs Thatcher, the market was left to decide what was in our national interest. And they decided for some reason that this equated to what was in their shareholders' interests and built new gas fired power stations. This combined with the criminal decision to abolish the profitable coal industry has left us reliant on foreign sources of energy. The dash for gas burned off our North Sea reserves so we have to import more and ore from Russia. We're importing coal from Russia and Brazil rather than digging it up profitably from the pit a few miles away from the power station.

Labour utterly failed to grasp the situation and sat on their hands for 13 years. the market is still in control, now with many of our energy companies owned by foreign banks (reliable) and European nationalised energy providers (ironic). But our power stations are ageing and our energy use is increasing, so regardless of what happens to commodity prices we simply won't have the generating capacity to keep the lights on by the middle of the decade. The "we hate nuclear" stance of the new Secretary of State for the Environment and the "screw Forgemasters" insanity of not investing in kit which will let us build our own power stations just makes it worse.

And the second one is transport. Its all very well Hammond asking "why is our rail system 5 times more expensive" if he's unwilling to accept the answer - because its privatised. We have the absurd situation where we pay all this extra money to German and Dutch state railways to run our loss-making railway system allowing them to make a profit which is paid back to German and Dutch taxpayers. Again its "inefficient" public sector bodies able to run their own systems profitably - as BR did with Intercity - and expand in the marketplace.

Transport, Energy - two examples os national strategic assets which should never have been farmed off to the private sector. And Labour selling off NATS? Same stupidity.

Politicians look to short term solutions for issues. National infrastructure problems need long term solutions. The coal industry was in fact ruined by Wilson sidestepping the issue of excessive productions that grew out of avoiding dealing with outdated working practices. Our domestic coal was being produced using methods that had been abandoned in the rest of the world. It needed radical changes not closing down. Coal fired power station poison fifty times as many as nuclear power does but again the issues is too hotter political potato, so its kicked down the road by our politicians.
To imagine that a national railway system could be run efficiently by the private sector had been shown to be wrong. The immense wear and tear born by the rail network during the second world war was never addressed and only now are we accepting that as transport cost rise that we do need a proper national network. Sure we can use the private sector to carry out work for the needed reconstruction but the network itself should remain in the nations hands and not just the few.

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

:rotfl:that's a joke. for one there was no such party (you can't count a party that doesn't do what it says like the lib dems). even if there were such a party the murdoch media would annihilate it even more than they did to gordon brown with bigot-gate.

oh ok then.

well tony blair said 2 weeks before the 1997 general election that labour had no plans to introduce tuition fees.

they then pledged in their 2001 manifesto that they would not introduce top up fees and had legislated against them.

so presumably you won't be voting for them again?

chewmylegoff

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

hang on, I'm talking early 90s not 1973. Its widely accepted that the remaining high volume pits were profitable, many of them being privatised and turning a profit for a decade or so afterwards.

so hang on, are we talking about the "criminal decision to abolish the profitable coal industry", or the privatisation of the parts of the coal industry which were actually profitable which continued to function until it ceased to be profitable to run them? i'm getting rather confused now.

MrEnglish

He was wrong to sell all that gold to the banks when it was $300 oz now its almost $1500 oz and on its way to $8000.

But he must have had his re4asons, or incentives....

Percy1983

Is it just me who thinks the coal plan might be a good one, use everybody elses and as the price starts to go up as it runs out use our own again.

Radiantsoul

MrEnglish wrote: »

But he must have had his re4asons, or incentives....

TO purchase asset that paid an income instead?

chewmylegoff

MrEnglish wrote: »

He was wrong to sell all that gold to the banks when it was $300 oz now its almost $1500 oz and on its way to $8000.

But he must have had his re4asons, or incentives....

if only you had been chancellor - you would have sold everything to buy gold and silver and we'd now be the richest and most powerful country in the world (and we'd all have six houses instead of one).

Butterfly_Brain

At least he has the balls to admit it. Ca-moron and his cronies would blame labour, lib dem or anyone else they could slither behind