Margaret Thatcher day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Never heard of a rich miner down this way either, and im sorry but there are many more people that deserve to have a day named after them.

My grandfather's brother had a day named after him - lovely man, was really good to us kids. Broke my heart when I was told that uncle Pancake had been run over by a coal train.
If Thatcher had got into power earlier he'd be still around today - no coal trains now

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

How about: Blair's Day

for all hypocritical lying property dealing champagne socialists..

(it goes without saying that includes almost all the Shadow Cabinet)

And definitely all of the tories and liberals

 

[victor meldrew]

Never heard of a rich miner down this way either, and im sorry but there are many more people that deserve to have a day named after them.

Only one in this area!
Lord Joe Gormley

VM


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[mbc]

My grandfather's brother had a day named after him - lovely man, was really good to us kids. Broke my heart when I was told that uncle Pancake had been run over by a coal train.
If Thatcher had got into power earlier he'd be still around today - no coal trains now

We were very nearly related, he was going to marry my Aunt, Miss Lemon, but then said she was a little tart!

 

[pargyle]

My Dad was a teacher (who had been in the army for the whole of WWII)... QUOTE]

There were fewer easier jobs than teaching back then. Very different now.
I bet you Dad would not have swopped places with a miner!!!

Well actually ... my Dad was a lecturer at Rotherham College of Technology .. I simplified things ... three days a week he did 12 hour days, mainly to earn enough to make a living wage. He taught metallurgy and ceramics to young lads who worked in the steelworks ... there was no day release in those days, so as well as his day's teaching he then did 6pm - 9pm to catch the 'kiln burners' as he called them at evening classes. We had no car in those days and I've known him to walk from Mexborough to Rotherham when the snow stopped the trackless trams in order not to let his pupils down.

Then he would sit down for hours in the evening doing marking and lesson preparation .. without the benefit of the internet and photocopiers.

My mum still gets letters and cards from some of the people he taught - he's been dead 10 years but would have been 96 this year. My grandfather was a miner - he tended pit ponies in the days when mining really was a tough job - he reckoned that what my Dad did was tougher than anything he had done down the mines.

It's clear that you have never lived with a teacher if you think it was ever an 'easy' occupation. I'm married to one and most of my relatives were teachers ... it's not got any better as a profession.

 

[Norton]

Utter rubbish.

Really! Obviously the majority of voters at the time had another opinion.

 

[johnandyrob]

Really! Obviously the majority of voters at the time had another opinion.

The majority of voters voted against the tories as they only got about 44% of all votes cast.

 

[madasafish]

The majority of voters voted against the tories as they only got about 44% of all votes cast.

Clearly you are unaware Tony Blair became PM with under 45% of the National vote - and no Government since 1974 has had over 45%..(I could not go back further as I am too tired)

See http://tinyurl.com/blsl4s8

So on that basis, the country voted against every Government - a meaningless phrase as you vote for someone...

 

[pargyle]

k
As for the Yorkshire miners well, they might have been rich but i did not see much of it around here - obviously why they went back to work together with the Nottinghamlot and broke the back of the strike.

Well ... I never said 'rich' but it is a FACT that from 1960 onwards (when the NUM assumed a single pay negotiation for all miners) the miners were at the top of the earnings league of industrial workers - a position which the NUM sought to maintain (I am not saying that miners should not have enjoyed such a favoured position) but there were unrealistic demands ..at the 1971 NUM Conference a motion was carried to seek a 43% pay increase for their members. At a time when the government was settling other public sector pay rounds at between 5% and 7%. Indeed, the Government offered 7.9% which the NUM turned down and went on strike ... leading ultimately to the downfall of the Heath Government.

But ... the underlying problem was that there were too many pits that were not producing coal economically and a market for British coal that had been falling for the previous half century ...

Between 1923 and 1945, employment in the industry fell from 1.2 to 0.8 million, and the British share of the world coal market dropped from 59% to 37%. In part, this can be explained by increased competition, not only from other countries producing coal but also from cheaper alternative fuels. Before 1914 demand for coal was rising at an annual rate of 4%; after the first world war British exports of coal plummeted and domestic demand remained stagnant - a situation that continued throughout the first half of the 20th century and worsened from the early 1950's onwards.

The coal industry was artificially maintained as viable only by CEGB being forced to purchase British coal for their coal fired power stations at inflated prices ...the cost of which was passed on to the electricity consumers - a back handed subsidy that continued as the status quo until the pits finally closed.

The correct thing to have done would have been to run down the industry in a controlled way, as was done in Europe, but Thatcher inherited an industry which was far too big because of over-dependence on highly subsidised coal as a primary fuel for power generation and the disasterous results of earlier coal strikes where the NUM had asserted that mines should only close when the last ton of coal had been extracted. That led to the situation of men travelling miles underground to work seams only a few inches thick - no matter what, there was no way that could be profitable. Scargill reacted (some believe with only self-interest behind his decision to call a strike) and played right into the hands of a Government that was desperate to stem the haemorrage of money going to the coal industry. (I speak in generalities .. I know there were collieries that were both viable, economic and potentially profitable).

It's very easy to look back and say "Why did all the pits close ? There were many that were still viable ..." But one has to consider the market place at home and internationally ...and the movement, generally, away from coal as a fuel. Bear in mind, also, that the change in the Railways from steam power to diesel and susbequently electric power also denied a further, previously, huge market for steam coal.

It is a sad fact that some of the South Wales collieries produced, arguably, the finest coal in the world and there are still huge reserves of this coal in the ground - but when similar quality coal can be brought in bulk from halfway round the world at a lower cost than digging it up out of the ground at home then the choices are limited ... Subsidise production ? Close the pit ? The sensible alternative would have been to find an economic way of working the coal reserves ... but there was not the will on either the part of the Government or the Unions to find a workable and agreeable solution.

In a post Thatcher Labour Government, in office for 13 years, there was never any sort of proposal to reopen any closed pits or expand any of the remaining coal industry ... tells a story doesn't it ?

 

[REDWOOD]

When Thatcher closed a certain profitable pit in south Wales the workers purchased it and made a very healthy profit from it.

 

[pargyle]

When Thatcher closed a certain profitable pit in south Wales the workers purchased it and made a very healthy profit from it.

Is that the Tower Colliery in Cynon ... I thought that was either closed now or closing as a result of seams of coal running out ? But, yes, if it is the pit you were thinking of, it was purchased by the workers in 1995 and ran, initially, as a company with around 300 of the original workers each committing to use their redundancy payments to buy the colliery. If I recall correctly, your namesake, John Redwood, was intrumental in getting the deal through ... the Government didn't want the embarrassment of a private enterprise making a success of a mine they had closed ?

It provided a living for the workers who bought it but I don't think any of them retired rich ...

 

[johnandyrob]

Clearly you are unaware Tony Blair became PM with under 45% of the National vote - and no Government since 1974 has had over 45%..(I could not go back further as I am too tired)

See http://tinyurl.com/blsl4s8

So on that basis, the country voted against every Government - a meaningless phrase as you vote for someone...

Norton said that "the majority of voters at the time had a another opinion" The majority of voters voted for other parties is what I should of said.

I am however a little worried about your telepathy skills as you Clearly are unaware of anything I am aware of. However if you had used a little common scene you would have understood what was meant.

 

[Norton]

I think I'm going to start a Margaret Thatcher Appreciation Group on Facebook away from all the commies and poofter liberals. Anyone wants to join the group PM me for details.

 

[Stiffy]

Isn't it strange how Scargill and Thatcher are closely aligned in peoples minds? BTW Scargill did not have a national vote on striking after the special conference delegates voted for strike action, a mistake of the conference? Scargill should have pushed harder for a vote in my view. I heard him speak on several occasions, very charismatic but so was Thatcher and Hitler, not that I ever heard the latter.
With a large marority, the Tory government Thatcher headed had choices on how to change the way things were done, they chose to be devisive and a lot of the changes as with the present government was done for dogmatic reasons and for the benefit of a few.
S

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[psafloyd]

Things had to change, Pargyle, but it is the way she went about it that was so disturbing.

Not only did she engineer a 'war' to get herself re-elected, she undermined UK citizens' hard fought (with lives, remember, not just rhetoric) rights to organise and protest against exploitation.

The reason miners had it better than your dad may be because they were organised and they were operating in an essential industry; essential for recovery after the war, certainly.

That the pendulum had swung too far is not in doubt –-a situation compounded by successive weak governments of both hues.

But Thatcher sought to dismantle workers' rights by the (illegal) use of police and army, both in the coalfields and Wapping.

She sold off our national industries far too cheaply to institutional investors who have coined it ever since (they're not called defensive stocks for no reason), she dismantled social housing and created the environment in the housing and financial markets for unbridled greed and exploitation.

Most of the financial scandals that have been perpetrated against consumers can trace their origins back to the Thatcher/-ite administrations up to 1997. And it was not until Labour came in in that year (and I'm no apologist for Tony Blair who I find loathsome) that the average worker had some of the basic protections (especially in non-unionised workplaces) we benefit from and expect today.

So, you can claim she was just doing her job and a victim of circumstance, but that is not so. Her agenda was a destructive and corrosive force on UK society, for which she gave not a fig.

I don't disagree with your summary of the governments or the coal industry – true. And industry did need reform after we picked up the cheque for WW2.

I'm a member of no political parties, but that woman's insidious influence and abuse of her position is why I have never and will never vote Tory.

Well ... I wasn't going to comment on this thread but there really is some tripe being purveyed ... presumably by some people who have not been around long enough to remember some really BAD times before the Thatcher era started.

I'm pushing 64 and I lived through the post war years and I was brought up in a Yorkshire mining community. My Dad was a teacher (who had been in the army for the whole of WWII)... and in the 1960's he earned less than a lot of miners who not only enjoyed a very good (by comparison to many) wage they also got a huge free coal allowance which, in those days, basically meant they had no fuel bills ... in South Yorks, in the 1960's, winters seemed to be never ending and very cold so that 'perk' was worth a lot of money ... in warmer years miners used to sell their coal allowance to non miners ... another perk ! The miners were always at the top of the earnings league .. a position their leaders sought to maintain ..often to the annoyance of other union led industries. Despite their position in the wages league there were still frequent strikes and the nationalised coal industry had one of the lowest levels of production per man shift of any coal producing nation on the planet. Even the well equipped 'modern' mines never achieved their full potential because of archaic working practices and militant refusual to change.

Things had to change and the coal industry was symptomatic of the reluctance of some trades to accept that the world was becoming a smaller and very different place ... coupled with an arrogance and intransigence in some senior managers and equally opposite entrenched positions (but with the same attitude) from many trade union leaders, we were all set for a disaster on top of the 'natural' economic changes.

Considering the debt and devastation that we were left with after WWII - Germany - who caused the conflict - benefited from massive international investment and assistance with their rebuilding and were able to create modern industries - whilst the UK was left wallowing in pre-war technology, design and tooling and largely fending for ourselves with a massive National Debt and a loan from the USA and Canada which cost us over £10 billion in the ensuing years... in 1947 imagine what this sum was worth ... it was, like a credit card balance that you can't afford, never going to be paid off and was finally negotiated away in 2006 for £650 million ... after we had repaid far in excess of the original loan in interest. Britain was effectively bankrupt for much of the 1950's, 60's and 70's ....

We saw the demise of the British Car, Motorbike, Cycle, Textile, Steel, Shipbuilding and heavy engineering industries (and others !) mainly because of the cheap labour forces available in other parts of the world and their various Government's desire to encourage and subsidise growth.

Successive UK Governments struggled with inefficient, heavily subsidised, nationlised industries and private enterprise struggled with a whole raft of problems that included unrealistic wage demands, powerful trade unions who held Labour Governments in their pockets and sought to bring down Conservative governments with strikes and other industrial action. Inflation during the 1970's was rarely less than 10% and on one occasion, at least, was more than 20% ... Jim Callaghan's labour government (finally ousted in 1979) presided over some of the worst economic times the country had ever seen culminating in the 1978/79 Winter of Discontent where public sector strikes virtually brought the country to a standstill.

The proposal for a reduction in the number of collieries was actually formulated by a Labour government ... the original plan was for 20 of the least economic pits to be closed and this was opposed by Joe Gormley (Arthur Scargill's predecessor) and shelved. The Conservative government put the closures back on the agenda and Arthur Scargill (who Joe Gormley had held back because of his communist leanings but took over when Joe retired) took an executive decision to strike, an unballoted strike action ... a foolish move as a productivity deal, previously struck with the miners, had resulted in huge stocks of coal being held everywhere .. particularly in the power station yards. The union did not have the funds to support a protracted strike and as it was an unlawful strike miners could not claim any benefits. Pits that had not been marked for closure had to be closed as they were considered unsafe and not viable when the strike finally ended ... in a year the electricity generating industry had moved significantly away from coal fired stations and homes were more likely to be gas central heated than to be heated by solid fuel. The strike actually damaged the market place ... and if there was a villain in the piece then Arthur Scargill shares equal billing with anyone else you care to pillory.

To blame the whole situation on Margaret Thatcher is nonsense .. she had her faults and like many politicians failed to see that her time had come to an end but the reality was that she recognised what needed to happen and unlike the previous labour lot (who had plans in place but lacked the bottle to implement them) she had the balls to do something. Inflation was the elephant in the room and the side effect of reducing inflation was, inevitably, higher unemployment.

There are people commenting on here that need to read a bit more social history as they were clearly not around to witness the reality of history at first hand. The 'truth' may lie somewhere in the middle ground and I can accept that there were hidden agendas everywhere ... and empire builders both in and out of Government.

The recent (2014) releases of Cabinet papers show that there were lies told to the public by the Thatcher regime but if you look back to the disclosures from the previous labour governments they were equally disingenuous ... I am not certain that there is any such thing as a 'good government'.

Sadly, there was never going to be a bloodless end to this situation and we will never see a return to Britain as an economy based on the manufacture of low cost consumables and commodities ... the trick, which all the post war Governments seemed to have missed, was to change industry to specialist (high value),technology led production. The biggest steelworks in Sheffield now produces high grade, highly specialised, steel alloys and the growing technology of ceramics and metallurgy (which my father pioneered) is a huge growth area. It's just a pity that we didn't see more emphasis on change for the better from those (and I include the Union Leaders) short sighted individuals who could not countenance change.

The present level of unemployment in some areas was actually predictable ...without the desire to change and a continual harping back to 'the great days of british industry' and fear from foreign industrialists and investors that our labour force were militant and work shy (not true but an impression was there) there was and remains little hope for the generation who suffered from the demise in our industrial base.

The sad thing is that the next generation seem unable to change as well ... our existing employment situation is probably exacerbated by the lack of desire of some young (and slightly older !) people to do basic jobs and an influx of people from an ever expanding Europe that ARE prepared to do them .. not everyone can have a job that is well paid and one they really enjoy doing ... I don't !

So... little changes but little changes can make big changes in time - if the will is there.

Rant over ...

 

[psafloyd]

Not to mention the slaughter of the Cossacks, and the whole mess that is still raging in Palestine...

I'll watch that ... I am quite aware of the part Britain has played in some very dark acts ... Poland after WWII comes to mind immediately !

I don't actively support any political party ... none of them have ever done much for me and they all have flaws. I've made my own way in life and have never had a cent off the state (well I get free presecriptions now as I'm old !).

I see, at present, a government struggling to resolve a situation brought about, in part, by a grossly incompetent previous champagne socialist government who left the country in the most improverished situation since WWII and shouting 'not us .. world situation'.

I accept that there were many other factors that have contrived to put us in a situation where so many people are suffering and the only people who are not suffering are those who were rich enough to weather the storm ... but as well as those who are reliant on benefits I feel for the people who saved for their entire lives to provide for their retirement only to find that their pension funds were raided by the Government and their savings are almost incapapble of generating any sort of investment income.

It's iniquitous that people with modest amounts of money or a property are further penalised by the frugality and prudence earlier in their lives and taxed on money that has already been taxed as earned income.

In the event that people, with very modest assets, require care and assistance with living in later life they are then stripped of their savings and property. Save nothing, remortgage your property to the hilt, burn the candle at both ends or give it all to your children before you have to spend it on a care home that charges £850 a week and more if you need nursing care - seems to be the message being given out. The reality is that if you have nothing ... regardless of how you reached that state ... the cost of keeping you in a care home will be picked up by the rest of us ... or the State if you prefer.

I knew I shouldn't get involved in this thread ... it's a bag of worms and if anything I'm with Redwood ... the whole damn country (and its Governments) is greedy and selfish and perhaps it's time that someone started a campaign that reflected JFK's famous word ... ' Ask not what your country can do for you. but what you can do for your country'.

I'm off now ... going to do something sensible .. install my BeeGym !! (I've seen no more Varroa dropping in the last week since that one mite on Tuesday ...) SO ... watch this space !

 

[psafloyd]

Hmm well, I still think she was an evil twisted baggot whose heart should have been roasted over a fire of good Welsh anthracite before being thrown to the pigs.But I can see I might have to change political allegiances if I'm to remain on this forum when I get back
As for the Yorkshire miners well, they might have been rich but i did not see much of it around here - obviously why they went back to work together with the Nottinghamlot and broke the back of the strike.

No, I wouldn't want to eat any pig she had passed through and that would be a waste of good meat.

 

[psafloyd]

Well, actually, it has got a lot better as a profession. Teachers benefit from VERY long holidays, a decent salary and a very good pension. Not as good as it was, but very good, neverthless.

Your dad would have had it much harder in his day working for a tech.

Well actually ... my Dad was a lecturer at Rotherham College of Technology .. I simplified things ... three days a week he did 12 hour days, mainly to earn enough to make a living wage. He taught metallurgy and ceramics to young lads who worked in the steelworks ... there was no day release in those days, so as well as his day's teaching he then did 6pm - 9pm to catch the 'kiln burners' as he called them at evening classes. We had no car in those days and I've known him to walk from Mexborough to Rotherham when the snow stopped the trackless trams in order not to let his pupils down.

Then he would sit down for hours in the evening doing marking and lesson preparation .. without the benefit of the internet and photocopiers.

My mum still gets letters and cards from some of the people he taught - he's been dead 10 years but would have been 96 this year. My grandfather was a miner - he tended pit ponies in the days when mining really was a tough job - he reckoned that what my Dad did was tougher than anything he had done down the mines.

It's clear that you have never lived with a teacher if you think it was ever an 'easy' occupation. I'm married to one and most of my relatives were teachers ... it's not got any better as a profession.

 

[psafloyd]

Really! Obviously the majority of voters at the time had another opinion.

Popularity doesn't make something good or right, Norton. Hitler was voted in originally, remember.

Also, those karaoke and dancing shows are phenomenally popular, but they are utter dross.

And no, it wasn't the majority of voters. At no point did she have more than 44% of the vote in general elections. That isn't necessary in our system.

So as I said before: utter rubbish.

 

[psafloyd]

Well ... I never said 'rich' but it is a FACT that from 1960 onwards (when the NUM assumed a single pay negotiation for all miners) the miners were at the top of the earnings league of industrial workers - a position which the NUM sought to maintain (I am not saying that miners should not have enjoyed such a favoured position) but there were unrealistic demands ..at the 1971 NUM Conference a motion was carried to seek a 43% pay increase for their members.

And good luck to them. Were they worth less as a % than, for instance, footballers today?