Miners Strike And Me Itv Now

[WILF 49,920]

Like I say with no disrespect

Unless you lived thru it in the areas affected and unless you live in those said areas now and see what they have become with the shithouses moved in by Goverment from Southern Counties

For the most part' probably rapists' murderers'pedos and general filth you can't help but still have the hatred burn inside you for what for the best part Tory Goverment has done to these areas.

Thatcher and her spawn were and are filth end of.

And with all due respect to you big lad, I did live through it mate......the piles of rubbish rotting on the street, the constant industrial unrest.

You blame Thatcher and I say the miners & the union only have themselves to blame......different points of view.

If the community is everything you say it is then they wouldn't have the apathy to let it become a pisshole in my mind but hey, what do I know.

[The Seeker 3,048]

To some the following facts will be irellvent as to them Margret Thatcher caused everything from the pit closures to cancer to the Malaysian missing aircraft. But here are the facts.

 

 

"1969 was the last year when coal accounted for more than half of Britain’s energy consumption. By 1970, when the Conservatives were elected, there were just 300 pits left – a fall of two thirds in 25 years.

 

By 1974 coal accounted for less than one third of energy consumption in Britain. Wilson’s incoming Labour government published a new Plan for Coal which predicted an increase in production from 110 million tonnes to 135 million tonnes a year by 1985. This was never achieved.

 

Margaret Thatcher’s government inherited a coal industry which had seen productivity collapse by 6 percent in five years. Nevertheless, it made attempts to rescue it. In 1981 a subsidy of £50 million was given to industries which switched from cheap oil to expensive British coal. So decrepit had the industry become that taxpayers were paying people to buy British coal.

 

The Thatcher government injected a further £200 million into the industry. Companies who had gone abroad to buy coal, such as the Central Electricity Generating Board, were banned from bringing it in and 3 million tonnes of coal piled up at Rotterdam at a cost to the British taxpayer of £30 million per year.

 

By now the industry was losing £1.2 million per day. Its interest payments amounted to £467 million for the year and the National Coal Board needed a grant of £875 million from the taxpayer

 

Taxpayers were subsidising the mining industry to the tune of £1.3 billion annually. This figure doesn’t include the vast cost to taxpayer-funded industries such as steel and electricity which were obliged to buy British coal.

 

But when Arthur Scargill appeared before a Parliamentary committee and was asked at what level of loss it was acceptable to close a pit he answered “As far as I can see, the loss is without limits.”."

 

 

The coal miners were just people caught up in a war between a pathetic out of date greedy union and a government not willing to throw good money after bad.

[NEWKID 28,581]

Aren't Northeners a bunch of moaners.....

[WILF 49,920]

So just to be clear:

 

It's the Tories fault that........

coal was too expensive to get out the ground:

 

Steel was costing more to produce than it was worth

 

The rails ways were shite and you could ride them free all day while the guards played cards

 

It rains in Somerset

 

Labour pissed all the money away before the collapse of world markets so the country didn't have a reserve to bail out the banks

 

Gold got sold well under market value

 

That people are sat round in ex mining towns scratching their bollocks

 

..........anything else?

 

J F K ?

 

Titanic ?

 

Krakatoa ?

 

Scargills comb over ?

 

Princess Diana ?

 

The Hindenburg ?

 

f**k sake, listen to yourselves ! Lol

[NEWKID 28,581]

So just to be clear:

It's the Tories fault that........

coal was too expensive to get out the ground:

Steel was costing more to produce than it was worth

The rails ways were shite and you could ride them free all day while the guards played cards

It rains in Somerset

Labour pissed all the money away before the collapse of world markets so the country didn't have a reserve to bail out the banks

Gold got sold well under market value

That people are sat round in ex mining towns scratching their bollocks

..........anything else?

J F K ?

Titanic ?

Krakatoa ?

Scargills comb over ?

Princess Diana ?

The Hindenburg ?

f**k sake, listen to yourselves ! Lol

You forgot to mention all southerners are c**ts, who've been bred into the life of luxury purely based on the geographical coincidence of where they were born.....

[WILF 49,920]

That right Newkid, because the coal fields in Kent never existed........even though try were the very last to go back to work and the first out. Lol

[NEWKID 28,581]

I'm not going to pretend I know the in and outs of politics, or the whole mining debate... But for those in the " know", what do you think would've happened long term if the mines stayed open, if the unions had won... Where would the country be... Stronger as a whole or not?

[The Seeker 3,048]

 

So just to be clear:

It's the Tories fault that........

coal was too expensive to get out the ground:

Steel was costing more to produce than it was worth

The rails ways were shite and you could ride them free all day while the guards played cards

It rains in Somerset

Labour pissed all the money away before the collapse of world markets so the country didn't have a reserve to bail out the banks

Gold got sold well under market value

That people are sat round in ex mining towns scratching their bollocks

..........anything else?

J F K ?

Titanic ?

Krakatoa ?

Scargills comb over ?

Princess Diana ?

The Hindenburg ?

f**k sake, listen to yourselves ! Lol

You forgot to mention all southerners are c**ts, who've been bred into the life of luxury purely based on the geographical coincidence of where they were born.....

 

 

So just to be clear:

 

It's the Tories fault that........

coal was too expensive to get out the ground:

 

Steel was costing more to produce than it was worth

 

The rails ways were shite and you could ride them free all day while the guards played cards

 

It rains in Somerset

 

Labour pissed all the money away before the collapse of world markets so the country didn't have a reserve to bail out the banks

 

Gold got sold well under market value

 

That people are sat round in ex mining towns scratching their bollocks

 

..........anything else?

 

J F K ?

 

Titanic ?

 

Krakatoa ?

 

Scargills comb over ?

 

Princess Diana ?

 

The Hindenburg ?

 

f**k sake, listen to yourselves ! Lol

And Maddie McCans disappearance.......

 

That B*stard Thatcher has a lot to answer for, its all her fault wish Labour would get in power and put us all back on the straight and narrow.

 

Someone must have forgotten to tell Tony Blair and his pals about the profitability of the pits, he missed a trick there when he got in, he could have opened them all up again and we would have all been living the high life in this country.

[NEWKID 28,581]

But... Was the coal industry sustainable? An asset?

Would privatisation been beneficial?, perhaps a different stand from the unions would've preserved jobs, the miners were the pawns in game, used... Who were the real villians of the piece?

[The Seeker 3,048]

But... Was the coal industry sustainable? An asset?

Would privatisation been beneficial?, perhaps a different stand from the unions would've preserved jobs, the miners were the pawns in game, used... Who were the real villians of the piece?

From my earlier post

 

"By now the industry was losing £1.2 million per day. Its interest payments amounted to £467 million for the year and the National Coal Board needed a grant of £875 million from the taxpayer

Taxpayers were subsidising the mining industry to the tune of £1.3 billion annually."

 

That was in the mid 80's, it was sustainable if the British tax payer was to continue to pay money to keep it going. How much would the £1.3 billion a year be now? Take away emotion and you are left with It was not profitable and not sustainable thats the fact of the matter.

[NEWKID 28,581]

That's what I'm driving at Seeker,

If the mines were privatised and had to survive on their own, could they?

Cut all the hangers on out ( like the unions), and take it back to basic business, get the miners working for an organisation aimed at profit, not just jobs for jobs sake.. There would've been casualties but maybe as a business ran in the right way it could've survived?

What do miners think?

 

Bob... ?

[twobob 1,507]

it all depends whos facts and figures you believe kev

[twobob 1,507]

seeker when maggie was selling everything off she tried to privatise nuclear power and nobody wanted to touch it so she ended up subsidising that to the tune of 1.3billion a year

[gonetoearth 5,144]

I remember going upto Liverpool to clear a job, never been there before and there was a picket line complete with flaming oil drum outside the old docks.......the docks had been closed about 5 f*****g years !!!

Absolutely farcical !!

Which means in plain English, sometimes you have to get a grip of yourself and stop f*****g crying in your beer !!

. Wilf my friiend mersey docks plc is one of the world most success full container. Berths owning seversl other ports around the uk with record tonnage year on year. Landrover jag is britain biggest exporter You need to move on. My son

[Malt 379]

 

But... Was the coal industry sustainable? An asset?

Would privatisation been beneficial?, perhaps a different stand from the unions would've preserved jobs, the miners were the pawns in game, used... Who were the real villians of the piece?

 

From my earlier post

 

"By now the industry was losing £1.2 million per day. Its interest payments amounted to £467 million for the year and the National Coal Board needed a grant of £875 million from the taxpayerTaxpayers were subsidising the mining industry to the tune of £1.3 billion annually."

 

That was in the mid 80's, it was sustainable if the British tax payer was to continue to pay money to keep it going. How much would the £1.3 billion a year be now? Take away emotion and you are left with It was not profitable and not sustainable thats the fact of the matter.

So it was costing money to keep them open and people in work - I bet it costs a whole lot f***ing more to keep the people in those now deprived areas in benefit, and with absolutely no return. Look at the other privatised industries. We're still paying for the bloody railways hand over foot, and we're borrowing money off the chinks to build new power stations to make money for companies like EDL, which is in fact a company owned by the French state.. Who will be paying the interest on that money?

 

Look, I'm all for the idea of workers being able to form unions and look out for their own even if I'm not a fan of the way those unions inevitably get politicised here. I feel the whole state ownership/union arguments should be separated in discussions like this.. Other countries have equally powerful unions yet even when union power was at at its height they never had the problems we had here.. Our problem is we got the class system here with working class heroes who want to fight the old school tie, jobs for the boys lot..