If theres no work in deepest Wales, why not **** move to where there is work.

Have you not noticed the scale of Welsh/Irish/Geordie/Scouse/Manc migration ot other parts of this sceptred isle, and for that matter throughout the world? I would have thought even the meanest intelligence would have.

in the 10 years prior to thatcher, the labour government closed more pits than she did in her first 10 years in power. they closed 34 vs 28 under thatcher

http://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/forum/read.php?14,7169,7173

tbh, closing them had a devistating effect, but it had to happen sooner or later – they were simply uncompetative on a global market. Could more have been done to ‘soften the blow’ – possibly.

Welsh/Irish/Geordie/Scouse/Manc

Yep- got up and moved.

Should I be grateful that I do not understand politics in any way?

I was but a child during the eighties and my parents were working class and they were staunch Maggie fans.

I like Maggie.

Doesn’t matter how sheltered or screwed over our families were under whatever government you care to mention. Most of us just take on the political leanings of our parents. (Putting SDP leaflets in letterboxes with my dad when I was 9 here, guess what I think of her!)

My father in law had his colleagues screwed over and his whole career turned upside down by privatisation, struggled to pay his mortgage all through the 80’s. He saw his two favourite things scrapped before time under the Conservatives (Vulcans and British Railways), and yet he is still Tory as ever, because that’s what his dad was.

@ Junkyard, told you. 😉

I was but a child during the eighties and my parents were working class and they were staunch Maggie fans.

I like Maggie.

You know hora, I’ve typed and then scrapped about four retorts to your ‘calm down’ comment. There really is no point in trying to reason with somebody with views as polarised as yours are to mine. I’m lost for words, and becoming more and more wound up by an argument on an internet forum than is good for me, so for that reason, I’m oot (of this thread I mean, this is most definitely not an official flounce :wink:.

Are you really from the North of England Hora? You can’t be. Sometimes I think you’re from another planet. Planet Penis

Yep. I grew up in poverty. Stark poverty. Even now I hoard and worry over money. Where I grew up there were little choice to have interms of employment so I went to the otherside of the country then London.

barnsleymitch I’ll tell you about my Father one day if we meet 🙂

Edit: and sod off binners, you are from the Wirral- your not a true northerner!

I’ll mourn the day. What a woman. Not like every politician since. Cameron is a bloody makeweight/wishy-washy with weak leadership.

Stop trying to troll!

He speaketh the truth though.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with her politics, at least she had the conviction to follow through on her beliefs. A world away from modern politicians, too scared to alienate any section of the electorate.

I do laugh at the anti-tory hatred spouted currently. For those who despise Cameron et al, do you honestly believe Labour or the Liberal Democrats would do anything radically different if they were in charge.

The days of left, right, red, or blue politics are gone. Every party is just a slightly different shade of grey.

At least Thatcher, and the opposition at the time, backed up their beliefs with action and opinion.

hora – when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

Doesn’t matter how sheltered or screwed over our families were under whatever government you care to mention. Most of us just take on the political leanings of our parents. (Putting SDP leaflets in letterboxes with my dad when I was 9 here, guess what I think of her!)

My folks now hate the Tories and vote labour.

I still vote Tory (a pointless thing in Scotland, but still…)

hora – when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

If you know anyone who can do pointing work let me know. Everyone I’ve spoken to has a 2month waiting list.

hora – when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

If what he says is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, it is pretty amazing that he is unable to empathise with those for whatever reason that are even less fortunate than himself. Some sort of PTSD thing perhaps?

hora – when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

I think the theory is that you have to fight your neighbour for it, winner takes all

it is pretty amazing that he is unable to empathise with those for whatever reason that are even less fortunate than himself. Some sort of PTSD thing perhaps?

I spent two years on the dole in my teens doing **** all.

I just don’t agree that she was seen as the wicked witch and the source of all ills

nice shiny apple for the barrow boys (matched their braces), poisonous interior for the rest of us.

One of the saddest things about Thatcher’s legacy is that people like Hora genuinely think as they do. A finer example of a shattered and dysfunctional society could not be wheeled out. 🙁

One of the saddest things about Thatcher’s legacy is that people like muddyfox genuinely think as they do. A finer example of a shattered and dysfunctional society could not be wheeled out

EFA

your not a true northerner!

nobody’s a true northerner unless they were born north of Perth

Even the Hovis advert was filmed down sarf (Dorset)

You’re not making sense Hora – no change there then.

+1 barnsleymitch

I’ll never calm down about this.

I’m out. We shouldn’t have such topics. Yes there will always be opposite opinions on such things. We shouldn’t fall out over it.

Just agree to disagree. Peace.

You didn’t even get my username right Hora…. 🙄

not read any of this thread, but i have a good idea what it will be about.
all i can say is, when she dies i for one will be a happy man and may even have a little party.

both my stepdad and grandad were miners, my stepdad was on strike the whole duration of the strike.

whole villages were ruined and left to rot because of the effect of the strike
families were torn apart cos of the strike

most of the middle class idiots on here who spurt how wrong people who despise her are, have no idea how much this woman is hated in these communities.
and also no idea about the hardships suffered in the early 80’s.

We shouldn’t fall out over it.

With the greatest of respect, I don’t tend to fall out with people unless they make incredibly broad-brush statements, then tell me to calm down.

Inflammatory and patronising …. guaranteed to get me riled.

I grew up in the sixties in a mining community. The last of the deep pits in our area closed in the sixties, there was some opencast in the seventies, and there are a handfull of drift mines still working these days.
I never voted for Thatcher.
However, I do remember (what became) British Leyland, I do remember the miners’ strikes, I do remember the communities split (and I mean families, best friends; deep, deep splits some of which were never to be resolved). It’s convenient to blame Thatcher but she knew that the manufacturing industries, the steel industry, the mining industry were losing out to cheaper foreign industries. The unions probably did more damage in speeding up this process than she did.
Where she was wrong IMO was in not supporting the manufacturing industries, not leading by example in buying British, not subsidising British industry in a global market.
She is remembered because she was a strong leader; poltics changed after her leadership – the boundaries between Parties has become blurred, the press and media have a much bigger influence with a much wider audience. The Political Parties try to win elections by cowtowing to the electorate rather than standing up for ideals these days.
So, for me – I didn’t vote for her Party. I didn’t agree with the nationalisation of the utilities. I do however respect her strength as a leader and believe that the blame for a lot of things that were failing anyway was conveniently laid at her door. As for the Poll Tax, with hindsight it was probably one of the fairest systems of local taxation proposed but by that time nothing she proposed was going to win her votes.

well, she brought an end to this:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a9OAvqyjn0&feature=player_embedded[/video]

(Spot TJ 😉 )

z11, she also brought some people a load of overtime too…….. 😉

Pointless as you need to blame your own parents for your upbringing than a government.

Should we blame your parents for your obvious lack of education? 😐

psling – Member
….It’s convenient to blame Thatcher but she knew that the manufacturing industries, the steel industry, the mining industry were losing out to cheaper foreign industries. The unions probably did more damage in speeding up this process than she did….

A view conveniently overlooked by the Fatcha haters was that in many industries, the “right” the unions were fighting for was the right to remain in an unmodernised, unrecontructed work environment that was becoming increasingly vulnerable to cheaper imports &/or more modern production methods.

And so it came to pass, the unions blocked modernisation and their industry fell to the power of foreign competition, but it was all Fatcha’s fault, obstructive work practises and stubborn opposition to change played no part in the decline of UK manufacturing and other heavy industries, oh no……

Thesis => antithesis => synthesis => new thesis => etc. How knowledge and experience evolves.

In terms of economic history, the 1970’s and 1980s were periods of thesis and antithesis, whereas the 1990’s became more of a period of synthesis. As always, both extremes sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The 1970s were an appalling period for the UK as a whole. Mining was not exempt from this. Miners wages had been crushed by rampant inflation leading to the 1972 call by the NUM for a 45% wage increase to compensate for the loss of earnings previously suffered. Not unreasonable one could argue, but what global industry would survive wage inflation of 45%? We then had Satley…confrontation….miners winning…the Yom Kippur War…the oil shock…an inflation crisis….wage demands/conflict etc.

[so it is worth being sympathetic to those whose lives suffered during those periods]

So Thatcher arrives and takes on the extremes of the 1970s – inflation, union power, increase welfare state, rigid adherence to Keynesian economics (although Callaghan pre-emptied her here) and introduced a different set of extremes laid out in Hayek’s, “The Constitution of Liberty”. Inflation was targetted via (the extremes of) monetarism, union power/restrictive practices was taken head on leading ultimately to appalling scenes of the Miners strike, the welfare state was attacked with a renewed focus on self-reliance which had its own extreme in “there is no such thing as society.”, competition was introduced to the benefit of many before ending in an over-reliance on privatisation and free-markets etc.

[ditto, we should be sympathetic to those who suffered here. Hora, perhaps you did not have personal experience of the personal impact on individuals and communities, so really its not for you to comment on the pain that others still feel here]

The synthesis arrives in New Labour and Mandlesson’s infamous line, “we are all Thatcherites now.” Politics shifted to a central ground and the good parts of the Thatcher legacy remained and the bad parts rejected. This legacy remains with the real as opposed the rhetorical differences between Labour and Tories being marginal. Political extremes on both sides became and remain marginalised. The responses to the current crisis would have been generally the same whatever party had won the last election but with roles reversed.

The new thesis however was characterised by an unbalanced economy – financial services and public sector – and excess levels of leverage at the household, bank, corporate and sovereign levels. And so we now have a crisis that requires smaller financial services and public sectors and the extremes of leverage to be addressed but in the crisis context of the collapse (and possible re-birth) of the € project. So the new antithesis is represented by extremes in banker-bashing, the over-regulation of financial services, the attacks on the public sector wages and pensions and rhetorical errors such as Cameron’s credit card gaffe. As before, this will not be pretty, but hopefully a new synthesis will arrive in time (2016?).

So not all bankers/public sector workers are to be vilified. Many good people are going to suffer through this period irrespective of government policies – as bet your bottom dollar the reaction to the crisis will lead first to extreme policy reactions. Abusing each other and glorifying/celebrating the death of individuals is unlikely to be a solution.

Perhaps if we had listened to the unions and maintained some of the old working practices rather than looking at the short term cost benefits, we wouldn’t have to suffer the longer term damage.

I do like Ewan McColl

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPVaVKmGqOY[/video]

Relatively balanced outlook on the British economy without all the crap from the pseudo-politicos on this forum who believe that only they know the truth.

Thatcher can’t die. You’d have to be human first.

I remember my dad’s expressing the opinion (in the late 80s) that Thatcher did some stuff that needed doing to Britain but ended up going too far in a lot of cases. That view seems to tie in with teamhurtmore’s comments above that significant problems often lead to overreactions that fix the problem but create further problems themselves.

I grew up near Aberdeen, which thanks to North Sea oil generally did pretty well throughout the Thatcher years so compared to a lot of people my opinion of her is fairly abstract, though I wouldn’t say I’m a big fan.

A view conveniently overlooked by the Fatcha haters was that in many industries, the “right” the unions were fighting for was the right to remain in an unmodernised, unrecontructed work environment that was becoming increasingly vulnerable to cheaper imports &/or more modern production methods.

..and what if she was wrong and the unions were right?

The right most obviously being fought for was the right not to be managed by utter cocks in the main, and clearly the failure to win that argument and her policies have led to a strong thrusting British manufacturing base , where we are so clearly not vulnerable to cheap imports…….hang on..wait a minute! 😯

Ton – I grew up in a former mining town, my Nan worked in a pit canteen. I moved to the former Durham coalfields in the 80’s, living in a cat D village.

My village pit, like many of the Durham mining villages, closed in the 60’s as the NCB killed all the small pits and embedded its future in deep mine super pits.

I’ve worked with and been friends with a lot of former miners, and steelworkers, and their families, drank in the same clubs as them, and as a kid I stood on the picket lines with my Dad while another industry fought for its survival. My dad was a union shop steward, and spent a good while blacklisted.

The one thing I’ve learned through that whole experience is that times move on… All the old boys knew they had been watching the death throws of an industry that was doomed to be a thing of the past, and had been propped up for a long time.

Do you think I revel in what happened to the industries? not one bit – but you cannot blame Thatcher for it all, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway, and whenever it happened, it would have been horrific for those communities –

The death of the small pits in the fifties and sixties was a far greater catastrophe in its sheer scale, and those villages and towns will probably never recover. Mention to someone in the North East the category D villages and you’ll hear a tale or two.

Do I blame them for fighting for their survival? of course not, but I do blame sucessive governments for creating whole towns that were essentially ghettoised to reliance on one employer, which is what caused the real pain in the long run, and I do blame the unions for refusing to give an inch, which in the end is what sealed their fate.

Mark my words, we’ll see it again, the cotton industry, the rag trade, steel, coal, shipbuilding – the financial industries, callcentres, pharma companies, they’ll all close at some point… we need to consider whether our comfortable lifestyle is really sustainable when people in other countries will do the same for a pittance?

It would be nice to see us all have improved lifestyles, but the trickle down effect is currently trickling down to india, bangladesh, china and south america – as we get poorer and less comfortable lifestyles, they will get something gradually slightly better than the abject poverty they’ve been living in for decades – its not nice for us, but like I say, times move on, and maybe a slight averaging out of our rich western lifestyle to some other countries, in the grand scheme of things, is overdue.

An example of teh shortsightness and blinkered apraoch.

A coal burning power station and a coal mine – near to each other and connected by a railway. The mine produces high quality coal cleanburning coal.

Polish coal exported at a subsidised price is cheap so a contract is made to use this coal instead despite the fact it is dirtier and burns less cleanly. The UK coal mine is shut.
However the cost of the polish coal plus the cost of the miners unemployment benefits is actually higher than the cost of the UK coal

so the total cost to the UK is actually greater, there is a social cost as well in the unemployment, but the electricity is cheaper to produce so the power station can be sold off to create profits for the private sector. The Uk loses money, a state asset and has higher unemployment. A lose / lose situation unless you have the money to buy shares in the now private power station.

so as a result of the blinkered approach to the costs of generating electricity the country is worse off. the balance of payments is worse, people have lost their jobs and the pollution from the station is higher