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Originally posted by Anglican't:
URL=http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4903067/Thatcher-funeral-cost-just-36m-a-THIRD-of-reported-figure.html ]cost only a third of the reported figures /URL

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Originally posted by Anglican't:
From this - and your other posts - I can see that the Hillsborough Disaster and subsequent events relating to it are very close to your heart. I'm also aware that there is continuing antipathy on Merseyside towards the Sun. But in all honesty this appears to me to be a Merseyside-specific concern (otherwise the Sun wouldn't be the biggest-selling paper in the country, regardless of its faults).

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Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
Leaving aside the issue of whether the link between state incompetence which led to the death of 96 people followed by a state cover-up is a matter only for Merseyside or not, I am asking you (and any others reading) simply to make it known when a link to that newspaper is made.

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Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
The boycott of the S*n certainly has its capital in Liverpool, but is not restricted to Liverpool. I know plenty who avoid it from other parts of GB, though largely for political reasons.

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originally posted by Rosa Winkel
The boycott of the S*n certainly has its capital in Liverpool, but is not restricted to Liverpool. I know plenty who avoid it from other parts of GB, though largely for political reasons.

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• it is not a newspaper
• it considers trivia about football and the people who play it to be news
• I prefer not to buy something which is extremely misogynist
• I can't support a publication so hypocritical that it will thunder about the sexualisation of pre-teens on page 1 with a bare-breasted lovely on page 3
• I disapprove of giving succour to something or someone which harasses people in the news, even "celebs"
• I have no time for a paper that hounds the innocent
• oh, and I can think for myself, ta very much

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Originally posted by Pottage:
Well, certainly that's a more plausible element of The Thatcher Legacy than Sunday Trading. But, giving the topic the objectivity you advocate Saul, we must also acknowledge that the 1980s miners' strike was only one factor in the long decline of the coal industry, which began in the 1960s. By the 1980s the coal industry's fate was tied to energy production and the world price for coal, not Conservative Party policy. The "perfectly good industry" you describe had shed more than half its workforce in the two decades before Mrs Thatcher came to power and was continuing to lose pits at the same rate, despite being given eye-watering levels of subsidy that the rest of the country couldn't afford to continue.

Where Mrs Thatcher's handprint is more clearly to be seen, and where her legacy is distinctly shabby, is in the half hearted attempts made to alleviate the effects on mining communities of the pit closures. Admittedly it would have been challenging to persuade businesses to relocate to places that had often been sited where they were purely because of the presence of coal underground and which often lacked any other attribute (such as accessibility to markets or transport infrastructure) that investors would be looking for. But Germany's efforts in the former East Germany show what can be done if there's a will.

Coincidentally, I also lived in Liverpool during Hatton's turbulent reign - dealing with the City Council in those days was interesting, wasn't it! I wasn't sent to Coventry figuratively, but that's where I had to move to in the mid 1980s to get a job.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
* Rupert Murdoch
* Kelvin McKenzie
* Trevor Kavanagh

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
It was a unnamed source. How convenient. How News International.

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Originally posted by Sighthound:
So now we import coal from places like Poland. British coal was a strategic asset which we have basically thrown away.

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Originally posted by Cod:

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Originally posted by Sighthound:
So now we import coal from places like Poland. British coal was a strategic asset which we have basically thrown away.

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No: I think you'll find it's still in the ground, notwithstanding that even miners' jobs don't justify continuing to contribute to the greenhouse effect.

But leaving that aside, it is absurd to say that a government should be obliged to continue to operate uneconomic mines, regardless of one's political views, because doing so requires the public to subsidise the miners' jobs either through taxes or through paying an increased amount for coal. The same principle applies to all other industries controlled by the State, most notably the crisis-riven rust-bucket maker that was British Leyland, once the third largest car manufacturer in the world.

It is also absurd to say that a government can never choose to close a mine or a factory on purely political grounds either. If a government finds itself dependent on a workforce that is prepared to inconvenience every other member of the public in that country, it is quite reasonable for a government to take steps in order to avoid a repetition of the inconvenience.

I don't buy the comments about ripping out the tubes, kicking the patient out of bed etc. The government operated the mines. It closed them. It made redundancy payments to workers who, for years, would have known that they were working in a declining industry. To state that it is the government's responsibility to prevent any effect of any economic vicissitude on ordinary people is the strongest argument for the free market one can make.

Like just about everyone who doesn't work in an investment bank, the bank bailouts appal me. However, they are not so very different from the financial support given to heavy industry in the 70s - a stop gap to prevent crisis in a business capable of holding the country to ransom. I very much hope that British government will take steps similar to those taken by Thatcher to avoid any repetition being possible, and I'm sure you all would applaud them.

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
We get most of our coal now from Russia; what a pity we don't give British people the chance to mine a large useful natural asset.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
We get most of our coal now from Russia; what a pity we don't give British people the chance to mine a large useful natural asset.

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Saul, who is getting in the way of British people mining coal in the UK? And how are they stopping it?

For example, have people tried unsuccessfully to get permission (would this be planning permission or some other permit, I don't know) to resume coal mining?

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Incidentally, the Fukishima experience has made a number of people think that coal is not so dirty after all. No one, least of all the Japanese risk manager's considered a major tsunami and look what happened?

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Incidentally, the Fukishima experience has made a number of people think that coal is not so dirty after all. No one, least of all the Japanese risk manager's considered a major tsunami and look what happened?

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Not much happened, actually. The only deaths at the plant or in the surrounding area were due to the earthquake/tsunami, not the meltdown. The worst case projections from the WHO suggest that there may be a slightly increased risk of cancer for those living in the area, but the increase is less than for someone who smokes or regularly uses sunbeds. Sure, the reactor itself was totalled - but I doubt a coal-powered station would fare much better under the circumstances.

People keep treating Fukushima as if it was some terrible nuclear disaster, rather than the triumph of nuclear engineering it was. It's ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Pottage:
In global terms we don't have huge coal reserves in the UK but set against our actual use these days - largely for base load power generation - our proven coal reserves represent many years of supply. But it's considerably cheaper to import coal from faraway places than to mine it here. So it doesn't make economic sense for anyone to invest massive amounts of capital in mining our own reserves. Some few existing mines remain viable because the cost of developing them was incurred long ago, but they teeter on the brink and at any time any of them could be killed off by a single operating problem that it would not be financially worth while to overcome.

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
You are right of course, a business decision would have to be made (about a new coal industry) and unlikely that a major industry will be ressurected. But when you look at wind and solar power, nice to have though they are, they just don't stack up to the efficiency of coal.

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Originally posted by Cod:
Saul,

If energy security is the issue, it seems best not to use one's own coal reserves until they are needed.

Leaving that aside, of course a huge amount was lost from the pit closures of the 1980s and 90s. It was the end of a way of life which left a legacy of its own, specifically the coming of age of trade unionism and the first Labour governments: the mining communities were were the most staunch supporters of left-wing politics during this time, and contributed much to its rise. There is no question that across the north of England and south Wales certain areas have never entirely recovered from the closure of the pits, the unravelling of the community cohesion they supported, and the loss of pride people had in their communities and the mines.

As substantial as the mining tradition was, it simply does not follow that it was permissible for miners to hold the country at economic knifepoint.

Someone earlier - I can't remember who - it may even have been you - mentioned that Thatcher's legacy was the promotion of greed. It is appropriate to accuse corporate bankers of greed. I think it is hard to accuse people who undertake a dirty, dangerous job for moderate wages of greed. But it is fair to say that Thatcher did put paid to something unwittingly akin to greed, specifically the right to work in a particular job, for a particular wage, under particular conditions, in perpetuity, at the expense of others, and without regard for what was happening in the world outside. I am inclined to think that the srong trade union legacy of mining caused Scargill and others to overreach themselves, both in the 80s and in the 70s - not just politically but morally too.

I am no fan of Thatcher, but when I consider what she did to mining and heavy industry, I find myself asking: what was the alternative? Should she have continued subsidies? I don't think many people advocate that now. Should she have managed economic decline more slowly? Don't know. Are things actually worse other than in particular pockets of the country?

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Originally posted by Cod:
Like just about everyone who doesn't work in an investment bank, the bank bailouts appal me. However, they are not so very different from the financial support given to heavy industry in the 70s - a stop gap to prevent crisis in a business capable of holding the country to ransom. I very much hope that British government will take steps similar to those taken by Thatcher to avoid any repetition being possible, and I'm sure you all would applaud them.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Perhaps the true legacy of Thatcherism is to hold up a mirror to UK society and show that nothing has changed, at least in regards to women.

Why?

Because I doubt that this level of passion would be expended over the "legacy" or otherwise of an ex-Prime Minister.

But Margaret Thatcher was a woman, so she is judged differently.

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Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:

The mines and coal industry slot into the wider and very current absence of a sensible long term UK energy policy. I hope I have pointed out well enough, that due to things like Fukishima, rare though they are, show us the vulnerability of nuclear power (although I am not totally anti nuclear myself).

No one should have a job in a redundant industry for life.

Surely Beeching (British railway cuts and wholesale slaughter of the rail network early 1960s) should have taught us something?

A large well organised coal industry, with less manpower, more safety, and lower costs per tonne was the way to go in the 1980s towards the new century.

Sadly politics got in the way and part of Thatcher's legacy is to destroy a coal industry that could have had a bright (but changed and modernised) future.

Saul the Apostle

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Perhaps the true legacy of Thatcherism is to hold up a mirror to UK society and show that nothing has changed, at least in regards to women.

Why?

Because I doubt that this level of passion would be expended over the "legacy" or otherwise of an ex-Prime Minister.

But Margaret Thatcher was a woman, so she is judged differently.

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That's not pure, unadulterated bollocks. But it's pretty close.

Ask me about the legacy of that lying, war-mongering shit Blair.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Reword your middle paragraph as follows:

"Yes, there were wider political motivations as well, and yes a diminished and sickly mining industry was clinging on at the time by being pickled in subsidy. But the bottom line is that her government is culpable for its callous failure to deal with the plight of the former mining communities."

and I wouldn't much disagree with you. That's the bit that's still blighting people's lives around here.

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Originally posted by Cod:


Assuming we agree that the cause of mining communities' decline is the lack of jobs to replace those in the mines, what obligation did the government hold towards the former miners and their communities?

Was it to replace those jobs? Or was it to put in place appropriate measures to enable the economy to creat jobs?

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What wasn't done that should have been done?

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Originally posted by sebby:
Perhaps she challenged a culture of entitlement. The idea that the world owes one a living.

Perhaps we are owned nothing. Just a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.

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Originally posted by sebby:
Perhaps she challenged a culture of entitlement. The idea that the world owes one a living.

Perhaps we are owned nothing. Just a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.

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Originally posted by Cod:
I think in most times and in most places, the vast majority of people expect to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. While I'm sure expectations do vary, I'm sure this was just as true in the 1970s as today.

My query doesn't really relate to the extent to which Thatcher's government changed working expectations (in any event, what appears to have changed is not people's expectations of themselves but their beliefs about other people's expectations or lack of them). What interests me is why it is said that her government is responsible for continued deprivation in the former mining and heavy industrial areas. If a town's prosperity depends on a nearby coal seam, and that seam is mined out, then the town has a problem. I don't see how any government can see to it that all the former miners in that town can be provided with suitable alternative jobs in that town, or possibly even elsewhere. The most a government can do is smooth the way for alternative employers, such as are willing, to increase business in the town, or ensure that retrenched workers are able to retrain.

Another example is the automotive industry. Time was, so I'm told, that the majority of jobs in south Birmingham were in car manufacturing (and at Cadbury's). Given the lamentable record of car manufacturers, not least poor union-management relations, was it feasible for alternative employers such as Nissan to step into the gap left by British Leyland? Is it fair to blame the government for failing to secure alternative employment?

Getting made redundant is a truly horrid thing, and I hope if it happens to me (and I note that it's happening right and left in my profession) I will continue to support my family by securing alternative employment. But is it fair to assume the government always has the means of securing everyone's jobs if it chooses?

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Cod,

I would broadly agree with you......but ....there's always a but isn't there ? Thatcher's legacy for me is encapsulated in an outlook and direction of travel which has been less than wholly beneficial to the people of Britain.

An example. Our water companies in England are private. The cost to the consumer has sky rocketed of an essential basic - water. Salaries for top executives are obscene and compulsory metering is now being rolled out where I live. Bills have doubled and in some cases tripled.

In wales the water authority is a not for profit company and in Scotland they are still in public ownership, same as N.Ireland.

Thatcher set the tone for all of this. She paved the way she was the grand dame of privatising things and liberating them from the ''dead hand'' of state control.

Council houses - the reason that property is so unavailable in the UK (due to exhorbitant prices) is that the stock was diminished in the 1980s and 90s by the sell off to owners. You could argue that no one should be denied the right to own their own property, but the government now has a massive shortage of housing for British people.

Thatcher's legacy was not all gloss and roses. There has been a harder side and a darker side.

Saul

[ 05. May 2013, 06:45: Message edited by: Saul the Apostle ]

--------------------
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

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Originally posted by Cod:

I'm specifically interested in how a government can be held responsible for high unemployment in areas where jobs had previuously been in uneconomic industries. To blame a government in such circumstances doesn't strike me as fair, and even in Thatcher's case, one ought to look past her government's rhetoric about bikes and whatnot and ask that question.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

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Originally posted by Cod:

I'm specifically interested in how a government can be held responsible for high unemployment in areas where jobs had previuously been in uneconomic industries. To blame a government in such circumstances doesn't strike me as fair, and even in Thatcher's case, one ought to look past her government's rhetoric about bikes and whatnot and ask that question.

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Let's put it this way: if the Brown* and Cameron governments hadn't bailed out the financial sector, would they ever have been forgiven for doing to London and the South-East what Thatcher's government did to heavy manufacturing industry in Wales, Scotland and most of the North of England?

*having fucked things up, wasn't Blair a smart cookie, getting his ass out of the way just as the shit hit the fan.

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