Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

PS.

He thought it part of a contract!

Although never having worked down a pit, as I was born and lived in Nottingham till age 30 I can only go by what my many mining friends used to tell me, usually after a few pints had loosened them up a bit.

After the 1984/85 strikes I had many conversations with miners, many who had gone into mining straight from school, some still with jobs, most without and most had the same opinion that the Miners Union had bought a lot of the pit closures on themselves.
They did not want to modernise which was unavoidable but also understandable, as this would obviously mean job losses

The union was almost a 'vote for militancy or you were ostrasised' club.

There were many stories of an 8 hour day with only 3 or less spent on the coal face for face workers.
Time spent preparing, travelling and clean time after returning to the surface was often stretched out.
Foreign miners (and I don't mean the Chinese or other none risk averse counties) were producing far more coal per man than those in the UK making UK coal unprofitable.
This was proven post strike when some mines continued and produced far more tonnage per man and a higher wage than pre strike era.
There was little difference in the miners unions than the car industry unions where it was down tools till an electrician could fit a new light bulb.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of sympathy and admiration for the 'miner' and saw many families suffer as father disagreed with son and brother with brother.

As for Scargill, a commie from head to toe who only cared for himself!

Arthur Scargill: The very image of a man whose time has passed

Someone was telling me the other day, say what you like about that Bob Crow, but I’ll bet his members really love him.
Well, they probably do. Certainly most of the people who work in London and pay their wages have views on Bob Crow.

Those opinions have only become stronger since the Tube and railway workers so successfully used the Olympics to jemmy even more money out of the rest of us.

As Boris Johnson has discovered.
But even in the world of the trade unions, where 10 years can be a short time, things can go around. The all-conquering union boss beloved of his grateful members in one decade can become a pathetic shadow in another.

Cue the clanking, chained, ghostly figure of Arthur Scargill, shuffling into a county courtroom in Sheffield to try to get the National Union of Mineworkers to pay for his phone bills and a car.

Only £12.99

It isn't worth that much.

You could only pay for it in Camerons.

Her legacy the Financial Services and "Loads of Money" and a demoralised country of raped communities.

The Financial Services the main driver in the economic collapse of the country were liberalised .

a question or two for the pack of huff-and-puff resident socialists on this site .....

1) Can you deny that when MT became PM in 1979 that the country was not on its knees, effectively bankrupt and with inflation running at 15-20%

2) Can you tell me (us all) which of MT's labour policies the next Labour gov't reversed?

3) Can you tell what the next Labour gov't did to re-empower the unions?

DYOH.

cynic

You don't have to be Labour or Tory to hate Thatcher, you just have to be a member of a family of a sacked miner or put out of work factory worker or one of the millions put out of work by her policies, or the partner of someone who committed suicide, the suicide rate was sky high when she was in power not to mention the pensioners that suffered under her rein.

You can also ask the families of the three hundred sailors of the Belgrano that perished while sailing away from the Falkland Island and well out of the restricted zone, not to mention our armed forces that were killed or mutilated in a pointless war for an Island that no one wants. Give the Islanders £1m each and then see if they want to stay there.

What was the point of selling of all the council houses? Apart from the Tories trying to get more votes, the legacy of this policy is now costing us the tax payer millions families rent privately we foot the bill and the Tory landlords get rich.

What was the point of selling of all our nationalised industries? Apart from the Tories trying to get more votes, The French now own our Water, who owns our Gas and Electricity that keeps going up your guess is as good as mine.

I do not know what the future holds but no political party present or future seem to have a clue, if they do not take on real radical policies then this country is heading for the pan big time.

You don't have to be Labour or Tory to hate Thatcher .... that has virtually no bearing at all on the questions i asked .... as you were told at school, "Answer the question!"

Actually, we can see what was achieved by the war over the Falkland Islands and it is viewed as a positive by the inhabitants. What has been achieved by the war in Iraq, how many lives lost and £ billions by comparison. If it wasn't for Thatcher we would have the communist trade unions running this country by now, a bunch of Arthur Scargills who pretend to be standing up for the under- priviledged, but in reality who want to be living in country mansions and driving about in flash cars.

Driver........filter cynic I did yesterday ( a 6 week suspension) hes not genuine in his debating just wants to cause arguments and disruption and doesnt even believe in whats hes posting. Basicaly hes just out to take the -iss.

If more and more filter him hel get fed up and enter a debate without returing to his public schoolboy rheotoric where he trys to take delight in getting one over on you through his use of the English language.

Bin him.

sticky has only squelched me because i had the gall to challenge him on his assertions as to my lack of integrity .... sorry sticky, but even if you can't read this, you clearly lack backbone and balls

and no, i'm not out to take the piss or (necessarily) just to be contentious .... however, i seem to manage to raise questions that certain people find it difficult to answer

Doodlebug.......... proffessional bodies for accountants, solicitors, lawyers, doctors etc etc are far more militant than any labour union today.

For a kick off they are restrictive practices and you have to be a fully paid up member and pay your annual subs or you just dont practice, its as simple as that.

You cant opt in or opt out like you can in the labour unions these days.

This practice enables these proffessions to keep monopoly positions and leads to the extreme charges they levy on customers.

So please can we have a balanced debate and not the knocking you seem to like to carry out on the working classes.

This is not the 'Cockneys Den' thread where all have to follow the dictator in charge or face eviction.

The fact that the Belgrano was streaming away has nothing to do with its sinking. It was a legitimate target. It was not a civilian ship. It was an Argentinian warship. (actually it was American sold to Argentinia and survived Pearl Harbour).

Actually a lot of these professional bodies have brains, gf - unlike Scargill. Margaret Thatcher was a product of the working classes, people seem to forget that just because she had a 'posh' accent. And I don't know why you suddenly introduced 'Cockneys Den' into this debate. What on earth has this got to do with 'Cockneys Den'? I'm not knocking the working classes, I regard myself as working class i.e. I have worked hard all my life, was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, paid my taxes etc.etc.

I see goldfinger is spouting the same nonsense. There have been several investigation into trades union in recent years. The opt in/out is a fallacy in many unions. Some unions make it a condition of opting out of the 'political levy' that you have to attend a union meeting and request the opt out. You have to do this in front of work mates. Another example of union pressure on workers to fall in line.

Thatcher, polarised opinion and will continue to do so long after her death.

There is little doubt that she intended to break the unions or at the least, bring them to some sort of account. Anyone looking back through history or lived as a clear thinking, rational adult through the 70s could doubt that the country had been brought to its knees by union power and outdated practises. Scargill, fortunately, stepped willingly into the breach and allowed the NUM to become the tool of its own destruction and he became almost solely responsible for the emasculation of the Unions. Scargill was responsible for the destruction of the mining industry but the old, one eyed miners never saw it that way and probably never will.

Britain desperately needed modernisation and she made it happen. As ever, there were mistakes, some major, some minor, but the UK recovered from been a banana republic to a functioning country. Many of those former miners and factory workers retrained and found alternative employment. Their two weeks in Butlins at Skegness, living in a council house and catching t'bus to work, became two weeks in Benidorm, a nice new shiny car and a mortgage. A quantum shift in UK living standards.

Grocers were considered Middle class DB in those days.

And ive seen your rants against labour on the CR thread.

Anyway Im not going to get pulled into the debate about Maggie not yet. Its time for respect. Theirs a time and place for everything.

Just want to balance things out. Scargil was God to some of the miners and was a very clever man although a scheming man history as shown, but their were other decent union leaders.

Again we are going back to Tory propoganda.

And Goldfinger did very well out of the policies introduced by the Conservative govt, yes?

Good post chuckles. It's interesting that a lot of the people who claim to be worse off now than they were in the 70's can now afford to go overseas for a nice holiday.