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.

It was the red tint that was largely to blame. Union leaders like Scargill (and there were some worse) had politically motivated intentions that were more important to them than the benefit of their members.

Scargill and some of the print union bosses sent their members in to the valley of death.

They had no chance against the Maggon, who commanded all the cannon.


A discracefull episode on all sides!

The unions were not in a position of authority, or running the economy
well they were certainly in a position to do their utmost to wreck the economy and the country with it, and they tried damn hard to do so, but ultimately and thank goodness, failed


do you not remember wondrous strikes like the one by the boilermakers union over who should draw the chalk line on a piece of steel at the shipyards?

There you go again with your Maggie obsession Fred.

That shows your blinkered, or blighted view of the world.

Also, the lousy management styles of period, with Boys from London going to the industrial areas stuffed with "bright" ideas on how the pits and other industries "should" be managed but with little or actual working experience of the areas they were overseeing.

Elitist poured out of universities and other institutions without like yourself little humility.

The same approach as used in reorganisation of schools, universities, NHS and many other organisations.


I am in favour of evolution but not ill-thoughtout revolution, especially by detached neo-cons.

-------

If you go back to earlier posts and read, you will find I have been scathing of unions and many of the leaders, who were driven by their membership.

This similar to Cameron being driven by UKIP and the Neo-fascists in the present tory party..

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie !:-))

On twitter Milly gets a HUGE BOOST........wins hands down today at PMqs according to the polls and trending.

What makes it even better it was in Camorons own backyard the economy and debt and the deficit that Milly won the debate easily.

At times people swore Dave was going to blow up again like in the early days of his leadership.

Clearly an expert says Milliband as changed tactics and is taking Cameron apart.

Even Guido F the Tory blogger admitted Milli played a blinder, "perhaphs this is tactics coming with a late run, for certain the PM had his bottom kicked today".

...................................................................................................................

By Con Coughlin
4:46PM GMT 17 Dec 2014
Claims that soldiers tortured Iraqi detainees were all lies, says a new report. The BBC must undertake an urgent investigation of its own to find out how Panorama got it so badly wrong

Looking back, it is amazing just how many people were prepared to believe the accusations that the British Army routinely tortured detainees.

Of course it was the BBC and its fellow travellers on the Left who made the most of accusations that British soldiers had committed what amounted to war crimes following a three-hour battle with Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq in May 2004. Rather than praising the British soldiers for their undoubted heroism in tackling the Shia-dominated Mehdi Army in a fierce battle that could have gone either way, the BBC preferred to concentrate its considerable resources on Iraqi claims that some of the captured insurgents had been killed in cold blood, while others had been subjected to torture.

Coming in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, where American service personnel certainly were guilty of mistreating their Iraqi captives, it was easy for some to believe that British forces had engaged in similar acts of mistreatment, even though the evidence was murky, to say the least.

But rather than conducting a proper journalistic investigation into the incident, the BBC’s flagship Panorama programme, in its edition broadcast in February 2008 entitled “On Whose Orders”, instead preferred to rely on the testimony of former Iraqi combatants and their Legal Aid-funded lawyers to make unsubstantiated allegations against the integrity and professionalism of the British Army.

It has taken nearly six years for the truth to come out, but the conclusions of the al-Sweady inquiry published today makes for some uncomfortable reading for the BBC’s current affairs production team, as well as the teams of lawyers who forced the Government to conduct an inquiry into the allegations, earning themselves handsome legal fees in the process.

For the inquiry, which cost a staggering £31 million, has ruled unequivocally that the claims that British troops murdered, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees were “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”, and that the baseless allegations contained in the Panorama programme were the product of “deliberate and calculated lies”.

So much for the standards of the BBC's so-called investigative journalists.

It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the Army’s accusers, and all those at the BBC and elsewhere who were credulous, or naive, enough to believe them. But now that the truth is out, perhaps those responsible for making this programme, and who gave an air of credibility to the claims, would now like to issue a fulsome apology to the British Armed Forces for their own grave errors of judgment.

They could even make a new programme explaining why they got the story so horribly wrong in the first place. Now, that really would be a first.

More seriously, though, Tony Hall, who as the BBC’s director-general has overall responsibility for the corporation’s current affairs output (in a previous life he was in charge of BBC news and current affairs), should undertake an urgent investigation of his own to find out how Panorama got it so badly wrong.

Miliband was a disaster at PMQs again. The twittersphere is mainly a playground for left wing activist sycophants.

Milli won hands down at PMQT LOL!!!! Yeah right.

Hays how so wrong you are.

Tory MPs outnumber Labour MP tweeters just over 2-1 and the number of Tory blogs V labour blogs 3-1.

Just remember its quality that counts not quantity.

You must have been watching some sort of fantasy PMQs. The one one I watched was a car crash for Milibland.

so neither fred nor acolyte stan can actually admit that the unions were at least as culpable as management in the collapse of uk's heavy industry ..... ah, i forgot .... it was apparently all the fault of those in power, always provided that it was the conservatives

obviously fred and acolyte stan think the electorate are fools then

Also called alternative universe. (in science fiction, fantasy, etc.) a separate universe or world that coexists with our known universe but is very different from it.

Sounds like a perfect description of gf. He gets changed in a telephone box, don't you know :0)

Of course, the left wing fail to specify the motives of the right wing in ruining heavy industry.

That was simple enough Haystack...there was no (easy) money in it


Far easier to flog a few mortgages to numpties who don't know any better, and call it growth.


The "city" has long since been a driver of british growth, but it's more a bloodsucker these days.

In the days of decline or heavy industry there was little money in selling mortgages. That is a fairly recent phenomenon. The decline of our industry went hand in hand with the expansion of industry in emerging countries who undercut us with lower wages and cheaper natural resources. The same thing had already happened to our textile business. We cannot compete in certain businesses as our cost base is too high.

Are you having memory problems?

The 80's were nothing but mortgages, a bit like today.

It didn't happen in the 80s. The financial services market was a reaction to finding a solution to collapsing industry. It was considered that part of our future lay in the services sector. No one wanted to invest in industries that could not compete in world markets.

Really? look back.