Tweet
Re: General Election 2010 Thread
So by your analogy, if driving is that dangerous, then you should be thanking (non-driver) Gordon Brown for taxing all the drivers off the road to save them from the carnage ?
Mining IS dangerous. There is little doubt about that. Even your own figures above back it up. Did Margaret Thatcher do the miners a favour ?
Well, given a choice, most people would prefer NOT to work down a mine. However, there are communities up and down the UK that would not exist were it not for the mines. Huge sprawling communities grew up around them over the last 300 years.
Most people would prefer to work for a living, to provide for their families. If the only occupation available to them just happened to be a dangerous one (like mining), they will still choose to do that occupation and earn a crust for their family.
When Thatcher closed the mines down, she left large areas of the country with no other way of earning a living. Counting buttons on a factory line earning less than a fifth of what you were earning does not count (when you have a mortage to pay). She removed the ability (and the dignity) of most of the population in those areas to be able to look after them and theirs. The result being that all of a sudden, thousands more were left looking for work in an area where there was none, giving the State a huge surge in people suddenly claiming benefits. Many of those never found work again. Also, those that did own their own homes found that they spiralled down in value because nobody wanted to move there due to there being no work. They could have commuted into the Cities of course, but in many cases it was hard to even do that as Beeching had closed down most of the Railways in their area in the 60's. Add to that the fact that the bus companies had also been sold off and you had a better chance of seeing a UFO in those areas than you were to get a viable bus service (if one existed at all). Then of course, those who drive down into the Cities created another problem of traffic congestion in those cities that never existed before as the work was previously spread all over the place. Those that did found that the only thing they could do was to move abroad where their skills were still valued in places like Australia, South Africa, USA etc. I know of quite a few who did that. Maybe they were the wise ones ?
Don't you remember the TV character Yosser Hughes and his immortal line 'Gis a job, I can do that !!' ? He was not merely a fiction of imagination, he was based on countless REAL people out there.
It is not by accident that some of the most depressed areas in Britain are still those that have always traditionally been mining communities.
Add onto that the Steelworkers (Thatcher sold British Steel to private companies which means that it is now owned by the Chinese, via the Dutch) who proceeded to close down the majority of the Steel Plants. Then there is the shipyards, the railways (what mess they are since being privatised) etc etc and you get the picture.
It's no coincidence that crime, poverty and depravation rose in those communities whilst those living in the Tory favoured areas proceeded to make shedloads of money on the back of that, thus creating the odious 'Loadsamoney' character that Harry Enfield famously pilloried in his comedy sketches.
Some of those areas have only really recovered from that in the last 10 years or so (Glasgow being a good example). Some of them are still trying to recover from the effects of that.
All Thatcher did was invest millions in bringing in foreign companies to bridge the gap in some (but not all) of these areas, wooing them with grants. These companies took full advantage of the free rent and ready-made building provided to them by that policy, only to then bugger off to somewhere else where the labour was cheaper as soon as the life of the grants and incentives given to them ran out.
Originally posted by Cetelco
View Post
Mining IS dangerous. There is little doubt about that. Even your own figures above back it up. Did Margaret Thatcher do the miners a favour ?
Well, given a choice, most people would prefer NOT to work down a mine. However, there are communities up and down the UK that would not exist were it not for the mines. Huge sprawling communities grew up around them over the last 300 years.
Most people would prefer to work for a living, to provide for their families. If the only occupation available to them just happened to be a dangerous one (like mining), they will still choose to do that occupation and earn a crust for their family.
When Thatcher closed the mines down, she left large areas of the country with no other way of earning a living. Counting buttons on a factory line earning less than a fifth of what you were earning does not count (when you have a mortage to pay). She removed the ability (and the dignity) of most of the population in those areas to be able to look after them and theirs. The result being that all of a sudden, thousands more were left looking for work in an area where there was none, giving the State a huge surge in people suddenly claiming benefits. Many of those never found work again. Also, those that did own their own homes found that they spiralled down in value because nobody wanted to move there due to there being no work. They could have commuted into the Cities of course, but in many cases it was hard to even do that as Beeching had closed down most of the Railways in their area in the 60's. Add to that the fact that the bus companies had also been sold off and you had a better chance of seeing a UFO in those areas than you were to get a viable bus service (if one existed at all). Then of course, those who drive down into the Cities created another problem of traffic congestion in those cities that never existed before as the work was previously spread all over the place. Those that did found that the only thing they could do was to move abroad where their skills were still valued in places like Australia, South Africa, USA etc. I know of quite a few who did that. Maybe they were the wise ones ?
Don't you remember the TV character Yosser Hughes and his immortal line 'Gis a job, I can do that !!' ? He was not merely a fiction of imagination, he was based on countless REAL people out there.
It is not by accident that some of the most depressed areas in Britain are still those that have always traditionally been mining communities.
Add onto that the Steelworkers (Thatcher sold British Steel to private companies which means that it is now owned by the Chinese, via the Dutch) who proceeded to close down the majority of the Steel Plants. Then there is the shipyards, the railways (what mess they are since being privatised) etc etc and you get the picture.
It's no coincidence that crime, poverty and depravation rose in those communities whilst those living in the Tory favoured areas proceeded to make shedloads of money on the back of that, thus creating the odious 'Loadsamoney' character that Harry Enfield famously pilloried in his comedy sketches.
Some of those areas have only really recovered from that in the last 10 years or so (Glasgow being a good example). Some of them are still trying to recover from the effects of that.
All Thatcher did was invest millions in bringing in foreign companies to bridge the gap in some (but not all) of these areas, wooing them with grants. These companies took full advantage of the free rent and ready-made building provided to them by that policy, only to then bugger off to somewhere else where the labour was cheaper as soon as the life of the grants and incentives given to them ran out.
Comment