At the moment I am temping, before that I was doing sales, prior to that I've worked in numerous fields including computer games.Phenomenal-Nutrition wrote:If the government at the time could buy gas/coal at a much lower value than it cost them to employ miners it made sense to buy elsewhere - simple really. The only reason its become a viable option again is because oil prices are sky high now (they werent then) and getting energy reserves at home has become more attractive again.jamesmcdonnell wrote:Yes, interesting isn't it that all of a sudden coal is being seen as 'the fuel of the future' despite cuntcher's assertions that the pits were no longer economically viable?
The whole issue with the miners was nothing to do with modernising the nation, but rather with breaking the back of the trade unions. The miners represented a powerful faction not just as trade unionists, but also in deciding the make up of the labour party. By killing the manufacturing base in this country, thatcher hoped to destroy socialism, and in large part she did. We are now a far more self-centred service based country, where personal wealth and acquisition of material goods has become the holy grail, and we are definetly paying the price for that in raising a generation for whom obligation will become a dirty word.
What's wrong with having a strong sense of community, and having a strong sense of regional identity, truth is it makes people happy, a lot more than money does.
Interesting research has been done recently on what makes people happy, and interestingly, money is way way down on the list.
James what job do you do and would you be happy swapping it for going down a mine and making a fraction of your current earnings?
Okay heres a question where do you draw the line with Scargill, the strike action and the demands for higher wages. Do you pay 150% what it costs to buy coal/gas/oil elsewhere, 200%? 300%? 1000%? When does it become unfeesable? Because the trade unions were holding the country to hostage and asking for above inflation pay rises.
However, I am university educated, although from an impoverished background, and I live in London where there have been plenty of choices for a long time. I'm not someone who grew up in a mining village where several generations of my family have worked in the mines.
Whole towns were literally built off the back of the mining and steel industries, so it's not a like for like comparison. I wouldn't want to go and work down a mine for all the tea in china, but if it was the only available job and my only options, what else do I do?
My point is that if the tories wanted to buy coal elsewhere because it was cheaper, they should have considered the impact on the people in their hundreds of thousands who would be affected. Which is more important, the welfare of a nation, or the nation's welfare? Plunging hundreds of thousands of people into poverty that lasted a generation is in my opinion too big a price to pay for modernising the economy.
I am not saying Scargill was a saint, far from it, but the conservative government took an indecent amount of pleasure in breaking the working class of the northeast and wales on the wheel.
Change doesn't always have to be brutal, and economics should not be the ultimate arbiter of everything. Free market economics is a crock of shite, it doesn't take into account the countless jobs which have to be done to keep a civilised society ticking over, but which are never going to benefit those concerned.
Let me give you an example of one such example. Nowadays, you are never going to find many english born people (of whatever colour) who want to do shitty, low paid menial jobs, when they have the option of signing on and trying to make some money on the side. Hence we have countless immigrants doing the 'McJob' as it's known, shitty, no prospects, low pay, menial but a job nontheless.
At the same time we have people ranting and raving about 'fornicating immigrants taking our jobs, the same jobs they themselves would rather sign on for than do.
The fact is, free market economics favours big business, and big business does not give a flying fornicate about the individual or about how major economic changes affect society. The big wheel keeps on turning, crushing those unfortunate enough to be beneath it's rim as the next economical cycle occurs.
Sure, we can let free market globalisation run everything, but be prepared for those without to get more and more pissed off as those with get richer, which is precisely what is the outcome of freemarket economics.
Poverty is not to do with food, shelter, clothing, it's to do with a sense of having less than others, which is why my mate who has 150k a year feels he is missing out, despite earning way more than he needs to live on.
