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[TheBoy]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

I happen to sit next to an ex-copper who was dragged up to the East Mids to police the demonstrations. He will happily tell you that the "average" miner was no problem - to the point that the plods, who were given a packed lunch, would give there lunch to the miners so at least they could take some food home to there families.  Obviously, this wasn't sensational enough for the TV cameras, so we only saw the mounted charges.  He said these were so rare, and certainly wasn't normality....  ....although some of the police were thugs in his eyes.

[TheBoy]

How anyone who lived through it can think the economy was in a mess and she sorted it out needs treatment

1979, a country cripple financially. 1990, and country with many years of fast growing economy. Hmmmm

neglible unemployment until she got in.

But unstainable employment. Not dissimilar to how we ended up after the disastrous 1997-2010 government.

[TheBoy]

And if that tory government hadn't privatised Post Office Telephones, do you think you would have broadband now?

I recall in the late 70s, we were quoted "over 2 years" to get a phone line, although Dad's job got it in much quicker. And when it went wrong, it was weeks to get it repaired.

Can you imagine such an inefficient organisation managing it now?

[biggriffin]

RIP Baroness Thatcher one of kind, could do with someone like you now. You may have been a woman but you had bigger balls than the weasels running the country today.

. Second the above motion to the house.

[Nickbat]

Interesting statistics that lie behind the miners' strike:
 
1969 was the last year when coal accounted for more than half of Britain’s energy consumption. By 1970, when the Conservatives were elected, there were just 300 pits left – a fall of two thirds in 25 years.

By 1974 coal accounted for less than one third of energy consumption in Britain. Wilson’s incoming Labour government published a new Plan for Coal which predicted an increase in production from 110 million tonnes to 135 million tonnes a year by 1985. This was never achieved.

Margaret Thatcher’s government inherited a coal industry which had seen productivity collapse by 6 percent in five years. Nevertheless, it made attempts to rescue it. In 1981 a subsidy of £50 million was given to industries which switched from cheap oil to expensive British coal. So decrepit had the industry become that taxpayers were paying people to buy British coal.

The Thatcher government injected a further £200 million into the industry. Companies who had gone abroad to buy coal, such as the Central Electricity Generating Board, were banned from bringing it in and 3 million tonnes of coal piled up at Rotterdam at a cost to the British taxpayer of £30 million per year.

By now the industry was losing £1.2 million per day. Its interest payments amounted to £467 million for the year and the National Coal Board needed a grant of £875 million from the taxpayer.

The Monopolies and Mergers Commission found that 75 percent of British pits were losing money. The reason was obvious. By 1984 it cost £44 to mine a metric ton of British coal. America, Australia, and South Africa were selling it on the world market for £32 a metric ton.

Productivity increases had come in at 20 percent below the level set in the 1974 Plan for Coal.

Taxpayers were subsidising the mining industry to the tune of £1.3 billion annually. This figure doesn’t include the vast cost to taxpayer-funded industries such as steel and electricity which were obliged to buy British coal....

...She did not swoop in and kill perfectly good industries out of spite. Industries like coal and steel were already dead by the time she was elected. Thatcher just switched off the increasingly costly life support which had kept these zombie industries going.

John Phelan, 7 August 2012
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1497/thatcher_s_achievements_will_long_outlive_the_spite_of_sheffield_s_sons_and_daughters

 

[omegod]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

Really?  You have any proof of that?

I suppose you also think she ordered the police to open up the gates of Hillsborough so that a few working men (and women) could be crushed to death.

No she didn't personally order the gates to be opened but she damn well played her part in the government/police cover up that led to completely innocent men, women and children taking the blame for what happened that day.

Not a few working men and women either , 96 people lost their lives and their names were tarnished for 20 + years because of that rotten, spineless Tory regime. People may have danced and made merry in Liverpool last night, I didn't, but for her part in the cover up I can understand why some did.

[Nickbat]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

Really?  You have any proof of that?

I suppose you also think she ordered the police to open up the gates of Hillsborough so that a few working men (and women) could be crushed to death.

No she didn't personally order the gates to be opened but she damn well played her part in the government/police cover up that led to completely innocent men, women and children taking the blame for what happened that day.

Not a few working men and women either , 96 people lost their lives and their names were tarnished for 20 + years because of that rotten, spineless Tory regime. People may have danced and made merry in Liverpool last night, I didn't, but for her part in the cover up I can understand why some did.

Got a link for that number? 

The best I can find is this:

Six picketers died during the strike, and three teenagers (Darren Holmes aged 15 and Paul Holmes and Paul Womersley aged 14) died picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. The deaths of pickets David Jones and Joe Green continue to be viewed with suspicion. Jones was killed in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, by a flying brick during fighting between police, pickets, and non-striking miners, while Green was hit by a truck while picketing at Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the two. A taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed on 30 November 1984. He had been taking a non-striking miner to work in the Merthyr Vale Colliery, South Wales when two striking miners dropped a concrete post onto his car from a road bridge above. He died at the scene. The two miners served a prison sentence for manslaughter.

[albitz]

' @ dbdbdb - if Scargill had the support of the vast majority of his members why did he order them out on strike for more than a year and refuse point blank to allow them to have a ballot before or during the strike.
He has spent much of the last few years dragging the NUM to the brink of bankruptcy in the high court,due to his demand to be allowed sole personal use for life of an apartment at the Barbican in London which he bought with union funds when he was the president.They want to sell it and use the funds to keep the union afloat but he is fighting them tooth and nail.
Yeah,hes a real working class hero - NOT. 
Hes a classic lefty mix of a very large ago and a very small brain,and selective principles. A hateful character.

[05omegav6]

Cough. Nickbat, I think Omegod was referring to Hillsborough rather than the Miners

Rest them all

[STMO123]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

Really?  You have any proof of that?

I suppose you also think she ordered the police to open up the gates of Hillsborough so that a few working men (and women) could be crushed to death.

No she didn't personally order the gates to be opened but she damn well played her part in the government/police cover up that led to completely innocent men, women and children taking the blame for what happened that day.

Not a few working men and women either , 96 people lost their lives and their names were tarnished for 20 + years because of that rotten, spineless Tory regime. People may have danced and made merry in Liverpool last night, I didn't, but for her part in the cover up I can understand why some did.

Got a link for that number? 

The best I can find is this:

Six picketers died during the strike, and three teenagers (Darren Holmes aged 15 and Paul Holmes and Paul Womersley aged 14) died picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. The deaths of pickets David Jones and Joe Green continue to be viewed with suspicion. Jones was killed in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, by a flying brick during fighting between police, pickets, and non-striking miners, while Green was hit by a truck while picketing at Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the two. A taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed on 30 November 1984. He had been taking a non-striking miner to work in the Merthyr Vale Colliery, South Wales when two striking miners dropped a concrete post onto his car from a road bridge above. He died at the scene. The two miners served a prison sentence for manslaughter.

WTF has the miners strike got to do with Hillsborough?

[05omegav6]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

Really?  You have any proof of that?

I suppose you also think she ordered the police to open up the gates of Hillsborough so that a few working men (and women) could be crushed to death.

No she didn't personally order the gates to be opened but she damn well played her part in the government/police cover up that led to completely innocent men, women and children taking the blame for what happened that day.

Not a few working men and women either , 96 people lost their lives and their names were tarnished for 20 + years because of that rotten, spineless Tory regime. People may have danced and made merry in Liverpool last night, I didn't, but for her part in the cover up I can understand why some did.

Got a link for that number? 

The best I can find is this:

Six picketers died during the strike, and three teenagers (Darren Holmes aged 15 and Paul Holmes and Paul Womersley aged 14) died picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. The deaths of pickets David Jones and Joe Green continue to be viewed with suspicion. Jones was killed in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, by a flying brick during fighting between police, pickets, and non-striking miners, while Green was hit by a truck while picketing at Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the two. A taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed on 30 November 1984. He had been taking a non-striking miner to work in the Merthyr Vale Colliery, South Wales when two striking miners dropped a concrete post onto his car from a road bridge above. He died at the scene. The two miners served a prison sentence for manslaughter.

WTF has the miners strike got to do with Hillsborough?

Delicate point well raised

[STMO123]

Thank you Al.
People are so keen to get their tuppence worth in........well....you know.

[Nickbat]

I got the wrong end of the stick there, I thought the number quoted was about miners' strike casualties.

My bad. Must go to SpecSavers.

[omegod]

She did also order police on horseback to beat the living shite out of ordinary working men( miners) with truncheons who were striking to try and ensure their jobs

Really?  You have any proof of that?

I suppose you also think she ordered the police to open up the gates of Hillsborough so that a few working men (and women) could be crushed to death.

No she didn't personally order the gates to be opened but she damn well played her part in the government/police cover up that led to completely innocent men, women and children taking the blame for what happened that day.

Not a few working men and women either , 96 people lost their lives and their names were tarnished for 20 + years because of that rotten, spineless Tory regime. People may have danced and made merry in Liverpool last night, I didn't, but for her part in the cover up I can understand why some did.

Got a link for that number? 

The best I can find is this:

Six picketers died during the strike, and three teenagers (Darren Holmes aged 15 and Paul Holmes and Paul Womersley aged 14) died picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. The deaths of pickets David Jones and Joe Green continue to be viewed with suspicion. Jones was killed in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire, by a flying brick during fighting between police, pickets, and non-striking miners, while Green was hit by a truck while picketing at Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the two. A taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed on 30 November 1984. He had been taking a non-striking miner to work in the Merthyr Vale Colliery, South Wales when two striking miners dropped a concrete post onto his car from a road bridge above. He died at the scene. The two miners served a prison sentence for manslaughter.

WTF has the miners strike got to do with Hillsborough?

Exactly

[TheBoy]

WTF is in the water tonight 

Keep it pleasant. Debates are welcomed, arguments are not.