Poguesy said:
The trade unions were way too powerful. Throwing strikes every five minutes and finishing off the ruined industries. Coal strikes that reduced a nation to a three day working week, working by candlelight. Socialist crap.
Well if the companies didn't exploit their workers the unions wouldn't exist in the first place. The people you are defending are the same people that, a century ago, allowed children to be crushed in cave-ins and mangled in machinery, put low-grade meat in food, and dumped waste in rivers, all in the name of profitability. I don't know if you realize it, but profit is not very high on the list of moral imperatives.
The coal strikes didn't reduce the nation to a three day working week, that was a decision made by the government acting at the behest of corporate interests.
Poguesy said:
And yes the mines were closed due to financial reasons. Arthur Scargill campaigned/striked for those higher wages but in doing so finished it off. An industry all ready losing money and constant strikes losing day after day of trade.
Profitable coal mines were done for long before Thatcher came in.
They stopped being profitable because the company executives didn't want to come off it. I have seen first-hand what happens when a company's president or other executive staff take the lion's share of the company's funds. There are countless examples of company holders draining the life out of a company, then complaining about the lack of profitability.
My first boss ran his printing company into the ground because he wanted a mansion, a speed boat, a big, gas-guzzling truck - and yet there was a massive hole in the side of the building from where he had some doors knocked down to bring in a new press. Instead of spending the few hundred dollars to put a garage gate up, he left the hole covered with cheap plywood - until someone got the idea to saw through it and make off with half the equipment. Not to mention that, prior to that, various pieces of equipment (such as the image setter, which converted digital print jobs to film negatives) had started to fail and he had left the company without any funds to make the necessary repairs.
This very same thing happens over and over and over again. It's what happened to Hostess, AIG, EA and so many other companies across the spectrum. So you don't get to "live high on the hog" as we say then complain that a company isn't making money. If a company you're in charge of isn't making money,
it's your fault and
you should be the one to take a pay cut.
Poguesy said:
Let me also add I do feel for what it must have been like for the miners. I admit they were left in an industrial wasteland.
Well yeah. That's what they wanted. Keep them in line by cutting their pay, enacting regressive tax policies, and forcing them to live in squalor and the balance will remain in the favor of the corporations. This is rightist economics 101.
Just because conservatives talk about money and economics all the time that doesn't mean they're any good at it. Thatcher doubled the unemployment rate and created numerous deficits. She also effectively destroyed the export economy of the UK.
Poguesy said:
I would say more intelligent than Reagan but they got on rather well and shared many values.
I would hope so. Reagan was quoted as saying that trees are responsible for more pollution than cars. What an idiot.
