The day that Thatcher died

( and the association of cycling with failure)

Oh yeah - its in here somewhere ...http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/the-best-quotes-from-margaret-thatchers-statecraft-2/

I'm struggling a bit in terms of memory here- I think at the time it was cheap (east?) German coal imports that were the issue.

i.e. the UK coal mining industry was economical, until you introduced the cheap imports.

That might be bollocks though.

Let's not forget her deliberate distortion of the pound and interest rates to make industry unviable. That helps. But Van Uden surely knows this, or else he wouldn't be such a flippant troll, would he?

the hours Ive been watching of the Beeb pre-recorded version of her epitaph has nearly come to an end.
some of you will know this strand of appreciation made earlier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jY5fYjV-U

So I just posted a link about how one of the few remaining UK coal companies is asking for money from the Government, but maybe nobody clicked it..?

Here's another article, if you can't be arsed to read the article the headline is quite clear:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9916274/UK-Coal-closes-Daw-Mill-as-the-industry-goes-up-in-flames.html

There's no debate here, the UK coal industry is economically unworkable. These are private companies, trying to make money, but failing.

Let's move on. Let's remember the sinking of a big boat in a cold ocean. And the hypocrisy of berating the french for selling weapons.

^^Fox, no one is arguing that it's economical now, but that it might be in future.

^ And the death squads in Chile.

Supporting Chile to allow refueling bases in South America.

Ken Loach's new film (The Spirit of '45) is well worth a watch, it addresses many of the issues in this thread.

@Dammit - it's possible, I suppose.

Worth considering that deaths per TWH (TerraWatt Hour) for coal (worldwide average) is 100, nuclear (for example) is 0.04. Frankly the day the world stops mining coal will be a good one as far as I'm concerned.

I guess if someone found an economical way to turn coal into diamonds ;)

OK, somebody correct me here - please. I'm punting a guess that if the UK was mineral rich and there was masses of coal here and coal was a really valuable mineral then it would still be being extracted?

If it's not valuable is this simply because of the way in which power is now provided?

If it is valuable and we have loads of it why aren't the mines still open?

Please explain.

Substitute carrot (or something) for coal and farm for mine.

Except farmers tended to vote Tory

Fascinating reading: I’m sure most of the people who have joined the nasty, spiteful, cruel and callous little bandwagon - crudely celebrating the death of an old lady - are not old enough to have experienced the 70s and 80s, and have little knowledge of political history. Britain in the late 70s was a failed Britain - failed ‘Keynesian demand management’ polices - had caused the ‘Social Democratic’ experiment to implode, and the economy to collapse. Any cure would be difficult and require radical change. Many mistakes were made but without doubt the country was brought back from the brink and is in a better position now because of the changes in political direction.
Moreover, some of the comments on this thread tell us less about Margaret Thatcher, but more about the character, or the lack of character of people (anonymous little no marks) who put such offensive comments on a medium where they are theoretically accessible to the friends and family of somebody who has just died. Would Margaret Thatcher have done that! – I think not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbddqXib814

are not old enough

here we go again

No, she'd have probably sent in a load of thugs to trash the place.

Many mistakes were made but without doubt the country was brought back from the brink and is in a better position now because of the changes in political direction.

By what measure?

This will be fun.

the country...is in a better position now

I particularly enjoyed this bit

Well, there's less people in the country. They're all in cities now.

Fewer

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmmomV-ax-s"]Frankie
Boyle on Thatcher's Funeral - YouTube[/ame]

We've got far more celebrities now than in the 70's- that's a mark of a more developed economy.

(I was born too late to remember anything before she came into power, so most of what i know is from later efforts to try to understand what made the world i grew up into.)

It's easy to look back and write the unions off as fools demanding to be paid well for work no longer needed, but that forgets the context. Industrial workers had built their communities around and dedicated their lives to their industries, all the while being pretty effectively exploited by the capitalists in the good times. Once north sea revenues had shifted the exchange rate against our other export industries and all the money had gone they faced being abandoned. I see their demands to keep their jobs as their opening position in negotiations to not get shafted. Thatcher had no intention of negotiating.

Ship building was cool, but I don't want coal mining back - coal power puts more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear, let alone the CO2 issue or the human cost of mining or the damage to the landscape. Not as bad for climate change as fracking - that's about all you can say for it.