Reply to: The Beeb and VAT

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Essentially there was a tax levied on the difference between pre-war profit and war-time profit of 100% which combined with accountancy changes made it effectively way more than 100%, and bankrupted the companies. In 1949 Clement Attlee's Labour government set up the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain. There was massive confusion about what companies were defined as companies to be nationalised and which weren't, thereby preventing most from raising finance to retool for many years, and driving what money that was looking to invest to competitor economies.

Thanks for this - I wasn't aware of it.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

What an astonishing spin on the miners dispute. Arthur Scargill couldnt have interpreted his position any better himself.The miners had been holding the country to ransom before Thatcher came along and the country decided to vote for someone who could remove the reliance on coal for power, or remove the power of the Unions.

Which is pretty much what I said - did you read any of it?

Coal was cheaper to buy from somewhere else, was uneconomical and therefore the mining Industry went out of business.

As for the short term "if I can get it cheaper elsewhere, shut ours down" this is a little simplistic in connection with energy although I understood why she did it - and I'm the one being accused of being a redneck.

Scargill's agenda had nothing to do with the welfare of the miners. He wanted to exploit his power and the miners to bring down Thatcher. It was the same with the print unions and it was the same with the unions who ran British Leyland. To use a throw away line as "agenda was to smash the whole industry" is quite ridiculous, and to suggest that ".

I agree with you about Scargill in large part - I wasn't defending him - he was an idiot. Where he went wrong was hijacking a trade dispute for politics, playing politics with someone who was much better at it (Maggie), and not realising that just stating the obvious that Maggie wanted to shut down the coal industry wasn't enough to win sympathy with people who didn't care about it.

I will just give you an example of how your redneck mind works: You said "As a result she decided not to settle the dispute despite several opportunities" .

What do we assume from that? is that it she was patently out of order? Why are you not bright enough to simply ask the question? "on what terms?". Surely this is a fundamental question that anyone would ask.

You can assume what you like from my stating Thatcher had opportunities to settle - I was merely drawing attention to it. In my opinion she declined to do so in order to assert her authority and to push through her plan to shut the coal industry. I didn't offer an opinion on whether this was right or wrong

I despair with people like you that you can turn on someone who dismantled the evil system ...

I despair of people like you who can't accept anyone's right to a different view of history they lived through. I didn't "turn on" Thatcher - I never liked her in the first place and nothing in the intervening years has persuaded me she had much virtue (although she wasn't all bad). Certainly the attitude of her fervent supporters doesn't do anything to improve my view of her or them, often being characterised (as in your case) by a festival of name-calling rather than any attempt at proper discourse.

that was impoverishing people through sheer guts and determination, the effect of which being to enrich especially people like you.

There you go again "people like you" - you need to characterise me in a particular way in order for all the pieces to fit in your world view, but in point of fact you have no way of knowing (and nor for that matter has anyone) whether such personal wealth as I have has anything to do with Thatcher.

Your dogmatic one eyed stance on her suggests only that it is either "cool" in your social circle to "hate" Thatcher (middle class guilt) or that you are truly a Taleban[sic] mysoginist[sic].

Only to someone whose one-eyed dogmatic love for Thatcher refuses to accept anyone else's opinions as valid, if disagreable.

[DodgyAgent]

Ah, not the newspaper that will get Labour elected again?

This one

[expat]

I didnt call either of you hypocrites, just every other name under the sun.
And just in case you dont know which sun it is, it is the one that shines out of my arse

Ah, not the newspaper that will get Labour elected again?

[DodgyAgent]

Hmm I see what you mean

I didnt call either of you hypocrites, just every other name under the sun.
And just in case you dont know which sun it is, it is the one that shines out of my arse

[expat]

Watch it, Dodgy will be along to call you a hypocrite in a moment.

Hmm I see what you mean

[DodgyAgent]

She was spoiling for a fight with the unions. The miners were the elite so they volunteered. She won.

I'm not in favour of how the unions behaved in the 1970s, but the way the miners, and their communities, were smashed has left scars that will take generations to heal. And I don't mean by that just that some people are sour at losing.

But Thatcher was like that. The GLC and the Metropolitan Counties had an annoying habit of being elected Labour, and disagreeing with her, so she abolished them. A layer of democratic government eliminated for daring to oppose The Leader.

She was stuck on a train to Birmingham once for 3 hours without announcements or apologies: she never travelled by train again, and broke up the railways.

Spite: cross her and get destroyed. Nothing to do with government, just power.

What do you mean that you were not in favour of how the Unions behaved? what a pathetic view. The Unions were a fundamental part of a huge series of monopolies that were impoverishing the people of Britain and leading us inexorably towards a totalitarian regime.
These people controlled the media, the power Industry, transport and manufacturing. Your comment is like saying oh well Hitler only killed a few million so what?
Just like PB you use glib one liners to sum up the entire dynamics of what was happening to Britain. When you say that she travelled on a train was late and then closed it down is the most utterly stupid simplistic attempt at analysis. The railways happened to be costly and inefficient and she didnt close them down did she?
Thatcher was voted in on the back of a very clear agenda, she was not voted in and then suddenly decided to pursue personal vendettas.

[DodgyAgent]

She figured out that Scargill would seek to make a political point out of a trade dispute - as had happened in the past. She judged that people were tired of this and regarded as anti-democratic (which it was of course) and that she'd been given a mandate to stop it. As a result she decided not to settle the dispute despite several opportunities. She felt she had to smash the whole industry to to show that the country and government wouldn't be held to ransom in this way again. Ironically, Scargill was right when he claimed the agenda was to smash the whole industry, he just wasn't bright enough to see that Thatcher was bound to win.

If the two of them hadn't been on a political battlegound, we might still have a coal industry (although it'd no doubt be much smaller), but even I don't blame Thatcher for that (and I hate her) - she was only doing what she thought was right.

What an astonishing spin on the miners dispute. Arthur Scargill couldnt have interpreted his position any better himself.The miners had been holding the country to ransom before Thatcher came along and the country decided to vote for someone who could remove the reliance on coal for power, or remove the power of the Unions. Coal was cheaper to buy from somewhere else, was uneconomical and therefore the mining Industry went out of business.

Scargill's agenda had nothing to do with the welfare of the miners. He wanted to exploit his power and the miners to bring down Thatcher. It was the same with the print unions and it was the same with the unions who ran British Leyland. To use a throw away line as "agenda was to smash the whole industry" is quite ridiculous, and to suggest that ".

I will just give you an example of how your redneck mind works: You said "As a result she decided not to settle the dispute despite several opportunities" .

What do we assume from that? is that it she was patently out of order? Why are you not bright enough to simply ask the question? "on what terms?". Surely this is a fundamental question that anyone would ask.

I despair with people like you that you can turn on someone who dismantled the evil system that was impoverishing people through sheer guts and determination, the effect of which being to enrich especially people like you.

Your dogmatic one eyed stance on her suggests only that it is either "cool" in your social circle to "hate" Thatcher (middle class guilt) or that you are truly a Taleban mysoginist.

[Purple Dalek]

Not doubting your word (really I'm not) - can you elaborate on these taxes - I am genuinely interested in the history of this and I haven't heard it cited as a cause before.

Essentially there was a tax levied on the difference between pre-war profit and war-time profit of 100% which combined with accountancy changes made it effectively way more than 100%, and bankrupted the companies. In 1949 Clement Attlee's Labour government set up the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain. There was massive confusion about what companies were defined as companies to be nationalised and which weren't, thereby preventing most from raising finance to retool for many years, and driving what money that was looking to invest to competitor economies.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

She was spoiling for a fight with the unions. The miners were the elite so they volunteered. She won.

I'm not in favour of how the unions behaved in the 1970s, but the way the miners, and their communities, were smashed has left scars that will take generations to heal. And I don't mean by that just that some people are sour at losing.

But Thatcher was like that. The GLC and the Metropolitan Counties had an annoying habit of being elected Labour, and disagreeing with her, so she abolished them. A layer of democratic government eliminated for daring to oppose The Leader.

She was stuck on a train to Birmingham once for 3 hours without announcements or apologies: she never travelled by train again, and broke up the railways.

Spite: cross her and get destroyed. Nothing to do with government, just power.

Watch it, Dodgy will be along to call you a hypocrite in a moment.

[expat]

Why did Maggie close down coal mining anyway? did she believe that the North Sea gas would last forever? Whilst there will be coal for centuries to come and they've developed the technology to burn it very cleanly...and store the CO2 in a safe place.

She was spoiling for a fight with the unions. The miners were the elite so they volunteered. She won.

I'm not in favour of how the unions behaved in the 1970s, but the way the miners, and their communities, were smashed has left scars that will take generations to heal. And I don't mean by that just that some people are sour at losing.

But Thatcher was like that. The GLC and the Metropolitan Counties had an annoying habit of being elected Labour, and disagreeing with her, so she abolished them. A layer of democratic government eliminated for daring to oppose The Leader.

She was stuck on a train to Birmingham once for 3 hours without announcements or apologies: she never travelled by train again, and broke up the railways.

Spite: cross her and get destroyed. Nothing to do with government, just power.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Why did Maggie close down coal mining anyway? did she believe that the North Sea gas would last forever? Whilst there will be coal for centuries to come and they've developed the technology to burn it very cleanly...and store the CO2 in a safe place.

She figured out that Scargill would seek to make a political point out of a trade dispute - as had happened in the past. She judged that people were tired of this and regarded as anti-democratic (which it was of course) and that she'd been given a mandate to stop it. As a result she decided not to settle the dispute despite several opportunities. She felt she had to smash the whole industry to to show that the country and government wouldn't be held to ransom in this way again. Ironically, Scargill was right when he claimed the agenda was to smash the whole industry, he just wasn't bright enough to see that Thatcher was bound to win.

If the two of them hadn't been on a political battlegound, we might still have a coal industry (although it'd no doubt be much smaller), but even I don't blame Thatcher for that (and I hate her) - she was only doing what she thought was right.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

One must remember that historically it has been the labour party that has destroyed UK industry by preventing retooling etc. with punitive taxes when they were about to do so. Just look at ship-building, steel works, mining all major industries ham-strung. Think more recently with the Pensions Grab. Now that Old-Labour is back do you really think they will do anything different to what they've achieved previously?

Not doubting your word (really I'm not) - can you elaborate on these taxes - I am genuinely interested in the history of this and I haven't heard it cited as a cause before.

[TimberWolf]

Why did Maggie close down coal mining anyway? did she believe that the North Sea gas would last forever? Whilst there will be coal for centuries to come and they've developed the technology to burn it very cleanly...and store the CO2 in a safe place.

I don't think any of that is true. We have relatively little coal left and our mining industry has been declining since it peaked sometime around 1910. We once had vast amounts of coal and this gave us our empire, but what little is left now is harder and more costly to get at. I wish we'd extract our remaining oil sustainably too.

[lilelvis2000]

I agree it wasn't Maggie that spontaneously decided to scrap any of these industries, all were already doomed (as I said above). My point is that it wasn't Labour taxes that killed them either.

Why did Maggie close down coal mining anyway? did she believe that the North Sea gas would last forever? Whilst there will be coal for centuries to come and they've developed the technology to burn it very cleanly...and store the CO2 in a safe place.