to think that surely not EVERYONE hates Maggie?

[LadyOfTheManor]

Seriously, unless you're a miner or from a mining family, or Welsh... ok well even if you are, surely not EVERYONE hates Maggie T?

I'm a tad young, I was born in her "reign", but I did my degree in Politics and although I didn't really live under her (it was Major until I was 11) I couldn't see what she did that was SO terrible-let alone the sheer hostility when her name is mentioned here (in Wales!).

Heh, I was trying to summarise what happened - NOT recommending a(nother) re-run! I have a feeling you can explain it better, Alouise.

Love that video.

Kangaroo - we still have ice on the insides of our windows in winter! Is that a sign of poverty? I thought it was part and parcel of not having double glazing!

As for broadening my social network, are you suggesting I go out looking for Thatcherites to hang out with, Zero? I think I'd rather eat my own liver.

Portofino. I agree, we have used housing stock as an index of prosperity, this was given a massive boost by council house tenants taking advantage of the ensuing boom. This is excacerbated by the supply issue in Britain, we are an overcrowded country because of our seemingly generous house and benefit system.

! guess you just cant have everything.

If you have to use the name Margaret I prefer the nn Pearl.

HTH

Kangaroo I had ice on the inside of my windows not so long ago, like 3 weeks!

Its probably more to do with the thickness of my window blinds, my husband says they could double as yoga mats, insulation is terribly green.

as an aside. I wonder what the esteemed Lady T would make of the environmental "crisis"?

QueenofTheNight - the UK does not buy expensive foreign coal. It buys cheap foreign coal which is far cheaper than digging it from underground in tiny seams in perenially flooding UK coal fields.

There are still a few underground mines in the UK but they have many geological problems and will eventually shut once they cant compete with the price of foreign imported coal. No one in Govt will force them to close, their owners will just shut them once the cost of extraction makes them uneconomic.

The coalfields shut under Thatcher were just uneconomic. Pure and simple. Very sad for those put out of work but the UK could not afford to keep paying miners to dig coal that was far more expensive than imported coal.

World coal prices are quite high at the moment but when they fall, I suspect all UK deep mines will quickly close.

Loopy it can be surprisingly interesting, hanging out with people's whose opinions on politics aren't identical to your own. One of the things I like about my work is that my colleague range from extreme left to extreme right and everything in between

One of my best friends is a raging Tory. We try and avoid talking politics though! It gets a bit icy...

Anyway, Loopy...fancy lunch one day??? i only know Tories and i could do with broadening my horizons. I am terribly common too, so dont get carried away!

Are you coming on to me Alouise?

Dh's family were miners through and through. My father is a Tory despite being bessie mates with Dave Milliband, and my uncles were policemen in the miners' strike, although come from mining stock themselves...can you imagine the family get-togethers?

Loupy & Alouiseq, my father used to say the ice on the inside of the windows was good for our health, all that fresh air circulating, although the fact is we could only afford to heat the living room and took it in turns to have the Calor Gas Fire in the bedrooms. Maybe that was just the 70s though and not, as I remember, an indication of our lack of wealth!

Ooh I love it when she does this. She normally posts in succinct single sentences but get her on her specialist subject and she's unstoppable.

Alouiseg for PM

All this leftie talk of 'community' and 'compassion' and 'helping one another' is laughable.

True community and compassion is demonstrated by doing something for someone else from your own free will (i.e. by giving to charity, doing voluntary work etc), not by having your 'help' extracted from you by force, in the way that Govt takes our taxes and spends it on its latest pet project.

Lefties - seeking to spend other people's money on your favourite cause is not the same as caring.

'The coalfields shut under Thatcher were just uneconomic. Pure and simple'
really? who told you that? There is very little evidence of that that I have ever been able to discover. We
The mines were closed often had abundant coal reserves.

BeenBeta, as far as I understood (NCB family) the problem with the coalfields was that Thatcher refused to subsidise it to the same extent the govt did other energy industries (partly on political grounds & to break the unions).

There's still fair amount of coal there, from what I've been told - but the infrastructure has been so neglected it certainly is uneconomic to get it out now - they'd essentially have to rebuild the mines to do so.

Wow Fellatio, after the homes pics threads I just looked at your profile, and, do you live in Homes and Gardens magazine? I knew it would be lovely (poncetastic Xmas) but my word I'm jealous! Please tell me you have a fleet of cleaners and your children and dogs live in the shed?

Yep I grew up in the 60'/70's and we had a coal fire in the living room, giving way to a gas fire later, this was the only heating in a three story 6 bedroomed house. My bedroom windows used to ice up on the inside, but weren't hot water bottles and brushed cotton sheets lovely? We weren't even poor and my mum was a staunch Tory!

Evening Fellatio! Ive caned the Gavi and am onto my specialist (if unpopular) subject.. Also dh is out and i have free reign on the mac and my typing skills are creeping up on me as if it were yesterday.

The coal mines had to be subsidised by the Government as they were uncompetitive and would probably got more so as the years get on. The Government cannot continue to subsidise interests that do not provide a vital service to the country its backward thinking and damaging to the economy.

Yes, the mines were closed down and NOW it is uneconomic to mine them.
It was utter economic madness, otoh, to decimate whole communities and leave them reliant on state support by closing the mines down. You might say it SHOULDN'T have happened, they should all have retrained as, er, IT specialists or something and moved to Guildford but that isn't what happened and it was totally predictable and indeed predicted.
The economic and human cost in terms of health, opportunity etc is huge and will continue, and it wasn't put into the equation at the time for idealogical reasons.
Similarly, the cost/risk of our increased dependence on foreign energy sources, especially from less than stable countries, should also have been part of the consideration imo.

A little fable my DH came home with this week:

A couple have a dinner party and their very intelligent young daughter comes to the table. A guest says 'So young lady, what would you like to do when you are older?' 'Be a politican' she replies, 'I'd like to be Labour Prime Minister one day.'

The guest says 'What would you like to acheive?' and she says 'I believe in socialist society and I want to help the poor and the homeless.'

So the guest says 'Why wait until you are older to do that? You could spend this weekend working in the garden, sweeping leaves and weeding for your father. He could pay you £25, but as you are already have enough pocket money to manage on, you could take that money done to the local homelss shelter and give it to a poor man.'

The girl thought for a moment about how hard she'd worked at school that week, and how she really wanted to spent the weekend going out with friends and having fun, so she said and said 'Well, I could do that I suppose, but wouldn't it make more sense to offer to bring the poor man here? He needs a job. He can sweep the leaves and weed the garden for my father, and earn the £25 for himself.'

'Then my dear, you are not a socialist at all - but a Conservative' said the guest.

Thats the thing about Mrs T'S tories, we were not wealthy, or well educated. We were the aspirational class, not content with first generation wealth creation or education, we had to make our own way. That is why i see it as so very different to Dave and his band of merry plutocrats.

I cannot abide toadyism or cronyism but the opportunites that were available under Thatchers tories were unique and life changing.

I really wish my children could experience the entrepreneurial feeling that was around in the 80's and 90's. Pinning all our hopes on 60% of the poulation having a university education and reaping those perceived rewards is short sighted and verging on duplicitous.

Fab fable fellatio ;-)

'The coal mines had to be subsidised by the Government as they were uncompetitive and would probably got more so as the years get on'

Where is the evidence for this statement? Uncompetitive with who? With which countries? Over what time scale?
What about the costs of closing the mines - how was that taken into account?

'The Government cannot continue to subsidise interests that do not provide a vital service to the country its backward thinking and damaging to the economy.'
What about the massive bail out of the banks? Why was it appropriate to sink massive amounts of money into that, but not appropriate to help the mining communities.
Damage was done to cities, towns and villages. Is wasn't fixed and continues. What about that damage?

It wasn't econnomic then to mine coal and it certain wouldn't be now. The issue of energy security is seperate to colemining IMO.