To wonder why people care more about dairy farmers than ............

[ChocLover2015]

..coal miners when the pits closed because of cheap foreign coal?
Is it because farmers are more middle clarrsss. Have nice houses send their Dc to private schools and drive new land Rovers?

[Mrsjayy]

What you are talking about is flogging a dead horse tbh Brtain doesn't have heavy industry anymore which is a bloody disgrace,but when industry was failing closing bein putpurced people were being supportive ime. Dairy farmers are going under having to sell milk cheaply granted you will have them stil driving about in their big cars they still have money floating about. I am sure if mumsnet was about in the 80s then threads would be everywhere. I could tell you how bad it got for miners and their families if you like just to prove your point but as I said it was decades ago

[Mrsjayy]

Lack of punctuation in my post sorry

[BaffledSomeMore]

The closure of the mines was a political vendetta. Thatcher wanted to break the unions and subsidised the nuclear industry to assist them. Paying more for British coal wouldn't have saved the industry.
The dairy farmers have had their prices forced down by the big supermarkets and choosing a different source will have an effect.

[Mrsjayy]

Yeah it wasn't about coal steel or cars it was about breaking the unions

[OllyBJolly]

I believe people are just better educated now, more critical of the media, and are more aware of the far reaching effects of the economy. The supermarkets squeeze suppliers, the suppliers go out of business, this reduces available jobs, money isn't coming into the communities, everyone suffers.

I'd like to think this is a mass movement but I suspect very few people will shop around to buy more ethically sourced milk. People will say that when money is tight they can't find the few extra pennies when in reality - just don't buy that bag of donuts and get the free range rather than factory farmed chicken! I've found shopping spend goes down when you're more aware of what you're buying.

I do care that we have lost sight of the importance of manufacturing and production in this country. We poured investment into "service jobs" - nice clean call centre jobs - only to see them disappear to cheaper labour markets within 10 years. Once a manufacturing business goes out of business or relocates abroad, it ain't going to come back. And neither are the quality careers and opportunities for our young people.

As consumers, if we shop more wisely, we can make an impact on this. (Of course we can vote, but the politicians are more or less in the pockets of the corporates and need the donations). Shop local, shop independent, know where and how your purchases were made.

(I did spend many Saturdays collecting for the Miners' family fund)

[ChocLover2015]

'Arf at those posho farmers and their public school educated kids grin. You are being very silly. Farmers in my area live a very hand to mouth existence, often several generations in one property, lots of assets in the form of live stock/land/decrepit vehicles but very little cash. It's a hard life and one that is dying out because it is so hard to make it economically viable......which should give you the slightest inkling that perhaps those still clinging on AREN'T living the high life.'

How am I being silly? I know what I see.Granted I don't know who is paying kids school fees.It might be GPs I suppose.,but I can see what they drive, they tell me about their holidays.
One poster made a point though that money may still be swishing about from better times and that might be true.Also I guess if they own their houses outright that makes a big difference.I would live a very different lifestyle without a mortgage!!

[RandomNPC]

What Olly said.

[ConferencePear]

I was against the closure of the pits because it put us at the mercy of foreign powers for our power supplies.
I am against the loss of our dairy farms because it will put is at the mercy of foreign powers for our milk/cheese/butter supplies.
Simple really.
As far as I can see the rest is trivia.

[Chilicosrenegade]

Op plainly run out of immac...

[Honeydragon]

I'm a British manufacturer and doing well, thanks. Pay living wages to shop floor staff. Pay all our taxes. And do it with jeff all help from the government ..... There's quite a few of us out there.

Although if people keep boycotting UK end users based on media hype, we're all fucked and will have to stick with exporting our goods

[Mrsjayy]

Is your original point due to envy what with the big cars and fancy holdays do people need to be going cap in hand for you to understand their predicament?

[PausingFlatly]

Honeydragon, if you were selling your products into a cartel which stood between you and the vast majority of your end customers, and that cartel was paying you less than the cost of production, then you wouldn't be paying living wages to anyone, and wouldn't be doing well. (It's good to hear you are, btw.)

If your products are non-perishable, have a lead time of less than "years" for every unit, and haven't attracted the interest of cartels, then you're in a completely different position to farmers.

[ilovechristmas1]

oh yes they did

my grandfather was a welsh miner

i can clearly remember a trolley outside our local Sainsburys overflowing with contributions of food for familys that where i dire need,just one example of the effect it had on people

[Honeydragon]

I was objecting to being generalised at, not comparing myself to either Dairy Farmers or Miners. And your point is absolutely correct. Thankfully I'm in a position to say to the cartel, "fuck off, my product is awesome, pay what's is worth, and make a sensible profit, or don't ....other people want it".

The op is throwing random things around to make daft comparisons.

People want to know WHERE they can shop to pay a fair price for their goods. This is surely a good thing?

But how the hell could people do this for coal in the 1980's

I'm bemused as to why the op is critical of the end user.

Doesn't matter if a few Farmers are rich, it's not right buying a product at less than production cost.

[Littlehomebird]

I grew up on a dairy farm. This is nothing new, it's all happened before. I remember dad milking the cows twice a day then pulling the plug in the tank letting the milk go down the drain. This was because it cost him more money to have the milk tanker collect than he would have got paid for the milk. He retired & sold the farm many years ago. However I have limited sympathy for dairy farmers- pre 1983 farmers could produce as much milk as they wanted & be paid for it. Result? A milk lake. Introduction of quotas- whole different ball game. Maybe they had it too good for too long & now find themselves struggling like the majority. Oh & no I didn't go to private school of have a privileged upbringing.its not something I would've wanted to inherit- there are issues which bother me. Eg. To produce milk the cow must bear a calf. Bull calves are a by product if the dairy industry. No thanks.

[maninawomansworld]

I am a farmer (not dairy), but I know a few dairy farmers. Only one is in profit , a couple are on the verge of going under and have been selling off assets / property to bridge the gap.
One has just sold a barn to some rich townie who wants to turn it into a weekend place, obviously you can only sell something once so when all the family silver has gone he'll go under anyway - but at least he's bought himself a few more years.
Another two of my friends are now former dairy farmers. One sold his land and cows. He kept the house and set up as a builder, now he's much richer than he ever was as a farmer! Another turned his land into a clay pigeon shoot.

I am lucky, my family have built up a very diverse portfolio of farming and farming related businesses over the generations so I suppose I am one of the 'rich' farmers but don't be so quick to tar everyone with the same brush. Many farmers do have grand looking houses but once you get inside you'll often find they are pretty much falling down and the family only lives in half a dozen rooms because they can't afford to heat the rest.

One friend of mine has a truly huge place (about 12000 sq ft) but in winter she shuts off over three quarters of the house and lives in the kitchen, study and a couple of rooms above them because she can't afford to run the rest of the house.

Just because someone looks 'rich' on the outside doesn't mean they are.

[TwinkieTwinkle]

Is this thread for real? You can't just randomly pick something that happened in the past and use it for comparison to a current day situation! There need to be similarities at least. Sounds to me like OP has jumped on the Dairy Farmer thread earlier in some bizarre way to vent her anger at the coal mines closing.

[Pastamancer]

OP why do you care more about coal miners than you do about tin miners? It was a major industry down here and there are none left due to it being cheaper to buy tin from abroad. Is it because Cornwall is so far away that we just don't matter?

[Honeydragon]

pastaMancer, stop making reasonable points. We don't have to listen to you furriners

[Pastamancer]

[londonrach]

I was only a child when the coal mines closed and i remember it was a huge huge news story. In fact more than the dairy story.

[londonrach]

Forgot to add i grow up in somerset where theres the odd cow or two and the farmers i knew (played with their children) never had this large land rovers. They tended to have a old car (usually an estate) and then one of those old green landrovers which never left the farm or if it did it was driven between fields.

[SaucyMare]

my next door neighbour (dairy farmer) is def not rolling in it, yes he has a land rover, but he needs that to pull the cow box.

Like every industry there aer the big wealthy people who had enough spare cash to diversify and the small bloke with 100 acres a small herd really struggling.
As my milkman is also a dairy farmer i really doubt he buys his milk from rip off wisemans :)

[CalamitouslyWrong]

There are still some operational coal mines in the UK, OP. Not many but I thought you might like you might like to know.

[StarsOfTrackAndField]

I agree the op is muddled and confused. But there is a wider point. Farmers like to portray themselves as rugged individualists yet are the biggest subsidy junkies going.

Every time there's a crisis in their industry they expect the public to sub them, be it compensation for BSE (suddenly the cattle they'd fed on infected ground down animal entrails) began to be referred to as the national herd and they began noisily demanding compensation to the current moaning about the milk prices which everyone knows are volatile.

If they can't make it pay maybe they shoild stop moaning, take their own medicine, sell the land they own (which will net them a tidy sum) and do something else, just like the miners did, just like the steelworkers did and just like pretty much every heavy industry in Britain. The largely Tory voting farmers aided Thatcher in doing this, showed no solidarity so can't expect any now.