Is it time we gave the miners thing a rest?

[esme]

the miners dug through solid rock to open the mines in the first place so they could certainly dig through concrete, or separate shafts could be sunk

 

if we really needed them we could re open them

 

the only point of no return is how expensive it would be

[rubydazzler]

I agree with the op, the past is past and people should put it behind them and get on with shaping the future, or even the present, if they can't manage the leap of imagination necessary to envisage the future.

 

This constant harping on what happened with the miners is getting old and boring. It happened, life changed for many, stop harping on it and live the life you have now, not the one that your grandfather had!

 

What parent would really want a life burrowing about in the dirt and darkness and constant danger for their children?

[artisan]

I agree with the op, the past is past and people should put it behind them and get on with shaping the future, or even the present, if they can't manage the leap of imagination necessary to envisage the future.

 

This constant harping on what happened with the miners is getting old and boring. It happened, life changed for many, stop harping on it and live the life you have now, not the one that your grandfather had!

 

What parent would really want a life burrowing about in the dirt and darkness and constant danger for their children?

 

Your final line is not the point.

The point is, her activities can never be forgotten, as we see the results of them daily.

We have the leaders and the led.

You are one of lifes leaders, as we know from your various successes.

But the vast majority of our fellow men have to led.

The dole queue does not offer leadership.

For those people, work, and the comradeship that went with it was their life.

 

When she took that away from them she killed them as effectively as if the had put a bullet through thier collective skulls.

 

I work with many men who redeployed from the Pits, but they are the cream of the crop.

The vast majority had no hope.

A horny handed son of toil, cannot become a checkout assisstant, or call centre worker.

[Guest]

Not all Tories use the wording "loony left" I have a question....on the understanding of the points you have made....who would you vote for today?

 

Honest answer to a straightforward question - I'm damned if I know.

 

Never a Tory unless they prove me wrong and turn out to have the interests of the working class at heart.

 

Certainly not Labour because of the points I quoted.

 

Certainly not the Lib Dems who've broken almost every promise in their manifesto.

 

I'm afraid it may take me more than the allotted 5 years to think this one through.

[hitch_1980]

Honest answer to a straightforward question - I'm damned if I know.

 

Never a Tory unless they prove me wrong and turn out to have the interests of the working class at heart.

 

Certainly not Labour because of the points I quoted.

 

Certainly not the Lib Dems who've broken almost every promise in their manifesto.

 

I'm afraid it may take me more than the allotted 5 years to think this one through.

 

That is the problem with sheffield as a whole. The tories are a bad word around these parts (im not from these parts). You are left with the liberals and labour. Both have activists on here....labour more than liberal. Both would have attacked the tories ....now its just labour. And sheffield is a target because of all that.

 

It may take people a few years to work out who to go for. Labour maybe on the cusp of a great rise....or a deep fall. The liberals are going no where.

 

Add to all that the way people react to politicians as a whole.

[artisan]

the miners dug through solid rock to open the mines in the first place so they could certainly dig through concrete, or separate shafts could be sunk

 

if we really needed them we could re open them

 

the only point of no return is how expensive it would be

 

Where are we to get the blast furnaces and the steel works, and engineering firms from?

These were demolished in order to built Meadowhall, in order to create her 'service economy'.

 

The woman is a lunatic, she wanted to turn England into another Switzerland, dealing in pure capitalism.

 

She is is a typical wartime grocers daughter.

She saw people debasing themselves before her father to get a few bits more off the ration, that she lost all respect for the people of this country.

 

And many loved her for grinding their faces in the muck, that she, and she alone had created.

[Guest]

I agree with the op, the past is past and people should put it behind them and get on with shaping the future, or even the present, if they can't manage the leap of imagination necessary to envisage the future.

 

This constant harping on what happened with the miners is getting old and boring. It happened, life changed for many, stop harping on it and live the life you have now, not the one that your grandfather had!

 

What parent would really want a life burrowing about in the dirt and darkness and constant danger for their children?

 

Certainly not ideal but better than the unemployment queue for those with pride. Our grandfathers lived with pride too.

 

You choose to forget it and we'll choose to remember - like the inevitability of the Con-Dems cuts you'll have to learn to live with it.

[rubydazzler]

Your final line is not the point.

The point is, her activities can never be forgotten, as we see the results of them daily.

A horny handed son of toil, cannot become a checkout assisstant, or call centre worker.

I've forgotten them. We have to move on in life. You can't spend your life repining for what once was. I'm sure it was lovely to be a part of it, the brass bands and the parades with banners and earn loads a money, but we didn't all have that privilege and we don't have parades anymore anywhere. I still miss the Whit Walks and Sings but I wouldn't waste time trying to bring them back.

 

An average human being can do anything they turn their mind and hands to, within reason. I firmly believe that. It was sad that their way of life was ended but lots of communities and ways of life have been ended in the last hundred or so years. It's called progress. It's happened to many trades over the centuries. And I'm pretty sure that if miners were holding us all to ransom now, you and others would be ranting about being froz to death and not being able to get on line and how dare they, along with the rest of us.

[artisan]

I've forgotten them. We have to move on in life. You can't spend your life repining for what once was. I'm sure it was lovely to be a part of it, the brass bands and the parades with banners and earn loads a money, but we didn't all have that privilege and we don't have parades anymore anywhere. I still miss the Whit Walks and Sings but I wouldn't waste time trying to bring them back.

 

An average human being can do anything they turn their mind and hands to, within reason. I firmly believe that. It was sad that their way of life was ended but lots of communities and ways of life have been ended in the last hundred or so years. It's called progress. It's happened to many trades over the centuries. And I'm pretty sure that if miners were holding us all to ransom now, you and others would be ranting about being froz to death and not being able to get on line and how dare they, along with the rest of us.

 

That is the very point ruby, the miners wernt holding us to ransom.

They were begging to be allowed to continue to work, and win energy, in the form of coal.

It was Thatcher who was the killer.

Engineering, steel making, mining, ship building.

Anywhere that working men were powerful, she destroyed, until all we left with are bloated incompetent bankers, living high on the hog of our hard earned taxes, and a few check out people and call centre workers.

 

When men such as myself retire in a couple of years, the last of the true engineers will have gone also.

 

She got her way, but at what a price.

[rubydazzler]

Certainly not ideal but better than the unemployment queue for those with pride. Our grandfathers lived with pride too.

You choose to forget it and we'll choose to remember - like the inevitability of the Con-Dems cuts you'll have to learn to live with it.

Well, mine certainly did, I do know that and I like to think I've followed in their footsteps.

 

You're limiting yourself by constantly dwelling on things that happened years ago. Bitterness is like a corrosive or a debilitating illness. It grinds you down eventually. There have been cuts before and there will be again and resourceful people get through them. I've been around a long time and I've lived through booms and bust and high interest rates, strikes, winters of discontent and the rest, and I've scraped through. Sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but I managed it somehow.

 

Sitting around bemoaning your lot and trying to blame a single person for it, year in, year out. What does it gain you? If I had to choose between Thatcher and Blair/Brown, I'd choose her everytime. At least she had the courage of her convictions and wasn't a twofaced charlatan, liar and incompetent buffoon.