The Tory ministers of the 80's should be put on trial for the Ridley plan.

[sccsux]

but as I think your post alludes less easy to do when dealing with fools.

 

Mine was deliberate and was with tongue firmly in cheek (after all, it's only a load of nibbles, bits and bytes stored on a few hard disks).

[Lucifer]

I will agree with you on that Boblet, most are career politicians coming out of a politician sausage factory. Personally I'd love to see more real people with real life experience from previous jobs, like doctors, nurses, cops, firemen, dentists, IT workers, lawyers, farmers, vets, academics, scientists, business people & entrepeneurs, engineers, builders and trades people. Wouldn't it be great if our parliament more closely reflected it's citizens and could relate to them better.

 

You have not included the lower level of non qualified people, those who did not want to be educated, didn't want to work or whatever, are you limiting to less than the whole community.

[Wildcat]

Mine was deliberate and was with tongue firmly in cheek (after all, it's only a load of nibbles, bits and bytes stored on a few hard disks).

 

It must be lunchtime because my initial thought on reading that was that it sounded tasty.

[Conrod]

Did the majority of members express their will for union funds to pay the mortgage on that lovely big house Scargill had on Cortworth Road?

I can't see the relevance of the question.

 

But, the answer to that is yes. Even if the AGM did not make the decision directly, they would have had the right under the democratising changes Scargill introduced to change the agreement through a motion to their AGM. That is the way democracy works.

Is it? I didn't know that.

 

Mmm, except that he was fiddling those mortgage payments, at the expense of union subs from out of work miners who couldn't feed their families.

Still, he was in a nice pad in S11 rubbing shoulders with the bourgeois he trained his minons to despise, so he was ok.

 

I believe Bob Crowe gets his house at a peppercorn rent as well - those uniuon members are so generous with their subs aren't they?

 

 

Socialism

[Mr Prime]

Is it? I didn't know that.

 

Mmm, except that he was fiddling those mortgage payments, at the expense of union subs from out of work miners who couldn't feed their families.

Still, he was in a nice pad in S11 rubbing shoulders with the bourgeois he trained his minons to despise, so he was ok.

 

I believe Bob Crowe gets his house at a peppercorn rent as well - those uniuon members are so generous with their subs aren't they?

 

 

Socialism

 

Are you talking about the 'Treelands' house? An obvious own goal and controversial but no one until now has accused him of fiddling union funds to buy it. You may note that the unions funds were under the control of the government until late 86/early 87. He borrowed money to buy it from the IMO which he paid back with interest. That is all covered in excrutiating detail in the many books and there was no fiddle. I don't know about any S11 house but of all the muck thrown at Scargill no one has said he was a corrupt embezzler.

 

You also misunderstand the psychology of unions, most members asked seem to think their leaders should have a large house and good salary. If not there would be repeated motions at union conferences calling for their abolition.

[Mr Prime]

@ wildcat.

Scargill was clear in his intention to remove the democratically elected government of the day. I don't believe that much is in dispute.

 

Scargill was a dedicated Marxist who was clear he wanted such a government in the UK

His setting up of a Marxist party clarifies that. Again not in dispute.

 

He was using the miners to rid the UK of capitalism in the hope of getting an ultra left run Labour party. That was his stepping stone to a Marxist government.

 

He made no secret of his wish to get rid of the government and to take the Labour party as far left as possible. Given those two things, its not a wild step to suggest he would go the last mile.

After all, he had a track record for ignoring democracy.

 

Right, so we are getting somewhere. The voting in of a left wing labour government after the tories have been humiliated and then brought down in a general election is far removed from turning the UK into a communist state.

 

I think his record when studied up close shows a healthy respect for democracy. The best example being the 3 national ballots in the years before the strike asking the membership if they wanted a national strike. Each result was a majority against and so there was no strike. If he had been a meglomaniac he would have ignored those results and simply ordered everyone out. In contrast he told wildcat strikers in 81 to get back to work much to the disgust of the left in the union and the nation! You must remember that?

 

As Wildcat pointed out Gormley ignored democracy e.g. incentive payments as did the majority of Notts miners who just went ahead with them regardless of what some pesky national ballot said.

[xenia]

I am a former member of the NUM and until 1984 was a loyal member as was my father and grandfather before me.

 

The first time I realised how corrupt the NUM was, was when I witnessed union officials burn down the NUM office at manvers containing the expenses books they had fiddled to line their own pockets at the expense of the flying pickets.

 

Scargill turned out to be a traitor, to his class and to his country.

 

Thatcher saved the country from a bunch of traitors who would have turned this country into North Korea.

 

GOD BLESS MAGGIE

[Mr Prime]

I am a former member of the NUM and until 1984 was a loyal member as was my father and grandfather before me.

 

The first time I realised how corrupt the NUM was, was when I witnessed union officials burn down the NUM office at manvers containing the expenses books they had fiddled to line their own pockets at the expense of the flying pickets.

 

Scargill turned out to be a traitor, to his class and to his country.

 

Thatcher saved the country from a bunch of traitors who would have turned this country into North Korea.

 

GOD BLESS MAGGIE

 

If you are genuine and your tall tale is true all it proves is some officials were corrupt out of an organisation of 180,000 men. Is there any organisation of that size anywhere in the world that does not have some level of corruption in it?

 

I don't see how a man accused of trying to put a working class organisation at the top of society could be a traitor to that class.

 

This country belongs to a small elite of rich and powerful people. The rest of us get a few crosses in boxes as our lifetime's contribution to it's running so it was never his country or ours in the first place.

[Tony]

They are reopening some now, there is a clean coal power station being built for Hatfield for example last I heard.

There is no such thing as clean coal regardless of how much some people try to convince us otherwise.

 

Burn hydrocarbons, catalyse them, invent some as yet unknown carbon capture method, whatever, you are still creating exactly the same stuff that came out of chimneys in smog ridden 18th century Sheffield.

 

Coal is yesterdays news from an environmental point of view.

[Guest sibon]

 

Coal is yesterdays news from an environmental point of view.

 

I agree there. Rather perversely, that might just turn out to be the saviour of the coal industry.

 

We've got hundreds of years of the stuff beneath our feet and an economy that is almost totally dependant upon hydrocarbons.