Originally Posted by ALi-B

And what of the Union leader's Karma? Have you seen how these leaders of the 70/80's now live, like Scargils £60K pension, which is in contrast to the people they campainged for?

When you ply deeper into the leaders of various unions past and present including the idaelistic communist/left wing militants in the NUM and now look at how they live(d) now, its nothing short of hypocrisy.

An insight into Lord Gormley's reign at the NUM is a very interesting one. But even he as such a morally integral person (unlike Scargil which he resented), he didn't die a pauper (although he was born one), making fair use of the Union's mansions and being driven round in Jaguars, all paid for by the union members, which not to forget were operated on closed-shop principals. (something Tebbit quite rightly outlawed).

Originally Posted by mrmadcap

What a w4nker, I wasn't bragging just stating fact.. Scargill was the worlds prize tosser and there were many that suffered from his actions.

Originally Posted by mrmadcap

Wasn't referring to the Union leaders, i was referring to the working man that was shafted and suffered the injustice, hell, i voted for Thatcher in 79 and every election thereafter, anything to keep Labour OUT. But that doesn't mean i don't recognise an injust situation when I witness one.

Originally Posted by AndyBaker

Have you asked yourself why the working man suffered? Most that suffered whilst King Arthur was on his crusade just blindly followed out of some misplaced loyalty when he asked them to go out on strike in a heat wave and with record levels of coal at the pit head. My girlfriend at the time had a Notts miner as a dad and you can imagine what those encounters were like when he found out my old man was a copper on the same picket line. It was all so sad because he was convinced Arthur would save them and teach Maggie a lesson.

Originally Posted by mrmadcap

Originally Posted by alcazar

Easier said than done, unfortunately Les.

Once you close a mine, it becomes extremely uneconomic to re-open it. I'm sure I've read somewhere that it would need the worth of the coal to be FIVE TIMES what it was in order to make it economically viable to reopen it, and even then, some will NEVER reopen as it's just too dangerous with present extraction techniques

We HAD coal to last 300 years.. much of it wasted by Maggie for ideology

Originally Posted by Leslie

You are right of course,it is very expensive to start a mine up again. I worry however that we may find ourselves in the situation where we have no other choice and expense will not be the significant factor.

Les

Originally Posted by supa

It's prob been said before. But if we take those who don't want to work and on benefits to work in the mines. Then providing they work in the mines they get to keep their benefits. The mines will be up and running and the cost of doing so has been absorbed by the benefits system.

Originally Posted by alcazar

The figures I had were from a book I studied from in the mid 70's.

Basically, they were saying that at that time, if it cost £1 to get a tonne of coal out of the ground, it would cost £2.50 if the mine had to be mothballed and then de-mothballed, and FIVE TIMES that to re-open a closed mine, which, they stated, would, in 90% of the cases be too dangerous to attempt, (Obviously with 1970's technology etc).
Which just might mean that Maggie WASTED our 300 years coal supplies for an ideological point...