O/T The Price Of Coal 1977 BBC Drama

[millmoormagic]

You’ve certainly said that British mines were the safest in the world and I’m sure that you believe it, but do you have any comparative figures to demonstrate it?

You didn’t directly answer the question I asked about your likely response to the Tories had Thatcher used climate change as a justification for an accelerated mine closure programme in the 90s. I think we both know the answer though. At what point did the science become irrefutable for you?

I mentioned a £50m subsidy to coal customers not to switch to oil in 1980. I also mentioned that as coal became less and less able to cover its costs, NCB annual losses had grown to £875m per year - £2.3m per day – by 1982/83 with only two areas out of twelve showing a profit. The industry was a financial basket case requiring ever more taxpayers money to keep its head afloat and pay wages. As I said earlier, the question was then whether it should continue to be supported as some sort of expensive job creation scheme. I think we both know the answer to that too.

I see no comparison between the decision to end the NCB’s dependence on the tax payer and the decision to partially nationalise certain banks in response to the consequences of the credit crunch. Banking is an everyday requirement of business and individuals and allowing large sections of it to collapse would have created chaos. Without action, we would have been reduced to trade by barter. As I think I have mentioned above, I think that the decisions made by Brown and Darling were correct and timely. The better questions around the position that the banks found themselves in are whether regulators should ever have allowed them to become ‘too big to fail’ and over extended and whether enough action has been taken to avoid a repetition.

I've neither the time or inclination, maybe you could use the rest of your holiday entitlement to search it, eh?

Could you directly point out where i wasn't direct?? maybe you could be more direct in your hypocrisy on this point??

Facts and figures eh, could you tell me the cost to the country as a whole in terms of communities ruined, no purpose for youngsters etc etc, i could go on all day,the fallout has been absolutely massive, not that you'd care really, would you, you support a party that has no empathy for whatever damage they do...it really is about time that people were put first, it really is.

You wouldn't see a comparison, would you, you don't give two hoots Kerr, you couldn't care less, you are exactly the type of person that is responsible for the absolute ruin that this country has become, and is doomed to fall even further, the 'I'm alright jack' generation.

[animallittle3]

I've neither the time or inclination, maybe you could use the rest of your holiday entitlement to search it, eh?

Could you directly point out where i wasn't direct?? maybe you could be more direct in your hypocrisy on this point??

Facts and figures eh, could you tell me the cost to the country as a whole in terms of communities ruined, no purpose for youngsters etc etc, i could go on all day,the fallout has been absolutely massive, not that you'd care really, would you, you support a party that has no empathy for whatever damage they do...it really is about time that people were put first, it really is.

You wouldn't see a comparison, would you, you don't give two hoots Kerr, you couldn't care less, you are exactly the type of person that is responsible for the absolute ruin that this country has become, and is doomed to fall even further, the 'I'm alright jack' generation.

The strike alone cost the UK taxpayer an estimated £3bn at 1985 rates !!!

The fall out from the industry closing down would be enormous too as you have alluded to MMM .

[KerrAvon]

The strike alone cost the UK taxpayer an estimated £3bn at 1985 rates !!!

The fall out from the industry closing down would be enormous too as you have alluded to MMM .

But the inescapable fact is that the pits would be closed for one reason or another at some point, at which point the financial and social costs of those closures would have to be paid. Whether the closures came about through the overwhelming economic reasons demonstrated by the figures, I have given, the geological reasons that closed Maltby in 2013 or the environmental reasons that MMM would have argued for at the, as yet undefined, point at which he concluded that the science on climate change was irrefutable.

As I have mentioned, when you take account of the financial reality of the pre-strike coal industry, the question becomes one of whether it should be treated as a giant and very expensive job creation scheme, producing coal that was uncompetitively priced and increasingly hard to sell in a shrinking market. And if the government was going to use tax payers money to keep one basket case industry going, why not other industries too?

The fact is that in addition to the massive subsidies required to keep NCB going prior to the strike, the government was already paying for pit closures. In 1983/4 the government paid out £459m in 'Social Grants' to cover the cost of closing pits, the redeployment of staff and enhanced pension benefits for staff accepting voluntary redundancy. That's on top of the £875m to cover the NCB's losses in that year taking the cost total cost to the taxpayer to £1.334bn.

.

[ragingpup]

@ raging Good things come to those who wait.

I’m not sure the figures that you copy and pasted help you that much. As the (Left leaning) think thank that you are quoting chose to use data from 1956 onwards, they are dealing with three periods of notional Labour government 1964 to 70, 1974 to 79 and 1997 to 2010.

As mentioned above, 1997 to 2010 has to be disregarded, as we are constantly told that it wasn’t ‘real’ Labour government and Blair has, in effect, been denounced as a counter-revolutionary. Of the remaining 11 years, Labour was, in effect, under the supervision of the IMF from 1976 to 1979 (they were required to slash their spending in response to the huge loan they needed from that body after the Left of the party had refused to agree to cuts). So you are talking about 8 years of ‘real’ Labour government in 53 years, with those 8 years ending in the need for the biggest loan that the IMF had ever given. Cool.

Turning to the new Labour policy of seizing 10% of every decent sized company, I would begin that I welcome any policy that tends to increase the ‘stake’ that workers have in the business that they work for. Such stakeholding can only help to encourage increased productivity, company performance and improved relationships between employer and employee. Employee share option schemes such as those described by animal have to be a good thing.

Unfortunately, what Labour has rolled out as a policy has nothing to do with worker ownership – it’s a part nationalisation. The supposed worker ownership element of the scheme is entirely illusory. The employees don’t own the shares, - they can’t dispose of them, they gain no benefit from a rise in share price, they don’t share in the risk of a fall in price and their supposed ‘ownership’ mysteriously evaporates when they leave the employment of the company.

Even the Guardian can see through the scheme (albeit they are polite and call it too complicated as opposed to a complete con-trick):

https://www.theguardian.com/business...hare-ownership

It’s a part nationalisation that is potentially very profitable to Mr McDonnell. The Guardian uses Lloyds Banking Group as an example, but I like Shell - the darling of the UK stock exchange. When McDonnell gets his hands on 10% of that company (irrespective of whether ownership is notionally vested in workers committees or whatever they will be called), he will get, on current performance, £1.2bn in dividends every year. Now let’s assume that the workers committee votes to give all of the 6500 UK Shell workers the maximum £500 pay-out. That means that McDonnell gets to trouser £1.1bn. Nice.

And, of course, the current owners of businesses will react to the idea of McDonnell seizing 10% of their capital. The current plan is that the 10% asset grab will apply to UK publically listed companies with 250 or more employees, so the obvious responses are to rebase outside the UK (shareholders have just defeated and attempt to rebase Unilever in the Netherlands – I think they might have a quick change of heart if McDonnell gets near their assets), take the company private (which means a deal more opacity about their finances) , or make sure that the company does not have more than 249 UK employees (go figure).

Within your post you stated I note that you haven't really mentioned how this scheme might improve productivity, focusing instead on a one dimensional tabloidic "they're hitting the rich" response.

I didn’t mention how the scheme might improve productivity because it won’t. How does partially nationalising a company and bunging its workers (from shop floor to boardroom) £500 per year do that? Was the fully nationalised coal industry a model of good performance and harmonious industrial relations?

As for hitting the rich, I am saddened that you are reduced to such a ridiculous comment. I have said nothing about hitting the rich. Who do you think owns the companies that are going to be part nationalised? I know that MMM thinks that they are whoilly owned by people living in the Bahamas (and some may be), but that bears no resemblance to the actual position. Many of the shares are held by institutional investors on behalf of pension schemes to provide growth and a returns for ordinary working people, rich and not rich. I note that you are in the public sector. Are you a member of a nice defined benefit scheme that isn’t dependent upon investment performance? Nice if you can get it.

Sorry for delay old fruit – been on me holibobs with the fam and don’t tend to message much on here when on holiday. Having fun you see.

So you say that of the Labour governments from the ONS data that you are willing to count, you are saying that there is too little actual labour government to count as doing as good a job on the economy as the Tories, but you’re perfectly happy to use that same 8 year window (as you identify it) as a stick to beat any potential incoming Labour government as financially irresponsible? You can’t have one without the other now can you?

Re: Blair’s government ‘not counting’ as they were in the eyes of the left, too right wing. Not quite – I voted for Blair in his first 2 terms as, whilst not the Labour government that I would like to see, he was a better alternative than the Tories and actually had a good record implementing policies on public spending and the minimum wage in his early years. It wasn’t my ideal, far from it, but definitely implemented left policies before he lost his direction in my opinion. Very centre left but for me 97 – 03 were left. You do seem to place a huge amount of focus on the financially disastrous 74-79 Labour government and we should be wary of history – you’re right to be cautious, but I don’t think we should use that as a rod to beat potential Labour goverments 40 years later in very different societies, especially when actual data shows very little difference between economic performance of left and right goverments in the 70 years of records, although I know you’ll continue beating them anyway!

Re: the 10% ‘seizure’ – I tend to agree with most of the article you link too and as I said earlier, if Labour don’t amend the policy as is, it will be quite easy for opponents to portray it as ‘hitting the rich’ (I’m not saying that you said that, just how it will be used against them by the Conservatives. I think it should be amended with the focus being on providing a way of incentivising the company’s workers through a share in the profits, not in taking % as treasury income. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know how best to make that work, but welcome Labour putting a starting point out there with a proviso that I hope it is amended/refined. I agree that if the shares are not saleable and no actual money can be made by the worker, that if the shares are of token value, then it won’t incentivise them, of course not.

So a re-stating of my key questions from before which you seem keen to avoid answering for some reason:

1. You say that you would welcome share ownership schemes – you have rejected the Labour proposals and that’s fair enough. How would you set it up in a way that you think would work? What mechanics would you use to make a good incentive for workers but good for the business? I am genuinely keen to learn from different angles on this. I think this general direction is right to address our productivity issue but am not sure how best to frame it.

2. Sorry to ask again, but for some reason, you never seem to answer. Many people on here have you down as a ‘full on’ Tory and simply don’t believe you when you say that you haven’t voted for the main parties. In fairness, as I’ve said, with your avid support of key conservative policies on tax, you do come over as a conservative supporter so I’m anxious to help you disprove this. So yes, I ask again: leaving aside your dislike for your local MP, specifically what conservative policies do you so dislike that you won’t vote for them as a national party?

3. What specific policies would be instrumental in getting the Kerr vote? C’mon, be vivid, at least someone is genuinely interested in your views and wanting to get more detail before labelling you one way or t’other. I know you’re very keen to come over as sophisticated, to be pinned to one party or another but you do only ever seem to argue in favour of Conservative orientated policies (putting it mildly). The continuous refusal to answer these questions to me seems to add weight to the fact that you are not being honest with us on here.