Reply With QuoteYou obviously don't appreciate the depth of feeling that the miners strike evokes but it's not mandatory to read the posts you knowOriginally Posted by Lolmorgan
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Yes it's worrying , compared to policeman on horseback at Orgreave willing to cave your skull in for the crime of wanting to work I don't believe my minerals will stand the test of gm s retort MMM .
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You obviously don't appreciate the depth of feeling that the miners strike evokes but it's not mandatory to read the posts you know
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So your response to a post in which the observation is made that you always blame Thatcher is to blame Thatcher.
Kids in your your parts where educated in schools run by a Local Education Authority. that had been run by Labour since its inception.
For every person she made wealthy she made two people poorer as a consequence.
- is that assertion based on research or just a piece of political hyperbole? And where does it leave Labour? Every period of Labour government has ended with higher levels of unemployment than when it began. What did that do to levels of poverty? The current Labour leadership are proposing policies that will destroy jobs en masse - the most recent being the 10% asset seizure - and you Momentum boys lap it up.
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respectable academic research repeatedly slams this claim as a distortion of reality. In May 2017 Martin Williams for Channel 4 FactCheck considered the performance of the economy under Labour and Conservative and concluded inter alia:
"It is fair to say GDP was generally better under Labour...up until the financial crisis."
"Statistically the Conservatives have presided over a far slower growth in earnings than Labour, on average."
"Tackling the gender pay gap has stalled under the Conservatives..."
"Labour have a better track record of keeping unemployment levels low...If we look at the figures over a longer time period - back to when Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 - then Labour would undoubtedly have the best record on unemployment..."
Williams also showed Labour invested more per capita in health and education.
But, hey, Kerr won't let this stop him repeating his mantra.
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@MMM.
Gormley devolved the decision upon the productivity bonus scheme to the areas and Kent took the NUM to court over it. The High Court ruled that as the NUM constitution carried no provisions upon the effect of a national ballot upon such issues - any such ballot could only be advisory rather than binding. The constitution (clause 33 from memory?) did contain a clear requirement for a national ballot for national strike action and so that was binding on the union.
It's hard not to get the impression that Gormley had read the constitution, whereas Scargill hadn't (or didn't care what it said).
I wonder what it would be like to play Monopoly with Scargill? I can see him deciding that he doesn't have to go to jail when he lands on the "go to jail' square, because he only has to pick up a chance card when he lands on a 'chance' square - failing to notice, or care, that the rules provide for different outcomes in those two different scenarios.
Other than a different explanation to that given by Scargill and Livingstone for why no national ballot was held, I see that you offer no real challenge to the explanation of the strike that I set out.
At the core of the situation and of your post is this: you thought (and continue to believe) that your view of whether to strike carried more value than that of the NUM members who chose no to. When they voted to work, they were wrong, because you were right. You are so set in your belief that you adopt a tactic that a committed racist would recognise - you seek to demonstrate your belief in your superiority by labelling your opponent with the use of a derogatory word - "scab'.
You are probably right not to care what I think - it hardly matters - but you should care about your belief that your opinion that there should be a strike was more valid than than the opinion of a miner who disagreed. It explains why you lost. It was a belief shared by Scargill when he decided that there should be no national ballot. And given that he must have known that, left to their own devices, some areas would choose to work, he gambled upon being able to intimidate the people there into not doing so.
Failing to hold a national ballot ensured that you wouldn't turn the lights off. Mass and secondary picketing ensured that public support went to the government.
The founders of the union movement would have been turning in their graves at the execution of the miners strike. It involved a perversion of their beliefs through the shattering of any notion of the solidarity that supports the word 'union' and of the deliberate setting of one group of working people on another.
Uniions should protect their members, not disregard their views and intimidate them.
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Me, me, me?
What meats are on offer in the Roly household today?
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Thankfully, under Labour since the WW2, unemployment never hit the heights of the Thatcher self inflicted recession in the early 80s, the Major recession of the early 90s and that of Cameron c. 2011.
Best do it mid term eh.
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I see that your penchant for selective quoting continues:
https://www.channel4.com/news/factch...on-the-economy
I only hope that you apply a little more academic rigour in your work.
https://fullfact.org/economy/has-lab...nt-it-started/
How about you taking the proven liar challenge that I set months ago? Win and you'd be a hero to Roly and the Barnsley boys.
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Very interesting reading Kerr - I can only hope that you were hoping that no one would read the detail. If these are your key counter arguments to back up your continued stance that the Conservatives have a better record on the economy, then the conclusions of your report simply don't back you up in ANY key economic area.
Here are the key findings extracted:
GDP growth
It’s fair to say that GDP was generally better under Labour, but only up until the financial crisis. Of course, the crisis was a global phenomenon that would have hit Britain no matter which party was in government. But critics say Labour could have done more to limit the impact.
Since then, growth has slowed significantly under the Conservatives. But whether this is because of government policy, or the continuing repercussions of the financial crash, is up for debate.
Earnings and income inequality
Again, this is heavily affected by the global financial crisis, so using this as a measure of a government’s success is tricky.
Statistically, the Conservatives have presided over a far slower growth in earnings than Labour, on average. Median gross annual earnings grew by an average of £638 in the six Labour years from 2005-2010 (inclusive). Then, under the Conservatives, they grew by an average of just £389 per year between 2011-2016.
But the worst year since the nineties was in 2010, when median gross earnings rose by just 0.3 per cent. This was a crossover year, when the the government switched from Labour to Conservative.
Under the Conservatives, the stagnation in earnings growth continued for a long time following the financial crash. But, when the figures did start to pick up, the increase in earnings was very significant. Notably, the bottom ten percent have actually seen their wages increase by a higher percentage than the top ten percent. This is probably partly thanks to the influence of the Living Wage Foundation, rather than purely because of government policy.
According to the Gini Coefficient, income inequality has not changed greatly since 1990s. For New Labour, it was a mixed picture with peaks and troughs. Since 2010, the Conservatives have overseen a slight improvement that began in the Labour years. But within the context of the rest of the graph, the Conservative’s record is marred by the large increases in inequality in previous years.
Gender pay gap
This one is a bit clearer. Tackling the gender pay gap has stalled under the Conservatives. They’re still making some progress, but it’s being reduced at a slower rate than under Labour.
The question is: are the Conservatives to blame, or is it down to other factors? Seeing as this is a multi-pronged problem, and not simply a matter of government policy, it’s likely to be a bit more nuanced.
Unemployment
On face value, Labour have a better track record on keeping unemployment levels low. While in office, the party oversaw an average unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent. This is two percentage points lower than the Conservative’s average. Labour also had the single lowest annual unemployment rates during this whole period.
(To make this comparison, we are including election years in both the incoming and outgoing government’s record as the data does not tally exactly with these changes.)
Interestingly though, although the Conservative’s average is higher, the rate of unemployment fell faster while they were in office than under Labour. But these were during post-recession recovery periods, following big bumps in unemployment – rather than driving down the figures below what we would otherwise have expected. The financial crisis makes it difficult to judge each party’s record fairly.
What’s more, low unemployment rates does not necessarily mean more people are in good, stable and well-paid work. For instance, in recent years the rise in low paid zero-hours contracts is likely to have driven down the unemployment statistics.
So who has the better record? It’s a close call: both parties have a reasonable claim to be the strongest on this, it just depends which way you look at it.
However, if we look at the figures over a longer time period – back to when Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 – then Labour would undoubtedly have the best record. Under these parameters, the average unemployment rate under the Conservatives rises to more than 8.5 per cent. They oversaw the longest sustained rise in unemployment, and witnessed the single biggest annual increase.
Industrial action
Official data shows us the number of days lost each year from strikes and industrial disputes. While this is not a financial measure, it gives us an insight into worker satisfaction and the government’s capability to manage an economy smoothly.
Let’s look at the data for the years covering the four prime ministers before Theresa May – that’s two Conservative and two Labour.
Based on this, the Conservatives have seen a higher number of days lost, on average. Overall, the figures are up 18 per cent under the Conservatives. However, this is only an average, pushed up by a few particularly bad years. In reality, both parties have a mixed record.
Based on the fact that the main weapon Conservatives use against Labour (including yourself) is an assertion that Labour have a much worse track record on the economy, many thanks for sharing an article with us that shows what a fallacy this is.
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I read it, raging and am happy for anyone else to. I posted the link for that purpose and to show that Monty was 'doing a Monty' and misrepresenting it.
I can't recall ever asserting that 'the Conservatives have a better record on the economy' in such general terms, but I've kind of grown used to being misrepresented and misquoted. I can only assume that it's easier than actually dealing with what I do say?
For the record, after the IMF had imposed some fiscal discipline upon it, I think the Callaghan government was showing promise and it would have been interesting to see what it could have achieved had the unions not secured it's defeat in 1979. I also think that the Brown government reacted quickly and we'll to the 2008 crash, albeit they (like every other government had failed to forsee it.
Did you read the stuff that you copied and pasted, by the way? It is based upon the last period of Labour government i.e. the Labour Party that posters such as animal, Exile and MMM will tell you were not real Labour, but were instead a neoliberal (whatever that means) extension of Thatcherism. I always find it amusing when Labour supporters try to cherry pick that era when, as Corbyn's pick for Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, recently put it in a radio interview, the party is 'under new management now'
You must be encouraged to see how the lowest 10% of earners have done under the Tories by the way? Or maybe not given that it shoots a Labour fox
Back to Labour, what do you make of their policy of seizing 10% of every decent sized public company? Nobody seems to want to talk about it (MMM denies knowing about it). It gives the lie to the suggestion that there is anything moderate or middle of the road about the current Labour set up, doesn't it?
Last edited by KerrAvon; 21-10-2018 at 09:32 AM.
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