General Chat

John, that song is (I googled ;-) ) From the album "Max Boyce: Live at Treorchy",
recorded 23rd Nov 1973, so it wasn't aimed at 'Mrs Thatcher and her ministers' because she was a few years from becoming Prime Minister ;-)

Rose. If that song is meant to be suggesting what I think you are suggesting, it has made me very angry.:-| :-|

If you really think Max Boyce wrote that song for any other reason than to vent despair and anger towards Mrs T and her Ministers, you totally misunderstand the coal mining areas.

Edit. Muffy. I think you will find I have praised Thatcher as well as criticised. I feel on balance she was not a good politician. Others think she was. And a lot of our impressions are based on how our lives were affected by her and her policies. I do think she deserves a special funeral like Attlee, Heath, Callaghan, Eden, MacMillan, Wilson and Home all had. But she was hardly a war hero universally admired like Winston Churchill in death - although he had many detractors in life. She hardly merited more than an hour of Commons eulogies, which could have been done on Monday as Cameron had planned.

So John...what has been done in these places in the 23 years since she left power?

You speak as though she left last year or that there hasn't been another party in power since.........

13 years of a Labour government and yet still all ills are blamed on Thatcher/Thatcherism.

I'm fully aware that not every policy of hers ws perfect..but please name me a leader who has never made a bad choice from time to time.

Honestly it really gets my back up all this Thatcher bashing.

Sylvia's post was spot on imho

And Guinevere imho also made a great point when she said that somewhere between blind admiration and blind loathing lies the real story (not her words but the sentiment is the same)

I like that Rose,it's so right

Well said, OFG.

Retail - to be compared with coal mining :-D I suppose stress and working long hours could be new problems. But much of stress at work in my view is caused by lack of clarity of objectives, too much spare time to chat and stir. Never that much of a problem in coal and steel communities. We needed (and still need) their products.

In 1950's, loads of Scostmen came to Corby to work in steel. In the early 1980's, 11,000 of them (out of a total population in Corby) had lost their jobs. Proud men were told they might have work on a new Disneyland project that was planned for Corby. Many of them have stayed in that area and have re-trained and now work in large warehouses, and small factory units.

John Redwood said in 1990 that Corby had average unemployment and was a triumph of Thatcherism. Well, I spent a lot of time in Corby in 1990's. It is very central - easy to visit. Go there one day and do your shopping and have a walk round. See what successful Thatcherism actually means to people outside the smarter towns and suburbs. I would say visit a place like Blaengarw - but that is remote and up a dead end up in the mountains of S Wales.

I'll go to someone else's words :-) that I found very poignant


Duw, It's Hard
(Max Boyce)

In our little valley
They closed the colliery down,
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.
Empty gurneys red with rust
Roll to rest among the rust
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.

CHO: 'Cos it's hard, Duw, it's hard
Harder than they will ever know.
And it's they must take the blame,
The price of coal's the same.
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.

They came down here from England
Because our output's low.
Briefcases full of bank clerks
That had never been below.
And they'll close the valley's oldest mine
Pretending that they're sad.
But don't you worry, Butty bach,
We're really very glad.

My clean-clothes locker's empty now,
I've thrown away the key.
And I've sold my boots and muffler
And my lampcheck 153.
But I can't forget the times we had,
The laughing midst the fear,
'Cos every time I cough I get
A mining souvenir.

I took my old helmet home with me,
Filled it full of earth,
And I planted little flowers there -
They grew for all their worth.
And it's hanging in the glasshouse now,
A living memory,
Reminding me they could have grown
In vases over me.

But I know the local magistrate,
She's got a job for me,
Though it's only counting buttons
In a local factory.
We get coffee breaks and coffee breaks,
Coffee breaks and tea.
And now I know those dusty mines
Have seen the last of me.

FINAL CHORUS
'Cos it's hard, Duw, it's hard
Harder than they will ever know.
And if ham was underground,
Would it be twelve bob a pound.
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.
Aye, the pithead baths is a supermarket now."


"An early example of a song addressing the coming of the
"post-industrial" world, and the disappearance of heavy
industry. Max worked eight years underground, so knows
what he's talking about"

On the subject of coal miners, I was brought up in the 1940's and early 1950's in a coal mining village and several members of my family died in mining accidents including my grandfather, so did members of many of our neighbours. You just need to visit any of the various mining websites to see why we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to coal miners.

In 1986 my mother asked me to take her out for the day to visit the places she remembered from childhood. We got in the car and we drove around the places she had an association with, Kelty, Glencraig, Crosshill, Lochore, Lochgelly, Cowdenbeath, Cardenden, Ballingry, Hill of Beath, Auchterderran, Bowhill, Lumphinans, in all an area covering nearly 20% of the county of Fife.

I also remembered many of these places from my childhood, to say my mother and I were devastated, would to be to put it mildly, much of these areas had been decimated following the closure of around 15 coal pits which had provided employment for most of the population in the area.

What my mother and I remembered as vibrant and thriving communities, were now just a shadow of their past and unemployment was rife because no new industries had filled the gap left by the closure of the pits, as a result a generation was ignored.

I know, I lived through it, and I witnessed it.

So as we remember Margaret Thatcher and her legacy let us also remember the legacy of those who gave their lives to fuel the fires of industry - The Coal Miners.

What Rose said.

John does make it sound as though, unless you're a miner, you don't know what hard work is :-S


Living in a mining area myself, it is hard not to be moved by the stories of life down the pit and to listen to the stories of the hardships and dangers involved. However, mining is not the be all and end all of things and miners are not the only hardworkers in this country of ours.


Other occupations bring their own risks and dangers, their challenges and hardships and yes, surprise surprise, even white collar workers run the risk of unemployment, dismissal and redundancy. They may not get their hands dirty but their workload can be tremendous and the levels of stress can be immense.................... and stress is a major killer.

Ignore him Rose, he hasn't got a clue really and is obviously judging what small shops do by what he has done in the past.

"But most of it in small shops is sitting in the back drinking tea whilst waiting for door to ping. Or putting some stock on the shelves."

... in square footage I have worked in a "small" shop, several in fact, where NO ONE ever sat in the back drinking tea except at designated break time. I'd also like John to tell me and the other 'girls' that carrying bags of sand, double swings and climbing frames up or down two flights of stairs wasn't hard work. We 'hit the ground running' every morning before the shop opened and were still 'running' when it closed.

It's comments like John's that have consistently devalued the way people have looked at retail staff imo and ignores the level of hard work and commitment that good staff put in. It's a shame.

'energy companies are making huge profits'

Are they though? Typically around 5% of turnover, half what they pay on Government obligations such as green levies, social support etc.

As you can see from my post, Lily, I am insulting myself and the industry I worked in for many, many years. Yes, I found it easy. Yes, it was difficult at times. But most of it in small shops is sitting in the back drinking tea whilst waiting for door to ping. Or putting some stock on the shelves.

Parents of my best friend in Rhondda were shopkeepers. His father came from an agricultural area in West Wales to work down the pits - because life in rural Wales was so precarious in inter-war period. Many Italians came from Bardi and other places to work in pits because it offered a decent wage and a decent rented house.

They could not wait to get out of pits at first opportunity and open shops and cafes. Some of them are still witnesses to just how hard coal mining really was. How dedicated these men were to keeping Britain warm. The danger. The decimation of whole villages (some as late as 1960's) in preventable mining explosions. The community spirit that pulled people through the hardest times. To say we work hard building up our shops, our hotels and our accountancy businesses compared to what coal miners did and still do in places is a real insult and shows total insensitivity.

And I rather think we spent a lot less of our incomes to keep ourselves warm than we do today. Cannot remember the term "fuel poverty" in 1970's (more than 10% of your income spent on keeping yourself warm). There are now 19 energy supply companies in UK all competing with each other to pull the wool over the eyes of customers and making huge profits and paying executives over £5m pa in a couple of cases. The poor continue to get poorer - that was her legacy.

I totally agree with you Cynthia. I too have experience of a Family Business, and I can assure those of you who think it doesn't entail hours and hours of work and worry, (especially if, as we were,you are responsible for the welfare and income of employees,) should have another think. We are now retired, but my daughter and her OH run a transport company, as well as bringing up a young family, and the hours they both work are unbelievable. Paperwork being the main bugbear, liasoning with drivers, catastrophe's of one sort or another, accidents, time shedules, broken down vehicles, staff off for whatever reason sometimes at a moments notice!, so shcedules to be covered Hubby called out to a breakdown/problem in the middle of the night etc etc- So don't ANYONE tell me that unless you are in physical work, you don't know what hard work is! Like you Cynthia, I find that VERY insulting!!

Cynthia, if you're talking about the link I posted The Guardian has reprinted articles from all sides, as I said.

They made very interesting reading. I'm not so blind as to think Thatcher did nothing right, I've said as much before. It's sad there there are people who believe she did no wrong in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Even her own party concede that.

In my eyes she did more bad than good. In others' eyes the reverse is true.

There are still some very ignorant people in the UK who believe everything she did was wrong and equally ignorant people who believe everything she did was right.

The truth lies inbetween those two extremes.

Thank you Sylvia.

I was pondering on how to respond to John's earlier 'theory' about the Thatcher's and hard work. You put it very well.

John, you seem to be implying that, unless someone took up pick and shovel and went down the mines, then they have no idea of what hard work was!

That implication is something I, personally, find extremely insulting.


I fear each newspaper has it's own particular political slant - like it or not.


It is inevitable that this thread will continue to go round and round in circles. :-(

Sylvia. As you may know, I have spent almost all my life in retail. As a 12 year old I was humping hundredweights of local papers about and bringing two 56lbs of coal at a time through to the shop from our lock-up shed in the back yard.

And it was even more manual when I went into supermarkets. Very long hours, very little handling equipment and very large tonnages every week.

Yet I say that was easy work compared to working in heavy industries like coal and steel. It was a healthy service industry compared to the unhealthy work in mining and manufacturing that made a thriving retail sector possible.

I stick by my assertion that Mr Roberts, Miss Margaret Roberts, Denis Thatcher and Mark Thatcher have never understood what a proper day's work is. And it was proper work that made Great Britain great up to about 1960. We were not the nation of shopkeepers that Napoleon claimed.

Since 1960ish, Japan, China and Germany have shown us the way. And we have sat back and watched immigrants do all the proper work (what is left of it). Now we have a stronger immigration policy, we no longer have that luxury - and the pips are beginning to squeak.

Roy. Have not seen anyone suggest that relative poverty is below 50% of average income. Measure seems to be below one third in all countries. 80% of my county are in poverty in my county and perhaps 40% in Hampshire. By your reckoning, it would be over 99% in Rhonnda Cynon Taf and over 80% in Hampshire!! :-0

Sylvia, Labour got rid of section 28, as has already been said. Very important.

Interesting round up here of writings this week.

Yes, it's in The Guardian but they have reproduced articles from many sources and opinions from all sides. It was a long read but it pretty much sums up the divisions and why people feel as they feel (on all sides)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2013/apr/11/margaret-thatcher-legacy-best-writing

It begins -

Margaret Thatcher's legacy: roundup of the best writing

Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century.

I think the Falklands has been mentioned before,perhaps on another thread if not this one.
I'm not trailling thro it to check!
Time for bed.~~~~~~~~~~~

Why has nobody mentioned the Falklands War and also the sinking of the Belgrano??

Can someone spell out quite simply what exactly were the good changes/laws she as leader brought in that benefited all the people, apart from being able to buy your council house.