Must watch TV 205

Nope I totally disagree with that. The miners were not forced by Scargil to go out on strike, they went out because they knew their futures were at stake. The only violence committed was in defence of their families. The problem though with the left and the trade unions is their aims and objectives are limited, they cannot see beyond their own immediate objectives and make no attempt to understand how capitalism works. Capitalism has it's own agenda and dynamics and is far purer than Social Marxist run countries will ever be, that is because capitalism is driven by market forces -which it has to be said are perfectly logical in a narrow context-but I'll come back to that. Socialist Marxist economies however are run by Ideology which as we've seen with Stalin, Mao.Pol pot and other tinpot Islamic states that they are cruel, with virtually no democracy and millions of innocents are end or crushed.

The miners however was different as with the News International printers, they were ordinary people who wanted to work, not rob, mug, sell drugs or addicted and increasingly turning to killing in their bestial behaviour. Since the defeat of the miners and printworkers living standards have actually relatively fallen. People work longer hours than ever this side of world war two, and with the rapid advancement of technology are enslaved even more to their work. At one time current affairs programmes would debate what would people do as retire earlier and earlier ,as machines did increasingly more of the physical work. Well the opposite turns out to be true, people will retire later and later not the other way round.

So to me, the miners against all the odds, the media, the state and eventually hunger stood out to maintain their families and communities. Coal was uneconomical, you can't 'buck' the system, but it's precisely at that point when you have to ask how can this be right?.

You know the global recession of the 1930's to an outside observer from another world would have puzzled them. They would see tens of millions out of work and thrown into poverty yet the farms which grew food they needed, the factories which created things they needed to live, were idle, locked up even destroyed and dismantled due to bankruptcies.

This was not due to capitalist greed or cruelty, it was just the way the laws of the capitalist economy work themselves through. Of course their is a modicum of control but not enough to stave of crisis forever. That's why Kyoto would fail -if Global warming was a real issue, because it would throw a spanner into the delicate workings of the world economy which could lead to another 30's style meltdown

In the eighties Thatcher represented the objective needs of the British economy to be more competitive by the psychological readjustment of the conditions people were prepared to tolerate -those at work of course.

The other issue now is, and this is where people see me as having right-wing views. The middle clbutt left having no strong Trade Unions to carry them have now sunk into a political quagmire of Political correctness and self-loathing and look for any minority grievance whether justified or not and fuel that hatred even further. An ex work colleague had told me years ago back in the middle to late eighties she applied for a position at Camden Council ,she was interview and told she had been oppressed by the British for hundreds of years, she being from Donegal. Of course Livingstone led Camden council then and was very pro IRA-I wonder what he thought of the recently released Manchester planting video, it was only the last Paddy's day, which incidentally is financed by Londoners-you know the people the IRA tried to kill-that Ken was Sauntering around with Martin Maguiness.

So back to my point, these people who once needed the strong trade union movement have now had to survive within local government, labour party politics, single group issues and ridiculous bandwagons The left are bankrupt and have no organised working clbutt to suck from, so they now court Islamic religion instead as a means of garnering votes.

The Miners effectively high-lighted the not always obvious contradictions of how or why the economy doesn't work.

Karl Mark ,although diminished and corrupted by the chattering clbuttes as well as the global communist party, is still pertinent today and what we see now is what he called the "socially necessary amount of labour time " to produce a product, that amount never stops falling based on the work force skill base the technology available and the intensity of the work performed.

That brings me back to a point I made earlier, that being that what makes perfect sense under capitalist economy does not always necessarily make sense outside of that-like at home or stranded on a remote island somewhere.

Years ago in the middle eighties, the first of the long term institutions for disabled physically and mentally ill people, started to close as the first stages of the community care programme came into operation. In those days the early services were run with noble intentions but pure naivety. There seemed to this buttumption that once in the community people would flourish away from their oppressors and anything was possible. Small workshops opened up, I distinctly remember one such workshop which tried commercially (albeit at the expense of heavy subsidies) to make and sell picture frames. Initially people from the care services meaning well would buy these frames but eventually the novelty wore off the reason being the frames when made, were poorly put together and very expensive. It wasn't because people were cruel or callous just the fact no one wants to waste hard earned money on shoddy goods, when they could get a far better product cheaper, elsewhere. Now this was Mark's socially necessary amount of labour time law kicking in. This people with disabilities could not match the labour and skill content of others without disabilities. So to try and fit in producing goods just wasn't on and effectively this particular project petered out as many others did. So these people were disenfranchised from the average workforce by virtue of their disabilities, they are just not economically viable so will continue to live on benefits as long as the economy will pay them.

Now if there was a good few dozen people stranded like in the series Lost(on me) Everyone can contribute in the day to day survival because it's highly unlikely that anyone's buying or selling. everyone no matter how they can do contribute to the good of the whole-a totally different relationship to that of a capitalist economy. So when employers are loathe to take on women of a child bearing age of course they are concerned because a women of on maternity leave blunts any competitiveness. That's why most employers would rather employ people that won't be taking a lot of time off, you have to pay them and find someone to cover their position. It's not right or wrong it's just the way it works independent of individuals concerns or thoughts.

So well done the miners and England were still poo last night.

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