The Student Room Group

Bob Crow dies at the age of 52

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Original post by DaveSmith99
I'm well aware of the fact that where I live is not representative of the entire country, I mentioned to try and make your realise that London isn't. The people who participate in political polls are more likely to more middle class, I don't believe that to be an accurate representation of the country.


These opinion polls are calculated and weighted to be representative of the country, otherwise they'd be pointless. You have no leg to stand on here.

Original post by DaveSmith99

I don't like New Labour, I don't know why you're assuming I do. The issue again is the mass culling of jobs that occurred in the sector and the misery it caused millions.


Except there was no 'mass culling' of jobs, aside from mining. Industry thrived under Thatcher, to say otherwise is to lie in the face of overwhelming statistics.

Original post by DaveSmith99

No. There is a huge, huge difference between a managed decline and a mass cull. None of the strikes before the 1984 ones were about closures, they were all about pay and conditions. Lots of the pits closed were smaller and very uneconomical, others had dried up. Lots of the miners were offered favorable redundancy terms and the jobs market was better, others moved to the larger mines that were increasing production to accommodate them. This is not what thatcher did, thatcher stockpiled coal and made arrangements to limit the impact of a strike, and she introduced right to buy because people with mortgages to pay are less likely to strike. She then started to cull of mines far, far, far faster than ever before with no concern for the impact on the miners or their communities. We know through cabinet documents that thatcher was planning to close 4 times as many mines as she was publicly admitting to, and what she was publicly admitting to was 20,000 jobs gone, I find the claim that they were guaranteeing no compulsory redundancies a little far fetched.


Of course Thatcher stockpiled coal, the last mining strike led to rolling brownouts. Arthur Scargill wanted to bring down the government, plain and simple, it had little to do with pay and conditions. And so right to buy was a plan to reduce the effectiveness of a coal mining strike? Me thinks you give the coal miners too much credit, the country doesn't revolve around them, nor does British industry.

Original post by DaveSmith99

Yes, New Labour completely and absolutely failed to undue the harm done by thatcher, I've never said otherwise. Selling off the council houses at a reduced value and not replacing them led to the cost of living increasing as peoples rent increased and it's one of the reasons that the poorest got poorer under thatcher. Ironically this policy that raised money for the councils to pay of their debts led to personal debt ballooning, and who'd have thought that would come back to bite us later.


Except, again, there was no 'undue harm' done by Thatcher. A problem isn't a problem until it is a problem. There was no need to build council houses en-masse under Thatcher, there was however a need to reduce central and local debt levels. Her policy made sense. And personal debt ballooning was due to the banking boom and cheap credit, right to buy had little to do with it. You're clutching at straws.

Original post by DaveSmith99

I know these people weren't alive back then, but they were born in places that were ruined by thatcher.


How many mines were there in central London and other inner cities? Refresh my memory. There are staunch Thatcher haters in small pockets all across the country, half of whom have the asinine half-arsed grasp of what actually happened as you do, boiling down to 'she ruined the country' without being able to elaborate on it and back it up.

Original post by DaveSmith99

Well you're comparing them to the tube strikes, so yes you are completely oblivious. I also didn't say that people who hate thatcher are in the majority, I actually explicitly stated that they were a minority, and that most people nowadays are pretty apathetic. But you seem to just read what you want to read to whatever.


I'm not comparing anything to anything. Also pretty humerous to accuse me of wanting to read whatever, when you keep parroting this idea that I'm comparing the mining strike to the tube strike, which I've never done. Bob Crow was, in my opinion, a knob, irrespective and irrelevant of Margaret Thatcher and anything about her, good or bad. It's not that hard of a concept to understand. Enough with the strawman arguments.

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