Supporting The Num

[threegee]

This is just about the first common sense I've heard from the NUM.

 

Keith Hartshorne from the union said: "If everything stacks up, we are looking at an employee buyout at the end of this, which would leave Kellingley run by the workforce."

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-27519353

 

Their efforts deserve every possible bit of support from all political parties.  But, why oh why couldn't we have arrived at this point several decades ago, and still have some sort of mining here?!  It's about putting YOUR money (and your efforts) where your mouth is, and not expecting that the World to owes you a living.  This isn't something that our own Mr Lavery has ever impressed me as being any good at!

[Adam Hogg]

Best of luck to them however I doubt they will get the support of every political party.

[mercuryg]

We do have some sort of mining here, in several locations. It's on the surface, not underground. I don't know if you've taken a look at Shotton from the top of the sculpture, but it's huge.....

[threegee]

Best of luck to them however I doubt they will get the support of every political party.

 

Can you expand on this Adam?  I'm confused as to possible motives for not supporting them. It seems to me that this is something which no rational person could offer any arguments against.

[Adam Hogg]

There are some people and parties in the political movement that would love to see every single coal mine close never to open again and would not give there support to miners buying and running the mine.

[threegee]

There are some people and parties in the political movement that would love to see every single coal mine close never to open again and would not give there support to miners buying and running the mine.

 

Are you talking about the left or right?  If it's the right you'd be seriously wrong.  People with right wing views do not have a problem with worker's cooperatives.  They don't oppose nationalisation on doctrinaire grounds, it's simply that it doesn't work!  One of the several reasons it doesn't work is that the bureaucrats that the state puts in charge have no direct interest.  They run it as their own fiefdom for their own career advancement.  That's human nature I'm afraid!  A lot of people in the early cooperative movement were strongly anti Labour Party, but the coop movement was hijacked.

[Adam Hogg]

Both left and right three G.

Mainly the extreme left and right (BNP, Socialist Labour Party, etc. also the "eco friendly" groups Greenpeace, Green Party, etc.) They will never support it so as I said not all political parties/groups will support it.

[threegee]

Both left and right three G.

Mainly the extreme left and right (BNP, Socialist Labour Party, etc. also the "eco friendly" groups Greenpeace, Green Party, etc.) They will never support it so as I said not all political parties/groups will support it.

 

I don't understand why the BNP would be against it, but they are an irrelevance anyway.  It would be interesting to ask them though. The Greens are pretty much an irrelevance too - most people can see straight through them.  At the end of the day they'd do things which cause real environmental and economic damage rather than abandon their left-wing prejudices. I can also understand why the Stalinist left would be opposed - any expression of individualism is bad, and we must all be subservient to an all-powerful state.  But, I can't see that there is any reason why all regular politicians can't give this their full support.

 

That's actually the reason I'm so interested in mutualism - not to mention that my grandfather was a mover in the movement.  Like Malcolm I think our community could and should do a lot more here than it has.  It's an apolitical way of improving things for the entire community.

[Malcolm Robinson]

It's an apolitical way of improving things for the entire community.

 

I  agree GGG but as the COOP has amply just demonstrated its really down to the integrity and acumen of the people given the task to run it/them. 

 

I would take issue with your previous statement too about nationalisation; I am not so sure it can't work.  In fact I think it could work if it's given the same structures and obligations a privatised unit has to endure. 

At the end of the day its only about ultimate ownership but I think where we both do agree is that the way its ran tips the balance. 

   

We started off right at the cutting edge of technology, eg Industrial Revolution, and exported to the world making us rich beyond avarice, or certainly compared to the previous Agro economic models of previous centuries.   Somewhere along the lines we became complacent and other nations took up the baton for technological advances.  Not only that we lost our traditional industries to other places once they saw how they equated to rising living standards.

 

Now by and large we have been deluded into thinking the service sector can sustain our economy but without a robust manufacturing sector all that does is cut hair and sell imported goods, AKA contemporary Bedlington!   

[threegee]

 

...In fact I think it could work if it's given the same structures and obligations a privatised unit has to endure....

 

It's the IF!  State run means state financed, and we all know what happens when the state finances anything.  It's just far too tempting to print more money and/or promise jam tomorrow.  Rationalise this by a "we need more investment", "the industry suffers from underinvestment".  What this actually means is lets paper over the structural problems for now because it will inevitably turn out to be someone else's problem..

 

The left corrupts the meaning of words like investment (and indeed democracy).  The simple reason we are in the current mess is that Gordo kidded himself that the he'd ended "boom and bust".  He squared this by pretending that we were at the bottom of the economic cycle when economists were telling him we were at the top.  But the ultimate rationalisation - which I noted only his blinkered supporters lapped up - was that he hadn't created the problem at all, it was a global problem!  Self delusion is part and parcel of a left wing mindset! 

 

If state controlled industries could be subject to normal market forces then, as you say, there'd be no problem.  But the very fact that no one - even in communist/ex-communist countries - still has any, clearly illustrates that they can't be.  "New Labour" certainly doesn't believe in nationalisation, but here the essential duplicity and dishonesty of the left creeps in.  When you spout silly ideas you have to go through amazing logical contortions to rationalise them.

 

This is why politicians like Boris and Nigel get so much support, they tell things as they are and don't try to rationalise daft and doctrinaire ideas.  The public is not as stupid as most politicians would like to believe, and is increasingly wising up!

 

The co-op long since ceased to be a mutual in the sense that its founders would ever understand.  No, I think there is a future for genuine mutuals.  They can and do work, and there are many models to learn from.

 

I fully agree - we do need manufacturing.  But current employment "protection" legislation has gone far too far, and that is a big drag on what is now possible.  It's a very brave politician that will touch that particular subject.

[Malcolm Robinson]

What really rankled me about the Thatcher privatisation run out was the way that the industries were privatised with basically the same management teams in place and whereas beforehand they were making losses as nationalised industries almost overnight they became huge money/profit generating machines.   Why couldn't they have done that for us?  Now most are controlled by foreign entities, not a very good or secure place to be with your indigenous power/water/communications/etc. industries.

 

Gordo was just a bumpkin, not a good Chancellor and a hopeless Premier but then he was a product of our political system, as was Mr Blair.  As is the current crop of ne'er-do-wells!  Nigel looks appealing to some because he looks to be different or at least possess a set of Maracas!  Or in Boris's case provides entertainment! 

 

The whole economic 'ideological verses proven practical' argument is futile because it's the politicians who control the system.   (Or who are supposed to!)  We can see the excellent example just over the water where a political ideal was put in first, followed by all practical economic/financial elements. That's the wrong way around and that's why the Euro will fail.  Nothing wrong with a Euro project but that has to lead and dictate the 'political make up' where it's used. 

 

I too think we should be looking at the Mutual models for a whole raft of uses.  

[threegee]

The damning thing about our former nationalised industries isn't that they were inefficient in themselves, and always had the cap out for more "investment".  It was their monopoly position which put the brakes on everything else.  BT poured huge amounts of money into R&D on the promise of new technology whilst keeping consumer prices way up and limiting consumer choice on the grounds of standardisation and efficiency.  What did any of this produce?  Oh yes, a proprietary plastic plug that you cut off and replace with an American RJ6, and Prestel (incredibly slow Internet without a keyboard at 3p for a each fiftieth of a page!).  Phones were the thing that the US had the good sense to break the monopoly on very early, and their business benefited hugely.

 

The Post office still has the monopoly mindset.  They are now bleating about needing to maintain one for "the universal postal service", and once again complaining about unfair competition. Heck it's 2014 not 1954!  If you trust Fred's Emporium down the street to deliver your post (and not shove it in his spare bedroom) then why shouldn't you have the choice?  If letters have to be repriced to reflect the true cost then there will be gainers an losers, and people will need to think more about the true costs of dead-tree email!  Can you imagine being able to send a text message for free to any part of the world if the UK government still had a monopoly on all communications?  There'd be regulations about everything you could do, and we'd have hectoring adverts about the responsible use of bandwidth - a nationally important resource.  But enormous amounts of effort would be poured into Prestel 2 (or incompatible Minitel Deux if you are French) - which would forever be tantalisingly only three or four years away.  It's the analogue of those 1950's sunny-uplands NUM banners.

 

Yes, the Euro will fail big time, as every LD will now be able to tell you. And, they knew this all the time, but simply wanted to be "good Europeans" by not upsetting our partners by exposing them to brutal reality!  They were only showing solidarity with the European Ideal, until such time as this dawned on other nations.

 

I was thinking principally of a credit union.  Do you have a wider vision?

[Malcolm Robinson]

I have looked at the Credit Union model and I think it's too rigid.  It does have appealing fundamentals for educating people and their money uses but it doesn't go far enough.  Or it isn't allowed to go far enough to be more exact. 

I think mixing some of credit union basics with a more flexible 'People's Bank' would be the way to go.  Or to put it another way a 21^st Century Mutual!   

 

Might have been interesting to see a Left of centre political party which was in power at the time of the financial meltdown to actually have the spine to seek to address the meltdown with left of centre ideals.   Letting the failing banks go bust then mutualising them the next day would have been my preferred option but who would we have running them coz I would have had the Bankers in the Tower! 

[threegee]

I don't believe that "left of centre" have any ideals.  Or, for that matter, do any of the LibLabCon alliance.  It may have become a cliché, but that there's nothing between them has never been more evident.  It's the power game, and there's the added dimension of London Power.

 

There's a lot of crap in The Telegraph these days, but Janet Daley tells it as it is:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10853265/London-land-cant-ignore-this-Ukip-protest.html

 

The bit about the Beeb is classic!

 

Well of course a few banks should have folded.  This in-the-public-interest thing is always taken past the bounds of reason.  If the public finances were in better shape there wouldn't be the continual fear of triggering a meltdown, and market forces would take care of things. The mistake is to believe it's lack of regulation when in fact it's lack of government self-discipline at a remove.

 

The bankers really had nothing to do with problem, they were only following herd instincts. How long would anyone's job have lasted if they'd refused to ape competitors "innovative strategies" on the grounds of traditional prudence?  The whole crazy climate was fuelled by Gordo's self-delusion.

[Malcolm Robinson]

The whole crazy climate was fuelled by Gordo's self-delusion.

 

I think Mr Greenspan had a little to do with it.........!  

[threegee]

The whole crazy climate was fuelled by Gordo's self-delusion.

 

I think Mr Greenspan had a little to do with it.........!  

 

Our little pathetic Northern Rock was the trigger. Nothing much has changed in the US.  Lehman was "let go" more for political than financial reasons (other bankers hated Dick Fuld's guts).

 

The same structural problems are there, though the private loans-crisis has abated.  We're back to the massive state borrowing, which can be more easily concealed, until...

[Malcolm Robinson]

I think sub prime debt was the trigger, the fact that everyone got into the game is not excusable in law.  

 

Ask the Nuremberg prosecutors!   

[threegee]

I think sub prime debt was the trigger, the fact that everyone got into the game is not excusable in law.  

 

Ask the Nuremberg prosecutors!   

 

...and who was the most stupidly exposed?  ...and where were the first tremors felt?

 

You don't have to flee to South America these days, you only need to repeat enough times "it is a global problem", and otherwise keep your head well down.  Where are you now stupid Northern Rock lady director?  How's the weather on your country estate?

[Malcolm Robinson]

I saw it first with the Lloyds 1990's insurance busts.  Passing a very hot parcel of sh..one.. t around and hoping you're not the one left holding when the music stops. 

 

Just repeat after me…….TOO BIG TO FAIL!