threegee

..and, as Neil Kinnock has recently pointed out, that's exactly what would have happened if Red Mick inherited the NUM leadership without the political manoeuvrings at the extreme left of Labour which excluded him. Kinnock puts the full blame for the debacle on Scargill's refusing to negotiate. He is - for once - spot on in his view. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/16/neil-kinnock-arthur-scargill-miners-strike I don't know if you can quote "clean coal" being a major factor at that point in history, ideas have changed a lot since then. It was chiefly that UK Coal was becoming too expensive against Eastern European product, as I think what you say partly acknowledges. It's a price the Country would have paid though if it hadn't been for the accompanying left wing militancy and disruption. Most people had had enough of three day weeks and constant industrial stoppages by then, and this included many miners, but Scargill misjudged that too. What we got at the time was this nonsense about lifetime job guarantees, not just for the strikers but for future generations. Any such promises given would have been completely worthless hot air, and the subject of endless future who-said-what disputes. No industry or government could have gone there. Labour were more than relieved that this didn't happen on their watch, and did absolutely nothing to reverse or mitigate anything later.

Did they really? I think the leftie journos at the Beeb are struggling to find any evidence of this, and you certainly have none. The reality was that no one lied, though there was plenty of the usual spin from both sides. There's a huge reality gap locally; people believing what they've been told to believe, or worse, what their parents told them to believe. If local people had travelled a bit more they'd have discovered that the Country at large held a quite different view. There was a lot of sympathy for the miner's families, but utter bafflement about what they hoped to achieve. That's why the NUM was split too. Calling fellow workers scabs because they saw this and you didn't was just plain stupid. And, demonising a PM who was doing her very best for the Country at large puts you on completely the wrong side of history.

And what sort of "victory" would that have been Sym? An overthrow of a democratically elected government kind of victory, by a Marxist agitator who couldn't even carry his own membership behind him? It was not a strike about pay or conditions. So what exactly would your victory have looked like? Where exactly did Mrs Thatcher lie Adam, or is this more of what someone who was around at the time told you to believe? She had a damn sight more integrity than politicians today! In fact Ian MacGregor didn't lie either, if you examine exactly what he said. Was it misleading? Well yes, but there was a lot of misleading BS going around at the time, and his was a politician's devious answer. The interviewers didn't ask the right questions, but then Scargill got off very lightly in interviews too. I'm not aware of anyone accusing Scargill of lying either; he obviously got his information from somewhere. At the time that there were going to be more closures seemed highly likely. Scargill though got the job by intrigue and manoeuvring. No wonder he feared democracy! The top NUM job should have gone to good old red Mick McGahey, but he was cheated out of it. Mick at least knew how far to push, and despite his leanings claimed never to mix the business of getting the best deal possible for his members with politics. Scargill did entirely the opposite and impoverished them for no identifiable purpose whatsoever. NUM members had the wrong guy foisted on them, and then blindly and stupidly followed him over the precipice, or at least the local ones did. The resulting hardship was directly due to the illegal strike, and once Scargill embarked on that course there was never any doubt about the outcome. You kid yourself if you believe otherwise Sym. The Country simply was not going to be held to ransom by a communist who as running scared of his own membership. That local miners were taken for such a ride, and kidded that there could be any other outcome but a total climb-down was almost beyond belief. That they blame entirely the wrong person - and actually the best peace time PM this country has ever had - for this, is the sad consequence of decades of political indoctrination. You know it's about time Scargill apologists put up a statue to our local hero. I will happily re-write the words to Lil Abner and we can turn the whole thing into a hit musical!

That's only part of the functionality of CCleaner. At least as important is the registry fix and clean, but that's the bit you need to be careful to save what it has removed. That probably sounds a bit more alarmist than I intended, as the default options are generally pretty safe. Another way of freeing space on Windoze is deleting unnecessary restore points - ones that you will likely never use. CCleaner can do this but there are other ways too. It's particularly safe to do this if you have a couple of external backups in the can anyway, and you know the machine is running stably. After some major upgrades the space you recover from this can make you very happy. Wise not to overdo this by not removing the most recent restore point though. I think that current versions of CCleaner save you from yourself here anyway by preventing you deleting the most recent one. See: Tools-->System Restore

If the site search did three letter words the database would be massive and the search results wouldn't be a great deal of use. This is deffo a case for using the page search in your browser (CTL+F). 'Orses for courses I think!

Interesting that the art market is booming. One or more economists put this down to QE. As the stock market is certainly not over-inflated generally speaking, and seems to represent fair value with "blue-sky" stuff actually depressed for once, then there would seem to be a large divide between ordinary investors and the mega rich. The mega rich of course can easily chose where they pay their tax - a fact which Mr Hollande seems to be blissfully unaware of. Or, possibly, the mega rich may know something ordinary business people don't know.

Someone else who doesn't read the "small print" at the bottom? Didn't say Avast was best, said one of the very best. I wouldn't presume to make that choice, except that when something is free then at least it's worth a try before parting with money. Speaking personally I've installed Avast on dozens of machines, many for other peeps, and no one (except someone here) has had anything but praise for it. I've used it myself for several years across at least half a dozen machines. By contrast I've found Norton an absolute pain to use, and the first thing I do with a new machine is try to get rid of any "free" bundled Symantec products - this is not always easy! And, the free version of malwarebytes has always done a good job, so why part with money on that too? Another free product you should look at is CCleaner to remove unnecessary clutter, and free up disk space. Now someone here had a disagreement about that a while long back but what they said was totally contrary to my own long experience. It has never screwed up a machine that I've used it on and I've been using it regularly on many machines for at least a decade. It's only sensible to save the registry entries it removes just in case, but I can't remember ever having to restore the saved entries. If I had to pay for CCleaner I would, but once again the free version does all the job you need to do, and does it well. The only irritation is the constant updates, with always the default option to upgrade to the paid-for version, but at least the product is being constantly improved and updated. https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

So I win the bet then? Why on earth would you pay for an AV when one of the very best is completely free?! http://www.avast.com/en-gb/index

So... the icebreaker that was to rescue the stuck Russian ship is stuck in the Antarctic ice! This brings to mind the news that there's a massive 50% more ice in the Arctic this Summer than last. If you remember last year we were told it was global warming surely to blame; this year the "excess ice" is simply normal seasonal variation. The same instantly variable spin which differentiates climate from weather I think! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25383373 Climate Change: A terribly important, yet elusive, phenomenon that warrants countless billions of others people's money being spent on wholly ineffective and vain attempts to influence nature. But, once a minuscule proportion of those costs are billed to the concerned party, instantly reduces in importance, and becomes a gross imposition.

Didn't you miss the second one? And what's wrong with simply right clicking on (an unoccupied place on) the taskbar? You should leave CTL+ALT+DEL as one of the last resorts, because with many operating systems it won't pop up any sort of dialogue and you will lose your entire session - something you don't want to get into the habit of doing! Even with Windows an accidental second keying could spell disaster. Malwarebytes is a useful addition to your regular AV program. It often picks up stuff that's not necessarily a virus but has been sneaked on to your system. My bet is that it will find something on your machine, and that won't be false positives aimed at selling you the paid-for version!

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Take-action/Find-a-grant/Green-Deal-and-ECO Or as Gordo would certainly tell you, it's a global problem: Why is Germany so expensive? Well the idiots have turned their backs on nuclear because of their tree-hugger lobby - Germans are always easily sold on crazy ideologies! Things will only get worse there as they progressively bottle themselves in, whilst their neighbours gleefully build new nuclear stations on their borders to profit from their stupidity. Why are we currently in trouble on supply? Well... a certain former government couldn't make its mind up on nuclear and didn't put the ground work in place, so we have lost a decade! Mind you the current lot have been slow off the mark, and it's only the stark prospect of the lights going out real soon that has actually got them off their backsides! The net result of the political muddle is we are having to pay far more for nuclear than would have been the case if Teflon Tony had made a timely commitment. The results of the politician's failures will be felt for decades to come, long after the true reasons are forgotten. Note the relatively low cost of electricity in Paris where governments of all political shades have been firmly focussed on just getting on with it. We can thank the French for their foresight, and their supplying us under the Channel. Without the connector we'd be in a lot more trouble than we already are. But... In other words the French are eyeing the higher prices Germans will pay for peak demand availability, and we are in danger of loosing another 5% of our supply. We can only hope they plough on with their nuclear program apace.

It's growing rapidly in the UK apparently, but never used it myself. Just wondering if anyone had any experience of other auction/fixed-price sites? http://uk.ebid.net/ eBay really does need serious competition, they are far too greedy, dictatorial, and service levels are near non-existent.

And.. for the record I'm wrong again - that almost certainly isn't Molly Hattersley holding Roy's hand either!

Great stuff! Well everyone has the year of the shiny new tarmac wrong then, I will put a note on the ones in the gallery. Your 1987 one looks like the tarmac has had a year's run-in then, so it's all consistent. There's that lass with the massive box brownie on her right shoulder again too! Gave up filming picnics myself round about 1958, that colour film is still around here somewhere and has never had a public show. Hope to locate it real soon!

That tome of all wisdom about Bedlington - bedlington.co.uk - says these pictures are actually 1980: http://www.bedlington.co.uk/community/gallery/sizes/897-1980-miners-picnic/large/ Which means the County Records Office is only 8 years out in its guess! http://www3.northumberland.gov.uk/catalogue/dserve.exe?dsqServer=w2k3calm1.woodhorn.org.uk&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Overview.tcl&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29%3D%27roy%27%29&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=2

Maggie is right, up front there is ex deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley. With him is presumably his wife (Edith aka Molly) who he divorced this April shortly before he remarried. So yes, he's still going strong at 81! A couple of trade unionists I half-recognise, particularly the old short guy in the black jacket and glasses on camera left. Going to need to research those - you know how well I relate to trade unionists!

LOL I was intending to take this temporary thread down, but now you'll scream censorship! Re-titled it.

http://www.bedlington.co.uk/news/_/news/breaking-news-r178

You can't hurry a White Christmas. Next you'll be asking for Bing Crosby!

Sounds like he may have knocked the Luxury out of "Bedlington Luxury Coaches".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/

I heard a rumour that they are going to scrap that Prestel clone and get the Internet real soon - mais non?

Brilliant! And, judging by the coats and scarves, it certainly wasn't the Summer of 1972 either.

Ah, so it is in that shot! Good find! What would be of far more general use it to know exactly when the (dangerous) concrete lampposts went. This has general implications for dating many Gallery photos.