Brian Fantana
Well-known member
I can accept that mining coal in this country was at some point going to become unviable. However, just letting them close as Thatcher did is an absolutely shit example of macro economic management. Closing down the mines cost thousands their jobs. Which in turn cost thousands more their livelihoods in lost income at shops that no longer had miner customers. Which in turn closes down businesses. And how much money does it all cost? Well, for a start, there is the loss in tax revenue from all of these sources, then the fact that benefits start needing to be paid to out of work miners. Plus crime soars as unemployment rises, and we all know what the miner's strike did to community relations with the police.
And then the fact that it costs a lot of money to re-start up any small business after predecessors have gone to the wall. It's the same argument as what we're seeing now. If we slash public expenditure on everything, we risk our future. Say, road maintenance is slashed: all those pot hole filling companies go to the wall. Then when we decide to spend the money fixing the roads, we have no-one to fix them because our pot-holers have all gone bust - so we have to import pot hole filling services. So closing down anything on a large scale is folly.
Our nation would have been better off with a staggered plan of mine closure, where mines were closed as new investment (and jobs) were attracted into those communities. Simply subsidising our coal mining in the interim would have been far more cost effective than just washing our hands of the whole industry.
We might as well close this thread, as I don't think anyone is going to put it more succinctly or reasonably than this.