Digging in the dirt

You guys up for a little British history lesson?

Ready for some truly mind-blowing figures?

Good, then read on...

Some time in the nineteen sixties, a review of the coal industry found that Britain sat on top of over three hundred years worth of coal reserves.

In nineteen seventy-four, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike and brought down the then Conservative government and ousted the Prime Minister Edward Heath.

Over the next twenty five years, successive Conservative governments waged a war with the NUM which they finally won on October nineteen ninety-two when over thirty two coal pits were closed and over two hundred thousand men lost their jobs.

This figure does not take into account the loss of jobs in businesses related to the mining industry, or the loss of jobs in local villages & towns where the likes of small, family-owned grocery shops had to close.

Nor does this figure take into account the immeasurable loss of faith, hope, identity and the cataclysmic loss of community across the whole country.

If you've been paying attention, then you'll have realized that the obvious question has an obvious answer, that answer being revenge, pure & simple.

Fast forward to two thousand and five.

The Rover Group has come to a close after over one hundred years of car production. There is no more interest from the Chinese and over six thousand men & woman are to loose their jobs.

Now, why do they think my dad has little or no sympathy for these poor bastards, who in the main, have been consigned to the economic scrap heap?

The now Labour government are to put together a one hundred and fifty million pound redundancy package to help said poor bastards get by.

My dad was fortunate. His mining career had done for his knees and his back years before, so he managed to land and very comfortable office job which allowed him the dubious pleasure of seeing his pit dismantled and turned into scrub and heath.

My dad got his redundancy, but many didn't.

Where was the Conservative government on October nineteen ninety-two?

This isn't some kind of party political broadcast running up to the election in May this year. This is me wondering how implicit rights & wrongs seem to be weighed in pounds sterling and in the satiation of negative emotions rather than in the interests of the lives of the men & woman who form the backbone of this once great nation...