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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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 Posted -
11/01/2009
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06:04
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New Year, new topic. If you want to see the old one do a forum search for same title but 2008.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk
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Phil
Regular Member
104 Posts
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Posted - 27/01/2011 : 19:37
No Frank, in Frankworld dinosoaurs are alive and well, that is the one know as Frank is!!!!
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frankwilk
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Posted - 27/01/2011 : 19:53
Hi Phil
Glad to see you are awake again,by the way where did you spring up from ?? same place as the Defence Chiefs ??.
I do love popping into the Labour Club you should come in more often.
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
HerbSG
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Posted - 27/01/2011 : 20:43
Frank, you would be surprised..no...delighted to see how many Barlickers frequent the Con Club, many on their way to or from Green St. (the working men's club). The non political enjoy the Cellar Bar or the Wine Bar. Not sure if there is a Liberal Club?
HERB
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Phil
Regular Member
104 Posts
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Posted - 27/01/2011 : 21:42
Defence chiefs??? Frankworld's labour club? What next an admission of privatisation is bad as it was originally a labour policy?
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Bradders
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Posted - 27/01/2011 : 22:15
Steady on there Phil...TORYWILKUS REX is stirring...!
When cornered ,it will always use diversionary tactics ....
If completely outwitted , a disappearing act comes into play ...
I suggest just a gentle prod or two to start with......
(you'll soon get the hang of it !)
BRADDERS BLUESINGER |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 28/01/2011 : 07:38
Frank, you're spluttering again! Let's look at what you have just said.
You're the one who keeps raising the matter of the Pendle election because in your tribal mind, the fact that I supported a canidate who lost is a badge of shame and something to be laughed at with a smiley. I think that's as good evidence as any of your shallow attitude to politcs, like a football fan who is only interested in the score-line and not the quality of the game. Of course my preferred man lost, this happens in politics. Macmillan lost Stockton on Tees in 1929 but regained it in 1931. No reflection on the man or his qualities, external factors and in the end his evident superiority won through. My mate Gordon lost in Pendle because, using Ashcroft money (over £250,000), the tories blanketed the constituency as though they were selling Rinso. I feel no shame in having supported a man who had demonstrated that he was a fine constituency MP. This isn't 'flooging a dead horse', it's being loyal to a good man and if you can see something to laugh at in that it simply demonstrates that you haven't the same views. I'll stick with mine thank you because I think your criteria are shallow.
Steel. Never mind British Steel, look at the steel industry after WW1. Totally in private hands and generally recognised as a lame duck. Antiquated plants running at a loss and the owners putting every obstruction they could think of up to any goverment sponsored scheme of assistance to amalgamate, reinvest and modernise within a privately owned structure. In 1933 Thomas Wards and the Conset Iron Co got together, employed the best consulant in the world on the siting of major primary steel works (sorry I can never remember his name. He was chief adviser to US Steel) and he said that one of the two best sites in the world was at Jarrow because of nearby coking coal, iron ore, skilled labour and deep water port. Palmers, the major employer in Jarrow shut down in 1933 and the new consortium approached the National Government for help to re-organise the industry. Despite all their efforts and research the government refused to invest in Jarrow even though it was a prime candidate under their new Special Areas Act. The refusal was attributed to right wing dinosaurs who couldn't forget the Jarrow March of 1936. So the proposed mega plant never got built. There was a similar initiative at the same time for Ebbwe Vale but that failed for the same political reasons.
By the time WW2 arrived we had a steel industry under private ownership that was hopelessly unfit for purpose and the War Coalition had to impose strict controls on the industry, virtually temporary nationalisation, in order to drag it kickking and screaming out of the 19th century. Private owneship had failed and the post war nationalisation was faced with the same problem that had existed before the war.
It was the Macmillan government in 1953 which handed partial control of steel back to the private owners and when Harold realised that steel making was to be concentrated in Wales he forced the new partners, by throwing subsidies at them, to build Ravenscraig. Done for political reasons under private ownership this effectively destroyed the economic advantages of both plants. The reason why Llanwern was the favoured site was the availabilty of good coking coal in SW Wales. Ravenscraig had to import theirs, that's why the first thing that had to be done was force British Rail to cooperate with Stewart and Lloyds to build a new deep water port to serve the plant.
Sorry for the length of that but in order to understand you have to read the history. So you see Frank, Ravenscraig was built by a private consortium bribed by a Tory government and whilst the blame can be laid at the door of 10 Downing Street it was not a fault of nationalisation. Under full public ownership the correct economic decision had been made and implemented, Llanwern was building when the Tories got back in and they couldn't stop it. The private owners grabbed the subsidies and built a white elephant but as far as they were concerned it made economic sense and who knows, perhaps they could compete with Llanwern. The Market at its finest! The British steel industry, under whatever ownership, had to fight the world decine in the industry with the handicap of an uneconomic primary steel-making capacity and in the end of course it had to fail.
I can't understand your point about rail disasters. What has that got to do with the economic principles emodied in the argument against public ownership? You shoot yourelf in the foot anyway. Read LTC Rolt 'Red for Danger' an account of rail disasters in Britain from the early days and you'll realise that rail crashes happen under any regime. What can be said with certainty is that the modernisation of track and rolling stock in an integrated system was one of the major achievements of British Rail, under their regime we rapidly became one of the safest systems in the world. The majority of accidents since privatisation can be traced back to the deterioration of track inspection and maintenance as the it was outsourced and economies applied. This was one of the major triggers for taking back these functions under central control but like Ted, I am not convinced we have yet arrived at a viable management system. Compared to the wealth of experience blown away by privatisation it is a pale shadow of what we enjoyed under an integrated BR.
As for the motives for privatisation you are totally mistaken if you think it was because of fear that Labour would privatise. If Major hadn't dashed for the sale as part of the tribal instinct that the Market knows best there would have been no need to nationalise, BR would still have existed so that argument is patently nonsense.
The dinosaurs are not extinct. They still exist in the mists of Frankworld laboring under the misapprehension that all Socialists are Demons and that the Market is always Right. Read Harold and the Middle Way, he was streets ahead of the modern Tories in 1936 when he wrote it. He is stll right now, we will not make any progress as long as the dinosaurs cling to the shibboleths of the market and sound money. There will be hope when all parties realise that there has to be a partnership between public and private ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Bevan and Macmillan were right and despite all your spluttering Frank, at heart you must know that there is merit in that point of view. But in Frankworld the lessons of history, policies based on the real world and the needs of the future carry no weight. The only dead horse being floogged here is yours.
Belle, you are not mistaken in your misgivings as to government motives. There is a very interesting book (Well worth reading Frank!) by Naomi Klein called 'The Shock Doctrine'. It traces the use of shocks to the sytem from early interrogation and torture techniques in the 1930s to world politics today and gives good evidence of the use of a primary shock to a system (Whether natural or induced) to produce a climate where draconian political and social change can be forced on a system or country on the grounds that 'we are all in it', or 'this is the only solution'. This is exactly what is happening now and it is a cynical misuse of political power for tribal ends.
The aim is to start the reverse of advantages gained over the last 65 years since the shock of WW2. Yes, it was that shock which allowed the advances, shock doctrine isn't always a bad thing! It was the shock of the 1929 crash that allowed Roosevelt to impose the New Deal in the US and led to the Glass-Steagal Acts which curbed the power of the markets until the regulatory mechanisms were attacked in the 1960s, the markets got their freedom and led us to another 1929 fifty years later.
So you're right Belle and forests and canals are ony the tip of the iceberg.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
belle
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Posted - 28/01/2011 : 10:43
As I said elsewhere, yesterday those concerned about the Govt demolishing our defence forces have said it's all part of a larger plan to build a Euopean fighting force.. it's time to wake up ad smell the coffee folks, the conspiracy theorists are about to have a taste of triumph!
Edited by - belle on 28/01/2011 10:43:43 AM
Life is what you make it |
Bradders
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Posted - 28/01/2011 : 22:52
A proper understanding of what's what , and why it came about .....!
Thankyou Stanley....
BRADDERS BLUESINGER |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 07:27
It's a pleasure Bradders and I enjoy doing it. Question is will logic supported by solid historical evidence penetrate the border defences of Frankworld? Or will it simply provoke another diversion and a splutter. Time to pop down into the Anderson shelter and await the next attack! Anyone for a mug of cocoa?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 09:20
Remember me losing the name of the consultant who recommended Jarrow as one of the two best sites in the world for siting a major steel works. These things itch and I have to scratch them so I went digging. I found the reference in Mowatt, 'Britain between the wars'. The man was Henry Brassert, he was German and headed a consultancy that specialised in siting and designing large steel works. His advice was clear and is mantioned in Hansard but the employer's federation refused to have anything to do with it because competition was the last thing they wanted. As they controlled new investment in 1933 this killed the project. See also Ellen Wilkinson, 'The Town that was Murdered'.
In another context here's a quotation that carries as much weght today as it did in 1944 when Ernie Bevin held a press conference on the Beveridge report;
"Today, this plan leaves the 19th century behind and it says in effect that instead of the human being having to fit into an economic system, the economic system has to fit human requirements. It reverses the policies we have followed since the Industrial Revolution."
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
catgate
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 10:46
quote:
Stanley wrote:
In another context here's a quotation that carries as much weght today as it did in 1944 when Ernie Bevin held a press conference on the Beveridge report;
"Today, this plan leaves the 19th century behind and it says in effect that instead of the human being having to fit into an economic system, the economic system has to fit human requirements. It reverses the policies we have followed since the Industrial Revolution."
Yes, he was always good for a laugh,was Ernie.
Every silver lining has a cloud.
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 16:45
Really Catty. You should enquire into what he did and the benefits that accrued from it, almost all of which we enjoy to this day. He was years in front of his time on joint industrial negotiation, industrial planning and labour management, including welfare and working conditions. Even his opponents praised his foresight and common sense.
So it would appear that you think that any move away from laissez-faire capitalism or away from total central control as in a Communist system is a bad thing? This is what he was arguing against and funnily enough the voters agreed with him, that's why there was the landslide of 1945.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
frankwilk
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 19:20
Stanley my point with regards to the Railways was we had Disasters when Rail was Nationalised not just under Private Control.
You need your book out again look at Port Talbot and Anchor at Scunny to see the Goverment in action with the Steel Industry. Lets face it a Nationlised Industry is just a toy for politicos to play with and manipulate, like Education and the NHS. I don't think all Socialists are demons I just don't think they should be trusted with the economy. The past in this instant is a clear guide to the future, every time Labour has been in Goverment it has ended in failure. That's why they get voted out, because people get fed up with the failure of Labour/ Socialists managing the economy. Nothing to do with Ashcroft at all.
Stanley, Stanley Harold Mac is only Right because You want to Believe He is !!! a lot of other people thought/think he was Wrong.
I like the Franksworld comments Because the majority of people in this country live in Frank's World fed up with the Socialists picking our pockets, so it shows we are at last gaining ground.
ps Have you ever visited Huntsville ?? that is the place the German Rocket Experts ended up after WW2 you only need to look at a telephone directory in Huntsville to see that. By the way it is worth a visit.
You see I am probably the most travelled Dinosaur you have ever met
I travelled from one end of China to the other by Train and Bus to try to understand what makes them tick. From Beijing to Nanning
I travelled from Mississippi to Vermont to try to understand what makes them tick as well.
I think the V&A and the Imperial War Museum, Natural History Museum etc are the most wonderful places to vist. The Smithsonian is probaly one of the best I have visited, see Dinosaurs do travel and observe, and then form their own views.
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
catgate
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 19:47
quote:
Stanley wrote:
So it would appear that you think that any move away from laissez-faire capitalism or away from total central control as in a Communist system is a bad thing? This is what he was arguing against and funnily enough the voters agreed with him, that's why there was the landslide of 1945.
Your perspicacity has led you to the wrong conclusion, I'm afraid, and I am also afraid that poor old Ernie would be most disappointed if he came back and found that central state control, over the last thirty years or so , has given capitalism as much laisssez-faire as it could ever want. Furthermore if those voters of 1945 came back with him he might well get lyched for facilitating the current mess.
Every silver lining has a cloud.
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frankwilk
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Posted - 29/01/2011 : 20:17
perspicacity
I think means looked at it to deeply and over analysed then came to the wrong conclusion !!! in Cats view. 
Edited by - frankwilk on 29/01/2011 8:19:58 PM
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
SPEAKER'S CORNER 2012
