Ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher dies

Agreed. She didn't have to go as far as smashing the miners into the ground. Coal is / was still a valuable resource and so were the miners that mined it.

Nobody is in possession of the full facts but many people give their opinion when they are in possession of none of the facts.

I allude below to a previous link:

"When was North Sea oil discovered?
Exploitation of oil and gas in the North Sea began in 1964. The earliest discoveries were of gas, but later exploration revealed large oil deposits. Between 1967 and 1974, 18 oilfields were developed and the first oil was piped onshore in 1975. By the early 1980s, Britain became self-sufficient in oil and, by 1985, the UK was producing 2.65 million barrels per day, making the UK the world’s fifth-largest oil producer."

On the Labour party, that's a different matter. I am not a labour supporter, I am a neutral.

We will never know. And we will never know what would have happened if Maggie had not used the UK as an experiment for her theories on Macroeconomics.

BTW I thought they loved her over there.

But from the above....

"We wish Mrs. Thatcher eternal peace; we wish her defenders temporary historical awareness."

My understanding of it all though was the unions wheren't in the habit of helping themselves. Look at them funny and its a stike, productivity down etc so the power of the unions had to be reduced. It was only going to end in one way and they essentaually imploded.

From what me dad told me of the 80's strikes that he worked through was it was cheaper for them to mine coal and transport to the power station in the UK from poland than it was for him to mine, load it into a truck and shift an hour up the road to the power station! If I remember rightly the power stations at the time in the uk where setup to run on a lower sulpher coal than the uk has underground hence to requirement to ship from abroad. I believe the power stations now can use uk based coal.

It was an open secert in the industry that scargill and kinnock both became very wealthy off the back of the fall of the unions!

A figure from the year 1984:

Welsh deep seam coal: £100 a ton at the pithead

Australian open cast coat £8 a ton, delivered CIF UK port.

My souce was Dr Arthur Minton, the eminent coal chemist.

Definitely not. If she was really as good as some people claim then she would have done the right thing and found a way to preserve jobs in the industry and keep the local coal production going. She didn't need to kill it stone dead.

At the time, privately and in my younger days I was selfishly pleased as I began to perceive North Sea Oil as a secure industry for me to work in. However in hindsight she ought to have acted more responsibly with coal and other industries too.

I agree with all of that. Except I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea that she got a lot of things wrong but at least she did it with a lot of vision and determination. She basically got a lot wrong, no matter whether it was done with a lot of grit and determination or not.

George Osborne needs a little of Margaret Thatcher's luck

"Margaret Thatcher was bold, single-minded, and – in the words of George Osborne – an “optimist about the human spirit”. Beyond that, though, she had what Napoleon famously believed was a great leader’s most essential quality. She was lucky."

"Like Mrs Thatcher, the Chancellor is trying to transform the economy and, simultaneously, get the public finances under control. But Mrs Thatcher had a trump card. North Sea oil."

However I believe George will miss the "Frack Boat" this time and another political party will get the luck this time around. I don't believe the economy will feel the benefit of frack gas in this parliamentary term.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...eeds-a-little-of-Margaret-Thatchers-luck.html

Maybe decent inflows from fracking will take some years yet.

But still some interesting news from North Sea oil:-
North Sea oil output to rise by a third over five years

Some interesting snippets on how governments policies can also be a help in the release of optimised production and associated revenues.

BTW I like to see that kind of news. It keeps me in a job.

Two important conditions need to be made by any UK government to make oil exploration and development and production possible and yet bring in an amount of revenue into the government coffers that is fair to the people of the UK. Firstly they must allocate licenses to drill in UK waters or onshore. And secondly tax levels need to be set and allowances granted where appropriate.

A further condition these days is safety and the environment. In terms of fracking, this one may yet be a can of worms for any government in the UK. At least frack gas is on / in English soil though!

So obviously any of the preceding governments need to manipulate / manage both / all three. I don't know that Maggie did anything special that wasn't being done by the previous government(s) in that sense. We don't know if Labour would have done anything different. What I do know is that it is often thought by those in the industry that a Conservative government is good for the UK oil industry in that it might be inclined to levy less Petroleum Revenue Tax - however that is really just a concern for jobs. But at the end of the day the government needs to levy some semblance of revenue tax to gain something out of the oil monies and not just let it taken out of the ground scot free, like what appears to be happening in the Republic of Ireland. A balance needs to be struck between too much tax and too little as too much tax might choke off activity and thus revenues. It could be argued that she got the oil taxation bob on but who's to say that another government might have done it differently.

License allocation seems to have been progressive and systematic throughout the course of time. Again, I am not sure that Maggie did anything marvellous in that sense.

... and when she was good, she was very very good...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=npjOSLCR2hE



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ6TgaPJcR0&feature=player_detailpage

"During Thatcher's time in office, government oil receipts amounted to 16% of GDP"

Thats enough to make all the difference. Britain at that time was the fifth largest oil producer in the world.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/throw-out-myths-margaret-thatcher

Also a great commentary on what Thatcher did for us....

or How the Oil Wealth was Squandered....

[video=youtube;BOnxF03Qh2E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BOnxF03Qh2E#![/video]

And from the Scottish perspective....

Margaret Thatcher snatched £130bn of Scottish wealth as she axed 250,000 of our jobs


"MARGARET Thatcher reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall while her policies wiped out 250,000 jobs north of the Border, it was claimed last night.

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

New analysis published by the SNP showed the booming North Sea oil industry meant Scotland consistently contributed substantially more tax per person than the UK average throughout the decade.

Effectively, it meant that Thatcher’s destructive agenda was bankrolled by Scottish cash – despite the country’s contempt for her policies."


http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/thatcher-snatched-130bn-scottish-wealth-1826513

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm

Contrasting "fortunes" of Norway and the UK, funding of Thatcher's policies, not enough to help Osbourne too much and climate disaster.

http://platformlondon.org/2013/02/2...or-north-sea-oil-and-a-thatcherism-flashback/