Yesterday was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Miners’ Strike.
It is a Yes-No question, “Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?” The correct answer is, “Yes.” We now know that every claim made about planned pit closures was true, to destroy the NUM and the mining communities at any cost.
The dwindling defenders of the Government of the day try to pretend that it was about something else, in the way that the dwindling defenders of the Blair Government now pretend that the Iraq War was about something other than weapons of mass destruction that were capable of deployment within 45 minutes.
But in fact the road from those closed pits runs through Baghdad and Tripoli to who knows how many other capitals of countries where the oil is coveted by our lords and masters, the House of Saud. Instead, I strongly support the exploitation of the vast reserves of coal in this country and in this county.
That, and the extension of civil nuclear power, are the backbone of an all-of-the-above energy policy, and they are the means of delivering highly paid, highly skilled, high status, unionised jobs while securing independence from Arab oil, from Russian gas, and from coal that has been mined using child and slave labour.
From Venezuela, Donald Trump intends his dynasty to supply a dependent world with oil deep into the twenty-second century. And from North Korea, Trump intends his dynasty to supply a dependent world with the coal of the Kim dynasty deep into the twenty-second century. Yet we have our own coal, right here under our feet.
Britain was the world leader in clean coal technology until the Strike. Britain can and must be that world leader again. Horror stories about how coal was burned or mined in the Britain of the twentieth century have no relevance to the Britain of the twenty-first. At the same time, I am totally opposed both to open-casting and to fracking, which extract hardly anything while employing hardly anyone.
It is a Yes-No question, “Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?” The correct answer is, “Yes.” We now know that every claim made about planned pit closures was true, to destroy the NUM and the mining communities at any cost.
The dwindling defenders of the Government of the day try to pretend that it was about something else, in the way that the dwindling defenders of the Blair Government now pretend that the Iraq War was about something other than weapons of mass destruction that were capable of deployment within 45 minutes.
But in fact the road from those closed pits runs through Baghdad and Tripoli to who knows how many other capitals of countries where the oil is coveted by our lords and masters, the House of Saud. Instead, I strongly support the exploitation of the vast reserves of coal in this country and in this county.
That, and the extension of civil nuclear power, are the backbone of an all-of-the-above energy policy, and they are the means of delivering highly paid, highly skilled, high status, unionised jobs while securing independence from Arab oil, from Russian gas, and from coal that has been mined using child and slave labour.
From Venezuela, Donald Trump intends his dynasty to supply a dependent world with oil deep into the twenty-second century. And from North Korea, Trump intends his dynasty to supply a dependent world with the coal of the Kim dynasty deep into the twenty-second century. Yet we have our own coal, right here under our feet.
Britain was the world leader in clean coal technology until the Strike. Britain can and must be that world leader again. Horror stories about how coal was burned or mined in the Britain of the twentieth century have no relevance to the Britain of the twenty-first. At the same time, I am totally opposed both to open-casting and to fracking, which extract hardly anything while employing hardly anyone.
We need an approach to climate
change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and
working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world,
which upheld the right of the working classes and of non-white people to have
children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that
always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities
or a full diet to the rich.
The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power.
Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power.
Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
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