[BITList] Margaret Thatcher 'death party' in London's TrafalgarSquare attracts hundreds

[HUGH]

Colin,

Few outside of our family grieved when my mother died, so I can't see why I should shed a knee jerk tear at the news some famous lady I never met or knew has died. Tough on her family, I say, note it has happened, and move on. Others dance in the streets, and that's life. Politics has bugger all to do with it.

On the article, it's Fox News after all. The Atlantic tends to blur things.

They wrote, "Widely respected on the right for reviving Britain's economic fortunes ..... "

I was unaware of her reviving our economic fortunes.  We've no ****ing industry - some revival. Of course, it can all be dismissed by some feeble soundbite. Yesterday's Herald had an account of a conversation between a man leaving a gents' toilet and another entering it.  Said the writer (the one entering it) "Going in for a read?" "Maybe," said the other. To which the first said, "That's what they used to do in Clyde shipyards"  All 20,000 of them? Some size of shithouse !!  In the Thatcher era and after, that kind of balderdash was used as ammunition against shipbuilding by idiots who couldn't pump up a tyre. Strike happy? I was on strike twice in my life. In 1951 - the apprentice's strike - and a one day token strike some time in the 80s. A friend's father fell to his death on a tanker building in a local yard. Compensation? Not on your nelly.The firm argued that he needn't have chosen that route between A and B. The "frozen toilets strike"? A yard full of men in winter and no toilet facilities, just platitudes - so they went home where the toilets worked, much to the glee of the right wing press, all of whom (one assumes) would have been happy to crap onto ice and poke it away with a stick.  Demarcations, that favourite of the Daily Express, etc? I've never met a manager yet who would allow a plumber to weld a main seam on a  pressure vessel (instead of a Grade 1 welder), or a caulker to turn his hand to grinding a few fuel pump rams when things were slack. Multi-skill groups were tried, and they failed abysmally.  That kind of nonsense, left unchecked, sees us now  flooded by cowboys and people in drawing offices waving papers certifying that they attended a 6 week course in hard sums and technical drawing. Heavens above, our local paper had a piece the other day about a firm offering 1-year apprenticeships. Unfavourable comparisons with yards in Europe which don't bother about unions? When I joined the staff of the Odense Staalskibsvaerft in1965 I was required to join the union there, the Teknisk Landsforbund, and to produce evidence I had been a member of the corresponding union in the UK. Time for coffee.

Hugh.  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20130414/e9b5b0ab/attachment.htm