Re: Scargill was right! : Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:47 pm  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

You know when I mentioned left wing types and their childish comments.......?

Might be a good idea if you reverted to type and locked it, as I can't really see any educated discussion coming any time soon.

Tomorrow's another day Big Man.

Don't feed the trolls.

Re: Scargill was right! : Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:51 pm  

SmokeyTA wrote:

The first 5 of those have sample sizes of 106, 258, 20, 22 and 1. Come with me to Grimethorpe and we cane find 200 people and ask thm what they think of her and pretend that's representative if you want?

Save your breath. There's no point asking Ajw a question, he'll just either produce a reply that ignores the question or not even reply to it at all.

You know physicists reckon that there's such a thing as dark energy, that's basically the opposite of gravity?
Ajw is to knowledge as dark energy is to gravity.


Give him a minute, he's just looking up his next reply on wikipedia, it's his one and only source of information.

Re: Scargill was right! : Tue Jan 07, 2014 11:19 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

As might Karl Benz, Raymond Damadian might have something to say about the award to Mansfield & Lauterbur, Rolls Royce, IBM, Johannes Gutenberg, James Black/ICI, John Vane/Wellcome David Wong/Eli Lilly we could go on and on.

Raymond Damadian can say what he want, in fact he did. Nobody listened. That's why Mansfield and Lauterbur have a noble prize and damadian doesn't.

Eli Lilly(the company) did do pretty well manufacturing others discoveries. But it's not difficult to make money when there is a pressing need, the state pays out fortunes to researchers, and a brave Genius makes his discoveries available for free. Especially when your capital was provided by selling sugar pills, elixers, and tonics. These days we call them placebos and we would refer to the Eli Lily company as snake oil salesmen.

IBM would have been nowhere, they wouldn't even have existed without the work of, Babbage, they would still be making punch card machines without the work of Turing.

I'm not sure what world changing discovery we are attributing to ICI, which bares comparison to the likes of Curie and Salk. Blacks discoveries simply built on his work at Glasgow University.

John Vanes work at wellcome foundation. A charity. Not Wellcome Burroughs the pharmaceutical company. Vane also spent almost all of his working life in academia.


Capitalism makes good doodads and whatsits if you want a gizmo a capitalist is your man. If you want world changing paradigm shifting research, the capitalist is counting his money and shouting at poor people and is nowhere to be seen.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 12:35 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

As might Karl Benz, Raymond Damadian might have something to say about the award to Mansfield & Lauterbur, Rolls Royce, IBM, Johannes Gutenberg, James Black/ICI, John Vane/Wellcome David Wong/Eli Lilly we could go on and on.

Recent (as in the last 50 years) developments in combustion engine technology have not been driven by automotive manufacturers but as a consequence of goverment demands

[DaveO]

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 2:03 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

In 1974 when Wilson got to power - the miners agreed a 30% wage increase with the NCB - I would say that was writing your own pay check would you not agree?

Pay rises back then were, across the board in % terms, way way above anything we have now. Even attempts at wage restraint by governments meant they were after pay rises of less than 10% (not the 1% public sector workers are lucky to get today).

Inflation rate was 16%. Miners were also paid 8% less than other manual workers on average which Wilson used to in the election to make the Tories stance on pay re the minors look stupid. That is asking for a high % rise was not "printing money" but about parity at least in part.

So what do we end up with? In real terms a 6% pay rise for a dangerous job of national importance at the time.

In other words you are cherry picking one statistic and taking it way out of context.

The introduction of more modern machinery would see a decline in numbers - that is just process improvement nothing to do with Wilson - its just evolution.

He had to deal with the fall out whatever the reason for the decline in numbers. What he didn't have was an agenda to decimate the industry. Thatcher did.

I agree with your sentiment re Scargill - my point is how much of what he did was about self-interest i.e. war against the capitalist rulers and all the lefty codswallop. The question for me did he actually shorten the life of the mining industry and cause he members unnecessary hardship just for his own political ambitions. Another point is why did Thatcher pick specifically on the NUM for the fight?

To answer your last question I have always thought the considered opinion was because she never forgot what happened to Ted Heath in 1974. She blamed the miners for Wilson winning in 1974 when in fact it was Heath's fault he lost the election when he tried to stage it as one of "Who runs the country".

The sequence of events back then is interesting. The miners announced a strike with 81% in favour, three days later Heath calls an election on the basis of "Who runs the country?".

Heath saw an opportunity with Labour 4% behind in the polls to exploit the miners strike to win another term.

What then happened is Wilson totally out manoeuvred him on that one by not backing the miners! He was neutral in everything he said. He instead went on about negotiation and blamed the Tories for the confrontation (as well as slagging them off on the economy).

So back then it was clearly was not the unions who brought the government down as you have argued. It was Ted Heath who sought to exploit the miners strike expecting Labour to back it outright which they did not, lost a 4% lead in the polls and basically screwed up.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:02 am  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

You know when I mentioned left wing types and their childish comments.......?

And I suggest that coming from someone who only recently made a cack-handed attempt at harassment on this forum, time may be well invested in considering how much he actually wants to remain on these boards.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:44 am  

Mintball wrote:

And I suggest that coming from someone who only recently made a cack-handed attempt at harassment on this forum, time may be well invested in considering how much he actually wants to remain on these boards.

Harassment? I invite you to provide any evidence of harassment. Either publically on here, or in a PM if you prefer.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:51 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

Yu are aware of the posters history with polls? It's a valid comment my friend

You need better bait, I've not locked anything for quite some time

LOL. Yes, it was indeed noted. I thought you must be off on holiday somewhere, or had maybe sat on the laptop.....

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:58 am  

SmokeyTA wrote:

Raymond Damadian can say what he want, in fact he did. Nobody listened. That's why Mansfield and Lauterbur have a noble prize and damadian doesn't.

Eli Lilly(the company) did do pretty well manufacturing others discoveries. But it's not difficult to make money when there is a pressing need, the state pays out fortunes to researchers, and a brave Genius makes his discoveries available for free. Especially when your capital was provided by selling sugar pills, elixers, and tonics. These days we call them placebos and we would refer to the Eli Lily company as snake oil salesmen.

IBM would have been nowhere, they wouldn't even have existed without the work of, Babbage, they would still be making punch card machines without the work of Turing.

I'm not sure what world changing discovery we are attributing to ICI, which bares comparison to the likes of Curie and Salk. Blacks discoveries simply built on his work at Glasgow University.

John Vanes work at wellcome foundation. A charity. Not Wellcome Burroughs the pharmaceutical company. Vane also spent almost all of his working life in academia.


Capitalism makes good doodads and whatsits if you want a gizmo a capitalist is your man. If you want world changing paradigm shifting research, the capitalist is counting his money and shouting at poor people and is nowhere to be seen.

Eli Lilly discovered the ingrediant for and developed Prozac, one of the most used drugs in the world, Black whilst at ICI discovered the ingrediant for and developed Beta-Blockers again one of the most consumed drugs in the world. Who funded the Wellcome foundation? the same people that fund a huge chunk of research in unversities the good old capitalist.

My father used to work for ER Squibb when they were a decent company before they were gobbled up by Bristol Myers. They developed a number of cutting edge drugs - they funded and worked alongside academia to develop these products - it was a process of cross pollination as I would suggest is the case with most drug development. To say all the major breakthroughs come via the state is simply untrue.

Depends what you call dodaas - I would say printed matter is a bit more than a doodah - is transport a doodah?

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 9:29 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Eli Lilly discovered the ingrediant for and developed Prozac, one of the most used drugs in the world, Black whilst at ICI discovered the ingrediant for and developed Beta-Blockers again one of the most consumed drugs in the world. Who funded the Wellcome foundation? the same people that fund a huge chunk of research in unversities the good old capitalist.

My father used to work for ER Squibb when they were a decent company before they were gobbled up by Bristol Myers. They developed a number of cutting edge drugs - they funded and worked alongside academia to develop these products - it was a process of cross pollination as I would suggest is the case with most drug development. To say all the major breakthroughs come via the state is simply untrue.

Depends what you call dodaas - I would say printed matter is a bit more than a doodah - is transport a doodah?

There is a reason why The Wellcome foundation does the research it does, and makes the discoveries it does, and Glaxosmithkline make cold remedies and Horlicks, and has to pay out billions of pounds in fines for fraud, kickbacks, and hides research. Teva pharmacuticals are one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, their entire company pretty much just makes cheap pills other people have discovered.

When Jonas Salk found remedies that didnt work, he told the world. When Eli Lilly found remedies that didnt work, they just pretended they did and sold them anyway. After all, their sugar pills were flavoured

I don’t think really you can look at ‘transport’ as a product of private enterprise, like there wasn’t huge amounts of state research in to flight, like the biggest ship and boat builders weren’t Navys. Like universities throughout the world don’t do huge amounts of research in to aerodynamics. like it didnt need government backing with huge levels of road building to cover for the motorcars failings. like it isnt government standards that have driven improvement.

Almost all, the vast, vast, vast majority of research which leads to major discoveries which change the way we see, use and look at the world comes from the state and academia. This will always be the case. Academia looks for the answer. Capitalism looks for the money.