when thatcher dies...

[ViolentPanda]

Would reopening the pits really be the best idea at this stage anyway? We need to be moving away from fossil fuels, otherwise the entire world's going to be completely fucked in the near future.

I think it'd depend on a lot of things.
For example, if we could clean up the process for making artificial petroleum distillates, we could wean ourselves off of imported oil products more conveniently, while integrating less polluting technologies in less of a haphazard and piecemeal manner. Similarly, if we could clean up coal-fired power generation significantly, we could give ourselves some lead time on bringing other generation methods "on-line".

So no, it wouldn't be "the best idea", but given that the short-term (and politicians never seem to look beyond the short-term) alternative is nuclear, then if we don't want to be dependent on being at the tail end of a gas and oil supply chain we've got to find methods of using what we have more cleanly and/or go full out on renewables. Even then we'd probably still end up with nuclear somewhere in the chain.

And, of course, everyone else would need to do so too.

 

[Meltingpot]

Oh, we've still got massive reserves of it, but it'll be quite hard to access, mostly because although the sensible thing to have done would have been to "mothball" pits, keep the pumps running etc, the Tories decided on total shut-down, so most of the workings are flooded and will cost a fortune to rehabilitate before mining can be re-started. For want of a nail and all that...

You;'re right. If you want to get angry about this, read Francis Beckett's and someone whose name I've forgotten's recent book about the miners' strike. Sheer vandalism, what happened. Even Norman Tebbit has said that in retrospect he regrets what the Tories did (though he still thinks Scargill had to be beaten).

 

[Pickman's model]

in retrospect the ira should have used a couple more pounds of explosives

 

[discokermit]

in retrospect the ira should have used a couple more pounds of explosives

no, cos then we wouldn't have gotten to laugh at the images of her leaving downing street beaten and in tears a few years later.

 

[Pickman's model]

no, cos then we wouldn't have gotten to laugh at the images of her leaving downing street beaten and in tears a few years later.

as a consolation we would have had a laugh at images of bits of her being removed from the rubble and lots of tories being in tears.

 

[Ralph Masters]

We could have had her blown to pieces but kept on as PM, it probably would have been much better that way. She could have left office in 1989 in a surgical waste bag.

 

[Pickman's model]

We could have had her blown to pieces but kept on as PM, it probably would have been much better that way. She could have left office in 1989 in a surgical waste bag.

or flushed down the toilet.

 

[Ralph Masters]

not good enough for the sewers, she'd have been better off fed to the young tories.

 

[Pickman's model]

not good enough for the sewers, she'd have been better off fed to the young tories.

a la titus andronicus

 

[Ralph Masters]

Rejoicers pie