Heseltine goes on about his €1,000 million aid package for ravaged mining communities. But that's just a one off. Nuclear Electricis given a £1,200 million subsidy every year.
With just 12,000 on its payroll, this comes out at €100,000 per worker annually. Sacked miners will get an average redundancy of just £37,000.
The assertion that pits are being subsidised by £100 million per month is based on the ludicrous assumption that they Will be kept open while no output is sold Oil is both dirty and dangerous, as the Piper Alpha disaster proves. Again using BP yearbook statistics, proven UK oil reserves are sufficient for less than six years. for a range of publications, John Major effectively handed the industry a £6,000 million subsidy as chancellor in 1990, by allowing it a 100 per cent allowance on Capital Gains Tax for the cost of cleaning up the North Sea. The coal shut downs will also see an additional £2,000 million O RT IRS women in the present campaign? I think so. Because we've had the experience of 1984-5 and women have made contacts and maintained them. These groups, these unions, these workplaces thatwe've twinned with, know that women are there; know that women are capable, and are asking once again for women.
PHOTO: Graeme Cooksor In 1984-5, there were women who didn't have the ability or time to get involved. I had parents and in-laws who were prepared to look after the children and I had a supportive husband. I think we should have a creche at every meeting, march and demonstration. We should have the Do you think the labour movement has been affected by the defeats of Since the strike, New Realism has won out in the Wales Labour Party. They say 'stay there and we It was meant to make us modern, attractive; all the words the ad-men use. New Realism and Thatcher made socialism a But New Realism meant nothing on a picket line at Abernant and Mardy. What it did was cloud are right now. the issues and it sold us an illusion. It was a tacit on Britain's current account deficit, while at least 90,000 extra dole cheques will have to go out each fortnight while direct and indirect taxation is lost. 'The Madhouse' isn't in it.
But there is - inevitably - a nice little earner in all this for the Tories. The government wants to sell its remaining 40 per cent stake in PowerGen and National Power without the threat of organised miners able to suspend coal supplies. Estimated value to Mr Lamont -€2,200 million, straight in the exchequer pocket.
Yet according to journalist David Ross, who covers energy