Question:
Channel 5 News reported that 5,000 jobs are to go in the coal
industry. BBC reported 2,000 jobs to go in the coal industry!
Channel 5 did say that 2,000 pit jobs are to go but also 3,000
dependent jobs.
Answer:
Tell me, how many miners did the Tory's put on the slagheap back in 1985 and
were you so eager to stand up and show your support for them and their
families back then or are you as I suspect just another hypercritic
Conservative supporter just wanting to have a go at a very successful labour
government ?
Sounds right. That means 2000 mining jobs to go, with a possible
further 3000 jobs lost in industries related to local coal mining. A
good proportion of that 3000 - many of whom will be women - can
reasonbaly expect to find work elsewhere. A year from now I'd guess at
2500 unemployed as a result of ther pits closure.
That's a good question. I think we have something between 1 and 2
million unemployed in this country, yet we have a massive labour
shortage. We desperately need [deep breath] doctors, dentists, nurses,
health visitors, policemen and women, prison workers, firemen and
women, soldiers, sailors, pilots, security agents, train drivers,
postmen and women, security guards, bus drivers, street cleaners,
builders, nannies, social workers and mental health nurses, civil
servants ... nearly all people who work in the public sector, or what
used to be the public sector. We are having to look abroad for nearly
all of these people - the NHS is bringing an enormous number of
foreign nurses over; the Met is taking in Jamaican coppers; I suspect
we'll soon be employing traindrivers from India, and if you walk
around London these days you can guarantee the street cleaners will be
foreign nationals - often asylum seekers.
So the obvious question is, why don't we employ the 2 million already
here? The first answer is they are too unskilled: British workers are
among the least skilled in western Europe. We have little heavy
manufacturing industry left, since it was decimated in the 1980s, and
so the old apprenticeship system, or its modern equivalents, have
disappeared or were never devised in the first place. Workers are
rarely trained to do their own jobs properly, let alone someone
else's, and our schools are useless at vocational training. Compared
to Germany, or even France, in this respect, we are a nation of
clumsy, bumbling idiots. Your coal miner is a case in point: coal
mining is a dying industry because sending men underground to hack
coal out of tunnels and breathe coal dust all day long is no longer
considered humane. But at 45 years old, with no retraining, what else
is he suppoed to do? Become a doctor? He might get a job as a train
driver or a postman, if he's lucky - but don't expect him to actually
be able to do the job properly. Our wonderful privatised rail system
isn't about to stretch to proper retraining courses. Not with all
those shareholders (and fines) to pay.
The second reason is that in Britain, public sector pay is shite. It
is ridiculously low. There are more registered nurses in this country
who have quit nursing because of the terrible pay and conditions than
there are RNs still working. And as for street cleaning, and all those
other necessary but disgusting jobs - there's nobody left in the
country willing to do them. Would you force your 45 year old coal
miner to do it? Or some unemployed teenager? If you did, we wouldn't
have very clean streets, I can tell you. It might sound harsh, but if
there are two thousand Ethiopians willing to clean the vomit off
Victoria station's concourse for a pittance, in the knowledge that one
day they might get citizenship and their kids might get a decent
education as Britons, we can guess which way Britain's local councils
will jump. 45 year old coal miners can stick to their alottments.
