I'm unfortunately old enough to remember the state of the country the last time Labour lost power in the Callaghan era. An urban myth has grown up in Scotland that a big, bad THATCHER came in and decimated the country.
Well let me tell you, the COUNTRY WAS ON IT'S KNEES, very similarly as it is now. The economy was fucked after THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT who had been in thrall to their Union paymasters much as today's lot are to UNISON, left office with soaring unemployment, record bankruptcies and company failures, record public debt, record balance of payments deficit and the pound on it's knees. Willie Ross, the then Scottish Secretary pledged to resign if the Scottish unemployment total reached 100,000.
Today it's been announced that it's now reached 216,000 in Scotland and in Willie Ross's day the total included everybody who was 'economically inactive' which it doesn't today. That is an increase of 55,000 SINCE LAST MONTH. IN SCOTLAND! That's the equivalent of a town the size of Motherwell, Hamilton and Wishaw put together. Where's your RAVENSCRAIG now? I don't hear the sound of shrill union voices in protest!
But They shout, "it's a global downturn"! GLOBAL, MY FUCKING ARSEHOLE! This is LABOUR'S MESS and don't LET THE LABOUR BASTARDS OR THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND FORGET IT!
18 comments:
I warned you what would happen if you voted against Labour. Mass unemployment and massive debts. You should have listened and given Gordon 5 more years to sort it all out. This was no time for a novice.
Maggie just did what had to be done. Lets face it, Ravenscraig was an industrial dinosaur. I do not feel very optimistic about our future under the condems though, but anyone has to be better than Labour.
I read an old post of yours the other day. It seems we both were fish merchants. Please satisfy my curiousity..did you buy fish in Mallaig?
DaveP, Yes, I did. I was MD of George M Hogg and Sons Ltd, which later traded as Scopesca. We went down the swanee in 1990, but we were buying in all the Scottish ports, most of the Irish, north and south and also some ports in England like Newlynn from other merchants. Who were you?
I was Mallaig based, and bought mostly there, (fish and prawns). Got out of the industry around 1990,before things got too bad. The EU certainly put a great Scottish industry on its knees.
Bought for J H McPhee, A Ramsay Aberdeen, LAD Fish Export and others. Was Steven Gerrard from Pittenweem your buyer? I wrongly thought you were one of the Frasers, (A&I), when I saw you were from Ayrshire.
I once took the train from Oban(?) to Mallaig, very picturesque, didn't see any fisherfolk though.
Back on topic. If only the Scots Tory had campaigned with such outright vigour DL perhaps he might have gained more than one Scotch constituency.
Tell me this, presumably there does exist in Scotland that stereotypical class of wealthy people who drink gin, play golf and make unwelcome advances upon their servants; who do they vote for?
DaveP, No we used a guy who worked for the salesman and I'm trying to remember his name but it escapes me. I think he latterly became independent working for himself. Funnily enough I can see his face, but his name just escapes me. We bought quite a lot of fish from Ramsay until we started to buy direct. We also worked with Bannerman in Lochinver and Lachie Ross in Clash. It was mostly megs and witches we bought in Mallaig, as most of the hake etc. was trawled to buggery and was shite.
Banned, they had chances to win in another two seats, another one in the Borders and that cunt Murphy's in East Renfrewshire but Labour increased their majority. Although Murphy increased his majority, his seat used to be the safest Tory seat in Scotland as it contains the south side of Glasgow where the middle clases stay although they have changed the boundry a bit and there are also a lot of moneyed Asians moving in and they tend to vote Labour.
Banned, sorry the class of landed gentry you name would vote Tory generally with a few voting LibDem and SNP. There is a 'that's what my father voted' attitude to voting Labour in Scotland and there was undoubtedly a mood of feeling sorry for Brown and Labour probably got a bigger vote than say Blair would have. When I was in hospital, I had a conversation with a young nurse who was going to vote Labour because she felt sorry for 'Gordon' despite the fact that health is devolved to Holyrood and she should have been voting SNP because they had promised to protect the health budget. Thick fuckers! The fact that the SNP wasn't represented in the Leaders' debates didn't help.
DL Sounds like your buyer was Keith Eddie of George Walkers. Seems to ring a bell now. Lets face it, a lot of the fish landed in Mallaig was shite. I bought a lot of round haddock and whiting for J H Mcphee, and we processed them in Mallaig. It was common that we had to give the fillets a long soak in brine to get rid of the stench of rot. I used to laugh when I saw the fish on sale in supermarkets, with "fresh from the sea to J H Mc Phee" plastered all over the packaging.
Banned..the toffs our way always appeared to be Tory voters. I can remember some of them used to have Tory grandees stay on their estates. Douglas Turd was a frequent visitor to the area. Now there was an unpleasant man. Condescending snob. Mallaig itself was a little Tory oasis, in days past anyway.
Mallaig rail line has to be one of the worlds best rail trips; just beautiful. There is a summer steam service Fort William to Mallaig too.
The MSM will be making out it's all Cameron's fault soon, while the mad, mono-eyed, commie fuckwit hides away riding his rocking horse in Kirkaldy!
DaveP that's the very person! I've
Ended up in Hospital for a couple of
Days, so I'm on my phone. I'll remenince
More when I get back to a laptop.
Spidey, the mad one-eyed prick
sitting in a rocking chair is a
frightening thought!
You are right about this DL - I am (just) old enough to remember the last Labour disaster in the 1970s. It took nearly two decades of austerity to sort it out, and now here we are again - back neck-deep in Labour debts, waste and taxes. Its the 1970s all over again, but this time in 3D, with full surround-sound.
The next few years are not going to be pretty, and the Tories will again get the blame for clearing up another Labour disaster.
Prospero, in 25 years time the coalition will be a dirty name in Labour circles particularly in good old socialist Scotland. They will be blamed for deystrying Scotland's industry, fuck knows what's teetering on it's last legs already, maybe open cast mining or some fucking thing. How going back to Thatcher, people thought that working like an animal at a coalface, developing lung diseases, being black with coal every shift and being paid a pittance for it was fucking noble is beyond me. Maybe because they got Sunday off to play in a brass band or fly some fucking pigeons!
DaveP aye some good days when I look back on them. I remember going to Mallaig one of the first times we bought there direct. At the time we bought fish from Bannerman in Tain and he in turn bought fish from George Ramsay in Aberdeen and charged us a small commission on it. Ramsay knew this and I had spoken to him several times and indeed went to one of his dances in Aberdeen but it was one of these business arrangements you sometimes get into when you are starting up. We changed it soon afterwards so that we were buying direct from Ramsay when it suited us. This night however George's brother was buying there. I forget his name but I think it might have been Billy. He had just bought himself a new BMW 635 and fancied his barra a bit. Anyway at the time we were the only people in Britain never mind Scotland who could handle large quantities of megs and witches, (we were set up to export 120 ton per week or so to Spain). I started to bid on the fresher catches and Billy started to shove it up my arse, so I retaliated by doing the same thing to him. The price per box rapidly rose from £10 to over £100 on the fresher stuff, a price I knew I could pay with ease as I could balance out my buys from other ports and the stuff we got consigned from Ireland. I ended up with about 80 boxes of decent fresh stuff and Billy Ramsay had over 300 boxes of shite at prices around about the £100 mark. He seemed very pleased with himself until I asked him what he was going to do with it. "I'll sell it to Bannerman was his reply" and "what's he going to do with it" I asked. "I don't know" he said. "Well let me tell you he's going to sell it to me but I'm going to tell hin to shove it right up his arse" At this point his face was going increasingly white! "We'll fillet them", he said. "Oh", I replied " and who the fuck is going to want 900 stone of meg fillets at £40 per stone" We ended up taking them off Ramsay's hands at £20 per box and discarding about 60 boxes because they were too far gone to use. It must have cost Ramsay about £20k, which in the 80's was a fucking lot of money. Funny, Billy Ramsay never spoke to me again!
Ah Billy Ramsay. He was just a spoilt wee shite. I remember that fancy car he had too, and the posing. His brother George had the brains.
Billy and I hated the sight of each other too, and I only bought for Ramsays after McPhees fired me as their buyer for refusing to give up my other customers. McPhee only ever bought small whiting and haddock, mostly round, and I loyally bought said fish solely for them. I just used Ramsay to screw McPhee and they (McP) subsequently pulled out off Mallaig.
You had to be very careful running Ramsay up in auctions, because George Walkers consigned a lot of fish to them on non auction days, and Ramsay paid back what he liked. Any loss at an auction would be covered by a crappy price paid on consigned fish. The fishermen knew what was going on, and some of the best white fish boats that were not in hock financially to Walkers left Mallaig altogether for Clash. I actually witnessed a briefcase being handed over to a particular salesman one night, and when it was opened it wasn't full of sandwiches.
The Nigerians could have learned a lot from Mallaig where corruption was concerned. I never got involved in anything corrupt, but in the end EU fishing regulations actually encouraged even more corruption, and the effort of continually having to keep one step ahead of bent salesmen, got too exhausting. I moved on to a more peaceful life with my young family.
There is a nice story about Mallaig in the late 70s. In those days of the great herring fishery, there was tata. A boat would come in with herring, and quite often the only way it would sell its legal catch, would be by giving extra catch to a buyer and the salesman for nothing. This would then be sold for cash and the money shared between buyer and salesman. One night Walkers safe was robbed, and a rumoured £100000 stolen..a lot of money in the 70s. Everyone knew who stole it, and as the money did not officially exist the local taxi driver got away with it. He bought a lovely hotel in Fort William.
DaveP, aye Billy Ramsay. He reminds me of my brother. Just the same, a flashy wanker with fuck all brains who was a drain on MY business. The only consolation in going out the game was that I didn't have to work with the prick on a daily basis. In fact I haven't spoken to him on purpse for 6 years since our mother died.
Aye, I had forgotten about the bundles of cash that use to grease the fishing indutry. The Income Tax had a field day when they went through it like a dose of salts starting in Aberdeen. One or two had some fucking big bills to pay!
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