7 ms·

Having an interest in ethnomusicology, my favorite testimony of Britain's tumultuous dropping of coal is the song Coal Not Dole. It's originally a poem written

by pierrec 10y ago

Having an interest in ethnomusicology, my favorite testimony of Britain's tumultuous dropping of coal is the song Coal Not Dole. It's originally a poem written by the wife of a laid-off coal miner. Dropping coal may be considered inevitable in retrospect - but it's interesting to see the perspective of people caught up in these changes, whose lives were disrupted and sometimes ruined in the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2hGp6HCn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2hGp6HCn8 It stands so proud, the wheel so still A ghost-like figure on the hill It seems so strange, there is no sound Now there are no men underground What will become of this pit-yard Where men once trampled, faces hard? Tired and weary, their work done Never having seen the sun Will it become a sacred ground? Foreign tourists gazing round Asking if men once worked here Way beneath this pit-head gear Empty trucks once filled with coal Lined up like men on the dole Will they e're be used again Or left for scrap just like the men? There'll always be a happy hour For those with money, jobs and power They'll never realise the hurt They cause to men they treat like dirt

notgood 10y ago
I wish to die if that's enough for next generations to live But it isn't enough I've to do A little more I've to leave fellow men without jobs because evolution only cares about survival in short term but i can care and that's my burden I care enough to kill your son if that means a million more will live without cancer without smoke without wondering if tomorrow the air will be breathed or will be chocked
pacaro 10y ago
It's a social challenge that we still haven't worked out how to meet. Prior to the industrial revolution there were small rural communities, hamlets, villages, and towns, in places which grew up to be coal towns. But when the single economic driver disappears we don't know how to scale these communities back down. I've always moved to where the work is, and I see the much same in my family tree all the way back to the industrial revolution (including mining engineers and mining machinery makers on my fathers side, who don't seem to have spent more than 10-20 years in any one coal field). But I know that many people are much more rooted in place. Forcing people to move isn't palatable in the U.K., but waiting for communities to disintegrate and people to move out on there own seems equally cruel
- untog 10y ago
  It also speaks to the need for purpose. One of the things not discussed enough in conversation about universal basic income and the like is that jobs give people a sense of purpose as well as money. It's "coal not dole" because no one wants to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing, no matter how great that might sound on the surface.
  - chowells 10y ago
    I would love to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing. I recently took 18 months of work to just drift around the country visiting friends and family. No side projects. No goals. No way to succeed or fail. It was wonderful. I'd be very happy to be paid to do it. I don't see how anyone can be unhappy like that.
    - simonh 10y ago
      There are plenty of very wealthy people with enough money to never have to work again at a relatively young age, who continue working well into their 70s. It just depends if you love what you do. My grandfather was a master butcher, he got a part time job at a butcher's shop after he retired purely as something to do because he loved it.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        Is it "because he loved it" or is it because his identity is so tied up in being a butcher, doing useful work, that he can't cope with no longer identifying in that way? For my retired father it's very much the latter, I feel, he works for free doing similar work to what he did before retirement.
        shitgoose 10y ago
        well, it is better to identify with what you have been doing all your life, than identify with couch, beer and TV.
robotmay 10y ago
I've lived in South Wales for quite a long time and the impact of Thatcher closing the mines is something that's very hard to understand until you spend time in these areas. They're still affected by those changes today, over 30 years later. South Wales does have one thing that may save the valleys towns, however; its railway. Unlike most of the UK, the lines up the valleys weren't destroyed in the Beeching changes in the 50s, and today there's a lot of people earning a living down in Cardiff who commute in from up the valleys. There are plans to update the trains to newer and faster tram-like machines, to make it easier for people to move about, and that will hopefully further encourage a renewal of these areas. The expansion of Cardiff should have an interesting effect on the valleys towns, as people who commute in earn more money and take it back up. And equally, as people get priced out of living in Cardiff, they may start looking at the towns on the outskirts, and over time we may start to see more small businesses cropping up and more work appearing as the towns get new people and money in. Of course they did just royally fuck themselves over by voting for Brexit (the area is regarded as one of the most deprived in Western Europe and receives a lot of EU funding), but that's to be expected when every newspaper and politician has been blaming Europe for their woes for decades. South Wales actually has a very interesting future in higher level manufacturing, if they continue working towards it. Some of the current Raspberry Pi models are made here and there are quite a few more factories cropping up along those lines.
- iuguy 10y ago
  Funnily enough my new hardware startup was looking at getting PCBs manufactured at the same Sony factory as the RPi a few months back. We don't really have the volume for it yet so are using a fab in Newbury, Hampshire for now.
  - timthorn 10y ago
    To be that pedant, Newbury is in Berkshire, although Hampshire is very close by.
    - iuguy 10y ago
      Yup, you're right. Sorry, I assumed Hampshire because it's about 30 minutes up the road from me. Derp!
pjc50 10y ago
Remember that the collapse of British coal mining happened long before global warming was a popular issue; it was purely an economic issue. And in some places simply resource exhaustion, the inevitable end of any extraction industry. There's a "miner's club" at the end of my street but it's been decades since any mining went on here; a bit further away is http://nationalminingmuseum.com/ http://nationalminingmuseum.com/ (Scotland and the north of England is in many ways a post-resource industry country. Lots of early iron and coal extraction here -> steel production -> shipbuilding/armaments/consumer durables/buildings -> Empire. Now almost all of that production chain is gone, and Glasgow has a space satellite industry instead)

by pierrec 10y ago

notgood 10y ago

I wish to die if that's enough for next generations to live But it isn't enough I've to do A little more I've to leave fellow men without jobs because evolution only cares about survival in short term but i can care and that's my burden I care enough to kill your son if that means a million more will live without cancer without smoke without wondering if tomorrow the air will be breathed or will be chocked

pacaro 10y ago

It's a social challenge that we still haven't worked out how to meet. Prior to the industrial revolution there were small rural communities, hamlets, villages, and towns, in places which grew up to be coal towns. But when the single economic driver disappears we don't know how to scale these communities back down. I've always moved to where the work is, and I see the much same in my family tree all the way back to the industrial revolution (including mining engineers and mining machinery makers on my fathers side, who don't seem to have spent more than 10-20 years in any one coal field). But I know that many people are much more rooted in place. Forcing people to move isn't palatable in the U.K., but waiting for communities to disintegrate and people to move out on there own seems equally cruel

untog 10y ago
It also speaks to the need for purpose. One of the things not discussed enough in conversation about universal basic income and the like is that jobs give people a sense of purpose as well as money. It's "coal not dole" because no one wants to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing, no matter how great that might sound on the surface.
- chowells 10y ago
  I would love to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing. I recently took 18 months of work to just drift around the country visiting friends and family. No side projects. No goals. No way to succeed or fail. It was wonderful. I'd be very happy to be paid to do it. I don't see how anyone can be unhappy like that.
  - simonh 10y ago
    There are plenty of very wealthy people with enough money to never have to work again at a relatively young age, who continue working well into their 70s. It just depends if you love what you do. My grandfather was a master butcher, he got a part time job at a butcher's shop after he retired purely as something to do because he loved it.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Is it "because he loved it" or is it because his identity is so tied up in being a butcher, doing useful work, that he can't cope with no longer identifying in that way? For my retired father it's very much the latter, I feel, he works for free doing similar work to what he did before retirement.
      - shitgoose 10y ago
        well, it is better to identify with what you have been doing all your life, than identify with couch, beer and TV.

robotmay 10y ago

I've lived in South Wales for quite a long time and the impact of Thatcher closing the mines is something that's very hard to understand until you spend time in these areas. They're still affected by those changes today, over 30 years later. South Wales does have one thing that may save the valleys towns, however; its railway. Unlike most of the UK, the lines up the valleys weren't destroyed in the Beeching changes in the 50s, and today there's a lot of people earning a living down in Cardiff who commute in from up the valleys. There are plans to update the trains to newer and faster tram-like machines, to make it easier for people to move about, and that will hopefully further encourage a renewal of these areas. The expansion of Cardiff should have an interesting effect on the valleys towns, as people who commute in earn more money and take it back up. And equally, as people get priced out of living in Cardiff, they may start looking at the towns on the outskirts, and over time we may start to see more small businesses cropping up and more work appearing as the towns get new people and money in. Of course they did just royally fuck themselves over by voting for Brexit (the area is regarded as one of the most deprived in Western Europe and receives a lot of EU funding), but that's to be expected when every newspaper and politician has been blaming Europe for their woes for decades. South Wales actually has a very interesting future in higher level manufacturing, if they continue working towards it. Some of the current Raspberry Pi models are made here and there are quite a few more factories cropping up along those lines.

iuguy 10y ago
Funnily enough my new hardware startup was looking at getting PCBs manufactured at the same Sony factory as the RPi a few months back. We don't really have the volume for it yet so are using a fab in Newbury, Hampshire for now.
- timthorn 10y ago
  To be that pedant, Newbury is in Berkshire, although Hampshire is very close by.
  - iuguy 10y ago
    Yup, you're right. Sorry, I assumed Hampshire because it's about 30 minutes up the road from me. Derp!

pjc50 10y ago

Remember that the collapse of British coal mining happened long before global warming was a popular issue; it was purely an economic issue. And in some places simply resource exhaustion, the inevitable end of any extraction industry. There's a "miner's club" at the end of my street but it's been decades since any mining went on here; a bit further away is http://nationalminingmuseum.com/ http://nationalminingmuseum.com/ (Scotland and the north of England is in many ways a post-resource industry country. Lots of early iron and coal extraction here -> steel production -> shipbuilding/armaments/consumer durables/buildings -> Empire. Now almost all of that production chain is gone, and Glasgow has a space satellite industry instead)