strike 'Indefinitely'. In both cases it lied the miners' strike is now Brithe likely date for power cuts.
Walker insists the dig deep to mine the truth.
The government can win the strike only by avoiding lenathy power cuts economy cannot function without electricity and the miners can stop generation. The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) is the major customer for coal, taking about three quarters of coal production (1.5 million tons a week).
But predicting the onset of power cuts by simply dividing stocks by weekconsumption mickey Some stocks are unusable. During 1974 miners' Economist estimated that over four million tons of stocks were useless, much due to waterlogging.
The distribution of stocks also matters. In the 1972 NUM strike, Heath pulled the plug with eight million tons of coal still in CEGB hands but poorly assinated.
Pit head stocks are useless until transported to power stations. usually move by rail, but the NUR and ASLEF boycotts are hitting deliveries The government estimates that roughly a half a million tons of coal a week is getting through to power stations. The NUM estimate is a quarter of a million tons.
Some coal is moving by rail but to shift the normal 1.5 million tonnes a week by lorry would require a fleet of well over 8,000 12-tonnes lorries, making two trips a day, seven days a week. The Ravenscraig convoys, dominating recent TV news footage, Mac calluls.
The CEGB can also substitute other SOCIALIST ACTION looks at some of the answers. cost of -the real what is the The HIOUSC They were not doing so.
But Peter Walker, minimise the impact of the strike on TV, inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. He maintained that COCk coa stocks were falling by only 1.5 per cent a week. Given the latest official figures for stock levels (May), this implies current stocks of about 16 million tonnes.
and rehearsing contingency plans. anxious to the Darkness approaches other options will grow more attractive, including action over secondary picketing and using troops to shift coal.
pressures the government faces and of the ettectiveness of the NUM's action.
Contingency Reserve this was £2¾ billion. reserve.
today worse the So don't rush to Ladbroke's to put your shirt on November. Our dateline is less a prediction than an index of the Power cuts are the government's £17-18 million week.
loses tax miners (£5-7 million a out on extra social million or so a £3-5 million a week. So the bottom line Seventy five million pounds a week man, and child in Britain. It is also the John Delorean's Here The centrepiece of the government s economic poncy — descripeu Do the Financial Times economic commentator o brutan as une only signicani innovation of the Thatcher government — is the so-called Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS). This plans to shave the difference between government revenue and expenditure.
Since governments are aware that projections of income and spending are dicey, they include an item called the cash in hand for unexpected difficulties. For 1984-5 But the reserve has already taken a battering. The government aimed for a rise in the public sector wage bill of only three per cent over the year. But to date settlements have averaged five per cent (many conceded to head off support for the miners). Since every one percen tage point addition to the public sector only wage bill costs nearly f¼ billion, this implies that pay deals will whittle away some f½ billion off the contingency Stockbrokers Simon and Coates suggest that: 'if the (miners) strike ends eventual accounting cost (including the cost of the overtime ban) would probably be f1 billion. What is costs mounting rapiary ..any substanllar proonganon of the miners' strike would certainly necessitate a re-think.' In other words. it would imply seriously overshooting the MTFS.
Tory rhetoric about 'sound finance' the evils of government 'profligacy' awkwardly their approach to this dispute. Thatcher, supposedly dedicated to tax cuts, is riding out a strike at a cost of well over f3 a week for every British taxpayer. A Mori poli on the question: *Do you think its worth paying £3 a week to defeat the miners? more interesting than the ones recently conducted. Interest rates The price to the exchequer is not the cost. Stockbrokers Messel estimate that the strike is knocking one perteniag point UK output growth. This implies a loss of some £3½ billion in a year. So the average male manual worker will be some f1.50 a week worse off (in addition to facing a higher tax burden).
Workers were also hit by a fall in sterling. more oi to generate electricity costs dollars. Between March and May the oil import bill rose b
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tain's only growth industry. Ministers, stockbrokers and journalists all pronounce on
Phillips and Drew go for early December, while Energy Secretary Peter
ment can keep the lights on money on early October. Have you ever wished you Action's DIY In- RISON and BOB MORGAN
government claimed it had the coal stocks to last out the - and lost. Now the government is provoking a national dock strike by attempting to keep Ravenscraig in production. Just how strong is the government's real position on coal
HUR SCARGILI CAN EAT THREE SHREDDED WHEAT
WELL EAT GRASS BEFORE WE GIVE IN