first on the Taxation issue:
look up:
Working Tax Brackets, Council Tax (Living Tax), Value Added Tax, as well as Tax on high-demand goods (Beer,Petrol,Ciggies)
on the schools: a decade ago when i took gcse, recent history was not covered. Covered (Neolithic Britian, Roman-upto-Victoria, Suffrejet movement (1921), WW2 and thats it.)
also on the point of credibility; John was working through that time as a bus driver for the police, and has a working class background. While if it were my mom who was in her teens at the time, telling me about it; then alright i'd edge with schepatism.
But both mom and john told me the same damn thing!
which is interesting considering at the time John was around manchester and mom was in south wales; which gives them very broad area definitions of the time, yet both were saying the same thing.
HMM... one KEY thing they told me, was that the Winter of Disconents *WAS NOT* just *a* Winter. It is the title given to the period of the miner strikes; now, i can believe your little quote, or two people who've lived through it.
both from different backgrounds, both at different ages doing different things, both telling the exact same story.
I noticed some argument broke out about something of who did the most wrong; but they still broth agreed on the details which i forwarded.
personally, i think that either you were too young or too sheltered. because your information seems internet spoon fed to me.
like someone reckoning they can get a more accurate picture of what happened in the gulf from a newspaper than from a vetran of the desert storm campaign.
[post.edit] on the point of the car factories, Rover closed (180,000), Ford closed (280,000) and Aston Martin closed (240,000)
they were not small companies and they were not small plants. the news was plastered with it each time one closed because they were basically 'the' employeer for that area.
