Politico

[Nebbiolo]

Totally agree with Reidy on this one. Thatcher singlehandedly set an agenda to destroy the unions, and it worked. We've now got one of the worst represented work forces in Europe. I know Bruce will claim that it was necessary, that she streamlined the workforce and made it more competitive. Such thinking, in my view, merely promotes a myth. We only have to look to the examples of the Nordic world, France, Germany and beyond to see that strong unions and manufacturing still flourish. The standard of living in those countries, moreover, is the same or higher than in Britain for ordinary working-class people.

Really, what did Thatcher do for Britain?

The poll tax; the destruction of the unions, the destruction of working-class communities; the boom and bust economy; the massive increase in unemployment; the destruction of manufacturing; massive inflation; the 15% interest rates; the huge increase in poverty; the selling of utilities that we owned; the selling of all the best council property at discount rates; the riots up and down the land; the snatching of milk from the mouths of babies; the escalation of the NI troubles; the denial that society exists, and on, and on.

Contemptible woman in my view.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Winter of Discontent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia might jog a few memories.

When was the last time we had nationwide power shortages? Or a lack of food on our shelves? When did you last hear of the dead not getting buried?

Now imagine a world where Britain had attempted to maintain its supposed manufacturing capability, didn't develop the service sector, then along comes China, India, eastern Europe et al who can manufacture exactly what we can, often to the same or higher quality at a significantly lower price. Imagine we enter this world with no alternative and no preperation.

You mention Germany and France as examples. Where is our equivalent of Siemens? Are we to believe that Rover are somehow equivalent to Mercedes, BMW, VW et al combined? This notion of British manufacturing might is stuck in the industrial revolution. Where we do have ability we continue to thrive. Rolls Royce for instance are a globally respected company because they are amongst the best at what they do. There's this implied notion that Thatcher destroyed perfectly good companies because she felt like screwing the working classes. Remember, she privatised industries left right and centre, so if they failed it was because they weren't profitable. Ask yourself if global leaders like Vodafone or Orange would have developed had BT remained the monopoly provider of all telecoms in Britain.

Even the poll tax is an issue that envokes a baffling amount of venom. Lets be honest here, before (and now) there is a fixed rate of tax based upon the size of your house. The poll tax was a fixed rate of tax based upon the size of your household. Neither is particularly good in my eyes but surely taxing households based on number of occupants is fairer than simply taxing based on house size as we currently do?

I don't find much to like about the lady on a personal level, but her economic principles were spot on.

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

Yes but life isn't something that's handed to you on a plate. There aren't many decent jobs where I grew up either, hence why I've moved to London.

Every child in this country has thousands upon thousands of hours of 'free' education. That's a tremendous gift. If you take advantage of that gift and gain a good education then I'm fairly certain that you won't be hard up for work for very long. If you don't take advantage of it then I don't see that it's really fair to blame the prime minister at the time.

I don't like much of what Gordon Brown does, but ultimately where my life is concerned, the buck stops at me.

sounds like you are suggesting i've been after a free lunch all my life bruce, also suggesting that i wasted my education. i trained for 5 years in a trade that was almost gone by the time i finished training, it was suggested that i "got on my bike", which i did.
everything that i managed to achieve was down to me, yet all the negative stuff was created by "her and them".

lets not suggest she is responsible for giving us a free education though as that was around long before her, i look on it more from the perspective that if industry hadnt been decimated in her time then everyone wouldnt be forced into uni, the education system could still afford to give grants and students these days wouldnt be hocked up to the nines.

she didnt exactly think very highly of football supporters either, she suggested banning orders and withdrawing teams from europe, i cant exactly imagine she wouldve been on the side of "joe fotty fan" after heisel, in fact i'll bet she asked for us all to be turfed out.

the local toryboy around these parts is the local landowners/farmers son. they did alright, dont grow a thing just mow the grass and get paid for not growing. looked after her own voters and stuffed the rest.

 

[Nebbiolo]

I'm sorry Bruce, but I look at her at her legacy on what she did for the people, rather than at what amounts to conjecture on whether some of her economic policies were spot on (which they weren't, actually). She promoted greed and a winner takes it all attitude. She destroyed lives and empowered the greedy to take what they could.

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

rates were....£900 p.a.
poll tax.....£1300 each , which was 3 of us in our house. an 18 y.o. expected to pay the gov for living at his parents. yes £1300 was our 1st poll tax bill.

we wont just sneak this tax in we'll absolutely hammer them with it.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

sounds like you are suggesting i've been after a free lunch all my life bruce, also suggesting that i wasted my education. i trained for 5 years in a trade that was almost gone by the time i finished training, it was suggested that i "got on my bike", which i did.
everything that i managed to achieve was down to me, yet all the negative stuff was created by "her and them".

Not that you were after a free lunch but that you simply have to do the best with what you have. I've trained primarily in IT at a time when Indian and eastern European people are offering big cost savings to the industry. That's just the rub of the green. If one avenue shuts, you look for another. No one said life is easy.

lets not suggest she is responsible for giving us a free education though as that was around long before her, i look on it more from the perspective that if industry hadnt been decimated in her time then everyone wouldnt be forced into uni, the education system could still afford to give grants and students these days wouldnt be hocked up to the nines.

I wouldn't dream of suggesting that state education was created by her, merely that every child in this country is given them on a place the opportunity to craft their future to a large extent. I lack sympathy entirely for people that waste that opportunity.

I also don't really get how people are forced to go to uni. I'm a big fan of learning on the job and regard university largely as an indicator of your learning potential rather than providing you with explicit skills for work. It is a waste for children to attend university to study some of the awful courses that currently exist but no one is forcing them to go. If anything I feel that the true cost of a uni education should be born by the student and this reality may force potential students to evaluate the merits of their course prior to starting it rather than hopping off to fill a void for three years.

she didnt exactly think very highly of football supporters either, she suggested banning orders and withdrawing teams from europe, i cant exactly imagine she wouldve been on the side of "joe fotty fan" after heisel, in fact i'll bet she asked for us all to be turfed out.

Like I said, there is much about her as a woman that I didn't much like, but you also have to admit that English football fans during this period had a terrible reputation. You surely can't pin the blame for the hooligan culture that existed then on Thatcher. That segment of the football following audience deserved scorn being heaped upon them as they were dragging our game into the gutter.[/quote]

the local toryboy around these parts is the local landowners/farmers son. they did alright, dont grow a thing just mow the grass and get paid for not growing. looked after her own voters and stuffed the rest.

I quite agree. Things like the CAP are awful policies, absolutely awful. They raise food prices domestically and do untold harm to developing nations wishing to trade themselves out of poverty, yet exist largely due to the lobbying power of the farming unions both here and in Europe (France in particular does well out of the CAP).

 

[Bruce Wayne]

rates were....£900 p.a.
poll tax.....£1300 each , which was 3 of us in our house. an 18 y.o. expected to pay the gov for living at his parents. yes £1300 was our 1st poll tax bill.

we wont just sneak this tax in we'll absolutely hammer them with it.

Presumably the 18 year old still used local council services though? I doubt he went through the week producing no rubbish for instance. What would your poll tax bill have been had there been just one of you living in that same property?

I'm sorry Bruce, but I look at her at her legacy on what she did for the people, rather than at what amounts to conjecture on whether some of her economic policies were spot on (which they weren't, actually). She promoted greed and a winner takes it all attitude. She destroyed lives and empowered the greedy to take what they could.

Think of it in football terms if you want. If you were manager at Everton would you be happy for VDM to continue getting paid whilst not delivering or would you expect him to start doing something to earn his corn? It's no different. This whole greed thing that's often labelled against her. In a market economy to earn money you generally have to be good at something. It's a simplistic view but the precept is correct. The better you are, the more you earn. Therefore it's easy enough to see greed as aspiration and that's for me her biggest legacy, she inspired people to aspire to bigger and better things.

You have to remember that in the 70's the world was much smaller than it is now. In our current global marketplace you have to aspire to be the best you can, not just against your local mates but against each and every person that's fighting for your job. The bar has been raised and unless people were made aware of that harsh fact they would have been eaten alive.

 

[Nebbiolo]

I agree with your comments on university, Bruce. I don't think it's the way forward to promote university for a number of what have traditionally been non-academic courses. I'm not saying this is down to the level of intelligence of potential students, just that university to me should, as you have pointed out, be a place where academic excellence is pursued and nurtured. It ought not to be somewhere that trains the next generation of nurses and the like. Interestingly, a number of people literally forced into university in order to gain access to a number of careers, seem to concur with that point of view.

I think new labour is the prime promoter of the "let's all go to university" culture that now exists in the UK.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It is a shame because it assumes that it's the best way to learn, which in many cases isn't the case.

 

[atrottel]

I think new labour is the prime promoter of the "let's all go to university" culture that now exists in the UK.

Well, if we're burying Thatcher, let's at least put her illegitimate step-child Blair in there as well.

Funnily enough, I agree with Bruce Wayne on this to a certain extent (although he might not be best pleased...)

If we are able to, we should indeed take the responsibility for our own lives. And that doesn't just mean physically.

It means that if you see and understand what is happening and has happened and you still allow yourself to be manipulated by those who would control you ("a nation mourns brave Jade", "Di, our princess of hearts", "Harry and our boys fight Terry Talib", "database necessary for war on terror", "foreign workers steal British jobs")

then you (and I) are just as culpable as Thatcher and Blair.

If you don't fight you lose.

 

[Nebbiolo]

Well, if we're burying Thatcher, let's at least put her illegitimate step-child Blair in there as well.

Funnily enough, I agree with Bruce Wayne on this to a certain extent (although he might not be best pleased...)

If we are able to, we should indeed take the responsibility for our own lives. And that doesn't just mean physically.

It means that if you see and understand what is happening and has happened and you still allow yourself to be manipulated by those who would control you ("a nation mourns brave Jade", "Di, our princess of hearts", "Harry and our boys fight Terry Talib", "database necessary for war on terror", "foreign workers steal British jobs")

then you (and I) are just as culpable as Thatcher and Blair.

If you don't fight you lose.

To be fair Atrottel, I would hazard a guess that those that are easily manipulated by media in whatever form it appears, never really do see or have comprehension of what is happening.

I also think there are a lot of people out there that fancy they are somehow in the "know", that are equally oblivious to how things approximately are. If that wasn't the case, every politically aware person would broadly agree on how to run the show.

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

i did 5 years of an apprenticeship during whichtime i also attended college, after that is it not reasonable to expect to find employment ?
should i have continued training in something else, then something else ?

i put everything into it whilst an apprentice, i didn't throw it all away, i studied and i did my best to excell in what i was doing. towards the end of my apprenticeship (after we were informed that b.a.e. had "bought" the group and we were gonna be out of jobs, 4 out of the 7 who had made it through the apprenticeship (myself being one) were selected to represent britain in what is called the "skills olympics" all selected to do different elements of engineering, mine being cad/cam and cnc programming, we got selected based on where we finished nationally in our exams.
"she" was to be there, promoting British industry and the Engineerng Industry Training Board and the quality of british engineering. 2 days before the event at olympia we were contacted to ensure we knew where to go etc etc etc all was fine in their eyes as the "team" were all mates and looking forward to taking on the world(so to speak), we let them think everything was hunky-dory, the day before the event i flew to tunisia with my bird, the other 3 went to magaluf. stuff her who wanted to parade us then discard us was the opinion of all 4 of us, would love to have seen her face when she was stood up.
if it had been a year later when the event was in sydney or the year before in tokyo i wouldve gone tbh, but that would have been me doin it for me and my own agenda. it didnt go against us because we had all the letters etc to say about the event which helped us find jobs, not that any of them turned out to be worth finding, i also used the letter when emigrating as it was classed as excelling in my occupation, although i had all the points/experience/job offer anyway.

 

[Goat]

What the fork are you lot doing? This all seems high brow to me. Im staying out.

 

[atrottel]

I also think there are a lot of people out there that fancy they are somehow in the "know", that are equally oblivious to how things approximately are. If that wasn't the case, every politically aware person would broadly agree on how to run the show.

I think your (one's) own view of politics informs how you see "the show" so Bruce Wayne or TX or you or I might have different ideas about how we would perform if we were "maximum leader".

In this particular case, people were giving grief to Thatcher (something I don't have a problem with). However, if we (and I include myself in that) don't do anything to change the conditions that produce her - or anything else that we strongly disagree with - then we are culpable in our own fate and have abdicated our duty to ourselves.

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

when i went to nz,this battleaxe was in charge....


all us brits were amazed that she was replicating failed tory policies from maggies time, then she said she was her inspiration and heroine(somethin' like that). she shouldve chosen those words more carefully as it was her death-knell.
there was a gen. election 2 days before i was leaving, i said to everyone at work that i wouldnt vote as i was off and i didnt feel it right that i would be making a decision on their futures, unless they were unanimous in who i should vote for , in which case i would do it for them.
"sink the ship" was what they said , get rid of this woman or there wont be a country left for me to one day return to, they said if she gets in and you come back then bring a torch as the last one to leave is gonna switch the lights off.

she was serving food with her husband at the wildfood festival, lamb barms or somethin', when she handed me one i said i hope it tastes better than your politics.