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Maggie Thatcher has died

Saint-Armstrong

By Saint-Armstrong,
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trousers

trousers

Posted
Posted (edited)
Do those graphs not show that manufacturing was declining in Britain anyway and that under Thatcher that trend didn't change much either way to what was happening before?

 

Hush now.... facts tend to get in the way of mythology....

Edited by trousers
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pap

pap

Posted
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What a load of rubbish. "From where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness?" Probably the same way as most normal people manage it.

 

Yeah, without some sort of "Sour Mash" benchmark of what normal is, this comment is fairly meaningless.

 

Normal to you might involve dressing up as a nun on Tuesdays.

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trousers

trousers

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I'm no fan of Russell Brand but I thought this was an eloquent and thought-provoking piece by him

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=NECNETTXT766

 

That's a good read - thanks for posting. It highlights the difference I tried to articulate yesterday. Brand manages to criticise Thatcher without resorting to vitriol.

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Sour Mash

Sour Mash

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Yeah, without some sort of "Sour Mash" benchmark of what normal is, this comment is fairly meaningless.

 

Normal to you might involve dressing up as a nun on Tuesdays.

Everyday people I work with, know, meet, just ordinary folk. They don't seem to have a problem with "compassion and forgiveness", they haven't needed it to somehow be passed down to them by central government.
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eurosaint

eurosaint

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I'll give you credit Kelv, you climb down on a point when evidence shows otherwise. I say that not to "beat you", but as a sign of respect.

 

Yeah, EDF are incredibly successful, but £1.6 billion UK profit propping up France's balance sheet really sticks in my craw. If the French can do it, there's no reason why we should not be able to. Thanks to Thatcher's policy, we are subsidising France.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDF_Energy

 

As EDF took over British Energy in 2009 and Thatcher left power in 1990, is it not stretching things to consider this as her responsibility ?

Given that we had 13 years of Labour government preceding this takeover, it strikes me that they may have had some say in the matter should they have wanted to ??

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Barry Sanchez

Barry Sanchez

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Posted
Personally, I prefer the bankers and governments to the scum. The bankers and governments don't kill their kids to try to get a bigger council house.

 

Where's this list of good British products from the 70's that we sold to the World? Just a couple of examples would be good.

 

Rolls Royce plane engines were pretty good and widely exported. But apart from that I really am struggling. Corby trouser press?

 

British music for a start, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin.

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trousers

trousers

Posted
Posted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDF_Energy

 

As EDF took over British Energy in 2009 and Thatcher left power in 1990, is it not stretching things to consider this as her responsibility ?

Given that we had 13 years of Labour government preceding this takeover, it strikes me that they may have had some say in the matter should they have wanted to ??

 

Might be worth referring to the Labour rules on this matter:

 

1) You can't blame the last Labour government for anything that is happening in the economy today as that was 3 years ago.

2) You can blame the Tories for anything that is happening today in the economy as that was only 30 years ago

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trousers

trousers

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Posted
Include the Arts generally in there BS - we are world leaders in the world of dance for example and our theatres and West End shows bring in huge revenues to this country.

 

Aren't we just as good at this art and music malarkey now as we were pre-Thatcher and thereafter? I thought the idea here was to highlight industries that were buoyant in the 70s but subsequently "decimated" by Thatcher?

 

Edit: Ok, The Spice Girls aside...I'll give you that one :)

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TopGun

TopGun

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This whole episode is getting over the top now as the state has started to act politically. I am fully supportive of those MPs who choose not to attend today's 7.5 hour Parliamentary farce if they feel it is not what their constituents would want.

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trousers

trousers

Posted
Posted
Because there are sad people out there that think that buying that song somehow makes a relevant point?

 

The left wing public lining the pockets of a company that is a beacon of capitalism to mock her death.... I'm sure Lady Thatch is having a wry smile as we speak...

 

Carlsberg don't do back handed compliments but if they did....

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saint1977

saint1977

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A sensible perspective on her (and Lawson's) economic track record can be seen here. This obviously doesn't cover the successful TU reforms or the unsuccessful social changes such as the Poll Tax but I thought it covered some of the key points in a balanced way:

 

http://www.voxeu.eu/article/economic-legacy-mrs-thatcher

 

John Major made a good point I think - the rhetoric was often more fierce than that reality and she was far more pragmatic than most politicians in a volatile climate at the time. Pity that the Tory right don't have the grey matter to understand that. Ironically, I was in the middle of reading Heseltine's autobiography at the time and he was making a similar point about the Tory right - most of them haven't been in business and can only recite theory about how they THINK the economy should be. Personally, the 1986 'There is no such thing as society' speech would have deterred me from voting for her but I rate some of her achievements as a PM in waking the country up a bit, even if I wasn't that keen on her as a human being.

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solentstars

solentstars

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Posted
A sensible perspective on her (and Lawson's) economic track record can be seen here. This obviously doesn't cover the successful TU reforms or the unsuccessful social changes such as the Poll Tax but I thought it covered some of the key points in a balanced way:

 

http://www.voxeu.eu/article/economic-legacy-mrs-thatcher

 

John Major made a good point I think - the rhetoric was often more fierce than that reality and she was far more pragmatic than most politicians in a volatile climate at the time. Pity that the Tory right don't have the grey matter to understand that. Ironically, I was in the middle of reading Heseltine's autobiography at the time and he was making a similar point about the Tory right - most of them haven't been in business and can only recite theory about how they THINK the economy should be. Personally, the 1986 'There is no such thing as society' speech would have deterred me from voting for her but I rate some of her achievements as a PM in waking the country up a bit, even if I wasn't that keen on her as a human being.

good read and the last part was very telling.
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Sour Mash

Sour Mash

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Posted
Because the roads are choked, really are they about the same, define what you mean by about?
They're approximately the same. I do plenty of train travel in the UK and Europe, there is very little difference in the price I pay or the service I've received. The roads are busy, but not choked, you can look at any stats you want, rail travel in this country has been a massive success over th last 10/15 years. I do agree that tax payer contributions are too high into the system, but there is plenty of work going into that - ironically brought about by the Tory initiated McNulty report etc.
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Barry Sanchez

Barry Sanchez

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Posted
They're approximately the same. I do plenty of train travel in the UK and Europe, there is very little difference in the price I pay or the service I've received. The roads are busy, but not choked, you can look at any stats you want, rail travel in this country has been a massive success over th last 10/15 years. I do agree that tax payer contributions are too high into the system, but there is plenty of work going into that - ironically brought about by the Tory initiated McNulty report etc.

 

Go on what services do you use? Saying privatisation has been a massive success is an interesting one so please quote that as well, the McNulty report in short means more closures, thank christ its only a recommendation, a few of my friends happen to work in the transport industry, without subsidy the railway would fold.

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Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

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This is quite a decent article, pretty balanced I would suggest.

 

We've had Bazza's take on it, how about Dominic Sandbrook's the author of several history books about Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Both appear to be of a similar age, so have had to rely on research rather than their memories.

 

A couple of points stand out for me.

 

"For when Margaret Thatcher won power in May 1979, it was against the backdrop of perhaps the gloomiest decade in modern British history. Shorn of its empire, Britain now cut a very miserable figure on the world stage. For at least two decades we had been falling behind our rivals, and now the contrast was painful to see. Britain's average inflation rate for the 1970s was 13%. West Germany's was just 5%. Our unemployment rate was 4%. Theirs was only 2%. Our major cities seemed shabby and seedy, our newspapers were full of strikes and walkouts,"

 

"In truth, Britain in the 1980s was always facing an immensely painful transition, partly because so many difficult decisions had been postponed for so long, but also because the stark reality of globalisation meant that major industries - notably carmaking, shipbuilding and coal-mining - were doomed even before she took power. As a strident and often abrasive woman, Thatcher became the convenient scapegoat."

 

"Even if she had never been prime minister, many of the changes she came to represent, from privatisation and deregulation to the death of heavy industry and the rise in unemployment, would almost certainly have happened anyway, only more slowly."

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22076886

 

I think one of the problems is that some on the right have built her up to be something that she wasn't. They have made her into a neo con type figure and this has then allowed the left to rewrite history in the same manner. Certain myths have been hijacked by both sides of the argument to push their own agenda.

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trousers

trousers

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Posted
Saying privatisation has been a massive success is an interesting one so please quote that as well

 

The telecoms industry is a good one. It facilitates people being able to spend every waking hour on an internet football message board going around in circles on all sorts of topical matters... the service would be down every ten minutes if run by the government....

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eurosaint

eurosaint

Posted
Posted (edited)

Loved this quote from Derek Hatton (the militant Scouser!) :

 

"She actually changed the whole face of this country in a way, that you know, people wouldn't even have anticipated. Even her successors got away with murder, literally, for example Blair in Iraq, that they wouldn't have got away with had it not been for what she did ".

 

She gets the blame for everything, I know, but sometimes you just have to use one of these :facepalm:

Edited by eurosaint
Punctuation !
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trousers

trousers

Posted
Posted
This is quite a decent article, pretty balanced I would suggest.

 

We've had Bazza's take on it, how about Dominic Sandbrook's the author of several history books about Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Both appear to be of a similar age, so have had to rely on research rather than their memories.

 

A couple of points stand out for me.

 

"For when Margaret Thatcher won power in May 1979, it was against the backdrop of perhaps the gloomiest decade in modern British history. Shorn of its empire, Britain now cut a very miserable figure on the world stage. For at least two decades we had been falling behind our rivals, and now the contrast was painful to see. Britain's average inflation rate for the 1970s was 13%. West Germany's was just 5%. Our unemployment rate was 4%. Theirs was only 2%. Our major cities seemed shabby and seedy, our newspapers were full of strikes and walkouts,"

 

"In truth, Britain in the 1980s was always facing an immensely painful transition, partly because so many difficult decisions had been postponed for so long, but also because the stark reality of globalisation meant that major industries - notably carmaking, shipbuilding and coal-mining - were doomed even before she took power. As a strident and often abrasive woman, Thatcher became the convenient scapegoat."

 

"Even if she had never been prime minister, many of the changes she came to represent, from privatisation and deregulation to the death of heavy industry and the rise in unemployment, would almost certainly have happened anyway, only more slowly."

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22076886

 

I think one of the problems is that some on the right have built her up to be something that she wasn't. They have made her into a neo con type figure and this has then allowed the left to rewrite history in the same manner. Certain myths have been hijacked by both sides of the argument to push their own agenda.

 

Good post IMO. Thanks for the link to the Sandbrook piece. Some good balanced debate on here today! :)

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Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

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Posted
The telecoms industry is a good one. It facilitates people being able to spend every waking hour on an internet football message board going around in circles on all sorts of topical matters... the service would be down every ten minutes if run by the government....

 

Remember how long it used to take to get a phone line fitted?

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trousers

trousers

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Posted
Why did she have to deregulate everything? The state does have a part and a responsibility to play in peoples lives.

 

When did it stop doing that? It's all about degrees of intervention. Some people think we should have a smaller state, some people think we should have a larger state. The percentage range that the size of the state actually ends up fluctuating between is relatively small compared to the size of the state as a whole.

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Barry Sanchez

Barry Sanchez

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Posted
When did it stop doing that? It's all about degrees of intervention. Some people think we should have a smaller state, some people think we should have a larger state. The percentage range that the size of the state actually ends up fluctuating between is relatively small compared to the size of the state as a whole.

 

When thatcher sold the working person down the river with no thought for their dignity or livelihood.

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Horley CTFC Saint

Horley CTFC Saint

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Posted
The telecoms industry is a good one. It facilitates people being able to spend every waking hour on an internet football message board going around in circles on all sorts of topical matters... the service would be down every ten minutes if run by the government....

 

This is a very poor example when you consider the technological developments that have occurred since BT was a nationalised institution. The advent of mobile phone technology alone has revolutionised the sector. This has nothing to do with privatisation - more to do with those cunning Japanese and Koreans!

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