slapphead_otool

Hi Eddie,

no poking, and no other side really. I didn't and don't support MT, any more than I supported any of the other idiots that have successively and successfully managed to destroy Britain.

And I am not putting a shine on the selling off of nationalized industries - I don't need to. Labour managed to nationalize pretty much every going concern in the Uk post war, and then shagged them. Dockyards, railways, shipyards, coal, steel and even for a brief period road haulage (anyone remember BRS?). Most of them died under nationalized control, just as they bloomed under private control. Even Thomas Cooks holidays were nationalized, and then ruined, before being sold off cheaply to a consortium as late as 1972. You may well ask why the bloody hell the British government were in any way interested in a nationalized holiday company.....

But back to your point about "pots of gold". I didn't agree with it, and still don't, - BUT - you need to be able to remember what the UK was like before that, when money/power/education remained in the hands of a limited few Rover and Bentley driving gin and tonic belt dwellers.

In the 60s, the Civil Service mandarins and captains of industry all went to public schools, Oxford/Cambridge, drank at the same gentlemen's clubs etc. If you were not born into it, you didn't get to join - something that left British industry and public service staffed with the least deserving and incapable.

If some kid with a cockney accent now drives a BMW and flashes his cash around - well good luck to him, because no matter how crass he is, he is a shitload better than the tossers where were running the world before him.

And don't even get me going about the champaign socialists and their agendas in the 50s and 60s. Burgess and Maclean, Philby, the raving upper class poofter Blunt (who cried when they took his knighthood away), were just the tip of the iceberg of privileged half wits who were happy to destroy the UK to further their aims. Add to them total traitors like Harold Wilson, who should have been shot, and I think the UK is a better place now.

At least MT didn't hand over the Falklands like Wilson did Aden - with Russian warships waiting to dock as the last of the Royal Marines pulled out.

Its easy to forget stuff like that and blame Thatcher for the situation the Uk finds itself in. Like I said, I can provide a full list of people to put up against the wall before we start on her.

DibDob

I have posted this before on another piglady thread but think its worth posting again to lend balance to the debate.

20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER

1. As Education secretary under Edward Heath in a foretaste of what is to come, stops free milk for school children. No chance of the widely praised 'free fruit' scheme ever being Tory policy! She later deregulates school meals so all they have on the menu is burger and chips! The health of the nation was not something Thatcher thought any of her concern.

2. Shamelessly uses the 'race card' to get elected PM in 1979! (Though I won’t claim her to be the first Tory leader to use this and certainly not the last!) "We are being flooded!" she asserts despite figures showing emigration higher than immigration and immigration at its lowest post-war level. Her idols are Keith Joseph (who ruined his own chance of being leader with a demon eyed rant on TV about sterilising the poor (I jest not!!)) and Enoch Powell (the 'intellectual' racist). She promotes Keith 'Eugenics' Joseph to Education Minister!

3. Monetarism! Disastrous policy of trying to control money supply. In the first of her two recessions (the worst since the 1930's), one fifth of our industrial base is wiped out and unemployment is more than doubled, there are summer riots in every inner-city in the country. Not bad for her first 2 years in office! In the first of many U-turns (see point on 'myth of strong leader'), she abandons monetarism. Polls predict Labour landslide and despite the resolute support of the press, she is the most unpopular PM on record. How could she possibly get out of this one?

4. The Falklands! In a gross piece of incompetence (or was it deliberate?) fails to avert the Falklands crisis by ignoring intelligence on the Argentine preparation for invasion in early 1982. Indeed she seems to positively encourage it by proposing scrapping the only warship we have there and having her defence secretary Nicholas Ridley openly say we didn't want the Falklands, thereby giving the impression we are not bothered about the islands! In 1978 when faced with the same intelligence, the Labour government quietly averts a war through diplomatic channels by threatening to send a taskforce. It's the classic tale, to divert attention from disastrous economic policies at home a crooked leader engages in a foreign war (except I'm not talking about Galtieri!). Perhaps Thatcher was getting advise from some of the brutal dictatorships she helped prop up in South America, "Would you like some more tea Mr Pinochet?". Number of British soldiers killed, 278, Argentines, 3000+. Blood on her hands anyone?

5. Destruction of local democracy. The beauty of not having a written constitution, having the backing of the press, having a massive majority in parliament (despite only getting 42% of the vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate) and having a permanent inbuilt Tory hereditary second chamber is that Tory PMs can do whatever they like. If you don’t like local democracy because they vote for someone else, just abolish it like Thatcher did and centralise everything from Whitehall and unelected Quangos who you carefully select. (Yes, Thatcher invented Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations.) The popular GLC was scrapped despite over 80% of Londoners being opposed. Londoners have to wait over 13 years before getting an assembly back and electing Livingstone as its leader once again.

6. Politicising the civil service. See point about QUANGOs above. Also if you don’t like what statistics the statistics office is publishing, make sure you stop them collecting the statistics and stop them publishing them. The figures that were published on individual wealth and earnings each year were abolished in this way. The Office for National Statistics like the Bank of England was made independent by this Labour government and yes they have started publishing the wealth and earnings figures again.

7. Regressive Taxation. Under Thatcher VAT increased from 8% to 17.5% and was also levied on utility bills for the first time as well. What she gave the rich in income tax cuts she took from the poor in indirect taxation. The proportion of GDP spent by the government under Thatcher stayed fairly static at around 40%. The difference was that rather than spend it on the NHS, housing or education she spent the money on defence, a massive expansion of the civil service (see point 6), paying the huge unemployment bill, and rising police salaries to keep them loyal in the face of massive civil unrest. The best part of all was that she shifted the burden of payment for all this onto the poor from the rich.

8. The widening gap between rich and poor. This might not be such a bad thing if the gap had not been so massive in the first place. How can the richest 50% owning 97% of the wealth be fair? This was her starting position she moved wealth almost exclusively to the richest 10% at the expense of the poorest 50%.


9. Spend, spend, spend! Abolishing credit controls seemed such a good idea, the economy booms on a consumer spending bubble....cue second crippling recession. Thanks Margaret! Not to mention the misery caused to millions of people suckered into debts and negative equity! Spend, spend, spend also applied to government borrowing which despite claims of financial prudence increased massively under Thatcher to fund income tax cuts for the rich.


10. Homelessness for the young. Why should homelessness be the preserve of ageing tramps who remember the 1930’s? No! Thatcher thought the opportunities should be open to all. Young beggars on the streets were Thatcher's invention. The legacy of massive youth unemployment and crime no-go areas for the police are still being fought today. There is a whole generation of people where crime and welfare culture was their only way of surviving and it became their mindset.

11. The Poll Tax! Regardless of how you view this in theory, apart from its regressive nature, it quite plainly was unworkable. They knew that it was going to be ridiculously expensive to collect, that there was overwhelming opposition to it (it ruined the 1991 census) and was going to mean massive non-payment and it was responsible for some of the worst rioting ever seen in central London but they pressed ahead anyway. Another U-turn inevitably came!

12. The myth of the strong leader. This was a total invention of the press. Thatcher's only strength (if you could call it that) was that she had no principles at all! She was an anti-smoking campaigner who ended up on the payroll of British American Tobacco. She had to do a U-turn on her 'flagship' economic policy after 2 years because she had wrecked the economy (see point 3) (This was just one year after her famous speech in 1980 where she assured the party faithful she was going to stick to monetarist policies-"You turn if you want to...the lady's not for turning"-yeah right!!). The Poll Tax was a disaster which she had to U-turn on (but too late to save her from being stabbed in the back!). She went to Europe saying she was against federalism but signed its most federalist law (the Single European Act in 1986). She later claimed she was tricked on this. Did she even know what she was doing? Some strong leader that is! And to top it all off, even in departure she was weak. "I fight on, I fight to win" she said in her pompous way before quietly resigning hours later when confronted by Ministers like Geoffrey Howe!!! It was the final U-turn from a weak puppet leader whose only qualities (as far as the Tories were concerned) were she did what she was told.

13. Degradation of the social professions. Social workers were virtually denounced as criminals! Teachers were so derided and there pay so eroded it barely survived as a profession and things like mental health, just loose them out on the streets, Thatcher's government didn’t care what they did!

14. Victorian Values. Yes before its Back to Basics successor under Major, Thatcher promised to take us back to Victorian morality and she nearly succeeded. We were not far away from child labour and seething slums of humanity and disease. I reckon Thatcher needed one more term for that!! She also took care to defend to the hilt her countless Ministers who were caught with their trousers down or hands in the till or both in some cases! Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer (3 times), Jonathon Aitkin (twice)... etc. etc. the list goes on.

15. "There is no such thing as society". Did Thatcher foresee the 'playstation' generation? Selfishness as a virtue seemed to sum up her warped sense of morality to me.

16. Over-privatisation and overt corruption. Oh the beauty of it, a totally dominant monopoly privatised at a discount price to big business (lots of it foreign owned) so they can cream off profits to their hearts content. Who can do without Water, Gas, and Electricity? We can charge what we like! Plus we get the bonus of nice jobs on more Quangos OfWat, OfGas, of-with taxpayers cash we go. With Ministers interchanging between the boardrooms of the newly privatised companies and the regulating boards on massive salaries. Even husband and wife teams, remember Mr and Mrs Howe, one a consultant with a privatised firm, his wife the regulator. Anyone for insider dealing calls out Mrs Archer! Oh jolly good show! Even industries that plainly weren’t feasible for privatisation like bus and rail, go for it, it won’t hurt. And what shall we do with the money my dear? Well my son Mark has shares in a nice defence firm! Rather, still some left over for a nice reduction in the top rate of income tax as well.

17. Even public service broadcasting couldn’t escape. Relentless bullying of the BBC was started by Thatcher, she took this to a new level with Tebbit and various other ministers calling it the Bolshevic Broadcasting Company because it failed to replicate Sun editorial lines in its news broadcasts. In one of her last acts she even managed to wreck Channel 4’s public service commitment by changing its funding situation from one of subscription from ITV who sold its advertising space to total dependence on advertising.

18. The divisiveness of the North-South divide in wealth. Look at the political map and you can still see where the Conservatives win most of their seats in the South East because of this.

19. Regular winter crises in the NHS became the norm. The Tories argued these were inevitable because we couldn’t afford to fund the NHS properly.

20. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher. This is probably the most surprising statistic of the lot when you consider the Tories so called strong standing on law and order. It just goes to demonstrate why we need a history lesson about Thatcher and not the lies printed in the right wing owned press.

It pains me even to think of this vile woman

eddie007

Bugger...

I get that nationalised industries were gravy trains of inefficiency... And they needed shaking up.... Reform and revolution... From within....

But I never understood selling off the family silver..... At bargain basement prices to friends....

I dont understand why the lotto was put out to tender... It was a license to print money and should have been government owned

And we are back at square one with education... Or actually minus square one... Its the priviledge of the wealthy... Or soon to be wealthy.. I could never have taken on a student loan, mentally...in my head.. Being in debt would have killed me.. But then I was one of those brought up to pay my bills and never a borrower be...
Wonder what message we are sending out..? Its ok to have a massive debt... The figures frighten me...

slapphead_otool

I dont know about the lottery Eddie, but I am not sure the government shouldn't be into gambling anyway..... What next? Drug dealing and prostitution?

The student loans issue is controversial, but I can give one side of the story.

The decision to end free education came from the Dearing Report, published in 1997, and implemented by Tony Blair. Cant blame Thatcher for that....

But in reality, the numbers of people now in tertiary education compared to the 1970s is staggering, and if they have to contribute something towards the opportunity, then I think it is fair.

In 1970 they had bugger all chance of even seeing the inside of a university - unless they were working as a Janitor.

Soi what is better - more people having an opportunity but having to contribute to its cost, or a select handful getting a chance?

roaringmouse

42% is less than 1 in 3?
It was under John Major that VAT increased from 15% to 17.5% ... and I believe it was also under Major when VAT was applied to utility bills too, wasn't it?

eddie007

Even in the 50s Education was always a "way out" for those who were clever.... Plenty of oppotunity for middle of the roads to get a higher education that equipped them to earn well, rise above their situation..... It really IS now only available to those who are wealthy or reckless enough to take on debt ....

There used to be plenty of ways into higher education that were free..... Providing you had the academic ability to access them.....

Now you can go to uni as long as you have money.... Its come full circle and devalued the worth of a university education in the process....

eddie007

Actually I DO blame Thatcher for Bliar... And all that came after her.... He is a product of her Vision for Britain.... Embodied it....

Wanker (Bliar.... Not you mate)

slapphead_otool

You see DibDob you are making the classic mistake of viewing a discrete section of history and taking it out of context.

The year I was born, 1953, 10% of the population owned a staggering 80% of the wealth (and I wasn't one of them). By 1980, when MT was in power, the figure had dropped to 52%.

But taking your richest 50% figures:

1966 - 50% of the population owned 97% of the wealth.
1971 - 50% of the population owned 97% of the wealth.
1976 - 50% of the population owned 95% of the wealth.
1980 - 50% of the population owned 94% of the wealth.
1999 - 50% of the population owned 93% of the wealth.

Sorry to burst your bubble mate, the figures have hardly moved in the last 45 years, apart from the period when Thatcher was in power.

Even more interesting, personal wealth has risen from 500 Billion in 1979 to 2752 billion - and indictment of the Thatcher economic policies if I ever saw one.

http://www.stuffit.org/average-wage/...stribution.pdf

slapphead_otool

Bang on the nail Eddie, and now universities are full of people who AREN'T clever.

I worked at one a few years ago and was shocked at the plain dumbness of the average student. Christ knows how they even finished high school, but into Uni they went, and out the other end they came, clutching a bit of paper.....

Bell curve normalization meant that even a class full of total idiots would get 20% distinctions.

In a sensible world they would have apprenticeships or TAFE courses, but off to the uni they go.

I really feel that joe taxpayer shouldn't be funding hopeless to mediocre people as they study paper folding at the University of Sinkatinee.

Ballys

Who was primarily responsible for the squandering of this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/e...nue-squandered

For comparison refer to Norway
The Government Pension Fund - Global (Norwegian: Statens pensjonsfond - Utland, SPU) is a fund into which the surplus wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited. The fund changed name in January 2006 from its previous name The Petroleum Fund of Norway. The fund is commonly referred to as The Oil Fund (Norwegian: Oljefondet). As of the valuation in June 2011, it was the largest pension fund in the world, although it is not actually a pension fund as it derives its financial backing from oil profits and not pension contributions. As of 31 December 2011 its total value is NOK 3,396 billion [1] ($573 bn), holding 1 per cent of global equity markets.[2] With 1.78 per cent of European stocks,[2] it is said to be the largest stock owner in Europe.[3]

The purpose of the petroleum fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector, generated mainly from taxes of companies, but also payment for license to explore as well as the State's Direct Financial Interest and dividends from partly state-owned Statoil. Current revenue from the petroleum sector is estimated to be at its peak period and to decline over the next decades. The Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 after a decision by the country's legislature to counter the effects of the forthcoming decline in income and to smooth out the disrupting effects of highly fluctuating oil prices.

slapphead_otool

I fully agree mate, but there was a tiny problem that Thatcher faced. Labour had been promising utopia for years and not delivering, so to get the population to vote her in she had to give the population something.

The north Sea oil money SHOULD have been invested in newer technologies and R&D, but try telling that to Mr and Mrs Average Voter, who by the time MT came to power had developed a clear dose of "whats in it for me"...

Labours Eric Varley, under Harold Wilson, actual began to nationalize North Sea Oil!!! Get that - having shagged mining, ports, shipping, steel, the automotive industry (BMC anyone) coal, road transport, trains and even poor bloody Thomas Cooks, these mindless idiots wanted to nationalize North Sea Oil! They sure as hell had a good track record at managing nationalised industries didn't they. NSO would have lasted about a month with that shower in charge.....

derren7

Although I agree that the UK needed major reform when MT came to power, I think she let the pendulum swing too far the other way. She fully embraced the ravenous style capitalist polices which I believe has contributed to our present economic woes.
Although I would describe myself as a socialist, I do believe that capitalism and socialism can be used together cohesively for a better society.
We keep looking to the US for ways forward , while I think we should be looking the other way, ie Scandinavia, for better solutions. Sure, there systems aren't perfect and they pay more taxes, but I would personally pay more taxes for better public utilities but the British public will never buy that, but if they want to keep the NHS, the BBC and improve services in general then it's the only way forward.