I disagree with you Toby. The cost of accommodation is what it is because NO government since Harold Macmillan's has set out and delivered a proper building program. Energy bills are going up everywhere, including here which has EDF who are effectively state owned. Cheap coal is no longer available, it wasn't even cheap from the UK mines, and it is eco unfriendly anyway. Transport costs are what they are because of lack of investment from successive governments and the costs of raw materials that are required to run them. Job security has never been a reality. Since WWII technology has taken over more and more, and the jobs once available no longer exist. It seems to me that to blame an individual who was controversial for all the ills of the current state of the country is just plain wrong.
If we had not had Margaret Thatcher we would be living in a Stalinist nation run by the labour puppets and their trades unions overlords, with an iron grip on power, and God help anyone who was slightly different from the norm (Jews, free thinkers, homosexuals, etc). We would have had a situation worse than Winston Smith had to face in the book 1984. A UK version of the Stasi, sports teams represtenting the army, railways, electricity company, etc. No winter of discontent, it would have been decades.
Wouldn't go that far zen. Australia, and maybe the majority of the rest of the world, went through the same problems back then. Rampant union power was negated via a political master stroke pulled off by Malcolm Fraser when he engineered the demise of the ruling Labor Party. Compared to Thatcher though, he was an average and ineffectual leader - and thankfully soon gave way to Labor and Bob Hawke, quite possibly the best leader the country has ever had. Thatcher's legacy is mostly the state this country is in now. Australia, on the other hand, has one of the world's strongest economies. Quite possibly due to its industry and richness of resources, but I'm just sayin'.
The thoughts on this of a couple of 'public figures' Billy Bragg This is not a time for celebration. The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing; of why domestic growth is driven by credit, not by real incomes; of why tax-payers are forced to top up wages; of why a spiteful government seeks to penalise the poor for having an extra bedroom; of why Rupert Murdoch became so powerful; of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society. Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate - organise! And Ken Loach:
Unemployment in 1979 leading up to Mrs T coming to power was already at 1.5 Million and inflation was at around 26% Tax on earned income was 83% for the higher rate and over 5 million working days lost to strikes each year. As far as the miners and other trades unions in the Public services are concerned no responsible government could give in to wage demand increases of nearly 25%! Its very easy to condem her record in power but lets face it the country was well and truly fecked before she came to power. The unelected Union bully boys saw to that!
Did see some pictures of people in Bristol and London having a street party. They were not old enough to have been born when she was in power. Stupid!
Ah Master Bragg, the left wing socialist who owns a mansion in Dorset. Outside said mansion is a cliff top footpath which he keeps trying to block up because he doesn't want the public walking in front of his property. Move Mr Bragg, you could afford it.
If British Telecom were still in state hands, you would be accessing this site via a 56K Dial-Up Modem.
I was born in the 80s OFH, my parents were both teachers and my Dad has always been an ardent socialist. I'm currently living with the consequences of Thatcher's time in power, and it has affected me probably more than it affected you at the time. I have the right to celebrate her death, as I would any world leader that ruled in such a selfish, heartless way.
It's a bit like if the trains were in state hands, we would be paying stupidly high prices for a lousy service, whilst giving millions of pounds of taxpayer money to large rail companies from other countries for them to fund their own rail projects at home. Oh wait...
exactly this , I remember us moving because my dad couldnt afford the mortgage coz the pounds GBP he was earning were devaluing faster than he could earn ! The country was on its knees , Maggie got it back on its feet , know were back on our knees again , due to global finance issues and ineffective leadership .
Toby I like you mate and many suffered under her rule , now heres the thing many many more would have suffered without her! bit like the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ( from old pointy ears).
As OFH said - Billy Bragg another champagne socialist living in his big mansion above Burton Bradstock... I am going to start a ****-storm now. Very soon, there will be a huge debate started regarding Council Tax and the need to re-assess it based on the revaluation of properties. I wonder how many people will start wishing that the Community Charge (as the Poll Tax is really known) was implemented. I could never understand the issue of paying for the services provided by local authorities based on usage and need rather than the value of a property - did I miss something?
W-y that was Maggies main feck up should have left the rates system coz it worked better than anything we have had since ! Are you up for a beer May4th
I was working for British Rail at the time of the Wilson government. An automatic safety system had been devised that would prevent a train going through a red light. We tested the system time and time again until we were certain that it would work 100%. Seeing as this was the time of the "white heat of technological revolution" as Mr Wilson put it, what would stop our nationalised train system adopting it all over the network, and hopefully saving lives. The government wouldn't invest in it as would be a poor life/ cost return. So no attempt to modernise the network, and by the time that people started to think we should try and catch up with the rest of the world costs had soared. All a long time before the lady.
I was a teenager back in the 1970s and I saw first hand the anarchy of life in Britain back in those days. Successive Governments since the war had ducked the big problems that we faced and embarked on managing decline. It makes me laugh when some on here would make you believe that Britain was a Utopia back in the 1970s! The humiliation of Dennis Healy having to go cap in hand to the IMF for an emergency loan in the Autumn of 1976 just to keep the country afloat! These people that say that Thatcher threw millions on the dole and destroyed communities should also acknowledge the big role that the Trades Unions played in all of this. For example Scargill was spoling for a fight ever since he became President of the NUM in 1981. He miscalculated the majority public mood in the country at that time and seriously underestimated Mrs Thatcher's considerable resolve in facing him down. Without any mandate from his members he decided to embark on a catastrophic strike and decided to go out at the beginning of the Summer! (Tactical genius he was). He tried to stop the lawful right of some miners to carry on working especially in the Nottinghamshore coalfields and organised flying pickets which were unlawful. For the sake of democracy and the rule of law Mrs Thatcher was given no choice but to take him on and through his own beligerence and vanity he was partly responsible for dragging the strike out for so long. Thank god that today the country is in a far better place!
Government shortsightedness and stinginess has always stymied the development of any number of brilliant technological innovations, only to end up trying to play catch-up decades later. (eg the Wilson government's cancellation of the Black Arrow because a satellite launching system was deemed to have no foreseeable futiure!*) And it's absolutely true that the railway network was pitifully neglected and in need of a huge amount of investment to bring it up to date. But where was the sense in fragmenting the whole thing into 100+ private companies- a process which began under Thatcher even if Major completed it? I could never understand how any sane person could expect that to work as a solution. *edit: checking my facts the Black arrow was finally cancelled in 1971, so not by Wilson's govnt.
Probably not the best choice GG, but government had shown that running a railway network was not what they should attempt to do. While I worked for them no one had a clue what was going on. At least with private companies they have been looking to get a return on their investment which seemingly is a far better way for people to focus on what their job really is.
