NEIL HARDING
Fair Votes, Fair Media and Fair Taxes.
15 October 2005
20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER.
What with Thatchers 80th birthday (when will the witch ever die?) and this post over at Stumbling and Mumbling, it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article of mine about why I hate her so much.
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.
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2. Shamelessly uses the 'race card' to get elected PM in 1979! (Though I wont 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!
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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?
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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 hereditory second chamber is that Tory PMs can do whatever they like. If you dont 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 dont 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 didnt 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, 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 werent feasible for privatisation like bus and rail, go for it, it wont 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.
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17. Even public service broadcasting couldnt 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 couldnt afford to fund the NHS properly. There are no winter crises anymore!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
.....or not, as it may seem !
Seems however, more people disagreed with you than agreed with you.
Never lost an election
And Mr Blair - a blue in red clothing - continued where the Tories left off. Only, he has a lot more blood on his hands.
It's so easy to criticise Thatcher, Tatter, and you've fallen into the trap of doing it.
Most of the problems this country faced when she assumed power in 1979 - the unions/strikes, declining coal mining/ship-building/car-making industries going abroad due to cheaper coal and labour costs, were upon us already and the shift of manufacturing was inevitable - look at China and South Korea today. That massive shift was unstoppable.
Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Edward Heath had all been made monkeys of by the unions, Arthur Scargill and the EC. Britain was known as 'the sick man of Europe'. Jim Callaghan once said 'if I were a young man, I'd emigrate'. Well, thanks for running our country, Jim!
Along came Thatcher and changed all that.
Our standing in Europe and in the world is very high today.
As for the Falklands, what would you have done? Rolled over and let Argentina take them? She allowed as much time as possible before Argentina played their hand - and then acted. It's like North Korea today. Do we act now, or wait till they actually do something?
Do you remember what Tony Benn said about sending the Task Force to the Falklands? He said we shouldn't send a task force, 'not in their winter'. For fúck's sake, so we're not going to defend the Falklands just because the weather's bad? Typical Tony fúcking Benn and Labour. All talk and no action. Is he the sort of 'leader' you'd prefer, or someone like Margaret Thatcher, who had more balls than Tony Benn and Jim Callaghan would ever have.
How old are you, Tatter?
Thatcher was so strong, she changed not one party, but two.
aries
So the answer to declining industries and troublesome unions is to smash them into virtual non existence ?
Germany, France and Italy,s manufacturing sector hasn't disappeared under the " unstoppable Chinese and S.Korean shift " as ours has.
Clegg. Have you read the Neil Harding article from 2005, posted above by Tatter at all? I suggest you actually read it with an open mind and not the closed-mind brain-washed one that you are currently using. What she did was truly remarkable, even more so as she was a woman, but you would be wrong to dismiss the article out of hand just because it raises questions that don't sit comfortably with your beliefs about her. It certainly got me thinking about the affect it has had on where we are today - and you can't possibly think where we are today is progress do you?
Oh and a) if she had been allowed to carry on she would've lost the next election as she was so unpopular to the British public and her own party and b) read point 5 above she won her last election despite only getting 42% of the UK vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate. That is not a popular politician!
Wolfgang, the answer to troublesome unions causing disruption of work and picketing health service lines is to show them who runs the country.
And Wolfgang, Britain's manufacturing hasn't disappeared either. You're simply repeating another popular myth to suit the anti-Thatcher agenda.
Margaret Thatcher on Tony Blair:
'My legacy is safe in his hands'
One of the few things she said that I ever agreed with.
all this carp about 'conviction politician'.
hitler was a conviction politician and so was Mao Tse Tung.
First thing you need from a 'conviction politician is that their convictions are right.
she won her last election despite only getting 42% of the UK vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate. That is not a popular politician!
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JAH, that always happens under the first-past-the-post system - everyone knows that.
Show us the figures for Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan and Tony Blair.
Wandering Greengrocer - don't forget to add Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot to your little list of 'conviction politicians'.
Comment deleted by Site Moderator
" Up yours Delors "
It's all coming back to me now. Perfidious Albion - no wonder Aries supports them.
Up yours, Delors
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That headline - I believe 'it was The Sun wot done it', Wolfgang.
And you repeat it as if Thatcher said it.
And here you are, saying 'up yours, Thatcher'. Yes?
For some idea of what kind of person was she :
i) got rid of free school milk for children
ii) was friend and protector of the criminal General Pinochet - the guy who overthrew Allende's reforming government then tortured and killed his own people (including, possibly, the poet Pablo Neruda (see footnote) whose body, co-incidentally was exhumed yesterday to see what really killed him just a few days after Pinochet came to power)
iii) thought Nelson Mandela was a terrorist
iv) never forgave the cabinet for ditching her (compare Nelson Mandela who 'let bygones be bygones)
v) didn't believe there was such a thing as 'society' but chose to exercise power over it anyway
vi) didn't understand - or didn't care that if you rely too much on free markets some people are not equipped to survive and end up existing rather than living.
vii) turned a hard face to the harsdhips of the miner's families but cried for herself when she left Downing Street.
viii) believed in 'Victorian values' - a time when we put little kids up chimneys and women were the chattels of their husbands.
No doubt there were those who prospered under Thatcher - mostly bankers, yuppies, property developers and asset strippers, I suspect. But the price to the losers and a cohesive society was far too high.
A 'one-size-fits-all' little-Englander politician who divided the country - hard to deny given the diametrically opposed reactions to her death.
Footnote: If, like me, as a general rule you don't do poetry check out Neruda's 'I'm Explaining A Few Things'. Not all poetry is about daffodils and unrequited love. Brilliant.
Do you remember last year an at EC summit meeting, Cameron and Sarkozy were walking towards each other and Cameron stuck out his hand and Sarkozy ignored it?
Who looked the fool there, Cameron or Sarkozy? Who had the smaller mind? Who would you rather have as premier, Cameron or Sarkozy?
Aries,
you miss the point of my analogy - I'm not trying to say Thatcher was as bad - I'm trying to show that, per se, 'conviction politics' is no good unless you have the right convictions.
Tony Blair was a conviction politician too - look what happened there.
More often than not, 'doubt' is a good thing since it makes us think a little harder. As Bertrand Russell said 'The whole problem with the world is that whilst the intelligent are full of doubt, the stupid are always so certain'.
Conventionally, in debate, when you make an analogy you are not claiming that everything is analogous, just the particular attribute you are referring to. I apologise if I did not make this clear - I mistakenly thought you would get it.
Greengrocer, let's hear it for poodle Tony Blair and the unelected prime minister Gordon Brown.
Well aware that it was a Sun headline aries - I was just trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere.
Fell on stony ground unfortunately.
Greengrocer, and no one is saying that Thatcher was perfect. She wasn't. But she was a damn sight better than most prime ministers you and I have seen.
And this morning we have Martin McGuinness saying the people of Northern Ireland shouldn't be having street parties to celebrate her death, even though, and I quote, 'she was not a peacemaker'.
That from Martin McGuinness, who was once forced to apologise for the killing of 10 year old Tim Parry in a Manchester shopping centre bombing.
To anyone trying to lighten the mood and me missing it, I apologise.
aires22, you have it spot o mate. Don't try and convince the left wing loonies that are on this board. Best Prime Minister in 30 years and gave the 'old bill' a huge pay rise too boot.
Kicked out Scargill and his cronies and stopped all the pointless strikes that were crippling the country at that time.
Here's just one fact I know for sure. There were some mines that Scargill kept open where the miners only spent a couple of hours at the coal face as the rest of their 8 hour shift was taken up by getting there.
Greengrocer, you forgot to add that she reduced unemployment from over 12% when she took office to just over 5% when she left. Created more jobs in the private sector, which in turn boosts profits for private companies and creates even more jobs.
By the way, Scargill was the one who created hardship for the miners families. He sat on the fat salary his union was paying him whilst his so called work force suffered. Did you ever see the house he lived in?
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posted on 9/4/13
NEIL HARDING
Fair Votes, Fair Media and Fair Taxes.
15 October 2005
20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER.
What with Thatchers 80th birthday (when will the witch ever die?) and this post over at Stumbling and Mumbling, it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article of mine about why I hate her so much.
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 wont 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 hereditory second chamber is that Tory PMs can do whatever they like. If you dont 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 dont 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 didnt 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, 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 werent feasible for privatisation like bus and rail, go for it, it wont 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 couldnt 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 couldnt afford to fund the NHS properly. There are no winter crises anymore!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
posted on 9/4/13
.....or not, as it may seem !
posted on 9/4/13
Seems however, more people disagreed with you than agreed with you.
Never lost an election
posted on 9/4/13
And Mr Blair - a blue in red clothing - continued where the Tories left off. Only, he has a lot more blood on his hands.
posted on 9/4/13
It's so easy to criticise Thatcher, Tatter, and you've fallen into the trap of doing it.
Most of the problems this country faced when she assumed power in 1979 - the unions/strikes, declining coal mining/ship-building/car-making industries going abroad due to cheaper coal and labour costs, were upon us already and the shift of manufacturing was inevitable - look at China and South Korea today. That massive shift was unstoppable.
Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Edward Heath had all been made monkeys of by the unions, Arthur Scargill and the EC. Britain was known as 'the sick man of Europe'. Jim Callaghan once said 'if I were a young man, I'd emigrate'. Well, thanks for running our country, Jim!
Along came Thatcher and changed all that.
Our standing in Europe and in the world is very high today.
As for the Falklands, what would you have done? Rolled over and let Argentina take them? She allowed as much time as possible before Argentina played their hand - and then acted. It's like North Korea today. Do we act now, or wait till they actually do something?
Do you remember what Tony Benn said about sending the Task Force to the Falklands? He said we shouldn't send a task force, 'not in their winter'. For fúck's sake, so we're not going to defend the Falklands just because the weather's bad? Typical Tony fúcking Benn and Labour. All talk and no action. Is he the sort of 'leader' you'd prefer, or someone like Margaret Thatcher, who had more balls than Tony Benn and Jim Callaghan would ever have.
How old are you, Tatter?
posted on 9/4/13
Thatcher was so strong, she changed not one party, but two.
posted on 9/4/13
aries
So the answer to declining industries and troublesome unions is to smash them into virtual non existence ?
Germany, France and Italy,s manufacturing sector hasn't disappeared under the " unstoppable Chinese and S.Korean shift " as ours has.
posted on 9/4/13
Clegg. Have you read the Neil Harding article from 2005, posted above by Tatter at all? I suggest you actually read it with an open mind and not the closed-mind brain-washed one that you are currently using. What she did was truly remarkable, even more so as she was a woman, but you would be wrong to dismiss the article out of hand just because it raises questions that don't sit comfortably with your beliefs about her. It certainly got me thinking about the affect it has had on where we are today - and you can't possibly think where we are today is progress do you?
Oh and a) if she had been allowed to carry on she would've lost the next election as she was so unpopular to the British public and her own party and b) read point 5 above she won her last election despite only getting 42% of the UK vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate. That is not a popular politician!
posted on 9/4/13
Wolfgang, the answer to troublesome unions causing disruption of work and picketing health service lines is to show them who runs the country.
posted on 9/4/13
And Wolfgang, Britain's manufacturing hasn't disappeared either. You're simply repeating another popular myth to suit the anti-Thatcher agenda.
posted on 9/4/13
Margaret Thatcher on Tony Blair:
'My legacy is safe in his hands'
One of the few things she said that I ever agreed with.
all this carp about 'conviction politician'.
hitler was a conviction politician and so was Mao Tse Tung.
First thing you need from a 'conviction politician is that their convictions are right.
posted on 9/4/13
she won her last election despite only getting 42% of the UK vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate. That is not a popular politician!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JAH, that always happens under the first-past-the-post system - everyone knows that.
Show us the figures for Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan and Tony Blair.
posted on 9/4/13
Wandering Greengrocer - don't forget to add Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot to your little list of 'conviction politicians'.
posted on 9/4/13
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posted on 9/4/13
" Up yours Delors "
It's all coming back to me now. Perfidious Albion - no wonder Aries supports them.
posted on 9/4/13
Up yours, Delors
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That headline - I believe 'it was The Sun wot done it', Wolfgang.
And you repeat it as if Thatcher said it.
And here you are, saying 'up yours, Thatcher'. Yes?
posted on 9/4/13
For some idea of what kind of person was she :
i) got rid of free school milk for children
ii) was friend and protector of the criminal General Pinochet - the guy who overthrew Allende's reforming government then tortured and killed his own people (including, possibly, the poet Pablo Neruda (see footnote) whose body, co-incidentally was exhumed yesterday to see what really killed him just a few days after Pinochet came to power)
iii) thought Nelson Mandela was a terrorist
iv) never forgave the cabinet for ditching her (compare Nelson Mandela who 'let bygones be bygones)
v) didn't believe there was such a thing as 'society' but chose to exercise power over it anyway
vi) didn't understand - or didn't care that if you rely too much on free markets some people are not equipped to survive and end up existing rather than living.
vii) turned a hard face to the harsdhips of the miner's families but cried for herself when she left Downing Street.
viii) believed in 'Victorian values' - a time when we put little kids up chimneys and women were the chattels of their husbands.
No doubt there were those who prospered under Thatcher - mostly bankers, yuppies, property developers and asset strippers, I suspect. But the price to the losers and a cohesive society was far too high.
A 'one-size-fits-all' little-Englander politician who divided the country - hard to deny given the diametrically opposed reactions to her death.
Footnote: If, like me, as a general rule you don't do poetry check out Neruda's 'I'm Explaining A Few Things'. Not all poetry is about daffodils and unrequited love. Brilliant.
posted on 9/4/13
Do you remember last year an at EC summit meeting, Cameron and Sarkozy were walking towards each other and Cameron stuck out his hand and Sarkozy ignored it?
Who looked the fool there, Cameron or Sarkozy? Who had the smaller mind? Who would you rather have as premier, Cameron or Sarkozy?
posted on 9/4/13
Aries,
you miss the point of my analogy - I'm not trying to say Thatcher was as bad - I'm trying to show that, per se, 'conviction politics' is no good unless you have the right convictions.
Tony Blair was a conviction politician too - look what happened there.
More often than not, 'doubt' is a good thing since it makes us think a little harder. As Bertrand Russell said 'The whole problem with the world is that whilst the intelligent are full of doubt, the stupid are always so certain'.
Conventionally, in debate, when you make an analogy you are not claiming that everything is analogous, just the particular attribute you are referring to. I apologise if I did not make this clear - I mistakenly thought you would get it.
posted on 9/4/13
Greengrocer, let's hear it for poodle Tony Blair and the unelected prime minister Gordon Brown.
posted on 9/4/13
Well aware that it was a Sun headline aries - I was just trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere.
Fell on stony ground unfortunately.
posted on 9/4/13
Greengrocer, and no one is saying that Thatcher was perfect. She wasn't. But she was a damn sight better than most prime ministers you and I have seen.
And this morning we have Martin McGuinness saying the people of Northern Ireland shouldn't be having street parties to celebrate her death, even though, and I quote, 'she was not a peacemaker'.
That from Martin McGuinness, who was once forced to apologise for the killing of 10 year old Tim Parry in a Manchester shopping centre bombing.
posted on 9/4/13
To anyone trying to lighten the mood and me missing it, I apologise.
posted on 9/4/13
aires22, you have it spot o mate. Don't try and convince the left wing loonies that are on this board. Best Prime Minister in 30 years and gave the 'old bill' a huge pay rise too boot.
Kicked out Scargill and his cronies and stopped all the pointless strikes that were crippling the country at that time.
Here's just one fact I know for sure. There were some mines that Scargill kept open where the miners only spent a couple of hours at the coal face as the rest of their 8 hour shift was taken up by getting there.
posted on 9/4/13
Greengrocer, you forgot to add that she reduced unemployment from over 12% when she took office to just over 5% when she left. Created more jobs in the private sector, which in turn boosts profits for private companies and creates even more jobs.
By the way, Scargill was the one who created hardship for the miners families. He sat on the fat salary his union was paying him whilst his so called work force suffered. Did you ever see the house he lived in?
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