Maggie Thatcher Passes Away.

JohnnyO said:

RB73 said:

I'm a little puzzled, whilst I wasn't of age to vote through the late seventies to early nineties, how did this woman stay in office for three terms, two by fairly bloody huge margins and up until she was kyboshed by members of her own party, mainly that low down Europro traitor ponce Heseltine, she probably would have seen a fourth term.

Just asking like.

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Not being an apologist for any politician and having no political alliances I can't offer any great insight into the success of either Thatcher or Blair RB. However I'd guess as one who was struggling to buy our three room terraced house in the seventies and lived through the shortened working week of Heath's government, the 27% inflation rate, the petrol shortages & a mortgage which was running in the region of 15% interest many of us ordinary working peeps were as sick of and alienated from what the politicians of the day were offering as, well, many of us are now. Did I mention the rat infested uncollected rubbish in the streets ?
Since, as far as I recall, we were in any event in thrall to being bailed out by the IMF whoever came in to power was always going to have to implement the type of stringent policies we now can witness in Greece & Cyprus. With the same type of economic pain. Add to this the (in my view) fairly extreme monetary policies of people such as Thatcher, Tebbit & Joseph and hard times were always in view. That the conservative government kept getting elected suggests, to me, that many voters felt "something had to be done" to balance the books. As far as the % of total votes alloted to one party or another, well, that's the system we have. In the recent referendum the opportunity to move to a system of proportional representation was decisively rejected by those who voted. So, first past the post it remains. And, as far as I read, in England it takes more voters in a constituency to elect a conservative MP than a labour one. An inequality (if true) which lost its opportunity to be rectified when the libs chose not to support the recommendations of the boundary commision.

JohnnyO. \:icon_razz:

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UKRob said:

shavecraft said:

Right to buy bought a whole bunch of votes from what was largely hitherto a natural Labour constituency.


Regarding industrial reform under Thatcher Jeltz, the baby was thrown out with the bath water. Her reforms, much of which I would personally describe as vandalism of a treasonous magnitude, were as politically motivated as they were economic.

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I've just got to respond to this Shavecraft. Are you seriously suggesting that the labour strongholds were so grateful to Maggie for allowing them to buy their own house that they pledged to support her for the next 10 years?

And as for the baby being thrown out with the bathwater - what baby? If you think it wrong that someone should have a choice whether to join a union as opposed to be foreced to via a closed shop; if you think it right that someone should be able to tell you that you must stop work without asking your opinion; if you think it right that left wing agitators should have carte blanche to bully, harrass, threaten and beat you up because you decide to make your own mind up on an issue - then I suggest that your opinion is at odds with the majority of decent people who wanted a strike and strife free country.

Take a look at the numbers of union members pre and post the legislation - less than half. Does that tell you anything about choice.

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Bechet45 said:

The Unions had grown very powerful - a reaction to Capitalism seeking better opportunities abroad. I wqs sea-going in those days and saw a British company being allowed to rot and then finding a new shipyard and/or drydock being opened by the same company in Singapore, say.

Chicken or Egg? Another reading of your example might be that the British shipyard was unworkable because of union power.
Industrial stagnation started after WWII. All things conspired to come to a head and Maggie stepped in to destroy. Many things needed to be changed - on both sides of industry - but re-building could have done that. Maggie chose destruction and the reassertion of the Establishment in place of power over the working folk of UK. No wonder Blair came along with his 'Partnership' attitudes!

The union problems came to a head in the 70's when the old guard moderates found they had lost control to a heavily left-wing group. These people would not work with Labour or any other government at the time. I remind you Carl, the nation was on it's knees - Tony Benn seriously wanted to install a siege economy where imports would be banned, but thought that the rest of the world loved us enough that it would gladly let us continue exporting to them. His answer to lame duck industries was to throw public money at 'co-operatives' - yet he refused to give his backing to the cabinet's wishes for labour reforms. Jim Callaghan (and Wilson before him) were totally dependent on union funding and hide-bound as to what they could do in terms of reforms anyway. That's the real background to what happened a decade later.
But we digress, this thread is about Maggie being dead. Hurrah!

I suppose a good question for you, Rob, is why is she so very much hated by so very many people if she was a power for good in UK. Not disliked. Hated!
I don't know the answer to that but part of the reason is that the left wing has never forgotten that she defeated their plans to turns this country into their version of a socialist utopia and has kept up a campaign of demonisation ever since.

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UKRob said:

Chicken or Egg? Another reading of your example might be that the British shipyard was unworkable because of union power.

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UKRob said:

I don't think you can explain history via personal anecdotes Carl. But I'm glad I cheered you up anyway.

This is positively my last word on this increasingly pointless thread.

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IanM said:

The woman had more balls than any male PM that I've ever seen.

She screwed a great many people, but at least she told them first.

Ian

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Boab said:

Didn't she attend a lot of parties with Jimmy Saville? That's probably worse than Pinochet

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Bechet45 said:

UKRob said:

Chicken or Egg? Another reading of your example might be that the British shipyard was unworkable because of union power.

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That made me chuckle, Rob. I was in Smith's Docks in North Shields for six months as part of my cadetship - 1965, twenty years after WWII ended. They had a steam driven crane that chugged and puffed along the top of the dry-dock wall. It could not reach up and over a lot of ships. Did they buy a new crane big enough to do the job? Not a bit of it! They converted the old - and I mean ancient - crane from coal fired to oil fired and it continued to chug and puff around the yard, too small and not powerful enough to do it's intended job.

Unworkable because of union power? Nah! the crane was too little. Singapore was getting alll mod cons in whacking big drydocks with huge, powerful cranes. British capital chasing cheap labour.

There was a time when, if you wanted a ship, you had to buy a British built ship and if you wanted an engine in that British built ship, you had to install a British engine, designed and built in Britian. It always seemed to me that was a pretty good head start on the Rest of the World. A bit of investment and modernisation was needed - well, a lot to be fair, after decades of neglect. All long since gone, apart from RN work. Maggie nailed the coffin lid down on that one, too.

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antdad said:

I hear "Ding Dong: The Witches Dead" has hit the charts and the beeb are all a quandary; who says young folks don't care anymore, you heard it first hear folks on post 6.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/apr/12/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead

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Jute Man said:

IanM said:

The woman had more balls than any male PM that I've ever seen.

She screwed a great many people, but at least she told them first.

Ian

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She screwed a whole nation with her guinea-pig trial of the poll tax on the people of Scotland!! That's why, to this day there are more pandas in the country than there are Scottish Tory MPs!

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Dr Rick said:

This whole thread does rather sum up political discussion in general, doesn't it. Nobody's mind is changed, and each side thinks the other immune to facts, logic, and basic human decency.

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