[Closed] Explain the "Thatcher" thing to me

Easy Hora, you're beginning to sound like you mean it 😆

I always liked Frankie Boyles comments about the proposal for a state funeral for her, which would supposedly cost three million pounds - "three million quid - for that money, you could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we'd dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan personally".
It's difficult for me to say anything positive about the woman, I saw at first hand the damage her policies caused, a legacy that is still seen and felt here in South Yorkshire. My disco slippers are very much ready, and furthermore, my bladder's full to bursting point.

Emsz she did "deliberately make a whole class of unemployed people" there is no such thing as society , i'm old enough to remember before during and after THATCHER pre Thatch the unions had massive power could hold the country to ransom and humiliate the Govt winter of discontent power cuts rubbish in the streets unburied dead.

The then traditional conservative govt plan was to do the best in the circumstances, Thatcher changed that by having a strong ideology monetarism individuality etc, She welcomed a fight with the unions and was happy to destroy the primary and secondary industries where union power was strong. Her aim was to change the economy from a balanced one to a financial industries powerhouse hence the rise of the Banker and Broker.

The result in the industrial/mining areas was and is catastrophic many thriving working communities lost the bulk of their jobs and became sink estates certainly where I'm from the use and supply of drugs went through the roof as boredom bread demand and lack of income became a motive to offend.

The Police became a political tool " i joined to serve my community i ended up helping to destroy it " is a quote from a south yorks bobby.

A wide section of society loved her she was a powerful and charismatic leader with a strong sense of self belief but there is a massive difference between being popular and being right. As stated above she bought the economic boom by flogging off the country's assets ultimately to trans national companies which withdraw the capital and jobs so ruining the country.

I don't blame Thatcher alone but she was the front person and claimed personal credit , the Tory party soon gave her the elbow when they thought it suited them .

I do Blame and hate Blair with a passion i voted for that murdering deceitful Thatcher spawn.

I'll mourn the day. What a woman. Not like every politician since. Cameron is a bloody makeweight/wishy-washy with weak leadership.

ding dong, she dead yet? ps bitch stole my milk in 87!

I do Blame and hate Blair with a passion i voted for that murdering deceitful Thatcher spawn

I'll mourn the day. What a woman. Not like every politician since. Cameron is a bloody makeweight/wishy-washy with weak leadership.

❓

I vote that on the fateful day we all go round to Hora's house and hold a party - we can wear paper hats, blow those paper tube things and follow him around all day laughing at his tears! 😆

from BBC article, sum her up..

what I can never forget or forgive Thatcher for was the vindictive way that she systematically destroyed the coal mining industry of this country.

It was done not for any economic reason, it was pure out and out revenge for the actions that brought down the Heath government.

ive witnessed first hand those dark days in Wales, the irony is coal will come back.

also she gave the order to destroy an argentine ship when it was outside the exclusion zone and heading home. but we wont go into that one!

She stole my milk when I was at school.
Maggie Thatcher - Milk Snatcher.

Actually I reckon that the people who love her to bits are a bit into dominatrices and have a desire for spanking.

Dunno why. It has always been an image that stuck in my head when people eulogise her. "Ooh PM I've been a [b]very[/b] naughty boy..." 😀

As for that film - it is too early to make it. From what I hear it portrays her in a very positive light (most probably to get the US dollars flowing in). A film like this is best made about 20 years after her death so both positive and negative views have settled somewhat and a more rounded view can be seen.

Some bullet points:

- Thatcher wanted to close the loss-making mines (20 out of 160).
- Unions vowed to stand united to oppose any closures as they had also bullied the previous government. So walked out for a year.

In the end it ended up with more being closed.

- Alot of Policemen made a packet in overtime payments
- Scargill lives a guilded lifestyle at the expense the Miners Union still.

Who are the losers?

I think you can have some grudging admiration for her abilities to follow a policy even when it was massively resented

... but the term "hard-faced cow" must have been invented specifically for her

I'm glad the tories ****ed her off when she'd outlived her usefulness - it's what she would've [s]wanted[/s] done

(Addit - that was in no way a response to you Hora. You really can't see who the losers were ?? 😯 )

I think you can have some grudging admiration for her abilities to follow a policy even when it was massively resented

Agree apart from the invasion of Iraq (the mass march on London protest) every politician seems to listen and temper their line accordingly.

As someone who was old enough to remember but not vote for or care much about Thatcher, I find this fascinating. What seems clear is there once was a time when politics was properly divisive; when one party very clearly stood for different values than another; when your political allegiance defined who you were as a person rather than what tit-bit you craved from the latest manifesto come election time.

I want to contribute to this thread. Unfortunately I can't. I can't even read it, as it will invariably involve someone, probably Hora, defending the nasty, hideous, poisonous, vindictive, evil corrosive bitch.

I'll let Mr Costello summarise my feelings more eloquently

TJ I don't understand why a govt would Diliberatly make a whole class of unemployed people

What I was going to say has been posted. The unions were able to get whatever they wanted by calling strikes whenever they felt like it. I think that this was a major problem in British industry.

However, she solved that paritcular problem by destroying the industries that were most powerful. Except that had the side effects of destroying many communities and towns. Imagine a town where most people worked for a particular employer, and suddenly that employer is shut down. What are you going to do? You've only got one skill and all the other employers are also shut down.

They claimed at the time that British coal was uneconomical to produce. Well, some of it probably was, either because it was being mined out or because the mines were not efficiently run. In any case, one of these mines was bought by a consortium of people who worked there using their own redundancy payments, and continued to operate at a profit for what - 15 years? Until they actually had run out of coal which was just a few years ago. [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Colliery ]The Tower Colliery[/url] - the local mine of my Dad's village - two of my Uncles worked there for a time, my Gramps worked there all his life. My Dad also worked in the mines but at Glynneath on the other side of the mountain.

Come on Binners, you can join me at Hora's house come the day... 😆

Why don't people blame their parents for the way their life turned out?

Or blame themselves?

If theres no work in deepest Wales, why not ****ing move to where there is work.

"No lad you see I've lived here for generations and I'm ****ed if I'm going elsewhere. I'd rather sit here in a council house drawing benefits whilst feeling quasi-proud about not moving away from my roots' and blame someone for not knocking on my door and providing work just a bicycle ride away.

Of **** off.

I want to contribute to this thread. Unfortunately I can't. I can't even read it, as it will invariably involve someone, probably Hora, defending the nasty, hideous, poisonous, vindictive, evil corrosive bitch.

I think you can have some grudging admiration for her abilities to follow a policy even when it was massively resented

Absolutely not. Pig-headedness is in no way an admirable quality.

Obviously people will now tell me about the countries that have managed to maintain their manufacturing in state ownership and take it from strength to strength

Germany

The Jezza thread vs this for longevity.

My money's on this.

She [s]was[/s] is ginger Marmite.

Think in terms of these issues :-

Freeing up the banks to do unfettered lending
The breakdown of traditional monogamous relationships
The cost of property
The obesity epidemic
The current state of British Rail
The current state of the Gas industry
The current state of the electricity industry
The current state of the water industry
The current state of our Steel industry
The current state of our coal industry
The current state of our financial institutions
The state of the NHS when New Labour came to power and the amount of money it took to repair it

To name but a few, and you’ll have a general idea of why she’s held in such esteem.

I suspect we'll make the day the old bitch dies a national holiday here in Scotland.

"Why don't people blame their parents for the way their life turned out?"
Oddly enough hora, my life changed dramatically because of what the right honourable bitch cow did. I was on strike for a year, then got made redundant. Following that, I did my nurse training, and here I am twenty odd years later, still nursing. Would I have done that if I'd have still had a job in the pit? I cant say. What I can say is that I feel bloody lucky to have been able to move on, and that I still see people and places that havent been able to, and are still suffering for it. As far as blaming my parents, I have nothing but gratitude for what my mam and dad did for me. With regards to Scargill living a gilded lifestyle - how do you know, other than what the media tells you to believe? Following the strike, his wife divorced him, and he's very, very much a shadow of his former self. I know he had a monstrous ego, and made some bad decisions at the time, but I for one would have followed him anywhere.

Not read the whole thread but, any one who lives in the North of England and sees the industrial desolation ,caused by policies that came from her belief that Britain should be a service economy, would be pretty misguided not to hate her IMO.

She has done more for the uk balance of payments deficit and social division than any politician ever AND the current lot seem to be following her template to build further on that legacy. Bitch.

Just what will the UK think when "the ladys not for turning" does eventually pop off??

I do wonder how her legacy will be treated.

Now then, who said "Mark Thatcher"... calm down at the back you..

TandemJeremy - Member
As a deliberate policy she pushed millions onto the dole and wasted the north sea oil money paying for them to do nothing.

We still are paying the price to day as the underclass she deliberately created continue to exist.

it was done to drive down the price of labour and to reduce the power of the unions. Unemployment from a million to nearer five million. Industry was devastated and the rich got richer while the poor got poorer

A massive crime against the people of our country. Of course some will defend her- the people who did well out of it - the richer amongst us.

Posted 11 hours ago # Report-Post

TJ sums it all up to start with,she destroyed the briritsh car and trucka nd bus industry that was BL, she closed the coal minmes so now we have to rly on expensive nuclear poweer, cheap to produce some idiots say, but oh so dear to keep safe for future generations, she closed down the large psychie hospitals and created care in the community, where menetally ill people are allowed to walk the streets with little or no treatment,she destroyed the steel industry, and most heavy engoineering, she wasted billions of oil money, paying her cronies huge sums to create training companies, that failed instead of giving the money to the coleges that existed, she destroyed working class comunities by destroying their workplaces, and created a them and us mentalitity, she sold off the council houses, bt, british steel, the water and electric boards, along with the gas,british rail, etc all companies who make massive profits and charge huge prices, we now have massive unemployment thats not going to be soaked up by pointless media studies degrees amongst others in the newly created univercities, some which are failing already and being taken over.

She must really be quite cheered by how she destroyed the unions power, and be quite happy at how poor a turnout the so called day off of work the unions and media created between themselves on wednesday .

A few yrs ago i was fortunate enough to be offered a part in the Channel4 documentary/dramatisation about the Battle of Orgreave during the Miners Strike.
That weekend i met many former miners who were there on that horrible day and i was struck by the implacable bitterness from that community towards Thatcher and her Ministers that still reverberates to this day.

At the end of filming there was a march down the road behind the Union banners, and again i was struck by how those men once again lifted their heads, firmed their chins and marched in pride.

*Plus, i got to hit a famous Hollywood director with a rubber rock! 😳

Why don't people blame their parents for the way their life turned out?

Or blame themselves?

If theres no work in deepest Wales, why not * move to where there is work.

"No lad you see I've lived here for generations and I'm * if I'm going elsewhere. I'd rather sit here in a council house drawing benefits whilst feeling quasi-proud about not moving away from my roots' and blame someone for not knocking on my door and providing work just a bicycle ride away.

Of **** off.

You're right Hora. People should get off their backside and find a job. But if you were from a mining town (and I'm assuming you're not) and had had an appalling education, then stuck down the mines at 15 (this is precisely what happened to my father), what exactly would you do if you were suddently put out of work at 35? No qualifications, a recession on ..... sure, there were [i]some[/i] jobs down South, but nowhere near enough. And some places had a mixed economy, but if you went to, say, the Durham coalfields there really wasn't much else around there. It was the biggest employer (on both a primary and secondary basis) by a huge margin. It stopped, everything stopped. People couldnt afford cars, so the garage closed. People didn't need labourers or builders. The metal-bashing firms were big suppliers to the mines, so they shut too. Supermarkets shut.

Jobs just a bike ride away? I can assume only that you're either quite young and just know about history, or never lived in a part of the country which was really affected. I watched communites [i]crumble[/i] and saw homeless people appear in my city.

Miners are not workshy people - there's a proud tradition of hard graft in the industry - so to blithely talk about people as somehow not being bothered, not caring about whether they could get a job is just so far of the mark that it's not funny.

Building, Labouring? etc etc.

She's responsible for killing our primary and secondary sectors, putting too much faith in the tertiary?

Some of this must be down to blanket education where those in charge think every student wants to go to uni, get a degree and powerdress to work.

Some kids just want to shape wood and weld things for a living.

I hope she goes while there's a Tory government in. I want to see the reaction of Call-me-Dave and his chums as Everywhere other than London and the Home Counties erupt in spontaneous rejoicing. I'm sure they'll find it incomprehensible and will express disgust and faux outrage, while the rest of us pop the champagne corks

Ironically I can think of no greater illustration of the polarisation and social division she bequeathed to the country

"Building, Labouring? etc etc."
Where? when the pits went, the villages and communities went, Which part of that do you fail to comprehend? In the village I grew up in, you went to work down the pit - that was more or less your choice, there werent a lot of options. I was lucky insofar as my mam and dad encouraged me to get an education, which gave me something to fall back on, but not everybody had that option. Keep going hora, your thatcherite ideology's shining through nicely, I'm sure she'd be very proud... 🙄

I struggle with long sentences
and, being at work have no access to youtube, so don't know if this will work or not, but of you want the thatcher philosophy summed up, see if you can't find the "Greed is Good" speech by Michael Douglas from Wall St (Gordon Gekko was the character).

Hora either doesn't understand or doesn't want to understand how the loss of a huge local employer affects a community.
Overnight the money is gone. Pubs close down, shops close and local services like plumbers, builders,garden centres etc all go bust because no-one - and i MEAN no-one - has any money to spend. 600 jobs gone in a pit can mean 10'000 more people losing money and businesses because of that.

THAT is why she is hated.

My comment was referring to this:

and had had an appalling education, then stuck down the mines at 15 (this is precisely what happened to my father), what exactly would you do if you were suddently put out of work at 35? No qualifications, a recession on ..... sure, there were some jobs down South, but nowhere near enough.

Calm down.

Referring back. WHY was an area so dependent on one industry? Why as a country had we put such reliance for an area on one sector instead of a mix?

The Government at the time had to take drastic measures due to the economic situation. The country couldn't keep running in such a way and had to control inflation. Unions wanted payrises.

Why, to this day is one person blamed and no one else is seen to shoulder the blame?

Why did the Unions call a year-longstrike surely knowing the downside could be a whole lot worse and detrimental for the whole country if they lost. Everyone loses.

As for the 'better to have people unemployed'- bollocks. Taxes paid and money spent in the economy is much more preferable.

I just don't agree that she was seen as the wicked witch and the source of all ills.

Are you really from the North of England Hora? You can't be. Sometimes I think you're from another planet. Planet Penis

If theres no work in deepest Wales, why not **** move to where there is work.

Have you not noticed the scale of Welsh/Irish/Geordie/Scouse/Manc migration ot other parts of this sceptred isle, and for that matter throughout the world? I would have thought even the meanest intelligence would have.

in the 10 years prior to thatcher, the labour government closed more pits than she did in her first 10 years in power. they closed 34 vs 28 under thatcher

http://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/forum/read.php?14,7169,7173

tbh, closing them had a devistating effect, but it had to happen sooner or later - they were simply uncompetative on a global market. Could more have been done to 'soften the blow' - possibly.

Welsh/Irish/Geordie/Scouse/Manc

Should I be grateful that I do not understand politics in any way?

I was but a child during the eighties and my parents were working class and they were staunch Maggie fans.

I like Maggie.

Doesn't matter how sheltered or screwed over our families were under whatever government you care to mention. Most of us just take on the political leanings of our parents. (Putting SDP leaflets in letterboxes with my dad when I was 9 here, guess what I think of her!)

My father in law had his colleagues screwed over and his whole career turned upside down by privatisation, struggled to pay his mortgage all through the 80's. He saw his two favourite things scrapped before time under the Conservatives (Vulcans and British Railways), and yet he is still Tory as ever, because that's what his dad was.

@ Junkyard, told you. 😉

I was but a child during the eighties and my parents were working class and they were staunch Maggie fans.

I like Maggie.

You know hora, I've typed and then scrapped about four retorts to your 'calm down' comment. There really is no point in trying to reason with somebody with views as polarised as yours are to mine. I'm lost for words, and becoming more and more wound up by an argument on an internet forum than is good for me, so for that reason, I'm oot (of this thread I mean, this is most definitely not an official flounce :wink:.

Are you really from the North of England Hora? You can't be. Sometimes I think you're from another planet. Planet Penis

Yep. I grew up in poverty. Stark poverty. Even now I hoard and worry over money. Where I grew up there were little choice to have interms of employment so I went to the otherside of the country then London.

barnsleymitch I'll tell you about my Father one day if we meet 🙂

Edit: and sod off binners, you are from the Wirral- your not a true northerner!

I'll mourn the day. What a woman. Not like every politician since. Cameron is a bloody makeweight/wishy-washy with weak leadership.

Stop trying to troll!

He speaketh the truth though.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with her politics, at least she had the conviction to follow through on her beliefs. A world away from modern politicians, too scared to alienate any section of the electorate.

I do laugh at the anti-tory hatred spouted currently. For those who despise Cameron et al, do you honestly believe Labour or the Liberal Democrats would do anything [i]radically[/i] different if they were in charge.

The days of left, right, red, or blue politics are gone. Every party is just a slightly different shade of grey.

At least Thatcher, and the opposition at the time, backed up their beliefs with action and opinion.

hora - when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

Doesn't matter how sheltered or screwed over our families were under whatever government you care to mention. Most of us just take on the political leanings of our parents. (Putting SDP leaflets in letterboxes with my dad when I was 9 here, guess what I think of her!)

My folks now hate the Tories and vote labour.

I still vote Tory (a pointless thing in Scotland, but still...)

hora - when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

If you know anyone who can do pointing work let me know. Everyone I've spoken to has a 2month waiting list.

hora - when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

If what he says is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, it is pretty amazing that he is unable to empathise with those for whatever reason that are even less fortunate than himself. Some sort of PTSD thing perhaps?

hora - when there are many millions unemployed how are they all supposed to get jobs?

I think the theory is that you have to fight your neighbour for it, winner takes all

it is pretty amazing that he is unable to empathise with those for whatever reason that are even less fortunate than himself. Some sort of PTSD thing perhaps?

I spent two years on the dole in my teens doing **** all.

I just don't agree that she was seen as the wicked witch and the source of all ills

[img] [/img]

nice shiny apple for the barrow boys (matched their braces), poisonous interior for the rest of us.

One of the saddest things about Thatcher's legacy is that people like Hora genuinely think as they do. A finer example of a shattered and dysfunctional society could not be wheeled out. 🙁

One of the saddest things about Thatcher's legacy is that people like muddyfox genuinely think as they do. A finer example of a shattered and dysfunctional society could not be wheeled out

EFA

your not a true northerner!

nobody's a true northerner unless they were born north of Perth

Even the Hovis advert was filmed down sarf (Dorset)

You're not making sense Hora - no change there then.

+1 barnsleymitch

I'll [i]never[/i] calm down about this.

I'm out. We shouldn't have such topics. Yes there will always be opposite opinions on such things. We shouldn't fall out over it.

Just agree to disagree. Peace.

You didn't even get my username right Hora.... 🙄

not read any of this thread, but i have a good idea what it will be about.
all i can say is, when she dies i for one will be a happy man and may even have a little party.

both my stepdad and grandad were miners, my stepdad was on strike the whole duration of the strike.

whole villages were ruined and left to rot because of the effect of the strike
families were torn apart cos of the strike

most of the middle class idiots on here who spurt how wrong people who despise her are, have no idea how much this woman is hated in these communities.
and also no idea about the hardships suffered in the early 80's.

We shouldn't fall out over it.

With the greatest of respect, I don't tend to fall out with people unless they make incredibly broad-brush statements, then tell me to calm down.

Inflammatory [i]and[/i] patronising .... guaranteed to get me riled.

I grew up in the sixties in a mining community. The last of the deep pits in our area closed in the sixties, there was some opencast in the seventies, and there are a handfull of drift mines still working these days.
I never voted for Thatcher.
However, I do remember (what became) British Leyland, I do remember the miners' strikes, I do remember the communities split (and I mean families, best friends; deep, deep splits some of which were never to be resolved). It's convenient to blame Thatcher but she knew that the manufacturing industries, the steel industry, the mining industry were losing out to cheaper foreign industries. The unions probably did more damage in speeding up this process than she did.
Where she was wrong IMO was in not supporting the manufacturing industries, not leading by example in buying British, not subsidising British industry in a global market.
She is remembered because she was a strong leader; poltics changed after her leadership - the boundaries between Parties has become blurred, the press and media have a much bigger influence with a much wider audience. The Political Parties try to win elections by cowtowing to the electorate rather than standing up for ideals these days.
So, for me - I didn't vote for her Party. I didn't agree with the nationalisation of the utilities. I do however respect her strength as a leader and believe that the blame for a lot of things that were failing anyway was conveniently laid at her door. As for the Poll Tax, with hindsight it was probably one of the [i]fairest[/i] systems of local taxation proposed but by that time nothing she proposed was going to win her votes.

well, she brought an end to this:

(Spot TJ 😉 )

z11, she also brought some people a load of overtime too........ 😉

Pointless as you need to blame your own parents for your upbringing than a government.

Should we blame your parents for your obvious lack of education? 😐

psling - Member
....It's convenient to blame Thatcher but she knew that the manufacturing industries, the steel industry, the mining industry were losing out to cheaper foreign industries. The unions probably did more damage in speeding up this process than she did....

A view conveniently overlooked by the Fatcha haters was that in many industries, the "right" the unions were fighting for was the right to remain in an unmodernised, unrecontructed work environment that was becoming increasingly vulnerable to cheaper imports &/or more modern production methods.

And so it came to pass, the unions blocked modernisation and their industry fell to the power of foreign competition, but it was all Fatcha's fault, obstructive work practises and stubborn opposition to change played no part in the decline of UK manufacturing and other heavy industries, oh no......

Thesis => antithesis => synthesis => new thesis => etc. How knowledge and experience evolves.

In terms of economic history, the 1970's and 1980s were periods of thesis and antithesis, whereas the 1990's became more of a period of synthesis. [b]As always, both extremes sowed the seeds of their own destruction.[/b] The 1970s were an appalling period for the UK as a whole. Mining was not exempt from this. Miners wages had been crushed by rampant inflation leading to the 1972 call by the NUM for a 45% wage increase to compensate for the loss of earnings previously suffered. Not unreasonable one could argue, but what global industry would survive wage inflation of 45%? We then had Satley...confrontation....miners winning...the Yom Kippur War...the oil shock...an inflation crisis....wage demands/conflict etc.

[so it is worth being sympathetic to those whose lives suffered during those periods]

So Thatcher arrives and takes on the extremes of the 1970s - inflation, union power, increase welfare state, rigid adherence to Keynesian economics (although Callaghan pre-emptied her here) and introduced a different set of extremes laid out in Hayek's, "The Constitution of Liberty". Inflation was targetted via (the extremes of) monetarism, union power/restrictive practices was taken head on leading ultimately to appalling scenes of the Miners strike, the welfare state was attacked with a renewed focus on self-reliance which had its own extreme in "there is no such thing as society.", competition was introduced to the benefit of many before ending in an over-reliance on privatisation and free-markets etc.

[ditto, we should be sympathetic to those who suffered here. Hora, perhaps you did not have personal experience of the personal impact on individuals and communities, so really its not for you to comment on the pain that others still feel here]

The synthesis arrives in New Labour and Mandlesson's infamous line, "we are all Thatcherites now." Politics shifted to a central ground and the good parts of the Thatcher legacy remained and the bad parts rejected. This legacy remains with the real as opposed the rhetorical differences between Labour and Tories being marginal. Political extremes on both sides became and remain marginalised. The responses to the current crisis would have been generally the same whatever party had won the last election but with roles reversed.

The new thesis however was characterised by an unbalanced economy - financial services and public sector - and excess levels of leverage at the household, bank, corporate and sovereign levels. And so we now have a crisis that requires smaller financial services and public sectors and the extremes of leverage to be addressed but in the crisis context of the collapse (and possible re-birth) of the € project. So the new antithesis is represented by extremes in banker-bashing, the over-regulation of financial services, the attacks on the public sector wages and pensions and rhetorical errors such as Cameron's credit card gaffe. As before, this will not be pretty, but hopefully a new synthesis will arrive in time (2016?).

So not all bankers/public sector workers are to be vilified. Many good people are going to suffer through this period irrespective of government policies - as bet your bottom dollar the reaction to the crisis will lead first to extreme policy reactions. [b]Abusing each other and glorifying/celebrating the death of individuals is unlikely to be a solution.[/b]

Perhaps if we had listened to the unions and maintained some of the old working practices rather than looking at the short term cost benefits, we wouldn't have to suffer the longer term [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_oil_spill ]damage.[/url]

I do like Ewan McColl

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom ]Relatively balanced outlook on the British economy without all the crap from the pseudo-politicos on this forum who believe that only they know the truth.[/url]

Thatcher can't die. You'd have to be human first.

I remember my dad's expressing the opinion (in the late 80s) that Thatcher did some stuff that needed doing to Britain but ended up going too far in a lot of cases. That view seems to tie in with teamhurtmore's comments above that significant problems often lead to overreactions that fix the problem but create further problems themselves.

I grew up near Aberdeen, which thanks to North Sea oil generally did pretty well throughout the Thatcher years so compared to a lot of people my opinion of her is fairly abstract, though I wouldn't say I'm a big fan.

A view conveniently overlooked by the Fatcha haters was that in many industries, the "right" the unions were fighting for was the right to remain in an unmodernised, unrecontructed work environment that was becoming increasingly vulnerable to cheaper imports &/or more modern production methods.

..and what if she was wrong and the unions were right?

The right most obviously being fought for was the right not to be managed by utter cocks in the main, and clearly the failure to win that argument and her policies have led to a strong thrusting British manufacturing base , where we are so clearly not vulnerable to cheap imports.......hang on..wait a minute! 😯

Ton - I grew up in a former mining town, my Nan worked in a pit canteen. I moved to the former Durham coalfields in the 80's, living in a cat D village.

My village pit, like many of the Durham mining villages, closed in the 60's as the NCB killed all the small pits and embedded its future in deep mine super pits.

I've worked with and been friends with a lot of former miners, and steelworkers, and their families, drank in the same clubs as them, and as a kid I stood on the picket lines with my Dad while another industry fought for its survival. My dad was a union shop steward, and spent a good while blacklisted.

The one thing I've learned through that whole experience is that times move on... All the old boys knew they had been watching the death throws of an industry that was doomed to be a thing of the past, and had been propped up for a long time.

Do you think I revel in what happened to the industries? not one bit - but you cannot blame Thatcher for it all, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway, and whenever it happened, it would have been horrific for those communities -

The death of the small pits in the fifties and sixties was a far greater catastrophe in its sheer scale, and those villages and towns will probably never recover. Mention to someone in the North East the category D villages and you'll hear a tale or two.

Do I blame them for fighting for their survival? of course not, but I do blame sucessive governments for creating whole towns that were essentially ghettoised to reliance on one employer, which is what caused the real pain in the long run, and I do blame the unions for refusing to give an inch, which in the end is what sealed their fate.

Mark my words, we'll see it again, the cotton industry, the rag trade, steel, coal, shipbuilding - the financial industries, callcentres, pharma companies, they'll all close at some point... we need to consider whether our comfortable lifestyle is really sustainable when people in other countries will do the same for a pittance?

It would be nice to see us all have improved lifestyles, but the trickle down effect is currently trickling down to india, bangladesh, china and south america - as we get poorer and less comfortable lifestyles, they will get something gradually slightly better than the abject poverty they've been living in for decades - its not nice for us, but like I say, times move on, and maybe a slight averaging out of our rich western lifestyle to some other countries, in the grand scheme of things, is overdue.

An example of teh shortsightness and blinkered apraoch.

A coal burning power station and a coal mine - near to each other and connected by a railway. The mine produces high quality coal cleanburning coal.

Polish coal exported at a subsidised price is cheap so a contract is made to use this coal instead despite the fact it is dirtier and burns less cleanly. The UK coal mine is shut.
However the cost of the polish coal plus the cost of the miners unemployment benefits is actually higher than the cost of the UK coal

so the total cost to the UK is actually greater, there is a social cost as well in the unemployment, but the electricity is cheaper to produce so the power station can be sold off to create profits for the private sector. The Uk loses money, a state asset and has higher unemployment. A lose / lose situation unless you have the money to buy shares in the now private power station.

so as a result of the blinkered approach to the costs of generating electricity the country is worse off. the balance of payments is worse, people have lost their jobs and the pollution from the station is higher