[Closed] The Tories - for those of us old enough to remember 1st hand

Miners strike, NHS cutbacks, Criminal Justice bill, Poll tax, CSA, Falklands war - It makes me pi*s myself laughing when people choose to ignore this lot, and harp on about 'what a strong leader she was' or 'at least she had balls'. You could say the same about any money grabbing dictator. I for one still have a full bladder and my dancing shoes ready...

I would like to thank Sir Edward Heath for joining the EU. Norman Tebbit provided some good advice when he suggested I get on my bike as his father had done. And last but not least, Margaret Thatcher for signing reciprocal agreements with France that helped me prosper. That other true blue Tory Tony Blair also deserves a mention for saving me the money it used to cost to renew my British Passport.

It was dreadfull under the Thatch and my Brother in law didn't come home from the Falklands.

The years the tories were in power they continually altered the method of counting unemployment to lower the headline figure. Labour put it back to a more sensible method that gave a truer figure.

Paraphrasing but the number 24 comes to mind as the number of times they changed the counting method.

High unemplyment. Managed to stay employed myself but millions didnt.

Well its really low at the moment?

And for all the things they have done in the past Labour haven't got too much to be proud of at the moment. Brown is short of ideas and in partly responsible for the current financial issues the country is having at the moment. Fuel prices is my current issue. And as for the Lib Dems they seem to be promising the world but where is the money coming from.... Oh Trident we will scrap that just as Iran are getting the bomb..

It is time for a change just as it was when the tories had their last run at being in power.

Well fuelwould be higher under the tory escalator which Labour scrapped.
The rest of your post is waffle, "short of ideas" "time for a change" etc

Interest rates.

People having the chance to buy their own council houses.

Getting a job and being in the same job 22 years later.

PFI schemes (that Labour said they'd get rid of but never did, saddling the NHS Trusts with 25 year massive mortgages)

Created train operating companies, train owning companies and Railtrack.
The management bought out the train owning companies from the state(?) and ownership of these companies swiftly sold on to finance companies for some obscene returns. Many party donors in the lucky management. Follow the money!
The public got Railtrack, underfinanced at inception and the shareholders got screwed in the end as the cost of modernising the railways from previous decades of Labour and Conservative under investment came to a head.
The travelling public got some good/some bad franchises that use cash flow from fares to pay the rent on the trains without the flexibility and means to invest in better rolling stock - obliged to be rented from the train owning companies - offering any cattle truck you like as long as it is black.
There, now relax...

The Tories - for those of us old enough to remember 1st hand

They weren't so bad when I were a lad...

Taking us into the European Economic Community
Decimalisation
The Three Day Week - power strikes meant being sent home from school

Yunki
I was at castlemorton, great weekend!
Riots during the 80's, high unemployment, miners being attacked by police, poll tax riots, donor cards insisting you didn't want to be visited by maggie 😆 high interest rates, it was typical tory sh*te, great for the few & dire for the majority.

I remember when government spent what it could afford rather than what it could print.

cranberry - you are aware that the Thatcherite economy was built on a huge deficit and spending more than was earned?

+1 TJ
It was a completely ill-managed economy and who's heard of monetarism since then? ....a completely discredited 'theory'.

Not to mention the fact that both the last recession and this one were caused by the removal of Banking controls at the end of the 80's

I found it interesting last night that GB was uanble to nail Dave with the Euro sceptic/Banking Crisis tie up. It is a simple fact that since Reagan/Thatcher internationalisation has created a situation where pretty much all the worlds economies are interdependant. That being the case it is not possible to simply restrict our domestic banking system. Everyone has to do it otherwise the bankers just hop on a flight or use the internet to carry out their scheming in a different jursidiction.

The significance of Browns G20 success was that he got all parties to agree to the same process, and although I am sceptiocal it just may be that he has been instrumental in closing the unfettered capitalist pandoras box opened by Thatchers lot.

I remember when government spent what it could afford rather than what it could print.

Whats your point caller? is it a misplaced belief in the Victorian concept of thrift? or is your point an economic one?

3 day week

Litter piling up uncollected

power cuts

riots

red braces

yuppies

spitting image

get on yer bike (Chingford Skinhead)

more strikes

giving food to the miners

15% interest rates

*shrugs* whoever you vote for the government always wins. labours just had its turn at turning the country to sh*t, in fact worse than it ever has been IMHO. theyll get voted out, and conservatives will do the same in a different way. theyre all a load of c**ts.

Came in and tried to sort out the mess a Labour government had left us with

Failed, and instead created a society of greed and selfishness, where poor people suffered, where education and health care were neglected and run down, where vast chunks of land were sold off to private developers at rock-bottom prices, where council housing was sold off under the right to buy scheme but nothing done to address the growing need for social housing, etc etc etc....

Tories = CSA= Murdering Ba*tards

This thread and others like it have cheered me up no end. There I was thinking oh[code][/code] bugger here we go again, when all of a sudden DC and the Bullingdon Boot Boys seem to have cocked it right up and made it deeply uncool to be a tory boy once more..... Hurrah!!

Ya dont need a long memory... Their (HERS!)legacy still sits infront of me right now. Deprived South Yorkshire mining communities (all around Donny at least)and no investment to replace what they destroyed. Anyone know Stainforth??

I for one still have a full bladder and my dancing shoes ready...

😀

It was Arthur Scargil that refused democracy in the workplace, bullied workers who wanted to work and fought an unwinable fight. He denied what little democracy there was in that show off hands votes were deliberately miscounted in his favour.

[i]It was a completely ill-managed economy and who's heard of monetarism since then? ....a completely discredited 'theory'. [/i]

So what are they doing right now if it isn't monetarism?

Spent the first 37 years of my life in the North East, too many of which were under a Tory government. Thatcher was responsible for cutting the heart out countless communities...as a result of which I could NEVER vote for them.
The eighties were pretty miserable awa thu toon!

Our schools and health care have improved massively under Labour and are too critical to jeopardise.

My fondest memory is being encouraged to "invest" in property and being stuck in a 1 bedroom house worth 10grand less than we paid for it.

[url= http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Tramp-The-Dirt-Down-lyrics-Elvis-Costello/BBACE52C987C96EB482568B000053D8A ]Elvis Costello[/url] said it all for me

Thatcher did of course provide inspiration for a good few songwriters though...for the angry youth

I miss Thatcher. Spitting image went downhill after she got booted out.

The LibDems aren't suggesting that we unilaterally disarm and get rid of our nuclear deterrent, just that we can't afford and don't need Trident.

Nonsense. Paying for Trident and the SSBN's they'll go in buys the UK more than you think.

Nonsense. Paying for Trident and the SSBN's they'll go in buys the UK more than you think.

Why would that be?

So what are they doing right now if it isn't monetarism?

Well its not Monetarism! Monetarists believe in Government with a small "g" and that Governments are at the root of inflation. Todays macroeconomic policies are more in line with expansionist Keynsionism.

Monetarism is simply managing the economy through money supply and the cost of borrowing (interest rates). It can be used in parallel with other means of economic stimulus such as public spending but in an ecomonomy where the stated aim is 2% inflation and the means of achieving that is varying the central bank rate you have "monetarism".

Thatcher reduced the top rate of income tax from 83%

Why? You a Murdoch or someone?

15% + interest rates

40% negative equity on my flat in London

Sold off all the family silver (Gas, electric, rail, water, BT.................)

Sent lads to die in the Falklands for political expediancy

Decimated communities that will live with massive problems for generations to come (sth wales, yorkshire coal fields..............and loads more)

Shall I go on.......

Their (HERS!)legacy still sits infront of me right now. Deprived South Yorkshire mining communities

Hmm.. although Maggie put the boot in for sure, the mining industry had been in decline since the 1930s.. so post-industrial deprivation was inevitable on some scale.

Again, blaming a govt for something that would've happened anyway - the question really is how a different govt WOULD HAVE handled it, and if that would have been better.

Speaking as a non-Tory from a South Wales mining background.

From the 1979 Tory Manifesto 😆

[b][i]We believe that a competitive and efficient coal industry has an important role in meeting energy demand[/i][/b]

Yes they forgot to say we would close communities and import the bloody stuff, sell of the national asset for the rich (tory insiders) to make more money when the market turns....

15% + interest rates

40% negative equity on my flat in London

Sold off all the family silver (Gas, electric, rail, water, BT.................)

Sent lads to die in the Falklands for political expediancy

I'm no tory BTW, but these comments are very relevent to today.

In 1975 with inflltion at 25% Labour fixed the interest rate at 11%. Totally inappropriate.

In 1981 with inflation at 12% Thatcher set interest rates at a highly appropriate 15%.

Appropriate use of monetarism/monetary policy meant Thatcher got inflation under control and continued use of monetary policy to control inflation is one of the few things I'll congratulate Labour on - or I would if their measure of inflation included house prices and the "basket" were based on what people really spend their money on. It was not including house prices in inflation that meant interest rates were fixed too low in the pre-07 boom.

It was not including house prices in inflation that meant interest rates were fixed too low in the pre-07 boom.

But the entire sham economy required us to keep borrowing the money the Chinese were investing in London that we'd given them for making all our stuff so that we could feel rich and keep borrowing to buy more Chinese made stuff so that they would invest in London so that we could [repeat until inevitable crash]

I remember chucking eggs at thatcher's car on one of her visits to that economic miracle that was Keighley, West Yorkshire 1983 ish.

I fail to understand how anyone other than an Essex barrow boy could give the tories the time of day.

Some people are forgetting that although nearly everyone went round in the 1980s saying they hated the Tories, at election time people voted for them in droves.

The modern day equivalent I think is people paying lip service to green issues then jetting off to Prague or Barcelona every other weekend.

Started a promising training career with the coal board in 1982, ditched it just before miners strike 😥 Alot of this countries wealth was built on the back of miners who worked in terrible conditions & only received a decent wage for about the 10 years upto the time that Mrs T shat one them from a great height 👿

I remember when government spent what it could afford rather than what it could print.

You mean when we had North Sea Oil?

I have to say that Thatcher had it easy. During her time we had a massive subsidy from North Sea Oil that isn't there any more. The difference between then and now has got sod all to do with the supposed Tories superior financial management.

Thatcher was also responsible for the Dash to Gas, building loads of gas power stations that now leave us reliant on imports from Russia, whilst at the same time destroying our coal industry.

Just remember the calibre of opposition that Thatcher had to face...
[url=

= Comedy Gold[/url]

Blame Thatcher if you must, but remember the Labour government in the '70s, put us in a position where we were the sick man of Europe and had to call in the IMF, like Greece of today. The economy was so bad they started printing money like a banana republic...... printing money who'd of thought we'd be doing it again?

If Thatcher had it easy then Blair had it easier. Fact is they both squandered a fabulous resource that could have lasted decades longer with an appropriate energy policy.

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Thatcher was also responsible for the Dash to Gas, building loads of gas power stations that now leave us reliant on imports from Russia, whilst at the same time destroying our coal industry.

and allowing us to meet our CO2 targets agreed at Kyoto.

In 1975 with inflltion at 25% Labour fixed the interest rate at 11%. Totally inappropriate.

In 1981 with inflation at 12% Thatcher set interest rates at a highly appropriate 15%.

In 1997 Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent and put a stop to the use of interest rates as a political tool.

Oh come now Righplace, the BOE does what the government tells it to. Since 1997 that has been to keep to an inflation target based on inflation figures provided by the government. How independant is that? Perhaps if the BOE had been truly independant then it would have increased interest rates when faced with market bubbles, runaway government spending and nonsense government infaltion numbers.