Who's the most hated- Blair or Thatcher?

Let’s be be pragmatic here – Thatcher is dead Blair isn’t – So it makes far more sense to hate Tony more – if by any chance this sentiment ever reached critical mass just maybe some semblance of justice might be served – LOCK. HIM UP AND THROW AWY THE KEY !

Its the economic system she ushered in, with her mate Ronnie on the other side of the atlantic, (The Big Bang – unregulated free market, red-in-tooth-and-claw Chicago School capitalism, coupled with aggressive deindustrialisation)that was, and still is, the root cause of the mess we’re presently in

You forgot to add….IMHO!

Unfortunately (for you) there are considerably cleverer people who don’t frequent STW, who have quite different opinions! 🙄

I’d say it’s more of a fact than an opinion.

These clever people? They’d be the ones in ‘The City’ I presume? The Masters of the Universe she so benevolently bequeathed us. Well I think we all know where their dazzling, much-heralded cleverness got us

Unfortunately (for you) there are considerably cleverer people who don’t frequent STW, who have quite different opinions!

Clever people with different unspecified opinions ? Well no need to explain anymore, no one can refute that, that’s me convinced.

😆

Rockape63 – Member

She understood basic economics, which seems to be beyond most Politicians….basically that you can’t spend what you don’t earn and if something doesn’t make a profit, or worse loses money….you shut it down.

Harsh admittedly, but necessary.

(plus she was my Boss when I was in the Falklands and we felt backed)

You realise the armed forces don’t make a profit? Close ’em down!

These clever people? They’d be the ones in ‘The City’ I presume?

Never presume!

Clever people with different unspecified opinions ? Well no need to explain anymore, no one can refute that, that’s me convinced.

Indeed…there are clever people out there who don’t agree with most of the claptrap written by the guardianista’s on here!

Who’d have thunk it eh? 😕

Well… when you put it like that … in the face of such incontrovertible evidence of my obvious errors of judgement, thats me convinced too.

Please ignore all my previous posts on the subject

Wasn’t alive when Thatcher as prime minister. Blair’s a war criminal.

My mum’s family are Scottish, they use Thatcher as a swear word. 😆

Who’s the most hated- Blair or Thatcher?

That should be ‘the more hated’. There is only two of them.

As he once said, “education, education, education”.

Clever people can have certificates.

Unfortunately (for you) there are considerably cleverer people who don’t frequent STW, who have quite different opinions!

But there is a real weight of informed opinion that the unreconstructed market policies of Thatcher and Reagan are unworkable – a number of those who disagree with Thatcherism have Nobel prizes in economics or senior positions in the international financial and market governance bodies.

This does not of course mean they are right or wrong, knowledge evolves and economics may not have an “right” answer other than dogmatism is the real problem. Simply saying that the Chicago School inspired liberal market reforms are the “truth” of economics and anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand is a pretty demining indictment of the limitations of a lot of mainstream economic teaching.

But then what do I know.

She understood basic economics

That’s probably why she was such a fan of monetarism, then.

konabunny – Member
That’s probably why she was such a fan of monetarism, then.

She was never a fan of monetarism! Except for when she was.

You realise the armed forces don’t make a profit?

Not really true is it, they do the business development, marketing, sales and networking, and every company needs a good sales & marketing team.

Blair deffo most hated, under him parliament spent 700 hours debating fox hunting between 97 and 04. Yet things like going to war, tuition fees, selling gold on the cheap, raiding pensions, making GP’s minted for delivering less all passed without anything like the same scrutiny.

You lot are to be stepped on by all the political zombie parties regardless of who they are. 🙄

These clever people? They’d be the ones in ‘The City’ I presume?

Interesting that the failed financial institutions where all non-London RBS, HBOS, Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley etc

Blair deffo most hated, under him parliament spent 700 hours debating fox hunting between 97 and 04.

And the still made the wrong decision….

We have ourselves to blame for Thatcher but were tricked by Bliar – and it’s not just the fighting. Whilst the global economy problem wasn’t his and Brown’s fault the overspending they did before that would have caused us problems anyway – there would have been a bust eventually just because of the way personal debt was going.

jambalaya – Member
These clever people? They’d be the ones in ‘The City’ I presume?

Interesting that the failed financial institutions where all non-London RBS, HBOS, Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley etc

Scottish even. Like the two chancellors that repsided over the bit of a mess that saw us enter the GFC financially naked.

‘The City’ is more an ideology/tyranny/independent nation state than a geographical location

@digga – I was going to post the Scottish connection but I decided not to be too controversial. I think the point is that they where regional banks trying to “make it big” and over extended themselves. @binners I do think it’s relevant that they where not financial institutions from “the city”, ie the center of finance in the UK.

Back to the gist of the OP; http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/25/save-the-children-furious-charity-global-legacy-tony-blair

99,700+ votes against Blair so far on the “ASK ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN’ TO REVOKE THEIR ANNUAL GLOBAL LEGACY AWARD GIVEN TO TONY BLAIR” online petition: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/25/save-the-children-furious-charity-global-legacy-tony-blair

Despite big banks bringing down the global economy (more of a fault of post Thatcher governments and more particularly Brown), it is actually small to medium sized businesses that are the backbone of this countries economy. And thanks to Thatcher they have been allowed to thrive. Surely one of her legacies has to be normal people suddenly having the ability and opportunity to set up shop themselves and compete on the global stage, and benefit from the fruits of their own labour. The success in the ’80’s was more about average Joe Bloggs succeeding than pinstripe shirted city share traders. However I realise that ambition and the desire to succeed and improves ones position in life is a trait that appears to be generally frowned upon on this forum.

jambalaya – agreed. But geography isn’t really the point. Getting back onto the original subject, these banks (City based or not) were all taking ridiculous risks with other peoples money, then rewarding themselves to truly obscene levels, exploiting a deregulated, wild-west financial market entirely made possible, and positively encouraged by her Ladyship (may she rot in hell!)

Weren’t the vast majority of banks in the city bailed out by the US TARP scheme and European equivalent.

I do think it’s relevant that they where not financial institutions from “the city”, ie the center of finance in the UK.

But you’re refering to just UK banks in the context of a global recession. Didn’t a lot of the US/International banks that went tits up have a big City presence? eg. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehmans etc.

And I don’t think Brown can be accused of casing the recession. It just happend on his watch. I thought the Yanks started it with all that sub-prime malarkey. (though my memory might be faulty)

O/T other than you can’t stick that one on Thatcher, but the major de-regualtion of banking that led to the GFC was nuder Gordon Brown’s watch. He even admitted as much in 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13032013

Our current situation is not really the result of Blair/Brown or Thatcher’s policies really, it’s more systemic than that.
The economy grew fast after WW2 because our GDP at the end of that was so low (we were close to broke) – any growth would look high as a %. We also had the demographic bonanza of the baby boomer generation – more people = more work = more earnings = more spending = more GDP.
That came to an end in the 70s.
Thatcher realised this and went for liberalising the markets but that didn’t really solve the problem so Blair/Brown kept our living standards increasing by borrowing massively and encouraging consumers into debt. Loose lending standards for mortgages was also part of this game.
Then the inevitable came in 2008.

But the main point here is that it was neither Thatcher or Blair/Brown that caused the crash. This game of liberalisation and debt was being played by all of the Western economies – Europe, USA, Canada, Australia etc.

I know it’s comforting to scapegoat leaders or a particular colour of politician but this is so much bigger than party ideology or policy. We simply don’t have the ability to keep growing the economy in the way we got used to from 1946 – mid-70’s.

The demographic dividend of the baby boomer generation that gave us that growth is now going sharply into reverse as they become dependent on the economy rather than fuelling it. There’s not a government policy which can deal with the fundamentals of demography… the harsh choices are either robots/technology to do the jobs or massive immigration, and we all know how well the great British public are responding to that idea…

Looking back, it would’ve been better for the Tories in 1979 to admit the fundamentals were too weak and managed us into low economic growth. Problem with that of course is that the electorate wouldn’t have supported it – we like being rich…

^^^^ what he said good post

there are clever people out there who don’t agree with most of the claptrap written by the guardianista’s on here!

Everyone should know there limits in a debate

However I realise that ambition and the desire to succeed and improves ones position in life is a trait that appears to be generally frowned upon on this forum.

When you put it like that I almost want to apologise for not swallowing the greed is good mantra and I am almost embarrassed about caring about society and others as much as my own personal financial position. Why did I waste my time trying to make the world a better place when i could have just made me richer?

Basically she made it ok to be selfish and to think of yourself rather than all of us.

But you’re refering to just UK banks in the context of a global recession. Didn’t a lot of the US/International banks that went tits up have a big City presence? eg. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehmans etc.

And I don’t think Brown can be accused of casing the recession. It just happend on his watch. I thought the Yanks started it with all that sub-prime malarkey. (though my memory might be faulty)

Shhhhhh….you need to be careful coming out with factual stuff like that! 😐

Basically she made it ok to be selfish and to think of yourself rather than all of us.

Utter Bollocks! If we were all like you, where would the taxes come to pay for the NHS, schools etc etc. We’d be completely bankrupt! She made the UK more aspirational, because people saw that if they worked hard, they got rewarded and the Country became wealthier as a result……which in turn paid the bills. I’m not talking about the City either.

Binners – you may wish to enhance your analysis by referring to what was the main trigger for the crisis, where this originated and whether this was state or bank-inspired. Then look at how states interfered in the pricing of risk to compensate for past errors by flooding the world with liquidity at a time of artificially low interest rates – sound familiar. Blaming it in bankers solely misses the point by a country mile.

(Consider the origin of RBS’s bad loans and Barc for that matter and then who pushed Lloyds into the fatal acquisition that almost killed them?)

Brooess – good point. This is not a case of failed liberalisation, we are in a crisis of leverage- different things. Too much of it and this extends across many different economic and political models.

Re – supply side economics, ironic that the main supply-side proponent now is a French socialist. We could do with a lot more of this over here to address our appalling productivity levels – that’s how you improve pay not by silly political gestures. Instead we have the folly of T Hunt spouting BS about independent education. It makes you weep.

Pigeon holing Blair, Regan, Thatcher into ideologies is pretty pointless IMO. Strip away the rhetoric and the lazy reporting and the most consistent trends are that most leaders implement policies that are more likely to be associated with the opposition of the time. Just look at fiscal records here and in the US. Who cuts spending more – Republicans or Democrats?

Thatcher may have a carried a copy of The Road to Serfdom in her handbag, but that is about as far as she got.

If we were all like you, where would the taxes come to pay for the NHS, schools etc etc. We’d be completely bankrupt!

Its true I have never ever paid a penny in tax ever in my life and I have contributed nothing to society. Thanks to vibrant strivers and wealth creators like you I have managed to free myself from personal responsibility and I rely on the state for everything

Gawd bless it and you 🙄

people saw that if they worked hard, they got rewarded and the Country became wealthier as a result

She more than doubled unemployment.

If “the country became wealthier” then all that proves is that you can work less hard and still become wealthier.

Which I suspect isn’t true, and is the complete opposite of the point that you are apparently trying to make.

She made the UK more aspirational

By selling them the houses they already lived in and then, through the catastrophic mismanagement of the ERM withdrawl, had the banks charge them 15% interest on the debt they didn’t need in the first place. But everybody did get to wear white slip ons for a bit and lemon leShark polo shirts too, so that’s good.

By selling them the houses they already lived in

IIRC this was a policy considered by the Labour government before they got voted out in ’79.

The point being, that it wasn’t either Labour or Tories who created the current mess – neither ideology managed to cover up the fall in our underlying postwar economic growth and neither managed to find an effective and stable way to replace it.

ie: neither ideology actually has a solution. A pragmatic mix of the two, managed by a technocratic government might.

I see you didn’t call me out on the slip ons. Guilty as charged.

The point being……

The point being that it was Tory policy to sell off council houses, not Labour policy.

A point which you appear to have missed.

Did the current tenants benefit from buying? Got good discounts right? Good for them/bad for the country?