Oh Britain, what have you done (part ∞+21)?

[Arkless Electronics]

I don’t agree at all. Thatcher at least had a vision and was genuinely on the side of small business. It is since that point that the Conservatives have been reduced to purely being a front for disaster capitalists, asset strippers and global tax evading corporate giants. The current crop really are far worse as they don’t even retain the pretence of helping the middle-classes.

The impact on the north of Thatcherism was brutal, but there was need for change at the time. I certainly don’t agree with much that she did, but I can at least recognise a benign aim behind it even if in hindsight much was misguided. The current crop offer nothing beyond lining their own pockets and those of their covert paymasters. Brexit being the most obvious example; they are perfectly happy to very knowingly trash the country’s economic future and even break up the UK structure itself for internal party gain/their disaster capitalist backers. I’d argue they were actually treasonous. Thatcher never was.

An interesting POV.... but Thatcher set out to destroy the working classes, the unions, the whole concept that "the workers, united, will never be defeated" and destroyed whole communities in the process of shutting down almost all traditional manufacturing industry. She was responsible for the "me me me" selfishness, "there is no such thing as society" pernicious evil which still thrives as her legacy. Under Thatcher any one without money had forced upon them "you are worth no more than whatever crumbs from the rich Tory businessman's table as they care to spare you". She sold off the nationalised industries purely in order to make money for the already wealthy, destroyed the stock of council housing, and as Martin Stephenson and the Dainties pointed out "started the killing in the poorest fields and left us to burn".

The current crop are awful but are her "political offspring" and still shoving Thatcherism down our throats after all this time.

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[TheDecameron]

So your kids have done well then despite living under a Tory government.

I don't support anyone, I just get on with it by myself, I'm not interested in politicians and whatever Mickey Mouse promises they're making today.

Do you pay into an occupational pension?

 

[matt j]

Do you pay into an occupational pension?

No, why?

 

[Tony L]

An interesting POV.... but Thatcher set out to destroy the working classes, the unions, the whole concept that "the workers, united, will never be defeated" and destroyed whole communities in the process of shutting down almost all traditional manufacturing industry. She was responsible for the "me me me" selfishness, "there is no such thing as society" pernicious evil which still thrives as her legacy.

I do understand that but it is easy to argue that all that had already failed catastrophically by 1979. The motor industry was an embarrassment, the docks etc would be out on strike at the drop of a hat and who the hell in their right mind wants to work in a bloody coal mine? I left school in 1979 so remember the unemployment was already there. I also accept that the culture of placing too much emphasis on financial markets, gambling etc largely came in at that point, as did many of the dodgy banking practices that eventually crashed the western economy in 2008.

By saying that the ‘me me me’ thing can also be viewed as a rallying call to small business and entrepreneur culture, and that is me (and I assume you)! Along with the Enterprise Allowance Scheme the Thatcher period should also be remembered for the BBC Computer Literacy project that prioritised teaching real programming in schools, created the wonderful BBC B Micro and got a whole generation speaking BASIC. Whatever you think of Thatcher it is impossible to deny that she actively pushed this whole initiative. It was government policy. This coupled with budget computers from Sinclair, Acorn, Dragon, Commodore etc really put the UK right at the very front of the computer industry for decades. Right to this day to be honest. It launched so many amazing companies.

I’d argue being a games developer, website designer, chip architect or whatever is way, way better than dying of lung cancer down some shitty old coal mine! I’d left school long before this became a reality. I never even saw a computer in school, but I had a friend with a BBC B so still benefited and I eventually ended up in the IT industry (first teaching programming, then IT management).

PS I have a BBC B:

In hindsight I’d argue that thing was far more important in the grand scheme of things than the miners strike. It really did change the UK for a generation. I see nothing even remotely constructive or forward-looking from the current Conservative Party. They really have no discernible vision beyond their own trough. There is just no comparison to Thatcher’s party.

PPS I never thought I’d ever argue in that woman’s defence, but the current lot are just so utterly shit/useless/wrong the comparison needs to be made, and it needs to be made fairly.

 

[droodzilla]

Lynton Crosby's been a naughty boy:

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ton-crosbys-firm-part-of-push-for-hard-brexit

Paving the way for Prime Minister Boris Johnson?

It can't be a coincidence that Crosby is nearly an anagram of Corbyn.

 

[Tony L]

I’d suggest anyone ever gets fielded one of those on Facebook they report it as ‘fake news’. I do this with anything remotely gammony.

 

[avole]

I’m certainly not part of the ‘left wing mafia’ being a much-hated Lib Dem, but my main area of productivity was unquestionably during the Blair years! Were it not for Iraq and the lasting debt of PFI I’d not have a bad word for Blair as the boom he presided over basically gave me a house!

Thatcherism was awful as I lived in a mass-unemployment black spot, but fun as I could drop-right out into the music/arts counterculture. Despite being a disaster for the country as a whole Cameron and May have been unable to damage me too much as I’m just too far from the rat-race. They have damaged my savings and potential to emigrate though.

I don’t agree at all. Thatcher at least had a vision and was genuinely on the side of small business. It is since that point that the Conservatives have been reduced to purely being a front for disaster capitalists, asset strippers and global tax evading corporate giants. The current crop really are far worse as they don’t even retain the pretence of helping the middle-classes.

The impact on the north of Thatcherism was brutal, but there was need for change at the time. I certainly don’t agree with much that she did, but I can at least recognise a benign aim behind it even if in hindsight much was misguided. The current crop offer nothing beyond lining their own pockets and those of their covert paymasters. Brexit being the most obvious example; they are perfectly happy to very knowingly trash the country’s economic future and even break up the UK structure itself for internal party gain/their disaster capitalist backers. I’d argue they were actually treasonous. Thatcher never was.

I’m glad you enjoyed the Thatcher years, and found them « fun » Not many did.

I came back in the middle to find a broken country, a leader whose only interest was to break the working classes, particularly those whose industries were threatened, all the while saying nothing about the millions her familly were making out of investments in South Africa. I was intending to show my wife the wonders of my home country. Instead she collected and gave money to the miners.

Benign aim? The only positive quality she had was that iron inner strength, as her comments after the Brighton bombing showed. That you had to admire. I don’t even want to mention that piece of propaganda that killed 650 Argentinians and 250 of my fellow countrymen and women. As to Ireland, remember the hunger strikes?

I could go on, but why bother. Thatcher was a blot on the history of Britain. She, like all strong leaders, certainly had positive qualities, all of which were outweighed by her single-minded beliefs where human cost did not matter.

Your comments above are simply appalling. I do not understand how you can even think there was a good side to her rule. However, they reminded me of the black times and my hatred of the iron lady.

 

[russel]

I’d argue being a games developer, website designer, chip architect or whatever is way, way better than dying of lung cancer down some shitty old coal mine! I’d left school long before this became a reality...

I don't know about website design but I doubt whether one person in a hundred has the ability to be a games programmer and a chip architect more likely one in a thousand.

 

[Arkless Electronics]

I do understand that but it is easy to argue that all that had already failed catastrophically by 1979. The motor industry was an embarrassment, the docks etc would be out on strike at the drop of a hat and who the hell in their right mind wants to work in a bloody coal mine? I left school in 1979 so remember the unemployment was already there. I also accept that the culture of placing too much emphasis on financial markets, gambling etc largely came in at that point, as did many of the dodgy banking practices that eventually crashed the western economy in 2008.

By saying that the ‘me me me’ thing can also be viewed as a rallying call to small business and entrepreneur culture, and that is me (and I assume you)! Along with the Enterprise Allowance Scheme the Thatcher period should also be remembered for the BBC Computer Literacy project that prioritised teaching real programming in schools, created the wonderful BBC B Micro and got a whole generation speaking BASIC. Whatever you think of Thatcher it is impossible to deny that she actively pushed this whole initiative. It was government policy. This coupled with budget computers from Sinclair, Acorn, Dragon, Commodore etc really put the UK right at the very front of the computer industry for decades. Right to this day to be honest. It launched so many amazing companies.

I’d argue being a games developer, website designer, chip architect or whatever is way, way better than dying of lung cancer down some shitty old coal mine! I’d left school long before this became a reality. I never even saw a computer in school, but I had a friend with a BBC B so still benefited and I eventually ended up in the IT industry (first teaching programming, then IT management).

PS I have a BBC B:

In hindsight I’d argue that thing was far more important in the grand scheme of things than the miners strike. It really did change the UK for a generation. I see nothing even remotely constructive or forward-looking from the current Conservative Party. They really have no discernible vision beyond their own trough. There is just no comparison to Thatcher’s party.

PPS I never thought I’d ever argue in that woman’s defence, but the current lot are just so utterly shit/useless/wrong the comparison needs to be made, and it needs to be made fairly.

We're not going to agree on this one... IMO she was so much worse than this lot as to make comparison futile.

The computer industry was/is nothing.
The mines, steelworks, car factories should not have been shut down as the jobs they provided for so many people were vastly more important than whether or not they made a profit.
It went beyond the men employed in these nationalised industries... it was the cohesiveness of whole communities. The chippie, the shoe shop, the cinema, the car dealer all had customers who had a disposable income. Entire towns were viable due to the major employers which were these traditional industries and people had well paid secure jobs which allowed them to plan a future... not Mcjobs, ZHC's etc.
It probably cost more in dole money than was ever lost through non profitability in these industries!

Unfortunately Maggie had an ideology... it was OK for the rich to ride the gravy train and make millions while they sat on their arses, from interest on inheritance or from stocks and shares etc, but the working class were only worth whatever profit they could generate for their rich, Tory voting employers and their shareholders. Profit was put before people. And that is always wrong.

That is Thatchers evil legacy.... and to add to it there is the fact that without Maggie and Thatcherism there would probably be no Bojo or Rees-Cnut in parliament and Brexit would never have happened.

 

[Tony L]

She, like all strong leaders, certainly had positive qualities

I do not understand how you can even think there was a good side to her rule.

Maybe if you had a nice BBC B you might have a better grasp of logic!

PS I’m not really arguing for anything beyond the Enterprise Allowance Scheme and the BBC/schools Computer Initiative. I just didn’t see anything as deliberately destructive or self-defeating as Brexit in that time. In hindsight a hell of a lot was got disastrously wrong in that time for sure, but it wasn’t so obviously and knowingly wrong as what we are seeing now. That is the argument I’m making. I also have zero romance for dirty dangerous toxic mass labour roles in coal mining, steel working or whatever. I can’t think of a worse way to spend one’s life. I’d have never been prepared to do that sort of work in a million years, so why should I expect it from others? That’s what robots are for (see computer initiative)!

 

[sean99]

The closing of the coal mines was an inevitability, but Thatcher certainly handled it with particular callousness and with little or no regard for what might replace the incomes of those being made redundant.

I'm not sure we can blame her for the car industry - it seems that was a victim of poisonous industrial relations (class warfare?) and under investment that have beset much UK industry. Industrial relations and under-investment (short termism) seems to me the #1 reason that Germany is now so far ahead of the UK.

 

[avole]

Maybe you need a better grasp of language. Thatcher spoke well, a positive quality. That does not mean there was a good side to her rule.

I spent quite a while working on the above so I could go out without being too impolite, since this is the day.. I’ll also send a contribution to your running costs, as, running a couple of websites, and blogs, I understand the costs, and I’ve had a good run here.

Cheers all.

 

[Tony L]

I'm not sure we can blame her for the car industry - it seems that was a victim of poisonous industrial relations (class warfare?) and under investment that have beset much UK industry. Industrial relations and under-investment (short termism) seems to me the #1 reason that Germany is now so far ahead of the UK.

Really it was only British Leyland that was a total basket-case. That really was in a crap state. Who on earth would want a Metro rather than a Golf or Peugeot? WTF was the Austin Princess meant to be?! Awful designs badly made. The other non-Leyland brands had some mileage in them (Ford, Land Rover, Jaguar, Rolls Royce etc) and mostly survive to this day in some form.

More worrying to my mind is the fact we lost the ability to make trains, busses, ships, aircraft etc. It is astonishing how much of this was lost before Thatcher got anywhere near power. Again the last thing I want to do is to defend any Conservative government, but I’m convinced there is a significant amount of revisionism going on and a lot had already been squandered prior to 1979. As I mentioned above that was the year I left school and it was already shit - it was expected to walk out the school gates and sign on. There were no jobs, and in fairness Thatcher can’t have screwed it all up within just a month or so! That was a pre-existing condition.

 

[stephen bennett]

HIV campaign and BBC computers. Everything else Thatcher touched was a disaster.

The Princess and Metro are great cars badly implemented. Both were innovative designs.

We’ll see another wave of redundancies from well paid jobs post-Brexit. The Tories will care about as much as when they destroyed manufacturing without a plan for regeneration.

We still had great engineers and designers in the ‘70s. But terrible management. A sensible government would have moved these people to a revitalised car/transport industry, aerospace and ‘green’ tech. Thatcher threw them on the scrap heap.

Stephen

 

[davidsrsb]

The aircraft industry had already been ruined by two bad decisions, Concorde was the wrong product and diverted the UK clean out of civil aviation and the Tornado was the usual multi-role aircraft are the camel designed by a committee problem that the UK and more recently the US with the F-35 keep doing in peace time

 

[stephen bennett]

That’s why I said ‘revitalised’. We had the skills, not the management.

Stephen.

 

[Ellenor]

If Thatcher was so bad and made so many people’s live a misery why was she prime minister for so long? She was more popular than people admit.

 

[MVV]

So farewell then Avole, or is it a Vole?
a relative of mice
with a stouter body and a slightly rounder head
He never made me laugh but to some
he is known as a meadow mouse.

 

[Tony L]

If Thatcher was so bad and made so many people’s live a misery why was she prime minister for so long? She was more popular than people admit.

Unlike the current shower of Tories she sold aspiration to the working class. As I’ve gone to great length to point out most of what she stood for was in hindsight wrong and damaged the country long term, but the message was targeted and clear; personal independence, small business, computer literacy, home ownership, ‘bettering’ yourself, moving beyond the stagnant grind of the ‘70s etc. There was a clear marketable ideology, a simplistic selling point that a lot of people bought into. By comparison the current Conservative party has nothing to offer beyond ugly UKIP-grade nationalism, xenophobia and racism. There is no ‘carrot’, only a nasty ‘stick’ aimed at ‘others’. Much of what the Thatcher administration presided over failed, but the same can be said of Heath and Callahan previously. None pushed an already known-bad policy the way May and her shower are right now. That is a very new thing.

 

[HarryB]

All set up by and the legacy of Thatcher!

Fair enough. But May has presided over these horrors. Plus others.