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Britain needs a Thatcher
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21-02-2010 4:15pm#1
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Broken Britain? Can't you make your point without resorting to buzzwords?
Im reluctant to agree with both Brown and Mr. Obama of the United States. While a National Deficit is a demoralizing presence, I think it would pale in comparison to a sudden halt in billions of pounds worth of spending. We'd spend the next year finding another New Bottom.0 -
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No, Britain does not need someone like Margaret Thatcher.
My father grew up in 1970's and 80's Britain and trust me, it was not a happy time. During her time as PM, Thatcher launched the most viscouis type of class warfare ever seen in Britain. Unemployment benefits were slashed and she decimated whole rural communities with the closure of the mines and she revelled in it. Thatcher constantly talked about getting Britain back on its feet, but all she did was make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I was there too and it was every bit as bad as you say. She destroyed so much.When Thatcher finally dies, every single working-class man and woman who remembers her premiership will be dancing on her grave.
Including Elvis Costello!
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I suspect this thread will just end up a Bash Thatch thread if allowed too. (hint).
The the mid/late 70s the UK was going down the pan, the IMF's phone number was on redial, the unions has wrecked the countries manufacturing base and the NF were on the march. The Tories under Thatcher ended all that and turned the entire economy around through harsh medicine its true but if the Castor oil had not been administered where would all the Irish have gone in the 80s?
Ireland needs a Thatcher type.0 -
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How can any Irish man say something supportive of this woman? Does the memory of the hunger strickers and her blatant stubborn attitude not to recognise their POW status fade so easily?
Look the UK is finished. Simple as that. Remember their "exit" of recession? 0.1%! Ha Ha! Laughable! The sums just don't add up. Barring discovery of Falkland oil, they are well on their way to becoming third world and I for one won't shed one tear for them.
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I see the op is trolling for a row again... Makeing an arguement with no backup... I have no love for the women. I think she ruined the union movement and ultimatly the working class rights in "conservative" england. In fact I reckon she is more hated than the queen which says a lot....
What with Thatchers 80th birthday it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article about why I hate her so much.
20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER
1. As Education secretary under Edward Heath in a foretaste of what is to come, stops free milk for school children. No chance of the widely praised 'free fruit' scheme ever being Tory policy! She later deregulates school meals so all they have on the menu is burger and chips! The health of the nation was not something Thatcher thought any of her concern.
2. Shamelessly uses the 'race card' to get elected PM in 1979! (Though I wont claim her to be the first Tory leader to use this and certainly not the last!) "We are being flooded!" she asserts despite figures showing emigration higher than immigration and immigration at its lowest post-war level. Her idols are Keith Joseph (who ruined his own chance of being leader with a demon eyed rant on TV about sterilising the poor (I jest not!!)) and Enoch Powell (the 'intellectual' racist). She promotes Keith 'Eugenics' Joseph to Education Minister!
3. Monetarism! Disastrous policy of trying to control money supply. In the first of her two recessions (the worst since the 1930's), one fifth of our industrial base is wiped out and unemployment is more than doubled, there are summer riots in every inner-city in the country. Not bad for her first 2 years in office! In the first of many U-turns (see point on 'myth of strong leader'), she abandons monetarism. Polls predict Labour landslide and despite the resolute support of the press, she is the most unpopular PM on record. How could she possibly get out of this one?
4. The Falklands! In a gross piece of incompetence (or was it deliberate?) fails to avert the Falklands crisis by ignoring intelligence on the Argentine preparation for invasion in early 1982. Indeed she seems to positively encourage it by proposing scrapping the only warship we have there and having her defence secretary Nicholas Ridley openly say we didn't want the Falklands, thereby giving the impression we are not bothered about the islands! In 1978 when faced with the same intelligence, the Labour government quietly averts a war through diplomatic channels by threatening to send a taskforce. It's the classic tale, to divert attention from disastrous economic policies at home a crooked leader engages in a foreign war (except I'm not talking about Galtieri!). Perhaps Thatcher was getting advise from some of the brutal dictatorships she helped prop up in South America, "Would you like some more tea Mr Pinochet?". Number of British soldiers killed, 278, Argentines, 3000+. Blood on her hands anyone?
5. Destruction of local democracy. The beauty of not having a written constitution, having the backing of the press, having a massive majority in parliament (despite only getting 42% of the vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate) and having a permanent inbuilt Tory hereditory second chamber is that Tory PMs can do whatever they like. If you dont like local democracy because they vote for someone else, just abolish it like Thatcher did and centralise everything from Whitehall and unelected Quangos who you carefully select. (Yes, Thatcher invented Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations.) The popular GLC was scrapped despite over 80% of Londoners being opposed. Londoners have to wait over 13 years before getting an assembly back and electing Livingstone as its leader once again.
6. Politicising the civil service. See point about QUANGOs above. Also if you dont like what statistics the statistics office is publishing, make sure you stop them collecting the statistics and stop them publishing them. The figures that were published on individual wealth and earnings each year were abolished in this way. The Office for National Statistics like the Bank of England was made independent by this Labour government and yes they have started publishing the wealth and earnings figures again.
7. Regressive Taxation. Under Thatcher VAT increased from 8% to 17.5% and was also levied on utility bills for the first time as well. What she gave the rich in income tax cuts she took from the poor in indirect taxation. The proportion of GDP spent by the government under Thatcher stayed fairly static at around 40%. The difference was that rather than spend it on the NHS, housing or education she spent the money on defence, a massive expansion of the civil service (see point 6), paying the huge unemployment bill, and rising police salaries to keep them loyal in the face of massive civil unrest. The best part of all was that she shifted the burden of payment for all this onto the poor from the rich.
8. The widening gap between rich and poor. This might not be such a bad thing if the gap had not been so massive in the first place. How can the richest 50% owning 97% of the wealth be fair? This was her starting position she moved wealth almost exclusively to the richest 10% at the expense of the poorest 50%.
9. Spend, spend, spend! Abolishing credit controls seemed such a good idea, the economy booms on a consumer spending bubble....cue second crippling recession. Thanks Margaret! Not to mention the misery caused to millions of people suckered into debts and negative equity! Spend, spend, spend also applied to government borrowing which despite claims of financial prudence increased massively under Thatcher to fund income tax cuts for the rich.
10. Homelessness for the young. Why should homelessness be the preserve of ageing tramps who remember the 1930's. No! Thatcher thought the opportunities should be open to all. Young beggars on the streets were Thatcher's invention. The legacy of massive youth unemployment and crime no-go areas for the police are still being fought today. There is a whole generation of people where crime and welfare culture was their only way of surviving and it became their mindset.
11. The Poll Tax! Regardless of how you view this in theory, apart from its regressive nature, it quite plainly was unworkable. They knew that it was going to be ridiculously expensive to collect, that there was overwhelming opposition to it (it ruined the 1991 census) and was going to mean massive non-payment and it was responsible for some of the worst rioting ever seen in central London but they pressed ahead anyway. Another U-turn inevitably came!
12. The myth of the strong leader. This was a total invention of the press. Thatcher's only strength (if you could call it that) was that she had no principles at all! She was an anti-smoking campaigner who ended up on the payroll of British American Tobacco. She had to do a U-turn on her 'flagship' economic policy after 2 years because she had wrecked the economy (see point 3) (This was just one year after her famous speech in 1980 where she assured the party faithful she was going to stick to monetarist policies-"You turn if you want to...the lady's not for turning"-yeah right!!). The Poll Tax was a disaster which she had to U-turn on (but too late to save her from being stabbed in the back!). She went to Europe saying she was against federalism but signed its most federalist law (the Single European Act in 1986). She later claimed she was tricked on this. Did she even know what she was doing? Some strong leader that is! And to top it all off, even in departure she was weak. "I fight on, I fight to win" she said in her pompous way before quietly resigning hours later when confronted by Ministers like Geoffrey Howe!!! It was the final U-turn from a weak puppet leader whose only qualities (as far as the Tories were concerned) were she did what she was told.
13. Degradation of the social professions. Social workers were virtually denounced as criminals! Teachers were so derided and there pay so eroded it barely survived as a profession and things like mental health, just loose them out on the streets, Thatcher's government didnt care what they did! You remember what the social workers in the baby P case said and continue to say about there workload
14. Victorian Values. Yes before its Back to Basics successor under Major, Thatcher promised to take us back to Victorian morality and she nearly succeeded. We were not far away from child labour and seething slums of humanity and disease. I reckon Thatcher needed one more term for that!! She also took care to defend to the hilt her countless Ministers who were caught with their trousers down or hands in the till or both in some cases! Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer (3 times), Jonathon Aitkin (twice)... etc. etc. the list goes on.
15. "There is no such thing as society". Did Thatcher foresee the 'playstation' generation? Selfishness as a virtue seemed to sum up her warped sense of morality to me.
16. Over-privatisation and overt corruption. Oh the beauty of it, a totally dominant monopoly privatised at a discount price to big business (lots of it foreign owned) so they can cream off profits to their hearts content. Who can do without Water, Gas, Electricity? We can charge what we like! Plus we get the bonus of nice jobs on more Quangos OfWat, OfGas, Of-with taxpayers cash we go. With Ministers interchanging between the boardrooms of the newly privatised companies and the regulating boards on massive salaries. Even husband and wife teams, remember Mr and Mrs Howe, one a consultant with a privatised firm, his wife the regulator. Anyone for insider dealing calls out Mrs Archer! Oh jolly good show! Even industries that plainly werent feasible for privatisation like bus and rail, go for it, it wont hurt. And what shall we do with the money my dear? Well my son Mark has shares in a nice defence firm! Rather, still some left over for a nice reduction in the top rate of income tax as well.
17. Even public service broadcasting couldnt escape. Relentless bullying of the BBC was started by Thatcher, she took this to a new level with Tebbit and various other ministers calling it the Bolshevic Broadcasting Company because it failed to replicate Sun editorial lines in its news broadcasts. In one of her last acts she even managed to wreck Channel 4' s public service commitment by changing its funding situation from one of subscription from ITV who sold its advertising space to total dependence on advertising.
18. The divisiveness of the North-South divide in wealth. Look at the political map and you can still see where the Conservatives win most of their seats in the South East because of this.
19. Regular winter crises in the NHS became the norm. The Tories argued these were inevitable because we couldnt afford to fund the NHS properly. There are no winter crises anymore!
20. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher. This is probably the most surprising statistic of the lot when you consider the Tories so called strong standing on law and order. It just goes to demonstrate why we need a history lesson about Thatcher and not the lies printed in the right wing owned press.
Amazing I managed to dig out 20 reasons without pulling the republician card..... and they say republicians cannot see past the north
ps: These 20 reasons are from a published article i read once. I cannot for the life of me find the author but his opinion and contrabution is greatly reconised0 -
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Fratton Fred wrote: »Why Argentinian?
What did she do to the people of Argentina?
Freed them from the meat packing business of Snr Leopoldo Galtieri?
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