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You are talking bollocks again and typical what about etcOriginally Posted by JamesWales
Those who don't vote confecinservative have already shown in less than a year that they can criticise the new government and have done so on here and many other forums
You lot just won't take any bad mouthing of your precious right wing lot at all , ever
It's embarrassing for you , everyone can see it and yet you go on and on
You must think we all came down to earth in the last shower of rain
How old were you in 1985? Thatcher, and Reagan, were considered radicals when they were elected in 1979 and 1980 respectively, but their policies are still sticking to tight monetary control policies with direct taxation only rising as a last resort forty years on.
https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/44/2/319/5550923
Taxes across the board HAVE to be raised to increase funding into the NHS , care , schools , construction
And given the current climate if someone is still insisting on two holidays in the sun or that new car every 3 years on finance then I am afraid it's wake up and smell the coffee
It's absolutely no good in carrying on with this stupid idea that low taxation and cuts can get us through and the NHS for example can still keep going
The conservatives have pushed this nonsense for years and I sincerely hope that it's eventually binned
There are loads of middle class people living in nice areas who own their own homes who want higher taxation to pay for the better of the country
It is Thatcher and the no such thing as society bullshit that changed things
It's all about the money in MY pocket with your lot and all this crap about low taxation and tight spending is hogwash .....its all about the individual with post Thatcher Britain
No, the reality is there is 40 years of history between the mid-Thatcher period and now that you ignore!
Guaranteed you blame everything on Toshack being sold too!
I think the Ramsey sale was a bigger mistake
The saying you are trying to remember is, "It's like trying to play chess with a chimp." I often use it regarding chats with you.
All this anger because Starmer wants your PIP, the irony.
It's Thatchers fault, Reeves has over taxed businesses that will lead to closures and no growth in the economy, that will lead to unemployment and people thinking, I can't work again I'll try for PIP, yes OK Sludge whatever you say.
STG innit.
Always Thatchers fault! Some people may argue that the same industrial decline was happening elsewhere in the west and that decades have passed and we've seen the end of communism in Europe, an expanded EU, mass free markets, immigration on an unprecedented scale, war in Europe, numerous wars in the middle east, various changes of government, the rise of the green movement, pandemics, the rise and fall of Leo Fortune West and everything else.
None of that matters. It all comes down to Maggie 🥴
Good grief, I havent been paying as much attention to this board since the electi9n in July and its amazing to see how your standards have slipped in that time.
Starmer isn't getting my pip because I am not on it you dull cnut
But for those that are it's people like you who are never going to need it ....good luck with winning the lottery .....that cause just as much hassle as the minority of those swinging it
In my case chatting to a sanctimonious tory I am alright Jack like you is like playing chess with a cxxt
The appalling state of the care system is absolutely on her back as she fecking privatised it !
Yet here we are tory boys writing into the daily mail crying because their beloved mother is isolated at home and dependent on poor quality care provided by poorly paid staff with poor motivation but run by private care companies ...poorly vetted .....very little scrutiny....
I am afraid it's tough luck as this lot consistently voted for privatisation
Wasn't aware we were just talking about the care system, but the NHS spends an extraordinary amount on care, much of it provided privately but any government could have bought that back in house if they wanted, and they haven't. The NHS itself has never spent as much as now. The budget is enormous
This is the thing, you go on about Thatcher, but we've had, what, ten PMs since then? We've had enormous social, technological and economic change and you just harking back to Thatcher, who undoubtedly did some bad and good, does remind me of the guy who's only contribution to the Cardiff City question is to say "Well they should never have sold Toshack to Liverpool".
Time to move on Sludge, you can't pin everything on someone who has been decades gone and ignore the enormous changes and prime ministers since then, and I agree with you on some of the private service providers esp the cost of residential care btw
You wouldn't be able to play draughts ffs
Have some more dope and chill out
Aye, the Country is going to the dogs.
"Starmer isn't getting my pip because I am not on it you dull cnut"
Yes that's why your crying all day, pull the other one
We probably have a different view of what constitutes the biggest problems faced by the average person in the UK right now, ill give you a hint, I don't think its boats or wokeness in unis but lets go with the cost of living as an example as that seem pretty universal. Primarily the cost of living hit so hard because peoples fixed costs were high, not because sprouts went up by 20p. What do the averages persons fixed costs consist of, shelter, energy, water, food, transport (to work)?
Shelter - clearly in hindsight rtb was a complete mess and disaster for the country)
Energy - the energy market is basically a casino, which the taxpayer props up the losses for
Water - I don't think I even need to say anything
Transport - Public transport is poorly run and expensive
Thatcher wasn't interested in logic when it came to these things, she had a fundamental theory guiding privatisation which was that the state shouldn't involve itself in 'business' and our basic needs were a business apparently. As we know, once the floodgates start to creep open, the flood starts coming in.
- It's now normal to British people that its major airports (and everything else) are owned by the Qatari and Saudi state, giving the average person little incentive to care about Heathrow Expansion beyond getting a min wage job in a luxury store there. CDG and Schiphol are majority owned by the state.
- It's now normal to British people that business operates with a backstop of government support, whilst they are left to fend for themselves when something happens. Once you privatise something that people need, investors as a group can't lose, they have you held to ransom forever.
- It's now normal to British people to see CEO pay ratios in previously nationalised industries move to obscene levels + bonuses for doing a crap job. If water was nationalised, it might be shit, but you would have a handful of people running it probably on 10% of what they earn now, reporting to the government - an incentive system held together by a functioning democracy.
I mean I could probably go on and on and these are probably not even the best examples but Thatcher fundamentally changed the way the British public thinks and their tolerance to complete bullshit.
This is a great reply and I don't disagree with a lot of it. I'm not some great advocate of privatisation at all. I firmly believe that key industries and services should be nationally owned, or at least 51% so. None of us would dispute that includes the military, police, key health and education, power supply, parks, roads and the like. I would extend that to railways and water and no doubt other things.
But people cite the bad. No one wants a nationalised coach industry like National Express and no competition. So too the idea of British Telecom supplying all mobiles seems absurd. It's mad that even Lunn Poly and the like were nationally owned. I don't also object to competition in providing my electricity. The problem in particular with water and rail is there is no damned competition anyway, so the key theoretical benefit of privatisation (competing on price and service delivery)
As for the UK, my general understanding is that we were one of the forerunners in the scale of privatisation and that largely (but far from solely) happened under Thatcher. But essentially every other country followed. Maybe not to the same extent but it still happened. The world changed. Communication changed, communism ended, capital became more international, the EU was formed and pushed a massively pro-free market agenda, and that was coupled with a general decay in the quality of nationalised industries.
So in summary, Thatcher didn't cause it all. It happend everywhere and it would have happened irrespective of her.
More to the point though...I don't doubt Thatchers role in privatisation or her influence on British society. If asked to write an essay on the most influential British prime ministers of the last century she would be second only to Churchill. So I agree with you entirely on her influence and also agree that much -as with all govts let's be honest - wouldn't have been positive.
But...
What frustrates me is that a thousand other things have happend since she left power and the idea that all bad things stem from her is just wrong in my opinion. It bugs me that these massive things are overlooked and jettisoned to think about someone who hasn't been in power for a third of a century.
The world of communication is totally different. How we communicate and interact with eachother is different. The internet exists, how we travel and work is different. Immigration is wholly off the scale compared to Thatchers time. The country is far more diverse than it was, the way we get our news is totally different. The life expectancy, general health, level of family breakdown etc is all so different.
Personally I think our society is far weaker and fragmented, less empathetic and more clinical than in Thatchers time (when I was a young kid so what do I know, you may say..). I definitely think it's far weaker now than anytime in my adult life time. I don't blame her for that, I blame other things and I think the solutions are in identifying them.
Just going on about Thatcher makes a few people feel good but it largely if not wholly misdiagnoses the problem and you can't solve a problem when you do that.
That's why it bugs me, and I appreciate you won't agree with all or perhaps any of this but I hope you can see where I am coming from at least.
When a Labour Chancellors financial statement gets a unanimous thumbs down from a Guardian panel, you know she, and her party, are in trouble. She says the world has changed since July and yet herfiscal rules which dictate policy have not. When Labour talk about being on the side of working people, do they mean youre stuffed if youre not working for any reason? Mind you, they arent great for working people, unless youre in the top one per cent, either? Why is it that what has been announced in the last week is not classed as just more austerity?
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...owth-forecasts
You're coming from. your usual place, so none of what you say comes as a surprise. I was twenty three when Thatcher won in 1979, so I have an advantage over you in that I was an adult throughout her time in charge.
I could go on for ages about what happened in the eighties, but Eric has already done a very good job on that front so I'll not say much except that in the late 70s , I think it's generally accepted that there was a desire for change in the UK becsause of the perception od the majority that the balance of power between bosses and workers had swung too much to the latter with the result that un ion militancy was in need of being curbed.
Labour in 1979 were in a comparable situation with the Tories in 1997 and 2024 - they may not have been in power for so long, but they had spent eleven. of the previous fifteen years in Government and there was the feeling around that the intervening heath Government had been brought down by the unions.
What often. happens under those sort of circumstances is that the opposition party offers "change" and gets in only to, as Labour are doing now, just carry on in much the same manner as the last lot did, but Thatcher was a true believer in the new way and, if anything, grew more convicend she was right the longer she stayed in power. Where Thatcher was lucky was that, across the Atlantic, she had a kindred spirit in Ronald Reagan - I used to think of him as a bumbling old man in the Joe Biden mould, but there was clearly more to him that that.
If there had been no Thatcher and Reagan, there probably would have been something like Reagonomics and the Thatchjer "economic miracle" in the 80s because the western world seemed ready for something like that at the time. However, it would have not have been followed so devoutly as it was by the Thatcher and Reagan Governments and it's the nature of politics and economics that, for all that is good in a particular approach there is also bad things as a consequence and I suppose that when such policies are followed so relentlessly, their bad consequences are felt more strongly.
I don't think I'm being particularly political when. I say that there eighties were a time where it was all about the individual as opposed to the collective - Thatcher herself proclaimed that society was dead and, although there have been times when her words have rung less true down the years, in essence, they still hold true, as Rachel Reeves proved yesterday (this lot have done things Thatcher would not have tried forty years ago)
I'll go to the grave hating Thatcher, but I have to accept that she is probably the most significant UK politician of my lifetime - it's a bit of a running joke that people go into politics to "change things" only to become ground down by the "system", but Thatcher did change things far more than most manage and I would contend that the consequences, gooad and bad, of what she started in the 80s are still being felt todau, especially the bad ones.
I am financially warm as toast"Starmer isn't getting my pip because I am not on it you dull cnut"
Yes that's why your crying all day, pull the other one
But unlike you I think these reforms are shocking 😲
And hopefully you will one day be looking at needing them and if you get feck all I will be laughing my arse off
And I'll be laughing my arse off when Starmer drags you back to work, the irony years of saying Tory this and Tory that then Starmer gets you in the first year of office
Couldn't all this puerile nonsense be played out through personal messages? Children's tantrums are not always entertaining for the rest of us
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