R.I.P. Margaret Thatcher age 87

OK so the mid 1970's was the end of the Cold War but our union leaders were still heading off to Moscow for reasons only known to them. Our lights just happened to go off for 4 days a week for no good reason.

The UK does indeed drive Japanese cars because the British management at Rover/Leyland in the 1960's/70's/1980's was shocking, but so too were the Unions. Since the 1980's we have had Japanese car companies come over to make cars here using their own management style and reasonable unions and these cars are very popular and sell in great numbers. A real success story.

But I'm not sure you know the full benefits Thatcher gave to the UK. Before she came to power a lot of people rented a council house - a house provided by the local council (city hall?) for working people to live in. Thatcher introduced the right to buy, so that people who had lived in one of these houses could buy it and improve it as they see fit. Millions took advantage and helped improve their living conditions. I remember my gran living in her council house in the mid 1970's when the council came round to paint the doors; a choice of cream, green, blue and red. It was lucky my gran was in that day as the painter was able to ask her which colour she wanted, otherwise she'd have got what she was given. Now, with right to buy, people can buy these houses and improve them.

Right to Buy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some staid, inefficient nationalised companies were privatised and that was good in many cases. However, I personally believe she went too far and some privatisation was not a good thing and then Thatcher really went mad when she introduced the 'Poll tax'.

Community Charge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The peasants revolted over it 600 years ago and we did again in 1990. How getting everyone to pay the same lump sum tax was fair is beyond me. A millionaire paying the same as me? Nah. She lost it on that one. But many of her ideas helped move us from 1970's basket case.

And if she wasn't influential, then you tell me who Ted Heath and Gordon Brown were? Exactly. (and if you do, I bet half the people reading this don't, whereas they all know Maggie)

 

Dup

 

Rest in peace Lady Thatcher!

...with humble apologies to those in the UK.
Like most Yanks, I'm probably a bit off on my protocol. I'm not sure if she'd properly referred to as "Lady Thatcher" "Baroness" "Prime Minister" or just "Mrs"

Two things are pretty clear.
She would probably have preferred Margaret.
and...
History will only be unkind to her if it is improperly written.

If you look at the mean spirited, nasty, low-rent comments from the ideologues that are off to her left....I'm sure that they will probably make every attempt.

 

Haha um no.

 

Easier still to forget the facts. The coal miners accepted a 5.2% pay raise, keeping in mind they were not getting paid that much to do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world for some of the lowest wages and shortest lives, lives lived in poverty. Miners lived very poor lives. Coal barons lived in luxury.

Being off the facts by 80% is hall mark of the Fox News "history" of Murdoch who spans US and UK.

 

It's the UK, the coal industry was NATIONALISED at the time. There were no coal barons getting rich. It was a public company providing coal for the public electricity company.

National Coal Board - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Central Electricity Generating Board - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now you see why Thatcher was so keen to break it up into private companies and allowed every tax payer of the UK to take shares in these newly privatised companies.

I think it might be hard for some Americans to appreciate that until the mid 1980's with Thatcher most British companies were Nationalised; the car manufacturer, the phone company, the railways, the electric company, the water companies etc etc were ALL government owned. Even the BBC was and unusually still is.

The car manufacturer provided sub standard cars that nobody outside the UK wanted to buy, the phone company only allowed you a choice of a handful of phones that only they could install and charged Royally to do so, only one company could print tv listings etc etc. That's why we had 2 BBC tv channels and ONE private tv channel until the early 1980's. Is all privatisation good? No. Has some turned into a bigger nightmare than when Government owned? Yes. Would I want to go back to 3 tv channels, 1 phone supplier, 1 electric company, 1 car manufacturer, 1 railway company? No. On balance, the way it is now is better.

It all changed in the mid 1980's with the loved and/or loathed Thatcher.

That's why he left the UK, slags us off and has promised never to return? He had his fingers in lots of pies but eventually they got burnt. He had to close down his baby The News of the World.

News International phone hacking scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
News of the World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thankfully a free independent press managed to blow themselves up, but Murdoch had to sell shares in his TV channels because of it. So we don't have the extremes of reporting you get in the US.

 

The BBC is not now, and never has been, owned by the government.

 

Oh?
BBC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sounds to me like they're somewhat like OUR "Public Broadcasters."

They.....meaning our public broadcasters.....have all of the advantages of a 'private' entity and all of the advantages of a government-run entity....and all of the advantages of a 501(c)3 charity.
They "say" that their programming isn't sullied by private money.
They make Prius drivers look positively anti-smug...
however (comma!!!!) there aren't many programs that you can listen to that do not have commercials.
They don't call them commercials of course...since that would be quite common...and it would give the whole game away.
Twice a year.....or more (depending on where you live) the local "public" radio and TV stations beg for "tax-free donations".
...AND they get a half billion from the government every year.
...not a bad gig, if you can get it.

 

Wonder if Margeret will come back and set us straight

 

An emigrant, rather than an expat. I have no intention of moving back, and I'm in the process of applying for Australian citizenship.

I did have the experiences you mention: I'm slightly (not much) younger than you, and I left Britain in 1996 (for Hong Kong). Being slightly younger than you, I had the experience of having my school milk taken away too.

Yes, Callaghan's Prime Ministership was a disaster (as were Heath's two terms before that). And I accept that some of what she did had to be done. And the mining unions were trying to save a dying industry: you can't keep a coal mine open if there's no coal in there that can be mined economically.

But while 25% mortgage rates were a problem, the meteoric rise in house prices is just as big a problem. For much of the late 70s, mortgage rates were in the teens. By the late 2000s, mortage rates were a third of those in the 70s - lovely. But house prices - in real terms, adjusted for inflation - were more than three times what they were in the 70s. So housing was even less affordable as a result of her policies. However, in the interim, Thatcher had got rid of millions of council houses, and thus got rid of much of the safety net for those who couldn't afford housing. Instead, the homeless are now often put up in B&Bs, at a far greater expense to the government.

In the meantime, she kicked off a process eagerly built on by Gordon Brown to deregulate the banking sector, and to lay the groundwork for much of the global financial crisis.

You mentioned the Poll Tax in another post - that's a very good point. And I think it goes to a broader issue: in her first term, she did what had to be done (to a degree). Later, she stuck with extremely right wing (by European standards) dogma, often in the face of all logic. The Poll Tax was the culmination of that.

One group who've been mysteriously quiet so far on the Thatcher legacy is the Argentinians. They seem remarkably ungrateful for her having destroyed Galtieri's dictatorship.

 

I can see your argument here on TVs and last-mile phone companies, and certainly on car manufacturers. Although my experience of State-owned and private enterprises in China would suggest that there are good companies and bad companies in both categories. Comparing the service I used to get from (State-owned) China Telecom to what I get from (privately-owned Australian-Singaporean telco) Optus does not paint private enterprise in a good light.

But privatising the railways to introduce competition always mystified me. For those of you who don't know, what the rail privatisation did was sell off regional franchises to different companies. It's like having one private rail company in New England, another in Pennsylvania, NY and NJ, and so on. To me, that is not competition. If I'm thinking of getting the train from New York to Buffalo, but I see that another company offers a cheaper, better quality service to take me from Miami to Atlanta, I'm not really going to go for the better-value alternative. What Thatcher did in many cases - not just railways, although they're the most obvious example - was to replace publicly-owned monopolies which were intended to operate for the benefit of the nation (even if some failed to do so) with privately-owned monopolies which operated only in the interest of their shareholders.

 

Oh, sorry. One more (nice) thing about Thatcher that hasn't come up in this thread yet.

She battled a phenomenally sexist Establishment to reach her position of power. This was an extraordinary achievement. And while she didn't, as many would have liked her to, initiate some sort of affirmative action to get more women to the top of government, her achievement in itself made it far easier for women to rise to positions of power than it had previously been.

 

And it was Thatcher's mission to privatize it by importing from abroad and throwing 20,000 miners out of work, the heart of the strike issues. Not money at all.

Glad to see the fabrication about "40% wage increase" disappeared as did the fabrication of power outages, the coal fired plants had stockpiled to avoid outages.

Shows what happens when News Corp/Murdoch writes the news and history, people who believe Murdoch are wrong on the facts 80% of the time.

 

One thing Reagen was more successful with, he transferred a much higher percentage of wealth from the middle class to the rich, and all of us will pay for that for a long time, as most people don't understand the relationship of wealth to political power.

 

You're right. Much the same thing is happening today, only this time all of the middle class's money has been transferred to wal-street and the manufacturers of crappy cars via the auto and bank bailouts and government fat cats via higher taxes, insane wasteful spending and crushing debt.

 

That is the Republican Game Plan. They appeal to the wealthy and Tea Pots.

This is the ring leader and the crazy agenda.

 

Um I have a question? Chuck creates a thread about china and it gets instantly moved to the politics section, yet somehow this thread still exists in the main forum?

 

Is this the Ice Cream social?

 

Don't blame you

By selling those houses to the people who'd lived there for years and years. People who'd lived there so long it became their home. Those millions sold off have made millions home owners and helped their standard of living. I appreciate this doesnt help those looking for a house but then 14 years of a Labour Government didnt see any significant house building programs either.

The Argies are a funny one. They don't like the Falklands having the Brits there but they've been there longer than Argentina has been a Country. The discovery of oil in the late 1970s' had nothing to do with it at all

On that basis all the Aussies should return to their respective historic countries and leave Australia to the Aboriginies and America should leave the place to the First Nation peoples.

But that's a whole different discussion.