MSE News: Margaret Thatcher 'leader to knock Britain into shape'

iAMaLONDONER

opinions4u wrote: »

I believe one of the key policies of Thatcherism was balancing the budget.

When did the nation last achieve this?

Thatcher got 1 in 1989 and Brown got one in 2001/2002 then He abandoned the Conservative-style spending plans and then we have had a deficit since

Milarky

Actually it needs to said for the young people (under 35) out there - it was Conservative policies to remove existing credit restrictions in 1981 or 82 in the first place that marked the watershed between having an economy based on any kind of production and one built entirely on personal debts. They always end up doing something like a 'Plan B' when 'Plan A' [in their case it was self inflicted recession and monetarism] doesn't so much work as make everything worse. Funny how 35 years later the same trick was attempted. This time it was 'deficit reduction' (not not borrowing to survive.. just not borrowing SO MUCH).. and they called that a 'Plan'?

Yes she was big on 'Personal Responsibility' but a complete toss pot when it came to applying those standards to her own.

The_pc_tech

Cheap credit abused by both individuals and nation states is the cause of the problems we are now all in and I speak as someone who is currently paying off debts myself so am definitely not claiming the moral high ground here.

Politicians of any political persuasion will use anything and everything to get elected and to keep renewing their mandate to govern which is how we've ended up with such a deficit.

I think Thatcher was definitely wrong to deregulate the financial system and to sell off essential utilities like gas, electric and water as these are essentials.

The communications infrastructure needed to be sold off but should have been made a mutual non profit owned by the telecoms companies and only sold when it became clear there were others wanting to compete with BT for business rather than gifting something that was built with public funds to a publicly traded entity who cares only about its shareholders and still enjoys a monopoly as even if you have an unbundled connection it still rents out the copper loop.