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

tagq2

JuicyJesus wrote: »

And now we have Cameron and Gideon doing it all over again, but now we haven't got anything left to sell off. Except the NHS...

Private prison management is a particularly contentious thing - and a private prisoner costs the state at least twice as much as one kept in the state system. The DWP is being pushed into the private sector in the very ugly sense of work programmes: giving below-minimum-wage labour to private companies in the style of the workhouse. Schools - though GCSEs and A levels have become jokes since exam boards were sold off to publishing companies.

You might hope national security is exempt, but what is Qinetiq if not a gradually privatised DERA? Who's for a private police force? The only thing I haven't heard mooted anywhere as a target for privatisation is the judiciary. I guess a gang of lawyers and PPE grads wouldn't want to dirty its own back garden.

If you want to slash the budget, bring government work back in-house. Let private business stand on its own two feet if it can, doing whatever it wants to do rather than siphoning off so much Treasury money. But if you don't like privatisation then things can get much worse - there's so much more than just the NHS to destroy.

Milton Friedman?

John Milton.

JuicyJesus

tagq2 wrote: »

Private prison management is a particularly contentious thing - and a private prisoner costs the state at least twice as much as one kept in the state system. The DWP is being pushed into the private sector in the very ugly sense of work programmes: giving below-minimum-wage labour to private companies in the style of the workhouse. Schools - though GCSEs and A levels have become jokes since exam boards were sold off to publishing companies.

You might hope national security is exempt, but what is Qinetiq if not a gradually privatised DERA? Who's for a private police force? The only thing I haven't heard mooted anywhere as a target for privatisation is the judiciary. I guess a gang of lawyers and PPE grads wouldn't want to dirty its own back garden.

If you want to slash the budget, bring government work back in-house. Let private business stand on its own two feet if it can, doing whatever it wants to do rather than siphoning off so much Treasury money. But if you don't like privatiastion then things can get much worse - there's so much more than just the NHS to destroy.

I just made a similar-ish post on the Virgin Money buys Northern Rock thread. You're entirely right - things the private sector should have absolutely no business doing are being franchised out to them on ideological grounds that a profit motive means better services.

I said in that post that what's happening is consumers are paying inflated prices to include profit margins that shouldn't really be there. Why on earth should it make sense that we, as a nation, pay a profit margin for our prisons and our schools and our defence and... I could go on.

Yogibear

VfM4meplse wrote: »

Let's be fair, how many of those polled actually remember politics pre 1970s?

Margaret Thatcher was the obvious choice as she is still known as the Iron Lady. Anyone who lived through her leadership will remember times of cruel poverty and a cabinet that quaked in their boots. Besides which, after her ill-health over the past few years she's not fit to govern a damn thing, if she ever was. I'm surprised at people's rose-tinted memory of her...!

and mortgage rates of 18% oh aye great leader it`s obvious that the people who voted for that fascist !!!!!!! didnt live through the times as we did:mad:

Yogibear

redux wrote: »

More than 20 years after her colleagues booted her out, and more than 30 after they first started promising to do so - and these actions were because she was the most unpopular Prime Minister in history - she has become the most popular Prime Minister in history?

Perhaps if her unpopularity hadn't been repaired by the Falklands War campaign, she wouldn't have survived the trebling of unemployment and doubling of inflation and the city centre riots, and the consequential loss of confidence of the electorate and her party, and she wouldn't be considered for this dubious honour.

More than a third of the electorate has changed since she left office, so one wonders to what extent a 60% result is something to do with false memory syndrome, or even fake multiple voting, or perhaps that loads of people who didn't have a strong favourite looked at this and never bothered to vote, like me.

I can think of no better recommendation than read this article by William Keegan in the Observer a few years ago, which deconstructs the myths of Thatcherism more eloquently and in more detail than most of us could, starting with the nonsense of the false attribution of inspiration for her inaugural speech, and including that privatisation was not even mentioned in the 1979 manifesto, but thought up later as a response to the poor economic situation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/may/09/past.women

well said:T

SnowMan

Doc_N wrote: »

Then there's this stirring song:

John McCullagh - I'll Dance On Your Grave Mrs Thatcher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bJbeeKBPCU

Having seen the news item and poll :mad: I went off to listen to this equally stirring tune

Hefner: The Day that Thatcher dies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4BCUWopQQ4

Feel a bit better now :j

Milarky

God awful woman...

[with apologies to all women]

Doc_N

SnowMan wrote: »

Having seen the news item and poll :mad:I went off to listen to this equally stirring tune

Hefner: The Day that Thatcher dies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4BCUWopQQ4

Feel a bit better now :j

Cheered me up too! Those scenes remind you of anything that happened 3 months back under another Tory-led government?

Plus ça change.......

Doc_N

Good to know we're not alone:





Dance on Thatcher's Grave - compilation of some of the best and most offensive anti-Thatcher tracks around. Why wait until she's dead? when you can have plenty of pre-parties in the build up to the big one with this CD. Minimum donation of £1.99 will cover the production and postage - if you wish to pay more, then the extra will go directly to fund anti-bnp work in Wolverhampton - cleaning up the legacy of Thatcherism!

http://dingdongdead.org.uk/

tagq2

JuicyJesus wrote: »

things the private sector should have absolutely no business doing are being franchised out to them on ideological grounds that a profit motive means better services.

I thought the ideology was "only private companies give fantastic kickbacks" :money:. Take away everything that is secure and honourable about being a civil servant (*) and you breed a new cadre with only one thing on their mind.

Yes, and something in EU competition philosophy about putting government work out to tender for the glory of freedom and equal opportunity under the union - another Thatcherite Trojan horse every country has dutifully let through the gates except the wise and now dominant France and Germany.

(*) Remember, if your pension isn't as good as theirs then the correct solution is not to campaign for better conditions for yourself but to bring everyone else down. This is progress.

dunstonh

So what is your choice...

Margaret Thatcher's policies which brought economic stability and growth but damaged society or Labour bankrupting the country and going back to third world status (and society going just as bad with it)?

A lot of people on here have pointed out negatives of Mrs Thatcher. However, they conveniently forget the mess Labour left the country in the 70s and perversely doing it again in the 2000s.

It seems that the public hate those that fix the problems but not those that put us in that position in the first place.