What Did Thatcher Ever Do For Us?

PaulF81

I have watched Tinker, tailor, soldier,spy and can tell anyone who wasn't there, it was grim.

I imagine it was very much like living in David Peace's Red Riding.

grizzly1911

mystic_trev wrote: »

I remember it well, the Country was being well and truly screwed by the Unions. I had to use one of these to work by during the three day week



The really galling thing was to see the striking Nationalised Industries, getting stonking great pay rises, while a lot of us were working for a pittance! How times have changed!

We used an empty baked bean tin, with one side cut out, and candle in it.

Cue the four Yorkshire men.;)

mystic_trev

grizzly1911 wrote: »

We used an empty baked bean tin, with one side cut out, and candle in it.

Cue the four Yorkshire men.;)

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ukcarper

mystic_trev wrote: »

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

They would be OK now they could use the glow from their I phones.

BobQ

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Good post.

Those of us who lived through the 70s in the West Midlands remember the constant strikes at British Leyland, who turned out lower quality cars than the Germans and Japanese, same with our motorcycle industry. WE, the people, in the form of militant Communist Trades Unions leadership, did for British manufacturing, not any Government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist)

The situation in British Leyland did get out of hand and was a good example of why reform was needed. The thing that people often forget is that a lot of the problems were due to lack of an effective union organisation.

These were days when minor issues on a production line could result in local shop stewards calling a quick meeting fire up a small group to put their hand up to down tools without the national union agreeing anything. These unofficial strikes only needed one trade in one union to stop work over something trivial like the length of a tea break and they downed tools. The culture of the workplace was the problem and management and workers simply failed to cooperate with each other. While there were some official strikes, most of the issues were due to these local issues.

In Germany, there was a completely different attitude by managers towards their staff and to the unions. This is still true today.

grizzly1911

BobQ wrote: »

The culture of the workplace was the problem and management and workers simply failed to cooperate with each other. While there were some official strikes, most of the issues were due to these local issues.

In Germany, there was a completely different attitude by managers towards their staff and to the unions. This is still true today.

Poor management, lack of direction and years of underinvestment were a big part of the problem. Yes the unions had a field day too.

As you say Japan and Germany had much better approaches.

Old_Git

maggie did two great things
she got dementia ,then she died .

She thought the sun shone out of Mark and neglected Carol .
Mark was as thick as !!!! but ended up filthy rich thanks to mummys connections .
I feel sorry for Carol being related to maggie and Mark .

Her own children hadnt visited her for months .
She really was the batch from hell.

Iron Lady rust in hell

the_flying_pig

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

This is the main thing for me.

It has been the expansion of private property ownership over the last century that has had the biggest impact on personal wealth in the UK.

The roots of which go back to the 1920's, but didn't truly flourish until the 1980's.

The phrase "Property Owning Democracy" was originally conceived of by a Scotsman, Noel Skelton, in the mid-20's and gained national attention after it was included in Anthony Eden's speech in Nov 1929.

"The Conservative objective, must be to spread the private ownership of property as widely as possible, to enable every worker to become a capitalist."
~ Anthony Eden, November 1929

Eden saw true capitalism as only being achievable when workers had a stake in society, and that the most direct way to encourage workers to produce efficiently was to align their interests with that of their employers through enabling them to build wealth and security.

Or as he also said....

"The wider we can spread the basis of national well-being, the larger the share of it every worker in the land can enjoy, the more real and direct his incentive to promote the welfare of the industry in which he is engaged, because it is his concern, the more certainly shall we create a Britain where her people may dwell in peace and plenty."
~ Anthony Eden, November 1929

It was Eden, and Skelton, who originally conceived of spreading wealth to the masses through widespread private ownership of property.

But it was Maggie who finally delivered it, half a century later.

For that alone, she would go down in my book as the greatest Prime Minister in peacetime history, but her list of truly remarkable achievements is so long, that now looks like a small part.

Worst post I've ever read.

the_flying_pig

It's a boring, very boring, answer, but in the decade 1980 to 1990 the UK started off as about the 20th most prosperous country in the world as measured by GDP per capita and ended it as, well, about the 20th most prosperous country in the world. We're in a not dissimilar position today.

Check for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_future_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita.

In total welfare terms pretty much nothing happened really. She was neither particularly an economic saviour nor, uh, wrecker. The main things that happened were to do with the distribution of income. Income inequality was ramped up massively (see graph 6 http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtmly. Certain types of job were more or less wiped out. Certain other types of job prospered (tho of course all economies change over time no matter who's in power).

Yes, Some low-middle income people were able to buy, below replacement cost (not that replacement was ever particularly a consideration) - but that was a plain old transfer of assets from the state to individuals rather than, clearly, generating assets/wealth.

the_flying_pig

S

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

...

"The Conservative objective, must be to spread the private ownership of property as widely as possible, to enable every worker to become a capitalist."
~ Anthony Eden, November 1929

..."The wider we can spread the basis of national well-being, the larger the share of it every worker in the land can enjoy, the more real and direct his incentive to promote the welfare of the industry in which he is engaged, because it is his concern, the more certainly shall we create a Britain where her people may dwell in peace and plenty."
~ Anthony Eden, November 1929...

These quotes make perfect sense if they are about owning shares of a company.

Give a worker a share of the firm he works for (a la waitrose/John Lewis) and he'll care more about its profits (so will work harder) because, frankly, he'll be getting a (tiny) slice if these profits.

Economics 101. People respond to incentives. Give them incentives, they will respond. This instinctively feels that something a modern Tory party should be going for.

Trying to bribe workers to vote for you by selling some of them them a house below market value, though... What does that do for incentives?

Certainly selling houses below market value provides an incentive to buy more houses, that must be right...

But back to Eden's quote, what "industry" is it that this sell-off might encourage workers to "promote" the "welfare" of? Complete the following sentence - 'I've just bought a house below market value so now I'm going to...'

I suppose I'm saying that the incentives story applies well to maybe letting workers at state owned companies buy shares cheap after privatisation but residential property... Just a plain old gift, no?