What Did Thatcher Ever Do For Us?

Kennyboy66

PaulF81 wrote: »

Perhaps those who benefit from a health service, a decent pension and a globalised economy for a start. If you think the the privatised rail service is run badly, imagine what it would be like run under an incompetent, unionised civil service with more focus on personal gain and promotion through attaining short term 'metrics' than improving efficiency.

Thatcher didn't privatise the railways (it was John Major in 1994) - in fact until about 1990 she was utterly opposed to that privatisation.

A bit baffled about your pension and health service points - neither of which were exactly Thatcher strong points.

PaulF81

She created the economic conditions necessary for a decade of growth, which was subsequently wasted by Labour.

Kennyboy66

Thrugelmir wrote: »

No spin in those days. Direct talking and action.

Look at the wimps we have today. We need a Maggie character now to kick the UK out of its current malaise, and its dependency culture.

No spin indeed.

Bernard Ingram (the Alistair Campbell of his day), Lord Bell & Saatchis and Gordon Reece (who changed her hair, speech and mannerisms for TV).

The first UK politician who was relentlessly coached in TV techniques and voice projection.

It's the least of her faults as importing these political techniques from the US was inevitable but to suggest this was a no spin era is ridiculous.

wotsthat

We've done pretty well in the UK and enjoyed a long history of decent politicians which is why we're the 6th (?) biggest economy in the world rather than a Romania.

That said I don't really see why Margaret Thatcher is meant to stand out in particular. I agree that privatisation is better than nationalised industries but it's fairly obvious that state industries were sold too cheaply, same with selling off council houses. The ideology is one thing but you don't need to be a cynic to think there's an element of vote buying going on.

The welfare state expanded under the Thatcher government in real terms as a result of rising unemployment and a recession. Scapegoat politics started too - single mothers were to blame for most things it seemed.

The only reason she stood out as far as I can see is that she was a 'conviction' politician (not really heard of that before today but it seems apt). It's great having strength of conviction but when combined with the ability to bulldozer ideas through party and parliament it's not so great if the convictions are wrong.

Tony Blair talks about how many times he had to spend 'political capital' to get some of his ideas into practice. If the ideas are any good they should be cheap in terms of political capital.

Tony Blair ran out of political capital - just like Mrs. Thatcher before him.

ILW

She changed the general attitude of millions, people started to think they could achieve something with their lives rather than relying the the state and unions to look after them.

Generali

Is there any chance we could stay on topic for once? I don't think privatization was a hidden agenda of the Thatcher era.

dryhat

I was 16 when Maggie came to power and had just started work.
I was one of the luckier ones.

Maggie used unemployment as a tool and argued it was actually necassary for economic progress.

And what paid for the increased welfare bill needed to sustain the high unemployment?.......


North Sea oil.
Millions thrown on the scrap heap of life and a valuable resource squandered in one go.

Although I personally prospered during her reign, there is no doubting that she caused misery to countless others.
This is why she was/is loved and despised in equal measure.


(and she nicked my milk as well)

StevieJ

purch wrote: »

She was PM for "only" 11 1/2 years, yet it is strange how she still is blamed for many of our current woes 22 years later.

Certainly she oversaw changes to our country that were massive and unprecedented, and some that will be hard to reverse, but we have had plenty of time to change direction, yet successive Governments have chosen not to.

The reason is, she had a disciple in Blair, so her legacy went on and on and on.

angrypirate

Once again, Daniel Hannan puts it well combining it with why she is so disliked amongst the left.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100211196/margaret-thatcher-took-a-ruined-dishonoured-and-bankrupt-britain-and-left-it-prosperous-confident-and-free/

Kennyboy66

Generali wrote: »

Is there any chance we could stay on topic for once? I don't think privatization was a hidden agenda of the Thatcher era.

A false hope I would say.

I don't think many people in the south still appreciate the epic scale of job losses in many northern cities during the couple of years either side of 1979.

In Speke (part of Liverpool) there were 8000 (Triumph / British Leyland plant 3500 and Dunlop 2500 being the main ones) redundancies in 1978 & 1979 before Thatcher was even elected.

The population of Speke was roughly 20,000 at the time.

Another 40,000 jobs went in Merseyside in the first 18 months of Thatcher being elected.