Margaret Thatcher RIP.

[slowmo]

MikeRox said:

MakeAmazing said:

I dont agree with selling power/water, but actually most of these monopolies were totally inefficient. Thats governement for you... the bigger the system the more money/red tape thats required. So making them private companies and making competition cuts costs and improves systems on the whole.

The Coal mines, well lets be honest they are totally a waste of money. We can buy coal and get it shipped from Australia than digging up our own coal. When something is that inefficient there is no point keeping it going. Open coal mines are the most efficient, but we dont have the room over here to do that. Personally i would rather us waste that money we would spend on getting coal out of the ground on solar panels on every house.

Selling council houses actually helped house hold income and gave people more spending money - so it helped the economy, the *BIG* problem was that no one (conservatives or labour after) had considered building any more. So a bubble was created. The actual idea of people owning their own houses was fine, it was the rest of it that was the problem. In fact no goverment since the 80's has still fixed the housing issue... were still not building them in anywhere near high enough numbers.

 

The problem we have right now, is Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems are all pretty much reading from the same rhetoric, just worded/phrased differently. There is no big ideas from any of them to actually fix our current economy. Margaret Thatcher had these ideas, she implemented them. It worked spectacularly (hence unemployment turned a corner, people in general (looking at the nation as a whole) etc became better off. There were no constant rolling black outs with power. Rubbish was collected (in the 70s it was left in the street). Most of the haters, simply don't understand the reality of what life was like in Britain in the late 70s, like me, they hadn't been born at that point. It improved for the vast majority of people. Unlike the idiots posting hate on Facebook etc however, I've actually studied our history a bit more and have concluded I'm so glad I was born in 1983!

However, the communities and industries she devestated, took an utter hammering and it's easy to see why they have and never will forgive her.

Our economy right now is heading down a similar path and if we carry on having the lame duck career politicians running our country (be it Labour/Lib Dem or Tory) fiddling with little things while Rome is burning, only a figure as divisive as Thatcher would be able to bring anything back from the brink.

I disagree with a lot of the things she has done, however nobody has bothered to turn any of this around. You'd think she was the last politician in power from the way idiots (yes, they are idiots) blame her for current issues. We've had 5 general elections since she was in power. Warning signs for things like Housing/the upcoming energy crisis/Financial crash [more a result of Blair/Brown's continued relaxation of financial regulations] etc have all been around for over a decade. They chose not to act. Can't blame Thatcher for that. What was right for the country in the 80s wasn't still right in the mid 90s and even less so in the mid 00s.

A lot of heavy engineering industry has never recovered from her policies and the wide spread privatization has resulted in more expensive and poorer services.  The point being, you couldn't undo what she did, too much changed too quickly without any understanding of the ramifications.  As you rightly say, others have made mistakes since but you don't seem to have any issue planting blame at their feet it seems while expecting people to turn a blind eye to what Thatchers government got very very wrong.  The only idiots are those pretending events of the past didn't happen.  I heard a fine upstanding Tory this morning state that mining was done because we were running out of coal.  That of course is a lie they have tried to perpetuate to hide the fact they mistreated so many workers.