To give a fair answer on Mrs Thatcher I would say you can see the seeds of the problems we have today in Mrs Thatcher's policies in the 1980s.

that's true to a certain extent but,with respect I think the real 'seeds' actually go back to the miners strike & general industrial unrest ( the three day week & petrol rationing etc) in the early seventies with of course the oil crisis at about the same time helping to put the boot in.Mrs Thatcher cannot be blamed for that surely ?.....depriving the over 7s of free school milk in 1971 maybe.....

The point is that the political and ideology that was set in place under Margaret Thatcher's government, and has been continued (by and large) since, has absolutely been at the core of the financial crisis both here and globally.

It isn't some strange coincidence that there were so many countries affected by different financial crises at the same time. And the global financial crisis was not a result of industrial unrest in the UK in the 1970s.

I'm not saying todays global crisis is solely a result of what happened in the early seventies but it did have a direct affect on policies brought in by Mrs Thatcher - ie the demolition of the union power bases for a start.Public opinion demanded that the unions be stripped of their power,something the french governments can only dream about...

but yes,you are right that the Thatcher ideology has been continued in one guise or another with seemingly no way out of the present impasse

Very true

It is my belief that it was not done to make people into home-owners, it was done specifically to do away with as much of social housing stock as possible.
That was why the councils were expressly forbiddden to use the money for housing.
Two birds with one stone ... remove social housing as a cost ... and use the proceeds to reduce council tax (short term, as with everything they do).

Her ideology did not include social provision of anything at all.
The only barrier to dismantling even more than she did, was the fact that she knew that if she went too far (e.g. the NHS) she'd be voted out.

Cameron has picked up the dismantlement baton that Major dropped ... inter alia, he thinks he can get away with the "modernising" (for which read privatisation) of the NHS so long as he doesn't go too far (in his reading of it) by cutting middle-class benefits, so he is callously targeting ... yes, targeting ... the poor and the uneducated.
Not only that but he is gerrymandering outrageously by changing constituency boundaries to reduce the number of MPs, appointing far more Lords, and making it easier for those at the bottom of the heap to be disenfranchised by removing local councils' legal duty to register all eligible electors.
See which way he is swinging the power?

Good call.....As a country we don't make enough of our saleable attributes.....Look at this year's biggest waste of money - The Royal Wedding.

We wasted millions on that irrelevant bash..... All those people given the day off must have cost us loads if you believe the stats from the recent public sector strikes.

Instead, we should have flogged off the rights to the whole thing to the biggest buyer....The Yanks would have been throwing dollars at us to let the happy pair go over to Vegas or LA and have a proper celebrity wedding.

Now with Thatcher we should do the same thing.....Imagine it, countries would be queing up to have her paraded round their streets so people could pay their 'respects'.....I think a place next to her bestest mate, Mr Reagan would be most fitting.

It could be like a sponsored Olympic flame thing. She could first start on a tour of previous mining and steelworks communities in England, Scotland & Wales before setting off for a quick trip down the Falls Road. The on trhough Europe to Libya and on through Asia before boarding a boat to Buenos Aires. Up through South America, not forgetting a stop at her old mate Pinochet's final resting place, before ending at the Reagan Presidential Library. I'm sure they could find room for her, if not they could just embalm her and prop her in a corner somewhere

couldn't you finish off the job in real style with a burial at sea from the fishing boat à la 'Captain Bob' ?

sanjunien wrote:couldn't you finish off the job in real style with a burial at sea from the fishing boat à la 'Captain Bob' ? What sea laps against the Mount of Olives in Israel?

sanjunien wrote:couldn't you finish off the job in real style with a burial at sea from the fishing boat à la 'Captain Bob' ? What sea laps against the Mount of Olives in Israel?

I can't remember specific manifesto pledges on this, but never forget that any opinion is, in part, informed by a UK media that is, in the majority, hostile to trades unions.



The French people should thank their lucky stars. It's possibly been one reason that France has not gone down the neo-liberal path to the extent that the US and UK have. And why you do not have quite the same economic divide as those two, with all the social problems that that brings.

It may also reflect the fact that France has a better press than over here: even the conservative media will, in the event of a major strike, say, actually look at the facts behind the dispute and sometimes even sympathise.

Incidentally, there is lower union density in France than in the UK.