Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Don't complain to me, I merely responded to GaryC's highly personal abuse.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
Back to the thread (well said Howard), with the miners strike you did have two leaders in Scargill and Thatcher who were determined to take eachother on. Scargill was prepared to use any means he could to bring down the government and Thatcher was prepared to bankrupt the country to destroy the unions. Neither was particularly admirable in their respective extremism. The miners were caught in the middle, with the majority simply fighting for their jobs.
When it was over more and more legislation had to be introduced to replace the valid day to day work once done by the unions in employee protection, health and safety etc. In many ways this was fairer in as much as it spread that protection to all those who could not, or did not want to, join a union. In practice, as always happens when lawyers get their hands on something, the legislation kept growing and the worker with his legal aid lawyer would usually find themselves up against employers with banks of lawyers able to twist everything.
As for Thatchers legacy, it can be summed up in one word, greed. Compare the rises in wages and house prices between 1949 - 1969 against the rises between 1969 - 1989. Under Thatcher it became almost illegal not to have a bank account, giving more power to bankers. The seemingly worthy "right to buy" was introduced and then tied in with legislation preventing councils from building replacement housing stock. This led to a decline in the building industry (at a loss of far too many jobs) and opened the way for increased property speculation with housing subject to increasingly higher profit seeking rises.
When Labour got back in, instead of trying to slow or halt such moves (such as allowing councils to use the money from right to buy for new building) tried to buffer the rampant cost rises with increasingly expensive 'buffers'. It has been a battle of ideologies all along and the only ones that suffer are the mass of working people who get sucked into the political see-saw by politicians who only ever see things in red or blue.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
agreed dogma rules to the benefit of nobody in particular.
i remember those times with utter distaste, the agendas of thatcher and scargill were all about power and nothing to do with the public good.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
I disagree with both of you 100%.
Think back to the utter mess the country was in before Mrs T. The Unions thought they could bring down any government they did not approve of and I lost count of the number of times people told me they would destroy a Conservative government.
We had massive subsidies going into outdated, over-manned, inefficient industries suffering from extreme TU militancy. Inflation at one point hit 29% - much of it because of lax UK monetary and fiscal policy and not oil. We were the sick man of Europe. Callaghan had to go to the IMF for a bail-out like some third world country. Strikes were held on any excuse at all, of a drop of a hat. he economy was overly regulated in every sense, you could only take £50 with you on holiday and had to get your passport stamped to exchange money. The whole situation was simply untenable and the economy was going down the drain fast. Yes it was largely the fault of the Labour government and the Trade Unions but Ted Heath can take some of the blame too as he did not address the core problems and did his famous U Turn. These were problems stacking up for decades of financial and economic bad management by all governments.
Mrs T turned all that around and it needed her strength and dedication to do the right thing for the country. It was nothing to do with dogma but dealing with problems of immense proportions. The high unemployment was dreadful but it was unavoidable and would have happened even without her as the whole economy was on a route to hell regardless. But she turned it around, tamed the madmen in the Unions and placed the economy on a more sustainable footing.
We all owe her a massive debt of gratitude.
That situation reminds me of some of the organisations I have been asked to turn around: the only way is up. It would be a real fool who could not improve on crap. The bonus is that the one turning it around ends up smelling of roses even if their end result is still manure - it will at least be a different class of manure.
Of course, I have never resulted in manure.............
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
"The high unemployment was dreadful..."
When the Conservatives ran their election campaign, way back in '79, they did so with a massive poster campaign showing a long queue of people waiting to sign on with the catchy slogan that "three quarters of a million unemployed was unacceptable", within a couple of years they were proudly boasting of reducing the unemployed figure down to 3 million.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 641- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,335
I'm a bit confused here, I thought the topic of this posting was about the new film 'The Iron Lady' starring Meryl Streep soon to be on our very own cinema screens in January 2012, which will be launched with fanfare with the closing of our beautiful 'fire sprinkler' in Market Square
Mrs T always provoked discussion!!
Guest 641- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,335
To be truthful I'm finding this quite informative especially how the Miners strike affected Dover and surrounding Kent towns.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Chris - but the cause of that unemployment was the unsustainable policies and economy that Mrs T inherited, as I said we would have had that unemployment anyway. The whole economy was in terminal decline and needed a dramatic change to turn it around. The evidence is in the appalling levels of subsidy of inefficient big heavy industry, the way industry overall was being driven to the wall by Union madmen and the unemployment statistics that were steadily rising before Mrs T with all that spending. remember that every Labour government ended it term with unemployment higher than when it started.
Worth noting as well that Mrs T's period was one in which many more women were joining the workforce so in spite of unemployment increasing so did levels of employment. There was a lot of tail chasing that distorted the bare figures.
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
I worked for a long established Marine Engineering firm at the time she was elected, the owner of the firm was delighted to the point he was like a dog with two appendages! When the firm closed along with so many around us he said, we have survived everything including the war but " I COULD NOT SURVIVE THAT BLOODY WOMAN" I left after 15 years , a week before my two week annual leave with my weeks wages , no redundancy no holiday pay and a hatred of the Thatcher regime that will live with me forever. There was no union problems or strikes involved in the process as I imagine will be touted by the usual suspect.
Audere est facere.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Martin P - Very easy to blame someone else when things go wrong with a business. Think back to the news as it was then, maybe that business was not hit by strikes directly but what about companies and businesses it supplied and suppliers to that business. Not only strikes of course were a problem, the huge State subsidies to produce often shoddy unwanted products in excess with old outdated production lines riven with restrictive practises. Whatever you say the UK was in an appalling condition in 1979 and that had to change, Mrs T provided that change after the failure of Heath and the mismanagement of the Labour years. Sad that any company goes bust but it was likely to happen anyway as thing could not go on the way they were. She did what she had to and we are all far better off now as a result despite 13 years of another Labour regime doing all it can to screw up the economy.
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
Very easy to blame someone else when things go wrong with Government! but that is ok I imagine?
Audere est facere.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
a lot of us had similar experiences to the one martin describes, the problem was that we knew the government did not care less about it.
who can forget "unemployment is a price worth paying"?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Howard that is simply not true. If you suffer from cancer the medicine makes you ill to try to cure a worse disease, it was exactly the same.
You can also liken it to a drug addict being made to go cold turkey to save his life. The British economy was on ever increasing doses of a drug called subsidy while rotting from within caused by an out of control Trade Union movement.
The UK needed some 'tough love' and yes it was worth it.
Martin P - true, a good point, but the historical facts speak for themselves in this case. I note that you have not tried to challenge what I said about the appalling state the country was in during the 70's.
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
No point in trying to challenge you Barry politics is obviously more than a passion to you, with me it is more a case of honesty and decency things that during the Thatcher years became signs of weakness , I imagine you would probably agree that the Country must have been in a appalling state before the 13 years of Labour Government?
Audere est facere.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Courtesy of Independent/rvh.
Employment Minister Mr Grayling continues the theme of the 80`s.;
``A million young people out of work is...............just a distraction.``
There is a need to ratchet up the Ministers Buffoon List to another list.........but the Boss would not permit the title.
Another Grayling classic ......it`s the Eurozones fault.
At least they are not blaming Gordon Brown this time but `they` always have to blame someone!
When it`s not working it is the people in charge who have failed.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Howard # 59.
"much better to attack the post rather than the poster?
I agree with this comment totally, that is my grievance with BarryW. He does not read my posts and although in some circumstances, I don't think he even realizes, he is constantly being personal and abusive.
To accuse me of being one of "Scargill's thugs", "an enemy within" and such like, is highly offensive to me and even worse, is his inability to give me the courtesy of reading my posts properly.
For the record.
I spent most of the year we was on strike, in offices in Norwich and Harwich, talking and negotiating.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
DT1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 15 Apr 2008
- Posts: 1,116
Interesting analogy Barry. Just to extend it further (although I don't really like the analogy):
What we saw, and are seeing once more, is that the 'treatment' to cure is actually not being administered to those that contracted the disease. Those that contracted it did so through bad choices and now those who did not make bad choices are taking the treatment for them as they did before.
Using this analogy, how about we increase national insurance to spend more money on people in Hospitals that are there directly through their own actions?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
DT1 - National Insurance is just another income tax and is nothing to do with what is spent in hospitals directly. The bad choices your refer to was the election of a Labour government that screws up the economy. That said, I have been fair enough to say that Heath failed miserably to address the problems so compounding them.
GaryC - I know nothing about you and if you want to associate yourself with what I generically refer to as Scargill's thugs then that is up to you. I have not personally abused you, but you do resort to that regularly and your previous post is evidence of that. By all means we can disagree and discuss differing political views but when you are unable to formulate an counter point you then get personal, you have done it time and time again. Its a bit sad really.
Martin P - The economy was recovering well when Labour got into power and even Blair at one point was honest enough to refer to a golden economic legacy that was bequeathed him - a legacy destroyed by Gordon Brown's incompetent handling of the economy. Mrs T compared to all that followed as PM was certainly 'honest and decent' - you know she meant what she said and did what she thought was right.