The new age...

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:49 pm

The grammar school I went to was half-private. i.e. those with enough money could pay for their children to go there, the majority of the pupils though got a public grant to go there if they passed their 11/12+ exams with high enough marks. Spending cuts in public education put paid to that, although to be fair, spending cuts started before Thatcher. She just extended them from the sublime to the ridiculous, in order to cut taxes for the already-rich

Post by **Lieva** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:58 pm

schools have got alot better it seems.
Or they seem to be doing more now then when i was at school.

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 2:13 pm

I don't think it really makes a huge difference which of the current parties is in power tbh, they're so similar. Most of us are sheep living in a world ruled by wolves. We end up as dinner no matter which set of wolves are in power.

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 2:25 pm

Xest wrote:I had to find out for myself why people hate them, why people still hate them 20 years on

Xest wrote:the famous one being champagne and the amount of luxury imports went up under Thatchers rule.

A relative of mine is one who still hates Margaret Thatcher, because he wasn't one of those drinking champagne, he was made redundant, and was too old to get a new job in the high unemployment climate. He will talk about this for hours.

So, I looked up some facts to see how typical his story was.

Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in June 1979.

Nov 22 1979 UK Building Societies put mortgage rate up 3.5% to 15%

Apr 22 1980 unemployment goes over 1.5 million

July 1980 unemployment goes over 1.9 million. Redundancies reach 40,000 a month.

Apr 1981 unemployment goes over 2.5 million

Feb 1983 unemployment goes over 3.2 million

I need to check on the turkey, but you get the idea. Think about a 15% mortgage rate and unemployment that high. Some people were drinking champagne, but some people still hate Margaret Thatcher. Ironically I gather my relative voted for her. I think that is why he really really hates her.

Cyfr · Post by **Cyfr** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 2:50 pm

OohhoO wrote:The grammar school I went to was half-private. i.e. those with enough money could pay for their children to go there, the majority of the pupils though got a public grant to go there if they passed their 11/12+ exams with high enough marks. Spending cuts in public education put paid to that, although to be fair, spending cuts started before Thatcher. She just extended them from the sublime to the ridiculous, in order to cut taxes for the already-rich

Or maybe she cut a lot of spending because our economy was in the shit and we'd still be in the shit now if she didn't lay the building blocks?
Although you seem unable to understand, tax cuts were for everybody, for this enabled people to go out and spend, and hence make our ecnomy better when people bought products...

Cyfr · Post by **Cyfr** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 2:56 pm

Kallima wrote:

Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in June 1979.

Nov 22 1979 UK Building Societies put mortgage rate up 3.5% to 15%

Apr 22 1980 unemployment goes over 1.5 million

July 1980 unemployment goes over 1.9 million. Redundancies reach 40,000 a month.

Apr 1981 unemployment goes over 2.5 million

Feb 1983 unemployment goes over 3.2 million

I need to check on the turkey, but you get the idea. Think about a 15% mortgage rate and unemployment that high. Some people were drinking champagne, but some people still hate Margaret Thatcher. Ironically I gather my relative voted for her. I think that is why he really really hates her.

Maybe if all those people who got made redunant didn't go striking every couple of days, (I urge you to research the winter of discontent where many many people died because they had fuck all thanks to all the strikes), then there wouldn't have been all these problems..

Thanks to the strikes, for example the steel workers who all striked, these companies lost millions and millions of pounds, this has to somehow be made up, job cuts.. People brought it on themselves.

Now, many of the strikers didn't actualy want to strike but the Unions made them or they could lose their jobs, Thatcher made it so they'd get compensation if this happened, so they could continue with their jobs without worrie.. she did what she could..

Oh and not to mention the fact that our industrial boom had ended, and the profit wasn't in those industries anymore, so sooner or later people would have had to find new jobs anyway!

What would YOU have done differently?

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 2:58 pm

but again ... a lot of people didn't benefit from the tax cuts directly at all, the vast majority of the rest only benefited minimally, and the people who benefited the most didn't really need it.

<ankh> · Post by **<ankh>** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 3:01 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

Cyfr · Post by **Cyfr** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 3:01 pm

Come to the United Kingdom will you.. come and see that everyones benefited..
What thatcher did couldn't happen right away, you can't suddenly turn around a socialist, tax and spend economy within a year..
And maybe there are cases, where older people have managed to lose their jobs because of redundancys thanks to striking, but that dosn't mean everyone was in the same boat. There'd be more people unemployed now if Thatcher just ignored the fact that our industry wasn't making the money it once was, and then Blair had to sort it all out..

Nobody can possibly say that Labour have suddenly made us all great since 1997, because thats simply not true. All they've done is built upon what Thatcher started, and even continued privatisation (even if they want to call it something else)

<ankh> · Post by **<ankh>** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 3:04 pm

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fac ... os/uk.html