The new age...

[pikeh]

I think you'll find the conservatives did very well considering the catastrophy of an economy Thatcher inherited from the socialist government..

...

[Cyfr]

Constructive..

[Lairiodd]

youd prefer them to be terrified.
peeps keep saying america and britian were wrong to start this and perhaps they were however sadam and the peeps in charge were pure evil to those peeps who lived there. But the only reason they went in in the first place was because when they first got there they ASKED if they could have osma and sadam refused. Peeps forget that bit..

Well, they probably were intending to go in anyway. Ultimately, the decision was more than likely based on the fact that in international politics, oppressive regimes will only take threats seriously if they don't think you are bluffing. It is a pity that they would never have been permitted to invade if they had said their real reasons.

[Xest]

didnt the conservatives put the country into a major debt tho?

Before I start, I may have a few things wrong here as I wasn't around at the time, this is what I've gathered from research and other people who were around when I've posed the question "What did Thatcher actually do wrong when statistically she made the UK stronger?". The reason I did research it is that I've always wanted to vote conservative seeing as their policies have always seemed most appealing to me, however each time I mentioned that I was going to vote conservative, I heard people whine about how bad the Conservatives were last time, hence I had to find out for myself why people hate them, why people still hate them 20 years on - I'm certainly not one to jump on the bandwagon of not voting for them because of something they did 20 years ago without finding out for myself first what that was and whether they've changed since.

The UK as a country was extremely weak in the seventies, and afaik the Conservatives actually set the groundwork and did a lot of the leg work in really strengthening the British economy so that it's in such a strong state it is today. The real issue is that the Conservatives shut down a lot of mines and such and a lot of people got in debt in the Thatcher era due to changes in the economy so whilst the country as a whole got stronger, a lot of people suffered as a result and many beleive it was because of this that the UK lost it's community feeling in a lot of areas. Realistically though? Thatcher did do a lot right, if she didn't stand up to the unions and shut the mines down no matter what and make the various other cuts she did the UK would've remained a weak economy for a lot longer, some may argue it wasn't worth it at the expense of losing the communities but who knows, I'd wager a bet they'd disintegrate anyway - they have in most other countries in the world. On top of that Thatcher did the right thing in other areas too such as the Falklands - if we hadn't stood up to Argentina there you could be sure the Spanish would've gone into Gibralatar and many other UK administered areas that wanted to remain UK administered would've been taken over by goverments closer to them, our show of strength in the Falklands scared others off. Basically, under the conservatives in the 80s the UK as a country actually became economically stronger, whilst quality of life for individuals became weaker.

I'm not sure how many of you have seen how political parties like to go on about redistribution of wealth - that is, tax the rich a little more to help improve quality of life for the poor. The conservatives point of view back in the Thatcher era was that we couldn't redistribute anymore than we already had, what we had to do was increase the overall amount of wealth in the country by making England stronger so rather than redistributing, everyone just became better off as a baseline - they did actually acheive this kinda, one measure of this is the amount of luxury imports, the famous one being champagne and the amount of luxury imports went up under Thatchers rule.

youd prefer them to be terrified.
peeps keep saying america and britian were wrong to start this and perhaps they were however sadam and the peeps in charge were pure evil to those peeps who lived there. But the only reason they went in in the first place was because when they first got there they ASKED if they could have osma and sadam refused. Peeps forget that bit..

Whilst Saddam did indeed kill and torture a lot of others the country was at least somewhat stable as a whole, the problem now is if these elections in Iraq fail in their task the country could face civil war which will leave hundreds of thousands dead - 30,000+ Iraqis and 2000 Americans have already died in Iraq since they unseated Saddam, it's hard to beleive that death toll is much better than the one under Saddam's rule. I do however agree Saddam needed to be removed - even if he didn't have WMDs (and honestly, despite the press liking to point and laugh at how none were found, it's still perfectly conveivable they exist in some bunker hidden in the desert) he was still a threat, that said I also fail to beleive him in Iraq posted anymore of a threat than Iran does right now, especially as Iran are moving towards becoming nuclear capable whilst publicly showing no understanding of how complicated the Israel situation is. As for Osama, he was never in Iraq, he was in Afghanistan (and hopefully was killed by the recent earthquakes, saves us a job ), the Clinton administration was offered Osama Bin Laden twice pre-9/11 by both the Taliban and also I beleive it was Sudan, Clinton's administration however refused him, no ones sure why they refused him but the speculation is that Clinton wanted to allow him to grow as a terrorist name and then crush him as a show of force - what a massive mistake that was if it's true, especially after seeing 9/11.

[OohhoO]

I lived in the UK during Thatchers reign & it was pure evil from my point of view. I ended up leaving the country permanently because of it. The average wealth may have increased, but the only people who really profited from it were the lucky 5% & the already-rich 5%. Most of the rest effectively got poorer. Unfortunately there were always enough people who wanted to belong to the lucky 5% to keep her in power. Bit like playing lotto even tho you know your chances of actually being one of the winners is millions to one against.

Britains economy should actually have improved by much more than it did, due amongst other things to north-sea oil, but much of that was squandered rather than invested in the future. Personally I'd rather they'd spent the money on sorting out the NHS or the education system or the railway network than on maintaining Britains nuclear-phallus, but Thatchers view was that educated kids don't want to sweep the roads, so a good education should as far as possible be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it.

Ack sod it if you want to know how it was just read "Turn it up" by Simply Red.
/out

[Lieva]

and ghost town,

Thats sposed to be about the conservatives isnt it?

btw oohhoo where do you live?

nm found out


switz ;p land of chocolate
or is it cuku clocks?

[OohhoO]

No, cuckoo-clocks are from Bayern or Austria or somewhere like that
Switzerland is the land of gnomes, chocolate, fondue, watches & "legal" money-laundering

[Cyfr]

Britains economy should actually have improved by much more than it did, due amongst other things to north-sea oil, but much of that was squandered rather than invested in the future. Thatchers view was that educated kids don't want to sweep the roads, so a good education should as far as possible be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it.

When Thatcher came in to power, she came in because there was a vote of no confidence in the current Labour government, their economy was a mess. We were 7th in the European Community at the time and yet we were initally the starters of the industrial revolution. Other countries such as Germany allowed their industry to thrive, where as ours were heavily regulated and punished by failures in the public sector.

When she came in to power, to make it worse (on top of the shit socialist economy), the whole world was going in to recession due to oil prices in the middle east.
Because of these huge oil prices, it was considered economicly feasable to explore this oil...however because the inital cost was high, there wasn't an immediate amount of high income from the oil...

Your assumptions about education are just plain wrong, for when Thatcher came in to power she announced (forgot the word) but she made it possible for people from backgrounds such as herself, to get a good education in private schools.
Whine about how she should have made public schools better all you want, 'cause no government to date has managed it really. The private schooling route is still a much better alternative in general.

[OohhoO]

Whine about how she should have made public schools better all you want, 'cause no government to date has managed it really. The private schooling route is still a much better alternative in general.

I had the good fortune to enjoy a grammar school education. Had I been born a year later, I would have had to suffer a secondary school education, thanks to Thatchers policies. Grammar school >>>>> Secondary school.

[Cyfr]

I never understood the difference, is grammar school just private and secondary public?
How does you going to secondary school have anything to do with Thatcher?