Thatcher dead

[mcmanus]

From the daughter of a greengrocer why didn't see buy some Colgate off him and clean her fucking teeth.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Interesting programme on channel 4 at the moment.

Thatcher is a topic of conversation that im certainly no expert on and at the moment im struggling to see what it is she did so wrong. It seems most things were done with the intension of the greater good.

Im open to an explanation if i am wrong but thats what im thinking at the moment.

Her ideology was the complete opposite of the prevailing, statist, centre-left, that had prevailed for a good few years. Heath had tried to take the Tories to the right but went back to the left. His Tory party was actually further to the left than the current Labour party. Both parties believed in state ownership & intervention in industry, consensus with the unions, the pursuit of full employment and a fixed exchange rate.

Thatcher believed that managers should run businesses, not the state or the unions and they should be left to the mercy of the market and their customers. She believed that businesses that weren't profitable should go to the wall and not be propped up by taxpayers. She believed in public ownership but via shareholding in private sector companies rather than state ownership. She believed that the market should determine exchange rates. She believed in competition not state monopolies. She believed that governments should do and spend as little as possible and that people should pay as little tax as possible.

The problems came in how she implemented that and the consequences. It was pretty brutal and not helped by a recession in her first couple of years. There was no doubt that many businesses would not have survived whatever happened but it's debatable whether another PM or government would have handled this decline the same way as she did. There was no seeming thought for the people thrown out of work, just a dogmatic belief that the private sector would create jobs for them. But the problem with using monetarist tools like interest rates to manage the money supply and exchange rates is that those exchange rates could fluctuate wildly, which made it difficult for the private sector to invest in order to create those jobs. It also it made it difficult for homeowners, whose mortgage costs went up and down.

The government raised a lot of money via the sale of privatised assets, council houses and revenue from North Sea Oil. That could have been used to invest in new industry and infrastructure but it was used to reduce government debt. Unemployment was high when she came to power but it shot up afterwards and only just about reached 1979 levels in the later years of Blair's premiership. It's gone up again since 2006, significantly so since 2008.

That's interesting as if people think she damaged the economy, then Brown was far more damaging. There is a concept called "cyclical unemployment" which assumes there will be an underlying level of unemployment even if the economy is stable. The difference between the actual and structural rate gives you a good idea of the underlying strength of the economy. up to about 1981, actual employment was lower than structural unemployment, maoinly because subsidies to state owned industries protected jobs that, by rights, should have been lost. There's also a lag between the state of the economy and that being reflected in increased or decreased unemployment.

So the "employment gap" (actual - structural unemployment rates) reached nearly 2% in 1985. By 1990 however it was -2% meaning the economy had created more jobs that would have been expected given the economic landscape. The gap wasn't significant during the Blair years but had shot up to around 3% by the end of Brown's tenure. It's not expected to close again until at least 2017.

So there's no doubt that Thatcher's policies had a huge impact on unemployment but her fiscal policies did have a positive impact ultimately. However that probably wasn't in the areas where the bulk of jobs had been lost and also didn't involve creating jobs with the same skill level as those lost.

 

[Anonymous]

@prestwich_blue

Thanks for the reply mate, im learning more and more.

I struggle to understand why people hate her so much though.

 

[Ducado]

@prestwich_blue

Thanks for the reply mate, im learning more and more.

I struggle to understand why people hate her so much though.

There are a lot of sheep like people who just like to be with the crowd although there is some good reasoned debate in this thread when you strip out hype

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

@prestwich_blue

Thanks for the reply mate, im learning more and more.

I struggle to understand why people hate her so much though.

Because she hated socialism and all the attitudes it stood for. She made no bones about it and set out to destroy it. Blair was her proudest creation. So if you were a socialist you hated her because she hated you.

Scargill thought he could beat her and she destroyed him and his industry. So the miners hated her.

She had no time for inefficient loss-making industries and felt that their survival was a matter for the market. So the skilled workers who lost their jobs and didn't have any other comparable jobs to go to hated her. The fact is this probably would have happened anyway but it was on her watch it happened so she got the blame.

People don't generally like conviction politicians but with her it all seemed to be about ideology and there was a sense that she didn't care who suffered as long as she achieved what she wanted.

 

[LittleStan]

@prestwich_blue

Thanks for the reply mate, im learning more and more.

I struggle to understand why people hate her so much though.

There are a lot of sheep like people who just like to be with the crowd although there is some good reasoned debate in this thread when you strip out hype

Or it could be that this sentence in PB's reply created more emotion than some people think is allowed.

There was no seeming thought for the people thrown out of work, just a dogmatic belief that the private sector would create jobs for them.

It was very difficult knowing that you would lose and knowing that those in power would do nothing to protect you. She went out to defeat the unions and smashed the workers. The equivalent to bombing civilians to bring down a tyrant.

It is the cultural change she made that will last is emotional. The "look after No1" mantra has survived and will continue to survive until we as a society figure out that it is not good for us.

The hatred comes from these negative emotional impacts. Economics will be argued and sides will be kept, this keeps people in jobs. The cultural impact she made does not get them same discussion, it was a "mishap" or just "well she did not think that through".

Frank Field was in the radio last week and told a story. He asked her if there was anything she had regretted and apparently she said "Yes, when I cut taxes I expected people to know what to do with the money".

So on one hand she was telling the country that there is "no society, only individuals" and to "look after no 1" and then she wonders why they did not use the tax relief to allow the trickle down of wealth.

Personally, I have no hate for the woman, no love either, she is a lesson in history and one that should teach us the consequences, intended or otherwise, of our actions. I will learn from her and we all should.

 

[Bill Walker]

Interesting programme on channel 4 at the moment.

Thatcher is a topic of conversation that im certainly no expert on and at the moment im struggling to see what it is she did so wrong. It seems most things were done with the intension of the greater good.

Im open to an explanation if i am wrong but thats what im thinking at the moment.

Her ideology was the complete opposite of the prevailing, statist, centre-left, that had prevailed for a good few years. Heath had tried to take the Tories to the right but went back to the left. His Tory party was actually further to the left than the current Labour party. Both parties believed in state ownership & intervention in industry, consensus with the unions, the pursuit of full employment and a fixed exchange rate.

Thatcher believed that managers should run businesses, not the state or the unions and they should be left to the mercy of the market and their customers. She believed that businesses that weren't profitable should go to the wall and not be propped up by taxpayers. She believed in public ownership but via shareholding in private sector companies rather than state ownership. She believed that the market should determine exchange rates. She believed in competition not state monopolies. She believed that governments should do and spend as little as possible and that people should pay as little tax as possible.

The problems came in how she implemented that and the consequences. It was pretty brutal and not helped by a recession in her first couple of years. There was no doubt that many businesses would not have survived whatever happened but it's debatable whether another PM or government would have handled this decline the same way as she did. There was no seeming thought for the people thrown out of work, just a dogmatic belief that the private sector would create jobs for them. But the problem with using monetarist tools like interest rates to manage the money supply and exchange rates is that those exchange rates could fluctuate wildly, which made it difficult for the private sector to invest in order to create those jobs. It also it made it difficult for homeowners, whose mortgage costs went up and down.

The government raised a lot of money via the sale of privatised assets, council houses and revenue from North Sea Oil. That could have been used to invest in new industry and infrastructure but it was used to reduce government debt. Unemployment was high when she came to power but it shot up afterwards and only just about reached 1979 levels in the later years of Blair's premiership. It's gone up again since 2006, significantly so since 2008.

That's interesting as if people think she damaged the economy, then Brown was far more damaging. There is a concept called "cyclical unemployment" which assumes there will be an underlying level of unemployment even if the economy is stable. The difference between the actual and structural rate gives you a good idea of the underlying strength of the economy. up to about 1981, actual employment was lower than structural unemployment, maoinly because subsidies to state owned industries protected jobs that, by rights, should have been lost. There's also a lag between the state of the economy and that being reflected in increased or decreased unemployment.

So the "employment gap" (actual - structural unemployment rates) reached nearly 2% in 1985. By 1990 however it was -2% meaning the economy had created more jobs that would have been expected given the economic landscape. The gap wasn't significant during the Blair years but had shot up to around 3% by the end of Brown's tenure. It's not expected to close again until at least 2017.

So there's no doubt that Thatcher's policies had a huge impact on unemployment but her fiscal policies did have a positive impact ultimately. However that probably wasn't in the areas where the bulk of jobs had been lost and also didn't involve creating jobs with the same skill level as those lost.

V good post PB, and her biggest mistake (in my view) was the poll tax, that was never going to work

 

[Anonymous]

@prestwich_blue

Thanks for the reply mate, im learning more and more.

I struggle to understand why people hate her so much though.

Because she hated socialism and all the attitudes it stood for. She made no bones about it and set out to destroy it. Blair was her proudest creation. So if you were a socialist you hated her because she hated you.

Scargill thought he could beat her and she destroyed him and his industry. So the miners hated her.

She had no time for inefficient loss-making industries and felt that their survival was a matter for the market. So the skilled workers who lost their jobs and didn't have any other comparable jobs to go to hated her. The fact is this probably would have happened anyway but it was on her watch it happened so she got the blame.

People don't generally like conviction politicians but with her it all seemed to be about ideology and there was a sense that she didn't care who suffered as long as she achieved what she wanted.

Thanks mate, it seems that a load of people my age in their early twenties are jumping on the bandwagon and are saying/tweeting disgusting things about her when they really know fuck all.

Im trying to learn about it before i start running my mouth so yoyr comments are appreciated.

 

[cyberblue]

She hated the poor .the sick .the working class .she loved powerfull people she loved rich people & she loved dictators .I couldnt celebrate anyones death (not even this evil women) but i understand why so many are having a party

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I thought the programme was embarrassingly one sided in her favour, but there was one truth at its heart which those on the left hate admitting:

Many working-class people did very well out of her time in office and worshiped the ground she walked on. Plenty of them and what's more, they still do.

I also found Kinnock's (who I don't normally mind) sneering dismissal of the aspirational working classes a bit annoying too.