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"As Canary says, is the country really better in the stranglehold of million-pound-bonus bankers than of basic-wage trade unionists? "
I don't really accept the premise of the question to be honest, but if you really pressed me for an answer, I'd say yes.
It was my understanding of the 'credit crunch' that it was the growth of 'shadow banking' across the Western world, and evasions of existing regulations rather than abject deregulation that was responsible. I appreciate this might seem facile, but for the subject at hand they are a different set of circumstances. I'm not really convinced that blaming Thatcher for the current crisis is any more legitimate than, say, blaming Gordon Brown (as some sensationalists have done).
I do agree though that Thatcher's economic reforms are responsible for the UK's particular vulnerability, if that's what you were getting at. And her failure to rebalance the economy was one repeated by every political generation since.
I don't really accept the premise of the question to be honest, but if you really pressed me for an answer, I'd say yes.
It was my understanding of the 'credit crunch' that it was the growth of 'shadow banking' across the Western world, and evasions of existing regulations rather than abject deregulation that was responsible. I appreciate this might seem facile, but for the subject at hand they are a different set of circumstances. I'm not really convinced that blaming Thatcher for the current crisis is any more legitimate than, say, blaming Gordon Brown (as some sensationalists have done).
I do agree though that Thatcher's economic reforms are responsible for the UK's particular vulnerability, if that's what you were getting at. And her failure to rebalance the economy was one repeated by every political generation since.
I believe her greatest achievement was the breaking of the Communist led unions who following on from their disruptive strikes during the war and during the post war periods had destroyed British industry.
Her failure was undoubtably the poll tax. It was unworkable in a mobile population. However today 20% of the population live alone and would be far better off , if they only had to pay the poll tax.
Her failure was undoubtably the poll tax. It was unworkable in a mobile population. However today 20% of the population live alone and would be far better off , if they only had to pay the poll tax.
I think her greatest achievement was dealing with the Falklands conflict. The poll tax was a very good idea but the implementation via local councils was completely mismanaged. I was in Australia when the poll tax riots kicked off. The Aussies couldn`t understand what the hell was happening in the UK. I was back in Australia when Margaret Thatcher was outsted. All the Australians I spoke to at that time though we (the UK) were mad. I met Margaret Thatcher. I`m glad I did. She will go down in history as one of the definitive leaders of the UK. From all the comments I have read about her over the years, the most vitriolic ones seem to come from men. A lot of men just can`t stand the thought that we had a very good PM who was a woman.
I think MT's greatest failure was her inabilkity to grasp the concept of disent.
She understood opposition, even in her own Cabinet and Party, but she did not understand that people could disagree with some of what she said, she demanded all-or-nothing support, which ultimately led to an inability to see that her judgement was becoming impaired, and which ended in her ignominious departure.
She understood opposition, even in her own Cabinet and Party, but she did not understand that people could disagree with some of what she said, she demanded all-or-nothing support, which ultimately led to an inability to see that her judgement was becoming impaired, and which ended in her ignominious departure.
Greatest achievement - getting the unions under control. The balance of power had absolutely slipped too far in favour of the unions by the late 70s. Britons were striking left right and centre...and successive governments (both Conservative and Labour) had failed to wrest power back from the union leaders. It lead to rampant inflation, and made Britain economically 'unviable'. We simply couldn't compete...
Greatest failure - destruction of mining and steel communities. Even if she believed that the future was in financial services (natural Tory voters), rather than manufacturing (natural Labour voters), she still should have recognised that once you take manufacturing, mining etc away from a community, that community will die.
A cleverer move would have been to grant massive tax breaks to new start ups in those areas. But this was never going to happen, because that didn't fit with her view of how the free market should operate.
Greatest failure - destruction of mining and steel communities. Even if she believed that the future was in financial services (natural Tory voters), rather than manufacturing (natural Labour voters), she still should have recognised that once you take manufacturing, mining etc away from a community, that community will die.
A cleverer move would have been to grant massive tax breaks to new start ups in those areas. But this was never going to happen, because that didn't fit with her view of how the free market should operate.
No sp. you get a reduced rate (-25%) if there is only one person in the property. If it is empty they drop all pretence of being fair and charge a full rate: and of late the bullies demand to steal a further 50% on top from you simply because they are powerful enough to do so. Poll tax no longer exists.
A cleverer move would have been to grant massive tax breaks to new start ups in those areas. But this was never going to happen, because that didn't fit with her view of how the free market should operate.
Up to a point. She managed to offer massive tax breaks to those setting up in Canary Wharf. But they were businessmen, not miners.
Up to a point. She managed to offer massive tax breaks to those setting up in Canary Wharf. But they were businessmen, not miners.
sp At the moment in my street of identical houses we have some families consisting of 6 working adults some of 4, 3 and 2. We all pay the same council tax. Which based on the council services we each receive is unfair. The poll tax idea was that the total tax burden should be shared equally amongst all the adults . This woud mean at the moment a retired couple would only pay a third of of that of the biggest . Who obviously would pay more. At the moment a single occupier gets a reduction of 20% under the poll tax it would be about 50% less.
It was however unworkable and threw up anomalies.
It was however unworkable and threw up anomalies.
SP1814: The biggest failure/error was allowing deeper integration into Europe, we now suffer from that. Several things I didn't agree with but they are minor compared with the things that were done right. Eg Council house sell off, great but she whould have allowed the councils to build more with the proceeds. Community charge, much better than what we have now but with hindsight someone of her intellect should have been able to predict the reaction of those that suddenly found themselves contributing to local authority funding. I would have liked to have seen the whole local funding thing abolished and centralised and direct/indirect taxation used to pay for it. It was a bit silly dubbing Gerry Adams but at least she didn't just surrender Like Blair and co. Not sure why she didn't just wipe out the IRA but hey she must have had her reasons.
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