gurramok wrote: » Will be interesting to see how many top league football matches in England will hold a minutes silence for Thatcher tomorrow(or later today). I suspect hardly any and that is hardly surprising.
Mr Tibbs wrote: » Poor auld Maggie is dead but she can still start a good argument. Often wondered if there hadn't been an election on the horizon would she have sent her forces on that little excursion to the South Atlantic.
Mr Tibbs wrote: » Often wondered if there hadn't been an election on the horizon would she have sent her forces on that little excursion to the South Atlantic.
Rascasse wrote: » I don't see why there would be silences. Fair enough for a head of state as there would be a day of national mourning. Apart from Madjeski, has anyone seriously suggested clubs were thinking about it?
Hank Schrader wrote: » Your post would suggest otherwise
Norwesterner wrote: » Really.So if I said FF fecked up the country, but the current lot aren't much better...that would make me a FF apologist. More coal pits were closed under Labour's 1970 governance. More Irish people were killed under Labour's 1970 governance. Bit of objectivity in a debate is healthy, rather than just parrot the mob.
Hank Schrader wrote: » Eh....yes As to your other points it's a bit of Stalin v Hitler really Objectivity only works when you take in both sides point of view
Norwesterner wrote: » Sorry, but thats utter nonsense.
true wrote: » China going in to Hong Kong, Spain in to Gibralter
end of the road wrote: » well at least it would be less empire to defend meaning resources could be put to use at home
Hank Schrader wrote: » There is no empire
Rascasse wrote: » Apart from Madjeski, has anyone seriously suggested clubs were thinking about it?
drakshug wrote: » A lot of Maggie apologists on here and a lot of people who didn't live in the UK under her government. I was 13 when she came to power. she defined my generation. Her way of talking down to people, her disdain and dismissal of people forced out of work. The way she destroyed whole communities and yet protected her own. Her talk of a classless society whilst creating a society of two classes - the haves and have nots. She never understood us Scots and her ideology never got a foothold in Scotland as it did in the home counties. Thatcherism is repugnant and even though the UK media are trying to whitewash and reinvent her legacy I was reminded of it all too vividly last Monday getting a train through Lanarkshire coming back to Ireland. Going past what used to be Ravenscraig steel works and seeing what used to be coal bings and down through North Ayrshire where there was 40% unemployment - it brought it all back. She destroyed it all and ripped the heart out of whole areas. as for her successes. It was a time of boom and bust, of the beginning of casino economics, of a rise in poverty and inequality and of the destruction of the public housing stock Thatcher may be dead but Thatcherism is still alive and prosperous in Tory and Labour policies. I won't be mourning.
wonderfullife wrote: » The bit i highlighted just illustrates how easy people find it to blame Thatcher and Thatcherism for things she isn't to blame for. Ravenscraig steel works closed in 1992 for the loss of 770 jobs and indirectly caused the loss of thousands of jobs linked to the site. First of all, Thatcher had left power in 1990. Second of all, the steel industry has declined massively in all major western countries. There's some very good reasons for this: In the 1950s, 450,000 people were employed in the UK in the Steel Industry. By 2003, that figure was 21,000 people. In 1953, of the 16 million tonnes of steel produced annually, that worked out at 35 tonnes per person employed. By 2003, due to new technologies, each person employed could produce 623 tonnes of steel. Even by that fact alone, you now only needed 5% of the staff to produce the same productivity. Then you had massive problems relating to over-capacity (way too much steel being produced relative to demand), you had problems with the value of sterling relative to the Euro being bad for export, then most of all you had the problem every industry faces in the West - the availability of cheaper labour, materials and so forth in China, Pakistan and elsewhere. Where Thatcher DID fail, is in a lack of support given to nationalised industries when they went private. But to blame her for the barren waste-lands around Motherwell is a nonsense.The days of steel and coal were numbered from the 1970s onwards. It was a matter of time before this happened and make no mistake, would have happened on anybodys watch - not just Thatcher. If Neil Kinnock was elected somehow in 1987, Ravenscraig would still have gone to the wall. Nobody could reverse the reality of the situation. The same happened in Chicago, Pittsburgh and all over the US. And, very like those cities, the problem Motherwell truly faced was spending decades neglecting the formation of other industries. It was all reliant on steel and coal when in truth they could see this coming for decades and little was done by anyone, Thatcher, Callaghan, Major, Blair, to step up and say "wait a minute, we need some other industries here". Margaret Thatcher is an easy, catch-all target for the miners, ex-miners and surrounding communities. Actually she is an easy target for anybody who suffered bad times in the 1980s and 1990s.
stretchdoe wrote: » So, taking your thesis as read, destroying those industries and those towns with a sledge-hammer, rather than gradually phasing out what was their life-blood, and, as you alluded to, not giving a sh*t about even trying to think about cushioning the blow, was right?
wonderfullife wrote: » No - more thought and support needed to go in to the inevitability that employment in steel and coal was going to collapse. But that fact was as plain as day from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and certainly as plain as day when we got into the 1990s. My point is, blame Thatcher solely if you like but that's not a fair assessment. Multiple leaders failed and failed badly to plan for an absolutely certain event. Thatcher is just the poster child for hate as she is an easy target but all of them failed. Blair, Major, Thatcher, Heath, Callaghan. If we apply the logic that Thatcher was a heartless b1tch who didnt care what happened to the working class folk in steel communities, then the same logic must apply to everyone from Blair back to Callaghan, as none of them took the requisite action to invest in new industries in those areas.
wonderfullife wrote: » privatise a nation overburdened with Nationalised companies
stretchdoe wrote: » I think she deserves blame for being guided by a combination of blind ideology and vindictiveness and acting accordingly. And selfishness and 'not caring', by the way, was the very underpinning of her ideology; she said as much, quite frequently. Have no idea why her supporters have a problem with that being pointed out.
wonderfullife wrote: » If Thatcher had have spread out her privatisation over a decade, that may well have softened the blow. There is no doubt the speed of her changes did not help the steel or coal industries. On the flip side of that coin, if she took a decade to implement the changes, then inflation and taxation would have likely remained at catastrophic levels. She had to go in there and make drastic changes and do them quickly. I'm really not sure where the middle ground was in all this. Most of her critics accept the changes had to be made but argue with the manner she made them, yet really don't offer up many alternatives she could have went for. I've yet to see many on here propose a viable alternative she had at the time. If your task, a necessity, is to combat crippling trade union power and privatise a nation overburdened with Nationalised companies, what was her alternatives? Bare in mind any realistic alternative must include a way to get inflation under control. I think, sadly, the sledgehammer approach was the only viable way forward. Accept a short-term massive increase in unemployment for a more stable longer-term solution. Which, to be fair, was proved correct in the sense that unemployment rose to 3,000,000 by 1984 and fell to 1,700,000 by 1990, when all the effects of her sledgehammer balanced out.
stretchdoe wrote: » Without even getting into the path that sent Britain upon, the reliance of 'financial services', etc, there's no reason to think she couldn't have 'achieved' the same or more if she'd taken a different approach; without instantly destroying so many lives. As for her 'getting inflation under-control', France had a similar problem with inflation when Thatcher took power and, funnily enough, achieved the same results, got it 'under-control'/to the same level, under a 'socialist' government. Outside factors played a part.
Zebra3 wrote: » Dave Whelan suggested it. In touch with the people of Wigan. :rolleyes:
