StealthGoblin
Banned
Biggzy said:
There'd be celebrations more or less everywhere to be honest.
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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
- Start date
There'd be celebrations more or less everywhere to be honest.
killer_clank
Member
I'm edging towards it being just Twitter speak, tbh. But you never know.
thestatics
Neo Member
Galvanise_ said:
Well, you can have some of our oil and we'll trade for the gas you've got (unless the Norwegians are willing to undercut you obviously).
Always been quite a conundrum re. the Scottish MP's voting on solely English matters. I've harboured a hope that they've voted vindictively in retaliation for the poll tax!!
Independence is an interesting one. In the north-east of Scotland where I am, I would say that if the SNP's next term progresses well that a Yes vote on a referendum may be possible. Whether than could ever be translated across the whole of Scotland (especially the Borders) is debatable though.
Biggzy said:
By the way this isn't my view, i don't think you should be happy with anyones death. But a large group of people are still living with the consequences of her policies to this day and so you can understand why they wouldn't be sad to see her gone; you just don't have to agree with it.
StealthGoblin
Banned
thestatics said:
Deal! We'd need to sort each other out energy wise until the UK as a whole actually bothers to take renewable energy seriously.
thestatics said:
We got screwed by that too.
thestatics said:
I think that the SNP's success in this election was more of an anti-lib dem vote than a lack of faith in Labour. When Scotland starts to receive the bigger cuts, we just might see labour make a comeback in Glasgow etc.
I wouldn't celebrate Thatchers death, as I don't celebrate anyones death, but I am certainly not going to look back fondly.
The Friendly Monster
Member
Do you understand how much she is hated?Meadows said:
Cerebral Assassin
Member
Meadows said:
You weren't around in the 80's I'm guessing?
Cerebral Assassin
Member
Meadows said:
Unlike her.
Galvanise_ said:
Although it was a stunning victory for the SNP and should quite rightly be congratulated for the campaign they did. The evidence seems to suggest that it was due to the collapse in Lib Dem vote and those Lib Dem supporters voted for the other centre left party that was left, the SNP. Also the Labour vote stayed static, thus indicating they didnt lose support, they just didnt gain any; due to partly a poor leader and also they ran a campaign that revolved around the goings on in Westminster and not Scotland.
What i am trying to say is that an SNP vote is not necessary a vote for independence but rather a protest vote as well as an indication that the electorate trust the SNP to do whats good for Scotland and not whats good for Westminster.
Cerebral Assassin said:
I don't like someone therefore I will dance in the streets when they die?
Thatcher was a woman with ideals. She made these ideals clear, and people voted for her time and time again, she didn't trick us into thinking she was liberal, she was always neo-liberal, she was always elected, never took power in a fascist regime. If you want to blame someone, then blame people who voted for her.
StealthGoblin
Banned
Biggzy said:
I agree. I wonder how things would have turned out if the Tories went it alone. The Lib Dems might have even gained support. Its nuts how things have turned out.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
Galvanise_ said:
Perhaps. But the Liberal Democrats needed (need?) to prove themselves as a party of government not a party of protest. They had to get into government.
Cerebral Assassin
Member
Meadows said:
It could be argued a unnecessary war propped up her reign of terror, but these are arguments that belong in the past. The simple fact is she will recieve a state funeral so people who wish to celebrate her life will be able to, those that don't are free to do as we see fit, one of the joys of living in a democracy.
StealthGoblin
Banned
Deku said:
The measures were needed, but the Torys could have formed a minority government. I'm guessing that Cameron knew he'd need a human shield given what he was about to do, and the appeal of actually being in government was too hard for the Lib Dems to turn down.
Nick Clegg has effectively lead his party into the ground by going into power alongside the Torys. They've lost support everywhere. They'd be a lot better off if they were the voice of reason in the opposition after the countries fall out with Labour. They might have even built more support before the next election. I'm glad they are having a moderate calming effect on the Torys, but now the only real hope against the Torys is a rather lacklustre Labour party.
killer_clank
Member
Meadows said:
Just a rogue post on Twitter that caught on I think. Not true, but when it does happen, it'll be such huge news it's the sort of thing that would be embargoed, I reckon.
Cerebral Assassin
Member
radioheadrule83
Banned
Cerebral Assassin said:
god the anti-left-wing nutjob comments on there are nauseating. The "marxist muslim in the White House"... really? Really?!
JonathanEx
Member
On this "what if the Lib Dems split" thing, if Cameron really does go "fuck your Lords plans" and then Clegg goes "well you've used us enough, that's too many times now've fucked with us" and split - I'd have more respect for the Lib Dems for getting to an 'enough is enough' stage rather than sticking around saying 'PUBLIC INTEREST!!!!' in such a PR-managed way. Although there's oh if they split they'd be dead, personally I'd think more of them as a solid party if they stood up more.
Tom Elliott proving himself to be a tit yet again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsP21hKvgLY
No wonder the UUP is getting rubbished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsP21hKvgLY
No wonder the UUP is getting rubbished.
He's really the only main leader who really acts like that, he does his part no favours and came across no better being interviewed after http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4-ekB1DaM4
A pity really, the UUP used to be at the forefront of politics here, they've went from hero to zero in no time at all really.
A pity really, the UUP used to be at the forefront of politics here, they've went from hero to zero in no time at all really.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Meadows said:
Me too.
The time for celebrating if you wanted to celebrate was when she left office - or at the latest when Labour gained power in 1997 (and how hollow that new dawn now looks). It's done, it's over.
There is sometimes moral space for celebrating the death of a brutal dictator in office, but never for the death of an elected political leader long out of office. How would you feel about all this hate if she were your grandmother?
killer_clank
Member
kharma45 said:
What a fucking idiot.
frankie_baby
Member
phisheep said:
If maggie thatcher was my grandmother I'd have disowned her decades ago, she ruined so many people lives and Britain is still feeling the after effects of her 20 years on, her crushing of the miners devastated communities many of which have never recovered with thousands of ex miners confined to a life on disability benefits, the stupidly short sighted switch to generating electricity from natural gas has led to us now nearly running out of gas and being dependant on imports from Russia when we had enough coal to last us 400 years, her low income taxes were all funded by squandering north sea oil money and the proceeds of selling off pretty much everything we owned for nowhere near what it was worth, selling off council houses without building new ones has led now to waiting lists of like 2 million people, thatcher ruined our country and if people want to party when she dies then I hope they have a great time
Well, if celebrating the death of the most hateful and destructively ideological woman in British history makes me a monumental cunt, then I guess I'm the uncarved fanny of Queen Victoria's statue.Meadows said:
That is, if she's about to croak. Not getting my hopes up too much, since people like her tend to be immortal.
EDIT: Ah, bugger. Still waiting, then.
frankie_baby
Member
she might not have killed people but she did ruin more peoples livesmclem said:
zomgbbqftw
Banned
frankie_baby said:
How about Tony Blair?
Gordon Brown ruined more people's lives with his shitty banking reforms and regulation changes. Labour, over their 13 years in power, oversaw a much bigger decline in manufacturing than Thatcher and Major ever did. It's a fact that many lefties/Labourites like to ignore, but it doesn't make it less true.
I don't agree with many of the policies that Thatcher enacted, but the UK was facing oblivion with militant trade unionists and something had to be done. I am of the belief that the trade unions did a lot more damage to the cause of manufacturing than Thatcher ever did and they still do so, but that is for a different debate.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Sir Fragula said:
So the IMF were called in for no reason then?
UK manunfacturing was wholly uncompetitive with EU and Japanese manufacturing in terms of quality, efficiency and price for no reason then?
Look beyond tribalist reasons and see that the UK was called the 'sick man of Europe' for a reason...
blazinglord
Member
Personally, I kind of hope that the Liberal Democrats will bring down the government and force a general election. The Conservatives' core support is holding well, the Lib Dems already facing electoral annihilation would get further blame for bringing down the government during an economic crisis. The Labour party drifting and still in deficit denial. The Conservatives would probably get an overall majority next time round as single-digit poll leads can quickly vanish after six weeks campaigning, as seen in Canada and Scotland.JonathanEx said:
Heaven forbid people take responsibility for their own lives instead of expecting cradle to grave state handout. Accept it, the socialist experiment failed and the result in 1979 was mass inefficiency, rampant union barons holding the country to ransom and a crumbling state. It certainly wasn't a Britain any of us today, all collectively richer with more consumer choice, would recognise.frankie_baby said:
frankie_baby
Member
blazinglord said:
i'm thinking mainly of the thousands of miners that had worked for years at their jobs didnt know how to do anything else and ended up on incapacity benefit for the rest of their working lives and even if they had it in them to try and get another job the knock on effect of closing their towns mine has devastated the local economy and there is no other jobs for them to get
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
zomgbbqftw said:
I wouldn't go quite that far.
Militant unions did some damage in some industries to be sure, but the position we were in was where global/european competition was opening up more than any time since before the Great War - the devastating impact of the structures we were left with post WWII (particularly in manufacturing but also in other sectors - publishing, printing, chemical engineering and so on) would have come home to roost eventually, as it still is in some areas. But the essential problem was that much of our industry was uncompetitive as against the outside world - depending on your political stance you can blame that on unions/management/government or whatever but plain fact is whatever it was, and it probably varied from place to place and industry to industry, it wasn't competitive. Remember the times when it took three months to get a telephone installed? I do.
Nationalisation was part of the problem. Nationalised industries may work perfectly well in an isolated economy (except that they usually don't), but they are usually rotten at dealing with competition. To preserve the industry you either have to introduce some sort of competition or end up with the sort of national protectionism that these days we decry in other countries.
It is all too easy to say in hindsight that it should have been done another way, or slower, or more compassionately. But to an extent we had tried that during the Wilson/Heath/Callaghan years and that wasn't working either.
Margaret Thatcher's greatest legacy is that she sorted a whole lot of this stuff out quickly brutally and on an ideological mission. Her greatest mistake is that she did exactly that without bringing the rest of the people along with her. It's the ideological bit that seems to make people hate her, but any impression that without Thatcher things would have just gone on the same is (a) mistaken and (b) not very sensible, because what happened before wasn't all that hot either.
And yes, I did live though it. Born in the '50s and lived through the whole lot.
But it's unfair, I think, to blame the unions predominantly for this - or Thatcher for that matter. To a large extent it was a consequence of the opening up of markets with entry into the EEC, which was (from the UK point of view) a Heath/Wilson thing. And that would have happened anyway eventually.
EDIT: I ought to mention that the trade unions did a heck of a lot of good especially in the early days. There's no way I'm an opponent of unionism. But, and there's a really huge BUT, you ddid get a whole load of stupid extremes in some places.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
frankie_baby said:
You say that but propose no alternative solution. The one presented by the unions was to keep paying thousands of people to do nothing while Britain was spending well beyond its means.
Other states had stronger and more involved unions with better employee protections. The problem was a chronic lack of investment coupled with an unwillingness to fund effective retraining. Instead, the government resented organised labour on ideological grounds and simply *wanted* to fight. It served the interests of individual Tories to reduce union power.zomgbbqftw said:
Cerebral Assassin
Member
phisheep said:
No-one said thing would have(or even should have) been the same, but she used her power to crush any democratically elected opposition, simultaneously decrying the state whilst moving power towards the state.
She also failed in her obectives, Public spending went up under Thatcher, Unemployment went from 1mil(when the famous "Britain isn't working" poster was used) up to 3mil, growth was slow under her(even though the she had the benefit of the boom in North Sea gas), inflation was in double-digits near the end of her reign, the issues with the NHS & the railways can be laid at her door, theres more but I can't really be arsed.
Also it's amusing to see the hate for Blair & (to a lesser extent) Brown, they are the sons of Thatcher.
frankie_baby
Member
When thatcher came in we had about 1000 mines employing about 1000000 people today we have about 20 maybe less, yes reform was needed, yes some of them were uneconomic but 980 of them? That's just a joke, instead of trying to crush the miners union (which was her plan all along) anybody sensible should've tried to reform the coal industry as a profitable business and also put a ban on building gas fired power stations (as I said a stupid waste of a limited resource) which would've maintained the market for coal, even if just a quarter of the mines had been kept open that'd be 250,000 more jobs today (not counting lots more jobs indirectly)that just don't exist any more and could be the difference now between up being in the economic shit as we are and actually being solvent as a nationzomgbbqftw said:
radioheadrule83
Banned
zomgbbqftw said:
Thatcher might not be as reviled if she had been a tad bit more compassionate towards her enemies. She didn't know the meaning of compromise. Or the meaning of transition.
Privatising the family silver might have helped boost our productivity, and maybe industries like coal were destined to fall into interminable decline, but her changes happened so fast as to come at a cost for much of the country outside of London.
She didn't care much for the fact that her policies would leave so many people out of work, she expected that the market would just take care of it, and it never did. Her economic policies resulted in a boom of wealth, but in many communities the rich were simply made richer while the poor suffered. There are communities like those in the North East, or the South Wales valleys that have just never really recovered... two or three generations of unemployed, no industry, no jobs.
Her handling of the Union strikes was totally non-conciliatory, she waged it like a war, and even had MI5 bug certain people involved with the Unions (a flagrant misuse of UK intelligence). Had she formulated a plan to better restructure the British economy while taking care of people who had been the engine of British productivity in decades prior, maybe we wouldn't have had strikes that lasted a year.
Who can forget the unsympathetic arrogance of her Employment Secretary, Norman Tebbit, suggesting people in regions with no work should "get on their bike" and look elsewhere for it?
The highs of unemployment under her reign, localised around communities that were under-provided for, naturally led to ghettos, disillusionment and crime in some cities. She responded to that not by considering the reasons why that was happening, but by mobilising the police, and wielding them like a hammer of the state. Her government pioneered this sort of ugly crowd control we see used on protests today. She brought in stop and search / sus laws, that dubiously targeted ethnic minorities in these under-privileged communities, and those directly resulted in the race riots of 1981.
The people clashing with the police again in the later poll tax riots is an image that I think has endured in many peoples memories.
She took a similarly ruthless approach towards political prisoners of Northern Ireland, allowing scores of them to die on hunger strike. She exacerbated tensions in Northern Ireland in her time, arguably worsening British security by provoking the IRA.
If you're still wondering why scores of people hate her: all of that is compounded by the tales that generations outside of London have passed down to their kids, about how she was the bitch that took milk from schoolchildren, and ruined the country. Her successors in the John Major government were seen as an extension of her reign by those people. They were successors that:
- opposed the minimum wage, a calculated payment that would allow all employees to have a self-respecting minimum standard of living,
- privatised Railtrack - something Thatcher herself was reluctant about doing but later backed. And it was and still is a disaster.
Conservatives obviously love her, but the fact is she enjoyed the second worst approval rating of a post war Prime Minister. A state funeral that glorifies her will be seen by many in the UK as a poor use of public finances, especially following a Royal Wedding, at a time when we are all struggling. I think people, generally, liked John Major more - he was a nicer person, and I actually believe he had a decent and much less harmful legacy... if only there wasn't all that in-fighting over Europe eh?
blazinglord said:
Although i agree that extreme forms of socialism do not work as it causes industry and businesses to be inefficient and gives your population no reason to improve themselves e.t.c because there is no incentive to do so. However Thatchers neo liberal and capitalists ideals dont work either, as it causes what economic prosperity there is to stay in the hands of the few, thus causing no end of social and economic issues.
Therefore i believe you need a mixture of the two, or in laymans terms what social democratic parties advocate. Also if you dont agree with me then look at the Nordic model where social democratic parties have implemented far more generous welfare systems than what the UK has, as well as an effective education system. The result: high employment, high life expectancy, a skilled and flexible work force, strong economic growth and some of the highest standards of living in the world.