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Robin9 · September 7th 15, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by

In article ,
(Robin9) wrote:

tim.....;150017 Wrote:
"Robin9" wrote in message
...-

e27002 aurora;149992 Wrote:-

Here we differ. The years of tepid socialism were culminating in
piles of garbage in the street, a growing rat population, and the dead
were unburied. Can you imagine how this added to the emotional load
of the families and friends of the recently decease?

Margaret Hilda Baroness Thatcher was raised up to restore our United
Kingdom. She achieved so much before the cowards in the tory party
had their palace coup.

This included trades union legislation and the defeat of Scargill and
co. Decent people were making a living again and the UK's national
esteem was being restored.-

The refuse not being collected and the dead lying unburied were not
normal, consistent features of life in the 1970s.

Thatcher did not restore the U. K. and because of her, huge numbers of
decent people were unable to make a proper living.

I was lucky. I was already a home-owner before 1979. In the 1970s,
before Thatcher, normal people on normal incomes could aspire to owning
their own home. Thatcher destroyed that dream. She created a housing
shortage and then, at the behest of her financial backers who could not
compete, she killed off building societies who dominated the mortgage
market. I feel sorry for today's young people, most of whom have given
up dreaming of their own home.-

What utter nonsense

whatever Thatcher do, or did not do wrong, creating a housing shortage
was not one of them,

That came much later (mostly on the watch of Mt T Blair)

You're obviously qualified to talk about utter nonsense.

Thatcher made it illegal for local authorities to spend the money they
received for council houses in building new homes. If you really believe
that has nothing to do with today's housing shortage, you are fantasising.

During Thatcher's period in office, house prices rose so sharply that in
the London area, it became the major subject of conversation. Prices rise
when there is a shortage.

The problem has got much worse since Thatcher's time. Arguably the
ridiculous speculator-driven housing market is a product of Gordon Brown
taxing pension funds so people can't otherwise save for their old age.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

I think everyone - even diehard Labour supporters - will agree that the
situation has become even more serious since Thatcher. (For what it's worth,
I dislike Labour even more than I dislike Tories, and I think Tony Blair was an
even worse Prime Minister than Thatcher) However a balanced perspective on
the entire housing problem must be based on facts, not on tribal loyalty.

During the 1950s home ownership increased enormously and the construction
industry achieved completion figures that put today's industry to shame. In
some years they built more than 400,000 houses. Today we can't manage even 300,000.

When Labour came into office in October 1964, they set about clearing the
remaining slums and hugely increasing council housing. I've always suspected
there was a lot of corruption involved but the indisputable fact is that
Harold Wilson's otherwise hopeless Government did bring about a vast
improvement in housing, in both quality and quantity. This improvement
was mainly achieved by building on a large scale both houses to
buy and council houses.

Thatcher's decision to prevent local authorities from building new council
accomodation meant that one half of the supply of additional housing stock
came to an end. Right wing dogmatists concocted a silly theory: the private
housing market would finance the construction of new houses to rent in the
private sector, standards would rise and everything would be fine. It didn't
work out like that at all.

That neither John Major nor Tony Blair took the growing housing problem
seriously does not absolve Margaret Thatcher from her share of the blame.