Quote:
Originally Posted by e27002 aurora
On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 18:19:36 +0200, Robin9
wrote:
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.
The pertinent word there was "culminating". It would take a book to
describe the bad legislation, wildcat strikes, and corruption leading
up to 1979.
Remember Leyland Vehicles merging into BMH and the resulting BL and
the wholesale destruction of the domestic auto industry.
Thank goodness Jaguar and Land Rover survived.
There were the many, many great British Companies whose products and
profitability declined until they died or were sold off to foreign
corps. I sadly saw the Decca Group decline.
The Wilson and Heath years saw desperate attempts to gain control of
the economy with dumb policies like "Prices and Incomes". Not to
mention Capital Controls. Remember the GBP50 max to spend outside the
UK. This hurt the working man's family on vacation in Spain. It sure
didn't affect the very wealthy who had means of taking their wealth
out of the UK.
There were the ludicrous tax rates. Having relieved the working man
of his income at source they then had to subsidise his poverty with
low rents etc.
We lost the close friendship of so many Commonwealth allies.
Thatcher did not restore the U. K.
One begs to differ. I was overseas during many of the Baroness's
years in Office. Respect for the UK rose tangibly.
and because of her, huge numbers of
decent people were unable to make a proper living.
There was pain in the early Thatcher years as we transitioned back to
a real economy. The days of subsidising stupidity were over.
During the middle Thatcher years there was ample good work for those
willing to use there gumption.
We lost a lot of ground in the latter years because the lard ass
Lawson decided to prepare the UK for the Euro by tracking the deutsche
mark. In so doing he induced inflation and crashed the economy.
We can all be grateful the Baroness saved the UK from the Euro.
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
My experience was quite the contrary. My local authority had refused
to sell me my council house. The Baroness's government's legislation
forced their hand. The GBP I put down on that house may have been the
best money I ever spent.
Several years later I sold the same house for about 125% profit and
was able to buy a delightful ranch in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
You omit to mention that the housing boom was followed by a slump. I
sold a house in 1997 that I had bought in 1989 for the same price. In
the interim it had dropped by GPB10,000.
then, at the behest of her financial backers who could not compete, she
killed off building societies who dominated the mortgage market.
IIRC the Building Societies tried to convert themselves into Banks.
For the most part it did not go well. Strangely the US Savings and
Loans faded at about the same time.
I feel
sorry
for today's young people, most of whom have given up dreaming of their
own
home.
Three of my four sons own homes. My oldest son owns two. My youngest
son, a bus driver, owns a decent semi.
Now, about that County Line. . . : |
British Leyland died under Thatcher, not before Thatcher. In the 1970s the
Government had taken a stake in BL which Thatcher sold off to her beloved
British Aerospace. I don't recall the financial details but, knowing Thatcher, I
imagine she sold it for less than its real value, thus cheating the British people
and rewarding her friends.
The fact that the innumerable strikes and stoppages in the 1970s did not kill
off British industrial companies proves that the underlying strength of those
companies must have been considerable. It was only after 1979 that these
companies, many of which exported on a large scale, went to the wall. The
inescapable truth is that British industry could contend with strikes, three day
weeks and stop/go economic strategies but could not survive the credit
squeeze, high interest rates and high value of the pound that Thatcher
and her dim-witted, uncomprehending Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe brought in.
It should always be remembered that most of the companies that went under
during the Thatcher/Howe period were making a theoretical profit. They were
not trading at a loss but they ran out of money. Michael Edwardes, the boss
of British Leyland, commenting on how high interest rates were killing British
manufacturing, said it would be better for the U. K. if North Sea oil was left
under ground!
Thatcher of course ignored him. She needed North Sea oil revenues to finance
her tax cuts for the rich and unemployment benefits for the growing number
of people out of work because the now much reduced U. K. economy was not
generating the same tax returns it had in the 1970s. So while Norway used its
North Sea oil revenues both to finance a huge investment in infrastructure
and to set aside a future investment fund, our North Sea oil revenues were
frittered away and at the end of the 1970s one of Thatcher's legacies was a
country with a crumbling infrastructure.
Your comment about subsidising rents is comically relevant to today's
Thatcher created situation where rents are astronomical and have to be
subsidised by the tax payer: about £23 billion this year, I believe.
I note your confession that you did not feel up to buying your property in the
open market as the rest of us did. Instead you waited until Thatcher flogged
it to you at an enormous discount, then sold it at a vast profit and cleared off
to America. An authentic Thatcher idolator!