Margaret Thatcher statue NOT wanted in her home town

[Tetley]

Not the milk, that bloody woman, gotta say she did a good job on the Falklands

yer but she stopped mi school milk  ;D



(ps cars great thanks  :tiphat: )

[roboman]

Not the milk, that bloody woman, gotta say she did a good job on the Falklands

[Tetley]

Put it in the melt an chuck old milk snatcher in after it

Rob   o no not the school milk as well   ;D

[roboman]

Put it in the melt an chuck old milk snatcher in after it

[Tetley]

Thanks Nibbler  :tiphat:

Roger you make Jabba cats point to perfection ie Labour and the socalists in denial   ;) perhaps you can know tell us all how we would have progressed under the 40 rule of kinnock,foot,blair ,unions off the lead and folks like brother scargil running uk industry.

[nibbler]

Tetley,with regard to your question,it's difficult to say as each force had their own problems.
I served in Cambridgeshire.not known for it violence but I was also part of a Police support unit which travelled the country when other forces needed help.
I was involved in the Inner City riots the miners strike and the big anti nuclear demo's at Molesworth and Alcobury.(both in Cambs) It was certainly a time of civil unrest.
I have to say that although my force was not known for too much trouble I did work in a town that had a fair number of violent criminals (St,Neots)

It was always kept in the town though and although rough a female of any age could walk along the street without any fear.

I myself had no real problems as I always treated everyone in a way that I expected them to treat me.

You mentioned respect,as far as I am concerned respect has to be earned,the problem with young officers today is (imo) they put a uniform on and automaticly expect it.
Prior to joining the Police I was employed on the railway and as it was a closed shop had to join a union,and I will admit that I never ever went on strike as it was against all my principles but the union bosses called one for the most minute problem.
If other industries were subject to the same union antics I am not surprized they went the way they did and I say Amen to that.

Nibbler :tiphat:

[Roger]

Thatcher

This subject always produces heated debate.
She was without doubt a very opinionated person who did not take advice from anyone.
The result was that she came over as a strong Prime Minister, but it also meant that she often made decisions without regard to the consequences.

There is no doubt that she was the most unpopular Prime Minister who only stayed in office because of the splits and incompetence of the Labour opposition, and aided by the aftermath of the Falkland conflict, which history has shown was unnecessary.

The period of her reign was marked by economic chaos and social strife, facts often forgotten by her supporters.

ECONOMIC CHAOS
For all her reign she was in constant conflict with each of her Chancellors, with the Treasury, and with most economic advisers. At one point over 300 economists wrote an open letter opposing her policies, including Mervyn King the present Governor of the Bank of England.

In her first budget in 1980 she increased taxes and reduced government spending. The result was a doubling of unemployment to 3 million.
In the late 80's there was an economic boom, but it was accompanied by high inflation and high interest rates.
This boom was funded by a period of easy money, loans offered irrespective of the ability to make the repayments secured against an anticipated continual rise in property values.
A typical boom and bust policy.

Black Wednesday in 1992 saw the pound go into free fall, and it cost the treasury 3.3 billion to save it.

She cut funding to higher education, the life blood of a modern advanced economy.

She defeated the miners at huge financial cost, including the destruction of the coal industry, leaving Britain today having to import almost all its energy needs.

She de regulated most of the public services and sold off the utilities. The result was a lot of money made by a few people but no public control over ever rising fuel and other costs.
And with all this income, including the money from North Sea oil and gas, nothing was invested in our industrial base. Instead it was used to fuel a consumer boom.

One personal experience was when I was on the Transport Committee of Greater Manchester Council. We had a large well maintained fleet of buses, and regular contract for replacements with local industry (Leyland Bus and Northern Counties) and a network of maintenance garages at which we ran an active apprenticeship scheme, with a job at the end.
Then Thatcher de regulated. The result was operators coming into the market running clapped out buses taking the profitable routes, leaving no country services, no new buses being ordered and an end to apprenticeships.
The Thatcher legacy was the collapse of local industry and the destruction of apprenticeships.

SOCIAL UNREST
Remember St Paul's in Bristol in 1980
Brixton in 1981
Toxteth in 1981
Manchester in 1981
Handsworth in 1985
Broadwater Farm in 1985
I was a teacher in central Manchester in 1981. Many of my former pupils were involved in these riots. They left school with great ambition but soon found the YTS work placement ended after 6 months and there was no work after.
The result was anger and frustration, and the legacy in Britain today is a generation with no experience of worthwhile work and no useful industrial training.


COUNCIL HOUSE SALES
She made a lot of Council tenants rich, and on this I do not object.
But she insisted on taking the income into the treasury and prevented local councils using it to build more houses. The result was a collapse in social housing, forcing many people to take on mortgages they could not afford, pushing the cost of houses to astronomic levels, and forcing many into private renting, often leaving the taxpayer to pay subsidies to the private landlords., a problem the country is still facing today.

INTERNATIONALLY
She refused to support sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
She supported General Pinochet against his crimes in Chile.

THE LEGACY
When she left office in 1990 she left behind an inflation rate of 10%, the same as she inherited.
She left a country dependent on the financial sector, because manufacturing industry had collapsed, except for the car industry which was then in foreign ownership.
Apprenticeships were a memory of the past.
And a million families dependent on the taxpayer because they had been left behind by economic change.
A housing crisis.

The sad thing is that her successors have not had the guts or intelligence to sort out the mess she left behind.
They continued the consumer led boom, continued to de regulated financial services, did not invest quickly enough in industrial recovery, left the housing crisis to go un-resolved, thus leading to the inevitable economic melt down.

[Norm2]

Keyser to be fair they were diffrent times and i think employers & employee,s have moved on together and now in most cases work in`partnership always looking at the bigger picture certainly in the private sector.

:tiphat:

Tetley - you paraphrase my post @ 9.30am. We are where we are!!!

[webejamin]

More wise words keyser soze and hotphot, we must be of the same blood group :tiphat:

[hotphot]

As I recall during the Mrs T reign it was all going to be the land of milk and honey. North sea oil revenues, selling off of British Gas, Telecoms, railways  to name just a few. The great council house sale and the 'promise' that everyone who owned their home would be a millionaire by 2000. Yes, I worked in the Civil Service sector undertaking weapon testing prior to the Falkland conflict. Came back from a three week trial to discover that my establishment was being privatized. Thanks a lot Mrs T. And yes I was also chairman of the Union. However in my experience most unions try to work with management for the good and protection of all sides, taking industrial action and giving up wages is not a step taken lightly. In regard to Labour I would not agree with everything they do, An illegal war in Iraq and the debacle that is Afghanistan costing avoidable loss of life and billions in treasure. The one thing I can say about Mrs T is that she can be likened to marmite.   

[Tetley]

Keyser to be fair they were diffrent times and i think employers & employee,s have moved on together and now in most cases work in`partnership always looking at the bigger picture certainly in the private sector.

:tiphat:

[keyser soze]

don't misunderstand me Tetley, the unions in general were an arrogant nightmare. However, their arrogance was certainly matched by "the management" of the countries major industries

The unions needed to br reigned in, as in the print unions etc etc but not destroyed.

unfortunately, neither side wanted to see a middle ground

[Tetley]

To be honest keyser your post pardon the pun is a bit of a red hearing  :)

im a Hull lad and it was the labour government that finished the fishing by backing down to iceland in 1976. i was at school in the arly 70,s and still owne a house on the banks of the humber,i can rember all the side winder trawlers going out and coming back to unload and then the bigger ships mid 70,s i also rember the bigger ships been towed in with the front ends off after a scirmish.

ref manufacturing... my favourite sublect and vocation

i served my time at Priestmans hull i can rember the mangment bringing in new japanease machine centres that put 3 turners and 2 millers out of work,i also rember the cnc burners coming inand co2 programable welding all in the name of progress and all lead to redundancy,i also rember our reps were the co was stuggling to compeat with the asian manfactors telling how they attended plant sales exabtions and how the jap excavotor sellers would lay megga money mink coats under the machines to prove there were no oil leaks,hence pristmans eventualy went as the manufacturing fire from the east took hold. again another hobby of mine is vintage brit bikes / bikes,i have a video of the norton triumph chairman po po ing the japs bikes,the fact that a honda 125 twin could match a brit 350 at less mony and more reliable electrics seems to have been lost and the rest as the saying goes is history.

now for todays manufatoring as always its down to cost the uk is what it is the high tec stuff we still turn out but im afraid you small low tec operations will never be able to undercut the far east.... most countrys have come to terms with this hence most thing are made in china even if there main assemble is elswer

and all the above was pre Thatcher.

as for coal... well its stil down there and who knowes what the boffins in whitehall have lined up for it.

:tiphat:

[rt21]

I had great misgivings about some of the things that she did at the time and also felt that some her actions led to the unnecessary loss of jobs and sections of industry.

However, one should also never forget the role of some of the trade unions in the loss of jobs and parts of industry. They also had a self destruct button.


Richard

[webejamin]

Thatcher was never going to lose. She just should have known when to stop and how far to go thats all.
"What if" mean nothing, "what is" is important and matters today.
Very good topic keyser soze, your last post say's it all.
I would still love to have her statue in my garden :) I mean it :tiphat: but if I cant have it and it goes to Basildon, I shall go there to see it (if I'm quick enough) ;D

[keyser soze]

Tetley

i think that if thatcher lost her battle against the unions it would have only postponed the inevitable -see ussr

My pnly objection to thatcher was that she destroyed an industry that could have been modernised

as another poster said the uk is built on coal with huge reserves and no need to import it

Also it was regrettable that she sold off the utilities and allowed the uk fishermen to sell off their boats so other countries could plunder the north sea

[Norm2]

/quote]

There are a great number of very informative posts - not just ones asking for idol speculation.

[gus-lopez]

[quote author=nibbler link=topic=72003.msg380125#msg380125 date=1360826717


also please a .. question for the rest of the panel... if the trade unions had have won there 80,s battles with Thatcher were would the UK  have been today.... socalist Utopia ? caring state were Bevins cradle to the grave looked after is policy ? an even bigger big brother bigger bust state ?
a UK  with more sympathy for the USSR and the doctrins of comunism ?
thanks  :tiphat:

Who knows and who cares- we are where we are. It's just speculation and personal opinion and a complete waste of time thinking about it - boring!!!!!

Then you could say that about the complete thread, or any thread for that matter ?

[webejamin]

Good post Norm2. :tiphat:

[Norm2]

[quote author=nibbler link=topic=72003.msg380125#msg380125 date=1360826717


also please a .. question for the rest of the panel... if the trade unions had have won there 80,s battles with Thatcher were would the UK  have been today.... socalist Utopia ? caring state were Bevins cradle to the grave looked after is policy ? an even bigger big brother bigger bust state ?
a UK  with more sympathy for the USSR and the doctrins of comunism ?
thanks  :tiphat:

Who knows and who cares- we are where we are. It's just speculation and personal opinion and a complete waste of time thinking about it - boring!!!!!

[Tetley]

I think it might be obvious that I was a Police Officer from some of my posts and I served 27yrs. 1974/2001 :clap:
Nibbler :tiphat:

Nibbler just out of intrest... as a cop under Thatcher do you think there was less crime ? i never had any shop shutters until 1992 and i had my first alarm fitted in 1989.

do you also think there was more respect for the police then   ? ... ie a young thug today  taking the xxxx on mobile phone to wind the cop up into giving him a pension loosing slap or mouthing off in the back of the sprinter telling everybody abought his / her rights or was the non respect just as bad back then.

:tiphat:


also please a .. question for the rest of the panel... if the trade unions had have won there 80,s battles with Thatcher were would the UK  have been today.... socalist Utopia ? caring state were Bevins cradle to the grave looked after is policy ? an even bigger big brother bigger bust state ?
a UK  with more sympathy for the USSR and the doctrins of comunism ?
thanks  :tiphat:

[nibbler]

I think it might be obvious that I was a Police Officer from some of my posts and I served 27yrs. 1974/2001 :clap:
Nibbler :tiphat:

[Tetley]

just out of intrest posters.... what did you all do for a job in the UK  i was in  heavey enginnering as a kid then self employed the reason i ask is it may explain how Mrs T  affected folks in diffrent ways ie have we got ony public sector workers,union officals,self employed on this dabate ?   :tiphat:

[webejamin]

Working class is just that, the people that have to work for a living and can be hired and fired. There are a lot of people that traditionally see themselves as middle class, like shop keepers and small business people but they are working class really. One thing they have in common is, that at the drop of a hat they can all be broke and jobless.
I've never said that everyone should vote Labour and yes the class terms are dated as far as the working classes are concerned, but just try telling that to the ruling classes ;D now there's another one ;D
I wonder how many miners voted for their fate? just hear the cops squealing now!
We can debate it till the cows come home, but it won't change a thing. People in the UK are only just begining to learn the meaning of squeeze and it's going to remind them just where their place is in society :'( and who puts them there :'(

Still a good debate ;D  :tiphat: 

[Tetley]

I also fail to see how Brother Blair payed 375k tax  on 10 mills worth of earnings been a true to his values.... both the torys and labour are same xxxx diffrent day for most.... hence the lack of intrest in voteing.

Jabba Cat made the best point so far.... there is still plenty of money in the UK  floating around and the only people whom rember and debate Thatcher is our generation  ie the one since the war that has taken the most out of UK PLC.

as for Jabbas other comment on Labours  self deniel of never been in power and its all the old eaton toffs that nxckerd the UK spot on again .

and as for the working man voteing tory... it simple... there seen as lower cost to the taxpayer.

[bobthelook]

I've never understood how working class people can see theselves as tories. I know so many people that have voted tory,   

Right so all "working class" should vote Labour then?! Anyway who do you label as working class?  Working class is a ridiculous label these days as it is meaningless. Are you working class because you have manual work or is it how much you earn?  Is a plumber working class?  I can assure you that my local plumber certainly isnt , he is well educated and extremely well off financially. It means nothing nowadays and people that use such labels are living in the past. There is certainly a widening gap of the haves and have nots. Couples both in work  with low interest rates on mortgages and little savings are doing extremely well whereas if only the husband has full time work or retired with a bit saved times can be difficult. Haves and have nots are no longer class related and nor is their political inclination IMO.

[webejamin]

I find it quite strange that, if your against the tories you are a communist, I supose it goes back to the old "reds under the bed" era. It's a weak reply to strong arguement, a last resort. For the life of me, I've never understood how working class people can see theselves as tories. I know so many people that have voted tory, only to end up out of a job, or their business going to the wall, just like everyone else, but, "there's nowt so Queer as folk" :tiphat:

It's been a good debate, with no tempers lost nor foul feelings. Thank you :tiphat: :)   

[gus-lopez]

She was responsible for the Falklands war by removing one frigate that patrolled there giving Argentina that Britain was no longer interested in the islands. All those deaths and extreme expense since.

I must admit that was a mistake. We should have used tactical nuclear weapons & I hope that Cameron has pointed that out to Cristina in case she wants another go.

[Duffs]

Orsinosouth: You forget that Maggie described Basildon as 'little Moscow down the Thames' before she withdrew most of the Services from the area.

She was responsible for selling the country assets, a one off. That's why we now rely on our necessities from other countries.

She was responsible for the Falklands war by removing one frigate that patrolled there giving Argentina that Britain was no longer interested in the islands. All those deaths and extreme expense since.

[jabba the cat]

Talk to any socialist or Labour supporter in the Uk labour have never been in goverment so you cant blame Labour for anything its always someones else's money or mistakes.
I have just come back from the UK, recession what recession every where people spending and half the worlds population cleaning cars on every road/street.
Most wouldnt know who Maggie was anyway. :tiphat:

[webejamin]

Getting a mortgage in the 60/70s was not an easy task, because there were some very sensible restrictions on lending. Most mortgages were from building societies at a rate lower than the bank rate.
The GLC were allowing their houses to be sold off long before the "right to buy" They would even give you a mortgage, as would other London councils.
It was only after Thatcher got the population in the mortgage mode that the banking system was given a free hand and interest rates started to fly.
The banks couldn't lose, the stock market soared, and the yuppies were born "LOADSAMONEY" remember? reposessions, the begining of the end of a great nation, you know the rest, Lawson, well, need I go on?
Remember this, The rich are still getting richer, no matter how bad things are, or how hard you struggle, they are raking it in. "LOADSAMONEY" :tiphat:

[bobthelook]

, she created a situation where she could take on the unions on her own terms, first thing she did was give the police a big pay rise so she had them on her side. She was responsible for council houses being sold off

Absolutely! She was smart to take the Unions on from a position of strength (unlike that dimwit giant egoed Scargill). The Unions had a history of causing trouble by dictating to the country their excessive demands and the pathetic Socialists simpered up to them as they needed their votes.  As far as police attacking miners - m ore like the other way round -  the flying pickets restricted any freedom of the individual to choose to work or not - they were bullying innocent people trying to get to work. Council estates - certainly in the Manchester area were in many cases dumps where there was seemingly little pride as  is often the case where  people rent  - they dont care about the property or garden as they don't own them. Look at these places today they are a world apart with people taking pride in ownership. Maggie wasn't perfect but she was a true leader unlike the wimps we have today. Not sure I like the idea of wasting thousands of £s on a marble statue of any PM but I do think that it is a little sad that Grantam have rejected it - whether they like it or not it is part of their heritage and who knows a few tourists might visit bringing some needed business.

[pagan]

Tetley I can remember in the 80's when my kids were teenagers they were inundated with literature from the banks/ building
societies offering loans /mortgages that would have been impossible for them to manage and but for the advice of myself and
my wife they could well have fallen prey to. Again this was part of Thatcher's society!!

[bigbaz]

ive got a headache

[Tetley]

O and wile were on the case

Bro Arthur... did he put the strike to ballot....NO .... did he split the union as a result ...Yes  (udm )

how many years have passed since the  terrible strike that layed waste to mineing comunitys.... 29 years ish.... how many goverments have we had since whom have throwne money into UK  manufacturing in the area,s.....an re built them.....?

:tiphat: