Margaret Thatcher P.m.

[ilw]

I'm not old enough to remember and i don't know enough to properly judge any of these things, so i won't try. Also i come from London which of course wasn't affected by the pit closures and subsequent unemployment, but i would like to pick up on one point that u made about subsidisation Rat Faced:

the money losers..( eg Coal, Steel, Post Office etc)

I agree that certain industries will almost inevitably make a loss and in the interests of the public good may need to be subsidised, however, in the list you give above I would say only the post office is really necessary. The steel produced in britain is the best in the world, however, producing lots of high quality expensive steel is stupid when in most cases cheap crappy steel will do and will therefore be preferred by companies. Coal was the most famous aspect of Maggies era, I think its a famous quote from the era (misquoted no doubt on my part)
"Britain produces the cheapest deep mined coal in the world" this statement was used to defend why the pits shouldn't be shut down, however, the equally famous response is that many other countries had coal nearer the surface which could be extracted much more cheaply it doesn't really make sense to waste money on digging up expensive coal.

Basically my point is that coal and steel are unnecessary production areas UNLIKE public services eg Water, electricity, post office etc, so whereas i can fully understand the logic behind subsidising critical services, i don't understand subsidising a redundant and uncompetitive industry. It seems to me that subsidising such an industry is basically the same as paying the miners unemployment benefits. I don't know numbers so I don't know which is cheaper, paying the benefits or paying them to dig up coal, perhaps it would be cheaper to employ the miners, but bear in mind that they were having to go very deep to find coal, indicating that coal supplies were severely diminished and therefore costs incurred would be rising quickly and the subsidies would have to keep rising accordingly. Also once hte coal had gone the miners would be out of work anyway, I don't know the status of the mine shafts in the mid 80's (ie how much coal left etc) so i dunno how long in the future this would have been, but perhaps a gradual phase out of mines would have been a good idea.
Thats all for now, I'm sure i had another point but i've forgotten it cos its 1am and i've been up since 5am this morning I'll make a post tomorrow about the travesty of what privatisation and the power 'market' have done to the future of our Electricity supply.

NB I am not a Maggie supporter and i think the brutality with which she enforced the changes she made was horrific, however, i agree with the principles of some of what she did ( just not the implementation).

[chalice]

I felt the effects of her regime from troubled Belfast and to have just a winter of discontent would have been a glorious summer for us.
She and others in her sect magnified the misery in this country to biblical proportions (or Shakespearian if my metaphors are faithful).
A succession of draconian, doddering Home Secretaries and Thatchers' rigid upper lips presented Ireland as backward Bogmen (prompt for wisecracks).
Since her departure there has been relative calm here. She exacerbated and encouraged an unnecessary 30 years of slaughter. It's unforgivable and difficult to be objective when we've all been marred in some degree by it. I include the British public in this. In the 20th Century no-one should have had to die for the Empire.
Incidentally, I met Billy Bragg in Belfast the day Thatcher resigned.
He strode out onto the stage with a copy of The Belfast Telegraph which proclaimed "Thatcher Out!!" screaming "Rejoice, Rejoice".
He proceeded with a rendition of "Hey ho, the witch is dead" from The Wizard Of Oz.
Comparable, for me anyway, to the dissolution of the Berlin Wall.

[Biggles]

Although I am largely cynical about politicians, I do recall a small Whoo hoo as I heard the news on the radio.

She came to power quoting St Francis and then set about creating division and mis-trust in every walk of life (even her own party). I do not think history will regard the 80s as a high point in British social life. It was one of the most depressing and socially divisive periods I can remember. The 60s swung and the 70s were weird but the 80s were Yuppies and 4 million plus unemployed. It cost the country almost everything it had to sustain that level of unemployment - and for what?... to break a few Unions? I still maintain she was loopy - a documentary detailing her removal from Office highlighted her unique perspective on life.

I would like to point out that I don't really do demonisation of individuals. No one is all bad (no not even whoever you have just thought of; although they may have chosen to be mostly bad) and simply getting things wrong doesn't preclude the possibility that they may have some insights with regards certain issues. Margaret Thatcher did identify weaknesses in the way Britain did things and she rightly identified that ordinary working people had aspirations to improve their lot. But the cure unfortunately was worse than the illness.

Major may have been dull but he did set about trying to get a bit of unity in the country (as he said "Im not really into the vision thing").

Now we have "our Tone" who sadly is into the vision thing.

[Rat Faced]

Originally posted by ilw@6 September 2003 - 00:07
I'm not old enough to remember and i don't know enough to properly judge any of these things, so i won't try. Also i come from London which of course wasn't affected by the pit closures and subsequent unemployment, but i would like to pick up on one point that u made about subsidisation Rat Faced:

the money losers..( eg Coal, Steel, Post Office etc)

I agree that certain industries will almost inevitably make a loss and in the interests of the public good may need to be subsidised, however, in the list you give above I would say only the post office is really necessary. The steel produced in britain is the best in the world, however, producing lots of high quality expensive steel is stupid when in most cases cheap crappy steel will do and will therefore be preferred by companies. Coal was the most famous aspect of Maggies era, I think its a famous quote from the era (misquoted no doubt on my part)
"Britain produces the cheapest deep mined coal in the world" this statement was used to defend why the pits shouldn't be shut down, however, the equally famous response is that many other countries had coal nearer the surface which could be extracted much more cheaply it doesn't really make sense to waste money on digging up expensive coal.

Basically my point is that coal and steel are unnecessary production areas UNLIKE public services eg Water, electricity, post office etc, so whereas i can fully understand the logic behind subsidising critical services, i don't understand subsidising a redundant and uncompetitive industry. It seems to me that subsidising such an industry is basically the same as paying the miners unemployment benefits. I don't know numbers so I don't know which is cheaper, paying the benefits or paying them to dig up coal, perhaps it would be cheaper to employ the miners, but bear in mind that they were having to go very deep to find coal, indicating that coal supplies were severely diminished and therefore costs incurred would be rising quickly and the subsidies would have to keep rising accordingly. Also once hte coal had gone the miners would be out of work anyway, I don't know the status of the mine shafts in the mid 80's (ie how much coal left etc) so i dunno how long in the future this would have been, but perhaps a gradual phase out of mines would have been a good idea.
Thats all for now, I'm sure i had another point but i've forgotten it cos its 1am and i've been up since 5am this morning I'll make a post tomorrow about the travesty of what privatisation and the power 'market' have done to the future of our Electricity supply.

NB I am not a Maggie supporter and i think the brutality with which she enforced the changes she made was horrific, however, i agree with the principles of some of what she did ( just not the implementation).

Some things are needed to be subsidised, not for short term economic reasons, but as history shows...for long term reasons.

In the 80's a lot of our Power Stations were Coal Powered, therefore she was making the country reliant on imports for our energy.

Once a deep shaft mine is shut down, it cannot be reopened...water, gas and the way geology works makes it impossible. Its estimated that we have 300 years worth of coal in the UK..against 15 years of Oil and Gas.....you work out the economics of it..........but not with todays technology taken into account, remember this was the 80s.


We have 2 world wars and numerous "conflicts" to show why some things should never rely on imports...even if it saves a little money (and it was a little money when she came to power, Post Office (inc BT) made enough to subsidise Coal and Steel).

Imports are great when it comes to choosing a new Car or TV, but no country should rely on imports for its survival, which is the position she put us into.

Other basic things that needed subsidising paid for themselves...eg Steel.

By subsidising this, there was less subsidy required for Shipbuilding, Car Industry and Rail...to name a few.
And on a purely economic front....ever hear of a loss leader?

We subsidised Steel, and that wasnt money down the drain....Once it left British Steel and went to our (now almost defunct) manufacturing base eg Sheffield..the world demand for the products more than outwayed the loss at the start of the process, in the natonal economic figures.

Dont believe me? Look at the National Deficit while she was in power, and how it plummets as she systematically destroyed our Industrial Heritage.