https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VlcjyNwA10 An interesting documentary that debunks many middle-class champagne socialists ideology.
Miss Thatcher was a true psychopath. A real witch who most likely would float if she would've ever be put in chains and push into the sea. A horrible person who hated miners, milk and football. Big boo.
At least she loved Britain whereas so many of your Prime Ministers hate their own country and are trying to destroy it and make it into the third world.
And we elected her time and time again because she made UK great again. Whilst at the same time you had Olaf Palme who was a real (*)(*)(*)(*) and a traitor and got the end he deserved.
Yes she and her counterpart Regan have bedeviled humanity and the growing poverty we are witnessing all over the world is caused by the joint wicked endeavors of these two devils in the guise of humans. - - - Updated - - - She made UK, the UK of the few great and the UK of the many small.
except that pverty is constantly diminishing. Though luck there - - - Updated - - - No she enabled many working class people to buy their own homes and make somethig of themselves
Yes thank goodness Mrs-T happended. Before her revolution Britain was a Country run by the Unions, its was on its back and going down the tubes. Since here free market revolutions we are a Country where anyone can improve their condition through hard work & imagination. Only the lazy, ignorant fools that want free State handouts would argue argue a return to a Britain before Thatcher.
Actually social mobility has declined in the UK since the seventies and the establishment who Thatcher took on are back in power. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts
Working class mobility has always been in the hands of the working class themselves and should never be blamed on anyone else. The EU & the Schengen agreement has led to many lazy working class having an excuse for not being able to take advantage of work opportunities.
If it has always been in the hands of the working class then Thatcher could not of improved it, as they must take the blame for failure , they must also take the credit for success.
Mrs T made the working class understand that their own future was in their own hands. Under the old British 40's - 70's idea of the post war consensus there was the idea of the State looking after people from the cradle to the grave, which as, not only makes me sick ... but also handicaps the working class. The idea of being born into the class and getting a job that your parent had & living in the same type of house that your parent had was the only thing that children of the 40's-70's ever had was. It was socialist slavery.. you could never expect more than what you were born into. The Thatcher, liberal market revolution gave the British was the ide they could improve their lot. What I find most hateful about the prehistoric Corbynites & the middle-class Guardian readers are that they want to see a return (although mostly ignorantly unknowing) a return to those bad old days. Thank God most of us Brits have firmly rejected those ideas. What we need in the future is to get rid of the socialist idea of tax credits & other State ideas of controlling the masses. A state should look after our defence & the postal service & NOTHING else.
The idea, but not the practical opportunity. That's the problem with that kind of pure 'it's in your own hands' thinking - it makes the mistake of underestimating the disadvantages of the situations some people start off with compared with the advantages that some others have over them. Some might escape 'the poverty trap' despite that, of course, but in reality only the exceptional and the exceptionally lucky - while it is theoretically possible, the practical chances of doing so are almost nil because of the disadvantages of being 'born into the wrong circumstances' and the lack of recognition of what is needed to increase real opportunity for such people. Indeed, real motivation and hope has to go hand in with that too - if you see the people around you striving and struggling but still getting pretty much nowhere, it's not hard to understand the human instinct to think 'what's the point of trying that hard anyway'. The difference between the 'neo-Thatcherite' way and the 'neo-Socialist' way is a deep ideological one of whether the poor should be 'helped' or should 'help themselves'. The end result is the same, though - either they are constantly dependent on 'help' and don't strive to 'help themselves', or they are unable to 'help themselves' no matter how hard they strive because they don't have the practical tools and opportunities, so end up reliant on the 'help' anyway (or ultimately dead, if the 'help' is taken away in order to 'encourage them', as is happening now - it's the wrong way to approach the problem). The answer, of course, is investing in the means to improve the long term opportunities - give people the practical means to allow them real, practical opportunity to 'help themselves' by striving, and give them encouragement to do that rather than vicious punishment if and when they don't succeed in doing it when they don't really have much change of succeeding anyway. Education, infrastructure, equality, health, social justice, and so on - all these are important parts of the equation. The reduction of the ability of the already advantaged to 'lock out' those who don't share their advantages is another part - ensuring all 'markets' are properly competitive, for example, and not effectively controlled by private interest, monopolies and cartels as much as they are not effectively controlled by government itself (as the socialists would have it). For socialists it's all about 'redistribution of wealth'. For Thatcherites and their ilk it's all about 'the underserving poor' being poor 'because they haven't worked hard enough'. Both are equally wrong, and both equally therefore miss what needs to be done to improve 'social mobility' - it's all about encouraging (and in some ways ultimately ensuring) real, practical 'equality of opportunity' for everyone. That's a long term process, of course, and not an easy thing to do, and people do have to be supported while the process occurs, but if it's not what is being thought about, it's never likely to happen.
No there is a difference between the 'underserving poor' and the 'deserving poor'. And since the socialst policy of education that has removed the grammer school system there is no longer any excuse for anyone to achieve good grades based upon their own ability. So if people can't educate themselves into a better circumstance it is no one else's fault except themselves. There are of course many examples of those "common" barrow boys from Essex that made good, since the Thatcher revolution that made good that disproves the idea that there isn't an even playing field. If you don't or can't achieve then it is your own fault & why should a state give their taxes to those that can't be bothered to make the effort?
Are you seriously trying to suggest that the level of education and support available in an inner city school is equal to that offered at Eton? Or even that a kid in a tough inner city school has the exact same opportunity, same quality of teaching, same facilities, etc., as someone from leafy upper-middle class suburbia? There's a reason why parents often try to get their kids into particular schools by any means that they can - not all schools are equal. Not all kids can get into the better schools even if they try, and even if they don't try, how can that be regarded as the fault of the child who suffers as a result? Not to mention the issues of peer pressure that come along with living in 'poor' areas with a history of hopelessness, poor services and infrastructure, etc., etc. - history that goes back generations, and is deeply ingrained in the mindset of the population. It ain't the fault of a kid who is born into that scenario - they don't choose not to have better off parents, friends and neighbours who give them more of a sense of hope that trying their best really can reap rewards for them. It's not equal at the moment, even within the state school system - nowhere near. Areas with a long history of deeply ingrained poverty do require extra support (in education, but also in other things) to bring them up to a standard that doesn't disadvantage kids growing up there. The last government made some improvements in educational funding via the Pupil Premium, but that's nowhere near enough to address the issues. Yes, some 'Essex barrow boys' made it, but they were the exceptional ones, and also had the advantage of proximity to London. What if those boys had been growing up in inner city Liverpool in the 1980's? Or in the South Wales Valleys, for example, where all they saw around them was no work, no hope of work, and their communities and local environments (and even their schools) just being left to literally decay around them as everything was closing down due to the lack of primary employment that had supported the entire region's economy for generations (add to that obvious level of the sense of bitterness there at the time - it could perhaps be argued that it was wrong, of course, but it can't really be argued that it didn't exist, or didn't matter within those communities, or was in any way the fault of the children who were effected by it). It would have made things that much harder for them - that's the point - their practical opportunities would have been significantly reduced. And what of those who aren't 'exceptional' - not everyone is suited to being an entrepreneurial businessperson anyway, and not everyone will be 'rich' - it's about them having a fair opportunity to exploit the natural talents that they have in order to make a decent living for themselves. It's not about 'equal outcomes', it's about every person having the opportunity to succeed in making a decent living according to their own efforts and talents. I don't disagree that social mobility did begin to improve somewhat for some in the 1980s, and that was a good thing, but it's still a very, very long way from being where it should be in terms of a reasonably level playing field for everyone. Many, many children are born into circumstances that massively disadvantage them from the start. That isn't in any way their fault, but it is them who will suffer the effects, and in doing so they will perpetuate those effects for generation after generation until someone finally gets to grips with the problems and begins the process of breaking the cycle for those communities.
Thatcher's legacy was wound up yesterday. Britain's last steel plant shut down a few weeks ago, and yesterday, Kellingly, the last deep coal mine closed it's doors despite the fact that a coal-fired power station complex is still operating less than five miles away.
It was because imported coal is much cheaper. I reckon that as soon as our last mine is closed the countries whose coal we buy will significantly up their prices. They'll probably think 'Those stupid bloody Brits have done it again!'
Grammer Schools should be reintroduced, that would help children from economically challenged backgrounds who have ability. There is no use denying that some people are just a bit "thick", maybe it is just down to their Parents, despite their education provided. - - - Updated - - - Then we can choose to buy coal from another Country. That is free Market economics in action.
I disagree. Although on an academic level it can be helpful, it's socially divisive and can help to perpetuate the problem, with kids being made to feel like they've been 'dumped' by the system. The better way to do it is via academic streaming within the same school - having teaching by academic ability, but social interaction as non-academic. Of course, that also has to work alongside improvements to teaching for the less academically gifted. They need to be taught real skills that they can use, and our school system has never dealt with that very will. There's almost been an academic arrogance to the system - that those who are not 'academic' are therefore not worth bothering with. Of course some people are more intelligent, and/or more academically gifted, than others. That's fine. It's not possible, or remotely fair, or in anybody's interests, to assume that some people must be less able because of the circumstances they start off with in life.Even if they are less able in some ways, that doesn't mean they don't have potential to make a useful contribution to society and earn a decent living, and school should be helping them to prepare for that. 'Equal opportunity' is not about 'equal outcome' - it's not about levelling income, or giving people things to do that they don't have the ability to do in order to make more cash, but about helping everyone to make their way in the world with reasonable chance of success by putting in the effort, even if what they can be successful at may be a matter of where their talents lie. It's not about everyone suddenly becoming 'rich', or about everyone being 'levelled off' in income, it's just about everyone having a fair chance to exploit their own talents to make a decent living for a decent days work, whatever those talents might be, regardless of the disadvantaged circumstances that they might have been born into. It's about helping everyone to have a good opportunity to find a decent job that they can do, or learn to do, with the abilities that they have, so that they are self-sufficient financially and not reliant on state aid, with the chance to develop, through hard work, as far as their abilities will allow. If that isn't thought about and done, all that happens is that those who are born surrounded by the 'left behind' and 'state dependent' will almost always remain 'left behind' and 'state dependent' (aside from those exceptional few with 'high' abilities who manage to escape). That doesn't help anyone. Yes, it costs in terms of investment, of course, but it saves in terms of having to support so many people in the longer term. The reason we have such high welfare bills is because nobody's ever really bothered to address that poverty trap effectively - it's not 'lazy people', it's people with massively restricted opportunity due to successive lazy governments who don't want to have to address issues with long term solutions that won't come to fruition and show results until long after that group of politicians have ceased to need votes. Of course, some political parties might not see addressing it as being in their interests anyway. Some parties seem to like keeping as many people as possible poor and ignorant so that they aren't a threat to the natural 'ruling class', and others like to keep them dependent and reliant on the state in some way (either for their benefits or for their jobs) because they know that's the section of society where the bulk of their votes tends to come from. It all seems a bit cynical really, but there are those who want to try to address the problem so that nobody (as far as possible) is left bereft of opportunity or hope, or lacking in the education that suits their attributes, or reliant on handouts because they can't see and alternative, just because they were born to the wrong parents or in the wrong post code. They are fighting an uphill battle against the forces of the big two establishment parties (and their money, and their interests), though, and very possibly always will be. - - - Updated - - - No it didn't, in fact, but I agree that the steel industry is hardly in the best of health!
What a great woman. The best peacetime Prime Minister we've ever had. Britain needs a Thatcher, or a Fraage, right now.
Farage might think he's a Thatcher, and may try to worship at the alter of Thatcherism politically, but he's far from being the same kind of politician. Whatever else you say about Thatcher, she was, as Tony Benn put it, a political 'signpost' - she believe in what she believed in, and she stood firm on that whatever anybody else thought. It brought her to power, and it also brought her down, but that goes with the territory if public opinion moves on and you don't. Whether you agreed with her or not (and I didn't on most things), she knew what she stood for, and so did everyone else. Farage is almost the opposite - the ultimate 'weathercock' - a pure populist who will say pretty much anything he thinks will appeal to, get him votes from, those who engage politically via emotional reactions to emotive language rather than employing logic and evidence. He'll say it if it sounds popular, even if it makes no sense, has no basis in fact, or eventually forms part of a program that doesn't actually have any kind of direction to bind it together into anything practical as a set of choices for government. He is all about having emotionally appealing language, and emotionally appealing image - he has no particular ideology that guides all of his thinking (as Thatcher did, even if I didn't agree with it). Not one he will admit to, anyway, because his full agenda might just not be quite so popular with some of those he needs to vote for him (especially those who have traditionally voted 'left').
