Lost Login Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Lost Login - the Unions came out of the Winter of Discontent far stronger than Labour - Labour attempted to enforce wage restraint of no more than 5%. Ford agreed to this, but after the strike had to accept an 17% rise. The lorry drivers demanded and got 20%, the grave diggers 14% etc etc. The spiral of union militantism, strikes, lost productivity, inflation and demanded pay rises was destroying the economy and the Labour party had totally failed to control it. They blinked during the Winter of Discontent and the result was pay madness. Thankfully neither the electorate, nor Maggie, were taken in. I agreet to an extent and the unions had also brought down Wilsons and Heath's Government. Where I disagree is when the impression is given as TJ did that Labour basically never stood up to the unions and basically just rolled over at the first instance. The Unions had to be reformed and that it was done deserves credit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jefferson Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 It's a catch 22.Are you *really* sure this is catch 22? I'm not *really* sure of anything. If you think I'm wrong, tell me why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jefferson Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 I agreet to an extent and the unions had also brought down Wilsons and Heath's Government. Where I disagree is when the impression is given as TJ did that Labour basically never stood up to the unions and basically just rolled over at the first instance. The Unions had to be reformed and that it was done deserves credit.Yeh, Labour really stood up to the unions and showed them what for! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GD4ELI Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 I'm not *really* sure of anything. If you think I'm wrong, tell me why. OK, here's why - this isn't Catch 22 I think. Here's what it really is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Anyone would think her 'crimes' are on the level of Hitler or Pol Pot (or Pinochet......) When Thatcher came to power 1 in 7 children were living in poverty. When she went it had jumped to 1 in 3 children living in poverty. That's an absolutely appalling legacy. What makes it worse is that if you were doing nicely, and if you had money under Thatcher you did do very nicely , then you just didn't care about the 3 million unemployed for example. After all, they didn't vote tory so fuck 'em... As I posted previously If you came from a household that didn't have much then under Thatcher you suffered. If you came from a well-off household then under Thatcher you did very nicely. It polarised the country along the lines of the "haves" and the "have nots" that we still see today in the pop charts FFS! So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the division on here between the detractors and the arse-kissers was down to how well off you or your household was at the time she came to power and how well or not you did out of her tenure. Which I guess comes down to disposable income. Despite the fact that the government of the day have a duty of care towards ALL of their citizens to me her lasting legacy will be the way she just looked out for tory voters and the rest could go hang.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jefferson Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 OK, here's why - this isn't Catch 22 I think. Here's what it really is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)Ok, perhaps it's SIMILAR to a double bind (mentioned in the same article)? "A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation." I can't think of a suitable word -- it's just a case of being damned either way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Catch-22: If Yossarian asks to be taken off missions due to insanity then this desire to be taken off missions is proof that Yossarian is actually sane. Back to the bomb-aiming..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blade Runner Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Anyone would think her 'crimes' are on the level of Hitler or Pol Pot (or Pinochet......) When Thatcher came to power 1 in 7 children were living in poverty. When she went it had jumped to 1 in 3 children living in poverty. That's an absolutely appalling legacy. What makes it worse is that if you were doing nicely, and if you had money under Thatcher you did do very nicely , then you just didn't care about the 3 million unemployed for example. After all, they didn't vote tory so fuck 'em... As I posted previously If you came from a household that didn't have much then under Thatcher you suffered. If you came from a well-off household then under Thatcher you did very nicely. It polarised the country along the lines of the "haves" and the "have nots" that we still see today in the pop charts FFS! So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the division on here between the detractors and the arse-kissers was down to how well off you or your household was at the time she came to power and how well or not you did out of her tenure. Which I guess comes down to disposable income. Despite the fact that the government of the day have a duty of care towards ALL of their citizens to me her lasting legacy will be the way she just looked out for tory voters and the rest could go hang.... Where did you get that statistic from, one in three children living in poverty in 1990? I stand to be corrected but that does seem a lot of children in the early 90s, I could see that kind of statistic being correct in the 1890s but the 20th Century? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matty Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 http://itunestracks.co.uk/iTunes.asp Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, no at no.4 in the iTunes UK downloads chart! A lot of what I remember from the 80's as a kid/teenager was watching TV after tea and seeing the daily number of factory closures, the unemployment figure climbing staggeringly high, I think she brought nothing but misery for vast swathes of the UK population - I shall not mourn her passing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Power Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 If Britain had continued the way it was going God knows where we would be now? Margaret Thatcher took the bull by the horns and turned it around. I agree that this caused a huge chasm between those who benefited, mainly in the south, and those who didn't, mainly in the north, and I never agreed that the majority of British industry could not have been saved. We still live with the problems caused by the dismantling of the steel, shipbuilding, textile and coal industries. Something needed to be done however, and successive governments had tried numerous policies which failed with terrible results, I just feel that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater before some kind of palatable solution could have been found. Now in former industrial zones we are left with vast armies of unemployable previously skilled workers or their totally unemployable offspring who are benefit dependant, and it's not altogether their own fault! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gladys Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Were you there? Irrelevant. Au contraire, TJ, it is highly relevant when talking about the prevailing culture. The unions had to be brought to heel, but to preserve the industries, not kill them. If we still had the primary industries that were lost we would be in better shape now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Anyone would think her 'crimes' are on the level of Hitler or Pol Pot (or Pinochet......) When Thatcher came to power 1 in 7 children were living in poverty. When she went it had jumped to 1 in 3 children living in poverty. That's an absolutely appalling legacy. What makes it worse is that if you were doing nicely, and if you had money under Thatcher you did do very nicely , then you just didn't care about the 3 million unemployed for example. After all, they didn't vote tory so fuck 'em... As I posted previously If you came from a household that didn't have much then under Thatcher you suffered. If you came from a well-off household then under Thatcher you did very nicely. It polarised the country along the lines of the "haves" and the "have nots" that we still see today in the pop charts FFS! So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the division on here between the detractors and the arse-kissers was down to how well off you or your household was at the time she came to power and how well or not you did out of her tenure. Which I guess comes down to disposable income. Despite the fact that the government of the day have a duty of care towards ALL of their citizens to me her lasting legacy will be the way she just looked out for tory voters and the rest could go hang.... Where did you get that statistic from, one in three children living in poverty in 1990? I stand to be corrected but that does seem a lot of children in the early 90s, I could see that kind of statistic being correct in the 1890s but the 20th Century? Not exactly rocket science. Three million unemployed equates to a lot of households with no income.... I like the Grauniad because politically it's a lot less partisan than most. For example yesterday's e-Torygraph didn't allow comments on it's Thatcher piece except by e-mail. To my complete and utter astonishment all the e-mails they posted up on their website all said how wonderful Thatcher was! So here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-obituary-video1 is a 10 min obit by Polly Toynbee (centre), Phillip Gould (lefty) and that appalling greaser Oliver Letwin (somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan). The thing to remember is that PM's should be there for the ENTIRE NATION. Not just those who vote for them.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blade Runner Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Were you there? Irrelevant. Au contraire, TJ, it is highly relevant when talking about the prevailing culture. The unions had to be brought to heel, but to preserve the industries, not kill them. If we still had the primary industries that were lost we would be in better shape now. But would those primary industries have been able to trade through the last 15/20 years when both India and China have been knocking out stuff so cheap we could not compete. It is only recently that some manufacturing is moving back to the UK possibly due to the higher wage demands of these country's, you know the working class there getting powerful (sound familiar) and those higher wages pushing up the cost of production. The world is running out of cheap labour, I think Africa is about the last available and the Chinese have already invested big time there. Dont laugh but a lot of things in the future will be made in replicators, advanced 3d printers, it will be very interesting to see how this effects the worlds economies, just a shame that by the time this happens I will likely be either pushing up daisy's or be boring my children with storys of how it used to be in the good old days when people made things with their bare hands................................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Re post #146 Trouble is Gladys it wasn't just a matter of preserving them. They were doomed anyway. Decades of under investment by both parties required huge reinvestment to make them competitive, not just a bit of fine tuning! Had Sunny Jim stayed in power they would have still shut and jobs would have been lost but probably not to the same degree. I visited a working pit in 1970 ish and they were still hauling the coal up by steam and it was a very deep mine. Now it can be argued that she had a choice (an argument which I, to a degree, agree with) to start a huge reinvestment program but don't let's all fall for the hype that everything was fine until she came to power and then it all went wrong. If you really suffered as a result of say the pit (just mentioned) closing then it is something you would easily believe but it's very far from the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 The thing to remember is that PM's should be there for the ENTIRE NATION. Not just those who vote for them.... Completely agree but it never happens no matter who is in power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.