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Baroness Margaret Thatcher Has Died


Amadeus

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I can well remember the state of the UK in the mid 70s, planning our evenings around the power cuts, she stopped all that.

 

 

 

Again - the power cuts - that was under the Tories of Ted Heath - the 3 Day Week was his, not Labour.

 

 

I knew that I was trying to get across the general poor state of the British economy before she came along.

 

Hundreds of thousands of days lost to strikes under Tory and Labour, the Unions were too powerful, she cut back their powers and introduced new strike rules that we take for granted now. Remember they could walk out without a formal vote in them days, go and picket at businesses not related to the dispute etc etc that was mad and had to be stopped.

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Regrading union power before MT came to power: in 1979 the starting salary at GCHQ for a graduate engineer with a 1st class degree was 3,000 quid.

 

An apprentice electrician was paid more!

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I knew that I was trying to get across the general poor state of the British economy before she came along.

 

Hundreds of thousands of days lost to strikes under Tory and Labour, the Unions were too powerful, she cut back their powers and introduced new strike rules that we take for granted now. Remember they could walk out without a formal vote in them days, go and picket at businesses not related to the dispute etc etc that was mad and had to be stopped.

 

The unions did need controlling and it would be wrong to argue that all that she achieved was bad. Unfortunatly in my view much of what she achieved is outweighed by the bad.

 

With regard to the recovery of the British economy I do not really see that as being down to her, she deysroyed much of the economy, rather that whoever was in power then was going to benefit hugely from the Income of North Sea Oil. This allowed her to see unemployment go through the roof and pay the dole money out.

 

You can see the changes in the UK economy as the last time the UK had a trade surplus was during the time of the Falklands war which is approximatly 30 years ago.

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Some interesting posts. However, what she did at the end of the '70s is take control back from the unions. The attitude of union workers at the time was terrible. It took very hard rule to crush that attitude, which had risen after many years of very liberal rule.

 

The problems today are actually very similar, except the pits have been replaced by bloated governments, and the ship yards replaced by the benefits culture.

 

Who is going to break that?

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Well avoided, I'm not saying that you believe the neuro surgeon should be paid less, are you saying that the neuro surgeon should stay on what they are currently on (let's say for argument's sake £250k PA) but that a toilet cleaner should be on say £50k per annum?

I believe the toilet cleaner should earn a minimum of a liveable wage.

 

What they earn above that minimum is not my concern.

And what pray tell is a minimum liveable wage?

Tony Blair brought in the minimum wage

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Thomas Jefferson - I find it odd that you like Thatcher yet seem to think classical liberalism is the best system and like Chomsky's politics.

 

She supported individualism within the existing system minus socialist policies and socialist production.

But the only result would have been and was more power to private business and making some very well off but not doing most working class people any good.

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