And yet the fundamental principle of Thatcherism was that EVERYONE would have the chance of doing well.

Time was when in order to get a job in the City you had to be public school educated and called Smithers Ponsonby-Smyth.
After the Big Bang you could get the same job being called Alf Muck.

Traditional Labour had a vested interest in keeping a large "working class", for wont of a better word, "down".
Tradtional Tory had a vested interest in keeping a large "working class", for wont of a better word, "down".

Thatcher offered the opportunity to everyone.

You can argue with her methods, and the alternatives, but you cannot deny this.

There is an argument for nationalisation of certain natural monopolies. The problem is that employees in a monopoly, state owned or private, tend to fall behind in the productivity stakes.

For any company this isn't an issue for non stakeholders. The difference is that for a public company those stakeholders are the taxpayers.

And yet the irony is that, in the past 30 years, social mobility has decreased.

How come the most efficient UK train company is the state-owned East Coast ?

Yes, I can.

But first, where do you get the notion that traditional Labour had a vested interest in keeping a large "working class" down and how did it do so?

Some industries are just not profitable without state subsidy. The railways being a case in point. Taxpayers subsidise the profits of Virgin Trains for example. If there are any advantages to privatisation it must be cheaper cost to the taxpayer. I see the opposite here.

Others such as Gas and Electricity are only profitable due to ever increasing bills for the consumer. Remember a private companies first duty is to its shareholders and we see the results with the power companies with less well off people suffering fuel poverty in 2013.

Some industries are natural monopolies and when you have a monopoly its better for the state to run it.

The idea mentioned elsewhere that there is some intrinsic problem once people are employed in such organisations is complete bunkum. The East Coast main line has been run by the state for over three years and is efficient. Network Rail itself is state run after having to be re-nationalised. The fact the most costly health provision in the world in the USA is private shows that is another area where privatise everything is not appropriate.



Was exiting the ERM mentioned under Lamont? I remember interests rates at that level and higher due to all that.



She was battling for the rights of her members and if you look into this in any detail you will find she was opposed by many local union leaders as she tried to end the casual labour that dominated the industry because getting them all unionised would have undermined the local leaders influence and position. She wasn't opposed to progress but was batting on a losing wicket because to a large extent local leaders felt they could continue to hold papers to ransom (by preventing them going to print). Murdoch saw that as the opportunity he needed to undermine Dean. It wasn't unions (ad Dean's level) interfering in progress but very old fashioned local chapel leaders who wanted to retain their influence who couldn't see what was coming that were the problem. They wanted to carry on with the way things were as art of an almost feudal system. Dean recognised this but was hamstrung from the start. There is a lot of stuff on the net about this dispute and it makes interesting reading.



And with our triple A rating gone and no manufacturing industry in comparison to the likes to Germany and France we aren't now? I certainly feel we have been dumped on from a very great height and when we see things like the Aussie dollar surge and make it prohibitive for us to travel there as opposed to the other way around we really are in a mess.



Nigel Lawson should have been shot for selling off BNOC.

ok, it's from wikipedia, so no doubt you have your reliable sources to back up your claims.

German GDP by sector Agri 1% Ind 28.5% Services 70.5%
French GDP by sector Agri 2% Ind 19.0% Services 79.0%
UK GDP by sector Agri 1% Ind 21.5% Services 77.5%

It never ceases to amaze me how people like you and your union mates construct a story in your heads and filter what you read to suit your theory.
It’s sad and I’ve seen it in many middle aged people who have sad lives and who live their lives based on a self delusion, only to be reinforced in a place like this forum where the self important thrive.
I’ll wager most of those I described are stuck in dead end minor supervisory jobs and blame everyone else including Maggie (God bless her) for your pointless lives.

My motivation to write on here is only to amuse myself at your indignation

Did your commanding officer in call of duty tell you that?

Im not indignant at all. Just confused about why someone would pretend to be a wounded serviceman. Seems like a ridiculous thing to pretend.

And not one of those things you have guessed are true. Again it wouldn’t bother me if they were but not one of them are.

There is no hell, but I am pretty convinced that Maggie will have gone to her grave 100% convinced that she had done no evil, but the "right thing". She seemed utterly convinced that she was always right, and anyone who disagred with her was in the wrong. Delusional, maybe, and certainly, not everyone would agree, but if there was a hell, wouldn't it be for sinners?

I reckon the mods should look at having an extra smily, perhaps a little guy gesturing back and forth with his had on his midrift area, would be ideal for the pillock

I will go with the House of Commons as my source:

[urlhttp://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05809.pdf[/url



It's obvious that while the likes of Germany,France and Italy retain ownership of major car manufacturers and have companies that manufacture rolling stock and so on when n the UK we have one train maker left who is under threat of closure you are hiding behind a very naive interpretation of statistics. The fact some manufacturers such as Rolls Royce build high value aero engines and this bumps up figures that relate to the value of exports doesn't disguise the obvious.

Have you been to France recently? The country is not in a good way. The future looks very dim and the people know it.

German productivity is much higher than the UK (worryingly so is that of France). The great news for them is that in a world in which manufactured goods are getting increasingly polarised between cheap and cheerful (supplied by Asia) and quality (Korea/Japan/Europe), the weaker Euro has helped them massively.


I'm interested to hear which car manufacturer the German state has ownership of btw.

so, you want to include italian, french and german companies that make engines but we should discount uk companies that do the same?



this makes your claim of entirely without merit.

sorry for the edit. there's some brilliant stats in there that you now think is the gospel.

Nationalised industries are OK provided they are cost neutral - otherwise they are being effectively subsidised by the non-state run businesses. Some areas need to be nationalised - NHS, roads, railway tracks etc. No one could possibly argue that BT is a worse company now than it was then it is a great example of progress that can made through de-nationalisation.

One thing that has occured to me is why didn't the NUM offer to take the mines out of public ownership and run it themselves if the business was such a great proposition? If as MR Fish says the coal was of such burning efficiency then everyone should be desperate to buy it - especially outside of teh UK - as it would provide massive financial gains.

We may have high interest rates but we never had high inflation - the Tories brought inflation down to 2% from 18%. The high inflation rate was caused primarily by unions involved with nationalised industries demanding excessive wage rises which caused an unsustainable upward cycle and the need to bail out to the IMF.

Dean was the boss of the union - don't blame the monkeys because the organ grinder was unable to control/manage the underlings. She is an example, the major culprits were Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Arthur Scargill, Ray Buckton, Sid Weighell who demanded higher wages with no increases in productivity and no process improvements forcing costs up.

You appear to have mistaken amused contempt for indignation.

Now run along - the adults are talking.

Boy, did you ever fall for the propaganda.

Care to explain with evidence, rather than a meaningless throwaway one liner and emoticon?


While you're at it, maybe you could elaborate on why a Grammar school girl who forced her way to the top job in the country would wish to ensure the Establishment would be unchanged.............

What's amazing in the aftermath of the Thatcher government is that the Old Etonians have taken control again as though she never existed and yet they use her memory to oppress the plebs much more than they were pre-Thatcher. Shows the "Establishment" is much more adaptive and intelligent than the leaders of the Labour "movement".

This is partially true (though some of the changes that Thatcher made cannot be undone). It's a very sad state of affairs too.

For adaptive and intelligent substitute devious and lying.

marrying a millionaire helped

You are not making any sense. Rolls Royce doesn't have comparable competitors in Germany, France and Italy making aero engines in terms of the value they add to manufacturing economy. Therefore in order for these countries to be ahead of ours on output they have to get it from other sources of manufacturing. And you have to have your head buried deep in the sand not to see this is plainly true given they are, as I pointed out, much stronger in other areas such as rolling stock manufacture.



No it shows you don't know what the term "gross value added" means.

It is a measure of revenue that takes into account subsidies and wages. It is NOT a measure of actual physical output. That is why this:

"(Britain is) 9th in terms of manufacturing output (value added) at $231 billion, behind the USA, China, Japan, Germany, Italy and France."

Doesn't contradict what you quoted which was this:

"108th in terms of manufacturing output as a share of gross value added (11%), marginally ahead of France but behind most major developed countries."

Because they are different statistics. In terms of output we ARE behind Germany, Italy and France because that is what the first one of those two stats tells you.