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Ding dong the Witch is dead
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That's my point Barkles. If you stand all the prime ministers in a line, the defining point of most of their premiership's is going to be negative:
Thatcher - the unions
Blair - Afghanistan
Brown - fiscal irresponsibility
Cameron - austerity
The other issues people will pick and choose depending on what affects them personally. It's where the better/worse thing gets subjective and clouds people's judgements.
Given the list above I would honestly say I think that Brown was the worst.
That's fine, I have no strong opinion on that either way. However, Sussex deemed - astonishingly - Thatcher to be worse than the worst serial killer this country has ever seen, justifying this by "number of lives".
Not entirely sure what they meant by that but if it's number of lives ruined or supposedly ruined by Thatcher vs Shipman (can't believe i'm discussing this as a viable comparison) then wouldn't you agree that Blair simply has to rank as worse than Thatcher, on that very premise? He sent troops in to invade a country on a lie and then thousands upon thousands of people died as a result.
Not my argument, it's Sussex' argument but one i'm finding difficult to see how it can be viewed any other way.
Apologies for the stray apostrophe BTW!
You forgot: Major - being grey
If I'm honest I always got the impression that Thatcher cared about the country but regarded the people who got in her way as collateral damage. My impression of Blair was that he cared deeply about Blair.
Thatcher's struggle with the Unions and the Falklands are probably her defining moments but they cover up the fact she presided over a 10 year period of mass unemployment in order to achieve 5% inflation.
Her borrowing record over the period suggests that not even she could see this as a good trade off.
When you also review that she took on the economy at 5% growth and handed it over at 0% at the end I would say that despite a couple of high grwoth years due to high borrowing, it's a good job she had the mners and the Falklands, no doubt she had resolve and could win a dispute, but her mismanagement of the economy has taken a back seat
Actually I didn't forget. It was because I actually think his defining moment may have been one of the positives i.e. the Good Friday Agreement.
Which was lucky as otherwise it would have been Black Wednesday and the ERM thing!
But then that's a matter of opinion too
For me, Major's most disgraceful thing was the last-minute privatisation of the trains. It's been a disaster.
For me it was that fact that he got it on with Edwina. Although, a small part of me wants to give him credit for managing to seduce a woman despite being such an insufferable bore.
EKGO I suspect that you are more knowledgeable than I am on this so please feel free to correct me. The Thatcher mismanagement of the economy was vthe fact that she also tried to get borrowing down and in doing so lost the growth. However, I don't think that included in the growth figures is the interest paid on the borrowing. If that is the case then were we better off in terms of economy as some of the debt had been paid off and therefore lower interest payments had to be made?
I really don't know so am genuinely curious
You're kidding, that was one of his greatest achievements! I mean who would have thought boring old John would have been banging away like a bunny with old Eggwina?
John Major.
Didn't he run away from a circus to join the Government?
On reflection its pretty much the same thing.
🙂
Yeah he did
I do have a bit of a soft spot for him actually, he seemed so well-meaning for a Tory.
Don't try to visualise it Pudge!
Glenda Jackson in the Thatcher debate in the Commons: well said.
i was interested to see Jackson's speech. Not in the politics. We all know where people stand on this matter, so that was no shock, but I did find her comments sexist. I was very surprised at Jackson attacking Thatcher's womanhood.
Public spending actually went up in the early Thatcher years, from 45 per cent of GDP to 48.5 per cent, before it fell shortly as she released the constraints of borrowing. It returned to the leves of pre-Thatcher years by 1987.
So if she lost growth, she also lost the public spending battle. You cannot control inflation by taking money and jobs away from people. Those same people then claim benefit and increase public debt.
RicF,
When "we" start to pay NI, tax etc, we enter into a social contractul obligation with the gov, that they will supply us with 1) education 2) policing 3) health care, etc, throughout our lives whether we are 16 or 116.
What the gov does with the money in the mean time is based on, at that time "current issues", but the contract still remains.
The gov still have a moral/ social /legal obligation to looking after us when we are elderly and frail, irrespective of if we can pay or not, or if we have paid into the system or not paid.
Roy,
You are clearly unaware or choose to ignore the fact that historically the Government owes the public jack-shit!
You've bought into the idea that the government will look after the individual from cradle to grave no matter what the prat gets up to.
The modern infrastructure has evolved over time to its current and now unsustainable condition.
Governments have existed for centuries. But they had no obligation to provide anything beyond security of its boundaries.
All the things you mention are pleasant 'add-on's' gifted to the public at a time when it seemed a good idea.
But none of them are ours 'by right'. It's just that some of us have got used to the idea that they are.
🙂
RicF, you must have heard of the social contract ... presumably you disagree?
Just done some quick research. I think you've confused the social contract with something called the socialism contract.
Believe or not, I'm a socialist. However, I also believe an individual should attempt to look after themselves and not put themselves in a position where the state has to bail them out.
In the UK we've got so used to having certain benefits that we take them for granted.
In fact, we've taken them for granted for so long we believe they are ours to have by birth right.
I consider that compared to most other countries we are lucky to have any at all.
When Thatcher appeared she was faced with a public that had spent 30 years being looked after in one form or another by the government. The same public was also telling the (any) government to keep its nose out of its (the public's) business.
So she gave them what she thought they wanted. With terrible consequences.
🙂
This is very true.
And I beleive, if you placed any UK government of the last 20-30 years on an ideology spectrum against, say, the current US government, we would fall towards the Socialist end of the spectrum every time.
Ricf,
If you or I had an accident (god forbid) you /I would expect to be helped by the NHS and looked after till we are well again, not because the gov x years ago thought it was a pleasent idea to help people in need.
But because of a legal / moral obligation to do so, the same principles apply in our
old age.
PS take a look at the national assistence act 1948, which the gov aggreed as law,
If you want to know your rights.
Our living conditions are relative.
In the UK we are really lucky.
Quote from an immigrant ( origin unknown ) "Britain is the greatest country in the world. You cannot believe how good it is. In your country you treat even your animals better than my own country treats its own people."
He went on to say that if he caught his younger brother stealing from the British people he'd beat him up.
🙂
Roy.
Even off the top of my head I know that the government had no legal or moral obligations to do anything.
The government did however recognize that people dying and suffering because they couldn't afford the extortionate cost of a doctor (like vets are today) or spent their latter years in abject poverty was a bloody scandal and vowed to do something about it.
Yes you know your rights. Just appreciate that before 1948 you had no need of them.
🙂
No, I meant the social contract - the idea that the individual gives up freedoms and agrees to be governed and in return the government/state governs and provides security.
What I'm arguing with you about here is that the state does have duties to its citizens and therefore we do have rights. The extent of those rights is another matter, what I'm probably being a pedant about is the concept.
Not sure if I'm a socialist or not but I do believe in the collective, the concept of society and mutual support, which are values that Thatcher hated.
I agree, the extent of those duties does appear to be open to debate. But when those duties i.e welfare were put in place. It was necessary to enshrine them in law. That way they couldn't be messed about with. Far too important.
If those really were values that Thatcher hated, then she needed milking.
I once worked for a nationalized industry. The electricity board. It was non profit making, it was probably inefficient. It employed lots of people who were not very good at their jobs, but it worked. It served a purpose. Not everyone can be brilliant at their jobs. It was a place where the average and slightly incompetent could survive.
To me that was worth keeping.
🙂