General Chat

Is it so bad to have Victorian values....at least people mainly respected one another.
Manners were taught.
It wasn't the materialistic society that it is today.
Most of the older generation only buy what they can afford,and get more pleasure out of it having saved their hard earned cash.
Many People do not put aside money for a rainy day.
I was brought up during the war.have worked hard all my life.
I would sweep streets rather than have to rely on benefits.
Don't get me wrong,there are a lot of folk who are genuinely unfit for work,but there are also those who have got into lethargy and won't work because they can get benefits that were never available when we worked

Not funny or clever terryj :-| :-

Terryj, can I ask you to remove that comment or do I need to report it

A reply to posts in response to your earlier comment would be good but your comment implies you don't have any answers

Roy

Gins, I agree, but to blame Margaret Thatcher is wrong,

councils had maxed out on their credit card and the debts had to be paid,

When the sun shines its time to fix the leaking roof

New housing stock should have been built once debts where paid back but councils chose not to,

We as genealogist no that the reason we have a census every 10 years is to assess the future need of the population which should include housing so the question is why when the financial situation improved did the councils/government do nothing?

Roy

The problem with the right to buy was, councils sold off their social housing and the the proceeds from those sales was resticted by central government, until the council(s) had cleared any debts they had.

This meant that local authorities were unable to build new social housing, as they didnt have the funds. They also lost out on the rents that had previously been paid by the 'now' home owners.

Hence.....we dont have enough social housing in the UK to this day. Private landlords have stepped in, but private rents are very different from local authority rents.

I'm not against the idea of people being able to buy their own home, I am against the freeze (on proceeds) imposed on the council(s)

Terryj

God,with your comments i thought i was listening to "Red Robbo" we know what he did to destroy British Leyland, no wonder their cars were generally rubbish, he was always bringing out the workers on strike after strike, so no continuity on quality of the product.
I do accept that the management shared some of the blame for the demise of Leyland at that time
George

But yet her own party realised she was unelectable, let alone the rest of us.

She started well but finished badly and divided the country - as divided as we are on here.

Lets just think about this.

Council houses - weren't they bought by the people already living in them. How did that create a shortage of housing? Same Number with houses after as there was before,

Utility companies - more capital investment under privatisation than could ever have been dreamt possible under nationalisation. Just one example example raw sewage is no longer pumped into the seaside, was only a pipedream under nationalisation.

Railways - Train drivers now earning up to double average earnings

Wages - under MT's stewardship they rose 25% more than prices did.

You could go on and on

Unfortunately it is easy to remember what things looked look behind tinted raybans, whatever colour they are tinted. Reality is often a long way removed.

Terryj
.... You sound just like my late father in law, I thought he was back from the dead. Such a bitter man

Terryj

Working people bought council houses,

Sold off utility companies because the state could no longer afford to continue to subsidise them although most did return to profit under her leadership (but for how long)?

Fuel poverty happened under labour

You was a shop steward

Enough said

Roy

lets see what did she achieve
she sold off the council properties millions of people desperate for decent housing
she sold off the utility companies
now foreign owned
record number of people living in fuel poverty or in seriouse dept to them

some legacy

i was a shop steward and deputy concenor through the misery of the thatcher years
she wanted a return to victorion values
by that she meant the working class knowing their place and being gratefull for it
if she had her way we would all be back to tugging our forlocks and the foreman back in a bowler hat

i celebrated when she died will celebrate again on wednesday i have waited long enough

What a lovely well balanced post Paula. Good on you and your husband for being the kind of people, with the right attitude toward life, that Britain needs. :-)

We seem to live in a 'blame culture' now Paula, where many people think the world/country/government owe them a living.
Unlike your late husband who picked himself up and took personal responsibilty with you to work at rebuilding your lives, these people then have to look for someone to blame, usually the government.
Unlike you and your late husband, these people lose their dignity and self respect, and then respect nobody else.
It must have been tough but you did it - respect to you both. :-)

Thanks AnnCardiff and AnninGlos,

I do try to keep a balanced perspective on most issues, especially politics, as a youngster Lawrence Daly and Adam Hunter MP were regular visitors to my grandfather's house, as they all had close ties with the coal mines in the area, they regularly debated the political issues of the day.

I grew up with an interest in politics and from my teens into my thirties I counted people like Tom Oswald MP, Robin Cook MP, and Nicholas Fairbairn MP, as acquaintances, all these people along with my mentors when I worked on Iona, they were the Very Reverend George McLeod and the Very Reverend Ralph Morten, I developed a middle of the road view of what I thought politicians should be doing.

What helped me form that view was the fact that all the aforementioned people came from the mold that put country and people before party and self gain, alas that does not appear to be the case in today's world.

I think Baroness Thatcher initially embarked on implementing policies that she truly believed were in the best interests of the country, alas like many who had gone before her, and those who came after her, she strayed from the path she set out to follow, and lost her way.

Looking at both Baroness Thatcher's and Tony Blair's time in office, I am persuaded to support the view that no one should be allowed to serve more than two terms as Prime Minster. It appears that after two terms complacency sets in, and, for a better phrase, makes them think they can get away with murder.

Paula+ thank you, that was a very informative post

In all wars there are casualties, The trade unions had declared war on the government and Thatcher did what she had to,

For labour supporters of old remember the words of the labour leader Neil Kinnock in 1985 when talking to his own.

I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council! – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you , I'm telling you, and you'll listen, .............you can't play politics with people's jobs and people's services.



Roy

My late husband was the Chairman of manufacturing public company ( and incidentally a life long socialist) His company had very strong trade union(s) which he understood and supported, however he was affected by the knock on effect of strikes, and he struggled with his beliefs as he became more aware that many people on strike where doing so against their will, in the area I lived the trade unions were getting stronger more militant and out of control. When Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister he/we benefited from some of the many good things she did. However, my husbands company was affected badly due to Mrs Thatchers policies during the 1980/1990, he just could not cope with the growing financial constraints, and despite investing more of his own money, sadly his business went into liquidation along with hundreds of others at the time. It was heartbreaking to see the effect this had on my husband when he had to make nearly 300 people redundant. She did many unpopular things, and it was those who were affected by these things that suffered the most.
I think it would be fair to say he did not have any affection for Mrs T, however he eventually picked himself up and started over again. I saw a young woman on TV last night shouting that "This woman ruined my childhood" it made me stop and think, about my husband and how he got on with rebuilding our lives with dignity strength. We had some tough times, but there is no way I would suggest she ruined our lives. <3 <3

OFITG thanks for that post, a very balanced perspecive of events.

spot on :-)

I watched a lot of the speeches on the Parliament Channel yesterday, there were those who had always idolised her, there were those who respected her, there were those who disliked her, and there was the hypocrisy of those who never had a good word to say about her when she was alive and who yesterday were suddenly singing her praises. There were many excellent contributions and I give credit to Ed Milliband as I thought he got the mix of things just right.

Those speeches aside, it is inevitable that there will be a lot of conflicting views voiced in various quarters about Baroness Thatcher, I actually think she would like that as she enjoyed a good for and against debate, well as long as she won the debate ;-)

Although there is much to debate, anarchistic displays by the rentamob type brigades are totally unacceptable. This is not only a solemn occasion, but the funeral of one of this country's longest serving Prime Ministers and such an occasion deserves dignity and respect. Do that lot of idiots not realise that things, such as a mock hanging of an effigy of her in Trafalgar Square and a re-enactment of the Brixton Riots, will only play into the hands of those who already think all people on benefits are layabouts and scroungers :-|

As I have said previously I do not hate Baroness Thatcher, hate is not in my vocabulary. Do I dislike her, yes, as I blame her free market interventions in the NHS as a major contributor to my mother's death in 1988, and shortly after that for myself nearly being denied a heart bypass operation due, for a better phrase, to the rationing of procedures in the late 1980's.

For some to say her policies were evil is a complete misrepresentation of the vision she wanted for this country, she did do many good things but equally she did many bad things, unfortunately it was those who were affected by the bad things that suffered the most.

Her vision of a new economic model for this country was something that was desperately needed and it meant dealing with many of our old heavy industries that were being subsidised by the state and these subsidies were no longer sustainable. However the running down of these labour intensive industries in areas such as, Scotland, the North of England, and Wales, and not providing alternative employment in these areas, did lead to mass unemployment and the consequences of that are still with us today.

Her economic policies were based on growth in the financial and service sectors and these sectors were mainly concentrated in the South of England. She may have been the Secretary of State for Education, however geography could not have been her strong point as it appears that the United Kingdom did not exist outside the boundaries of the South of England and we ended up with a massive North/South divide. In the 1980's in the South employment increased and many areas prospered while in Scotland, the North of England, and Wales, unemployment soared and many areas suffered.

There is no doubt in my mind that as a result of these policies, many who were born around the 1970's, were brought up in households where no one had a job, there were no decent paid jobs to be had. When these children left school in the mid 1980's, many of them had difficulty finding a decent paid job. Regrettably none of her successors, Major, Blair, or Brown, addressed the North/South divide problem, they all hoped it would just go away, and worse, they tried to hide it through various schemes. Many from every generation since then, have found themselves relying on the state in one form or another, and that legacy from 1979 onwards will I fear, be with us for many years to come.

Sadly she will not be remembered for the great things she achieved, she will be remembered for what she failed to achieve, and that was a fairer society for all :-(

No argument either from me about the 3rd term rush to the head...same thing happened to Tony Blair.

From John.....Mrs T was autocratic. That does not build good teams round you. There was an array of talent working WITH Ted Heath. There was an array of yes men and like-minded working FOR Mrs T.

Are you suggesting that there are never splits and divisions in any cabinet office John? Think back to the Brownites and the Blairites.......her autocratic style certainly stood her in good stead for a good long while....whilst G Brown's mobile phone lobbing style came to end pretty quickly !!!!!!