The Political Thread

[Dredd Head]

It was an opinion not a fact, Merely putting my 2 pence in, sorry if i have offended anyone

Don't be sorry, try not being a prejudiced fuckhead spouting ill-informed crap.

ok thanks for the advice

[Dredd Head]

Foreign travel? 

This, neebs:

The story of our country, Don't work, Have kids, Go on holiday. Meanwhile all working tax payers pick up the slack.

Ahh i get u now sorry

[Mabs]

It came from personal experience

Anecdotes do not equal data, and the people you know are not a statistically valid sample. Stop making shit up and passing your prejudices off as 'facts'.

Gah.

Jim

[Old Tankie]

Yep, I remember the 70s (or about 2 to 3 years' worth of them anyway).

Same here. I don't know how old Old Tankie actually is, but his description of the seventies sounds a lot more like the collective picture of the seventies drawn by TV and newspapers than a personal reminiscence, drawn from direct experience. I remember the regular power cuts he mentions (which lasted well into the eighties), but I'm sure I gained my knowledge of unburied bodies in seventies Liverpool from the same sources as he did.

I'm 56 next month which makes me more than old enough to remember the 70s personally.  Being an Essex boy, born and bred, of course I didn't stumble over the unburied bodies in Liverpool.  You can't personally experience everything that happened in a decade all round the country!!  I did though work on the production line at Ford's in Dagenham when the "workers" were stopping the production line over the tiniest dispute.  I did work on the London Underground and saw, first hand, the restricted practices going on there.  I did have my journeys to work curtailed by striking transport workers.  I did help my old man in his business when the lights kept going off through power cuts.  I couldn't leave the country with more than 50 quid in my pocket.  I was a squaddie and helped to cover the firemens strike in '77.  So, I do have personal experience about the "wonderful" pre-Thatcher days.  It's not me who's getting their history through the media.

[JayzusB.Christ]

So, I do have personal experience about the "wonderful" pre-Thatcher days.  It's not me who's getting their history through the media.

It's hard to argue with that.

[Trout]

With respect to both sides in this argument, I have a problem with the logic of Thatcher's supporters:

Life used to be bad, pre-Thatcherism

Thatcherism happened

Life got better (in the opinion of many)

Thatcherism is therefore good

I can't subscribe to that. I can accept that, yes, there needed to be change but that doesn't mean that Thatcherism had to happen. It certainly doesn't mean that the worst excesses of Thatcher and her government - such as the significant erosion of workers' rights, the imposition of the invidious poll tax, and the very 1980s principle that greed is good and socialist thinking is bad - should be seen as acceptable.

History happened - fine. That doesn't mean it had to happen that way. As science fiction fans, you should all understand that. 

[judgefloyd]

well said Trout.  There's a bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc involved in accounts of her life, along the lines of:
- Thatcher happened
- the cold war ended
so Thatcher made the Cold War end. 
  As you say, we're all into Sci Fi and counterfactuals.  Would the Cold War really not have ended without Thatcher?  I'm stuffed if I know how she made a difference to it at all. 
  As for the 'she took us out of a socialist hell-hole', well, I wasn't there.  It's definitely not the case, as her hero Hayek would have it, that having progressive taxes and a social welfare system lead inexorably to being East Germany

[COMMANDO FORCES]

You mention unions, are these the same unions that took the piss constantly. How many stories have we heard about what went on but I suppose those stories are ALL made up.
Arthur 'Hero of the Miners' Scargill made a terrible mistake when he said he would bring down the government and look what happened. By the way, I think he's being evicted out of his home by that very union now, so poetic!
The problem is that its always the extreme left and extreme right that battle it out and the moderates are lost in the dust storm that blows up and you can thank the press and TV for that.

I don't think anyone has said it was universally better under Thatcher but I tell you what, she gave people the chance to get on and better themselves. It might have been hard with certain industries closing because they couldn't compete but I suppose we could still have miners now doing a dangerous job by the thousands. Then again what about the greenhouse gases. You can't have it both ways folks.
By the way, my background is from the pit villages and I've been down a mine and that is a shit existence but if you think we should have people doing that type of work okay.

[flintlockjaw]

The problem is that its always the extreme left and extreme right that battle it out and the moderates are lost in the dust storm that blows up and you can thank the press and TV for that.

Amen.

[judgefloyd]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22087702

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Why not put a lovely header above your link, like Racist Thatcher the truth is out!

I always love this sort of stuff from people who know you can't slander the dead and end up in court. I could waffle on about Australias navy not long ago stopping those same migrants trying to get into the country but that wouldn't be fair.

Why did he wait until now to say that, apart from not being able to be taken to court. He says that he couldn't believe what she said and luckily his wife was out of earshot, as she is Malaysian born. What a joke, if that had been me I'd have called her out and made her repeat it in front of my wife and other witnesses. That fact alone speaks volumes about the man if you ask me.
Very poor point put forward, must try harder!

By the way, I shall take all you lot going on about the milk song to task later. If you want to save me the trouble search the web and look at what Labour did the decade before and also why she was actually against stopping the milk. Damn I've given it all away

Facts do ruin things don't they!

[Beaky Smoochies]

It's the false sense of public confidence and perceived democratic mandate which that perverse system encourages which leads Prime Ministers to rule like US Presidents (who are directly elected) and make disastrous decisions like the Poll tax and the Iraq War - disastrous and unpopular decisions which would never have passed a public vote.

THIS is absolutely correct and very insightful.  I liked Margaret Thatcher and (most of) her policies a great deal - except the treasonous Anglo-Irish Agreement (which intransigent Unionism effectively brought on itself) - she didn't get everything right or go about everything the right way, although I believe her motives were just and noble and right, but she also behaved in a very Presidential manner that continuously humiliated, ultimately alienated, and eventually motivated her cabinet colleagues to stage a bloodless coup on her premiership that the Conservative Party still have yet to fully recover from.

The U.K. is supposed  to be a parliamentary democracy but has since Lloyd George and the creation of the Cabinet Office become increasingly like a de facto presidential democracy, with the Prime Minister increasingly becoming more powerful at the expense of the Commons or for that matter the very notion of collective cabinet government, and Margaret Thatcher represented this unfortunate development.  Granted it was her sheer force of will imposed on her colleagues, the fact she pretty much ditched consensus politics over conviction politics wholesale, that got many of her signature and more controversial policies through, but it also ultimately sealed her political fate.

The Irish Free State Constitution of 1922 got it right (I believe), the powers of the chief executive - ironically titled as President of the Executive Council - were very constrained and restrained in nature, they effectively were the chairman of the board and moderator of a collective government rather than an all-powerful Great Leader, and who had to get approval from assembled members of the lower chamber for the cabinet, and again should any change of personnel happen in said cabinet... this is proper collective cabinet governance, one wonders how Margaret Thatcher would have fared in such a constitutional situation?

Of course, having a House of Lords that actually had teeth and could stop legislation in it's tracks also helps as well... but Lloyd George certainly saw to that one!

Here endeth the lesson.

[The Prodigal]

With respect to both sides in this argument, I have a problem with the logic of Thatcher's supporters:

Life used to be bad, pre-Thatcherism

Thatcherism happened

Life got better (in the opinion of many)

Thatcherism is therefore good

I can't subscribe to that. I can accept that, yes, there needed to be change but that doesn't mean that Thatcherism had to happen. It certainly doesn't mean that the worst excesses of Thatcher and her government - such as the significant erosion of workers' rights, the imposition of the invidious poll tax, and the very 1980s principle that greed is good and socialist thinking is bad - should be seen as acceptable.

History happened - fine. That doesn't mean it had to happen that way. As science fiction fans, you should all understand that. 

What Trout said.

[Modern Panther]

What a joke, if that had been me I'd have called her out and made her repeat it in front of my wife and other witnesses. That fact alone speaks volumes about the man if you ask me.

or maybe its true. Maybe he thought that calling out a woman who was famous for not changing her mind would onlybe embarrassing for his wife.  Maybe there isn't a liberal conspiracy.

[Richmond Clements]

What a joke, if that had been me I'd have called her out and made her repeat it in front of my wife and other witnesses. That fact alone speaks volumes about the man if you ask me.

or maybe its true. Maybe he thought that calling out a woman who was famous for not changing her mind would onlybe embarrassing for his wife.  Maybe there isn't a liberal conspiracy.

And Carol Thatcher had to learn it somewhere...