mark indigo -> RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (Nov. 12 2020 8:25:19)
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quote:
In my opinion, Margaret Thatcher’s policies were, by and large, good for Britain. Prior to Thatcher’s election, Britain had descended to the level of a Third World country. It had a GDP lower than Italy’s at the time. Inflation was running at over 20 percent. The bloated public sector (which was most of the economy; a private sector hardly existed!) was feather-bedded with far too many employees who were inefficient, creating a drag on the economy, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. Productivity was low. The British Miners’ Union held Britain in a stranglehold, and the British public was held hostage through Union demands and strikes. As a result, in the mid and late 1970s, Britain for a while went to a three-day work-week, there were power outages and brownouts, erratic heating, and garbage littered the streets. Meanwhile, the leader of the Miners’ Union, Arthur (“Red Arthur”) Scargill would take vacations on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and visit his friend, Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov. (I was assigned to the American Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria at the time and noted his presence.) When Thatcher assumed the position of Prime Minister, she privatized much of the inefficient and unproductive state sector and, as a result, it became more efficient and productive. GDP went up. She reined in the Miners’ Union that had been the source of so many of the problems facing the British, from forcing the three-day work-week to the power outages and lack of heating. Using monetary policy, Thatcher raised interest rates and reined in galloping inflation. And, of course, when Argentina invaded the British territory of the Falkland Islands, she sent the British fleet and forces to repel the invading Argentine forces, defeating them and reclaiming the Falklands. As a result of Thatcher’s policies, Britain became competitive again and assumed its place as a vibrant, respectable, medium-sized political and economic player on the world stage. This post took me aback because it is extremely one sided. Dubbed the "Iron Lady" Thatcher was widely hated and despised, not only during her time as PM but until her death (there were street parties). She oversaw the dismantling of coal mining, heavy industry and manufacturing, destroying in the process the close-knit working class communities and local economies that depended on those jobs. You may argue that those policies were economically necessary, but the social and human cost of those policies was devastating. As Brendan pointed out, they caused mass unemployment, and the Falklands war was widely seen as a convenient smokescreen to distract from problems at home and "unite" the country.... There is a whole list of things of a similar nature, turfing the mentally ill out of hospitals onto the streets in the "community care" programme, the massive rise of homelessness, inner city riots in a number of major cities caused by poverty, deprivation and "over-enthusiastic" policing (what we would now call systemic racism and racist policing), etc. etc. the list goes on. She famously said "there is no such thing as society" and she was often portrayed as having empowered selfishness and greed - this was the era of the rise of the Yuppie.
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