Post by CharlotteGirl on Apr 14, 2013 17:51:27 GMT -5
With the recent death of Mrs Thatcher, just wondered what you think about her? I was only about 11 when she stood down, so have no direct experience of her rule.
Personally I think she definitely had to do some things such as take on the trade unions and some other similar vested interests, make labour regulations more flexible/less bureaucratic, and sort out the then chronic inflation.
One of her most notorious acts though was to effectively more or less close down British manufacturing industry, mining, etc. It was questionable how viable much of it was anyway, and statistically the total production supposedly actually INCREASED during her era, but she certainly ruined many towns where there was/perhaps still is not much to replace it.
Another area where she really went too far IMO was privatisation and deregulation. The banking industry was apparently once an unacceptable closed-shop with vested interests like the unions, but excessive deregulation as in other countries, probably mainly caused the financial crisis.
Before the telephone system was privatised, it quite famously took 6 months to get a line installed, perhaps that was an exception. But for example, it's a fact that electricity bills have risen massively ever since privatisation, what good is that? Privatising water is just totally wrong really. On the other hand, even she apparently saw that privatising the railways or the post office would be madness, unlike later prime ministers.
Her policies also seem to have made British people less trusting of state institutions in general, not neccessarily a good thing (think we still have far fewer extreme right anti-government extremists on the fringes than America though
), and also more pro-business/so-called wealth creation, less interested in public service. So apparently, less community-minded than before, more individualistic, agressive, competitive towards other people.
On the other hand, at least today we have a very free market, non-protectionist economy, unlike most other European countries, which arguably has a lot of advantages. The country generally at least looked a lot nicer and more wealthy for a long time, even if sometimes only on the outside. Now the government is severely cutting everything really which is unpleasant, but that`s another story. When she was elected, the whole economy was seriously collapsing, so a possible socialist alternative might have been even worse.
For better or worse anyway, she was elected not some dictator, a woman who got right to the top, and supposedly quite a nice person in private so RIP although you can`t deny that she was an incredibly divisive figure whose death was openly celebrated by a lot of people here.
Personally I think she definitely had to do some things such as take on the trade unions and some other similar vested interests, make labour regulations more flexible/less bureaucratic, and sort out the then chronic inflation.
One of her most notorious acts though was to effectively more or less close down British manufacturing industry, mining, etc. It was questionable how viable much of it was anyway, and statistically the total production supposedly actually INCREASED during her era, but she certainly ruined many towns where there was/perhaps still is not much to replace it.
Another area where she really went too far IMO was privatisation and deregulation. The banking industry was apparently once an unacceptable closed-shop with vested interests like the unions, but excessive deregulation as in other countries, probably mainly caused the financial crisis.
Before the telephone system was privatised, it quite famously took 6 months to get a line installed, perhaps that was an exception. But for example, it's a fact that electricity bills have risen massively ever since privatisation, what good is that? Privatising water is just totally wrong really. On the other hand, even she apparently saw that privatising the railways or the post office would be madness, unlike later prime ministers.
Her policies also seem to have made British people less trusting of state institutions in general, not neccessarily a good thing (think we still have far fewer extreme right anti-government extremists on the fringes than America though
), and also more pro-business/so-called wealth creation, less interested in public service. So apparently, less community-minded than before, more individualistic, agressive, competitive towards other people. On the other hand, at least today we have a very free market, non-protectionist economy, unlike most other European countries, which arguably has a lot of advantages. The country generally at least looked a lot nicer and more wealthy for a long time, even if sometimes only on the outside. Now the government is severely cutting everything really which is unpleasant, but that`s another story. When she was elected, the whole economy was seriously collapsing, so a possible socialist alternative might have been even worse.
For better or worse anyway, she was elected not some dictator, a woman who got right to the top, and supposedly quite a nice person in private so RIP although you can`t deny that she was an incredibly divisive figure whose death was openly celebrated by a lot of people here.
