Re: Thatcher

There was very little of British society left to destroy back in 1979, the unions had done all of that already. Back then country was leading a miserable existence and almost at a standstill, being brought to it's knees by militant trade unions hell bent on imposing their communist ideals, even the dead weren't being buried. If you weren't there you wouldn't have a clue, as is quite clear you don't now.

Mrs.Thatcher rescued this country from total ruin, and just for that alone we owe her a huge debt of gratitude. It would be hard for anyone to argue that Britain wasn't in a much better place in 89 than it was 10 years earlier...

Re: Thatcher

It is funny you should mention 1989 because I came to Britain in November 1988 for a couple of months and left in January 1989.

I flew into Heathrow and caught the tube to Charing Cross. It was the most depressing journey of my life. The underground was packed and smelly and every station seemed to be in a state of decay with blank spaces where billboards should have been. This impression continued when I transferred to the Southern Region heavy rail.

I walked up the littered strewn steps outside Charing Cross station which itself was equally littered with rubbish everywhere and paid three/four times the amount I pay for same distance to Sydney for a trip to Folkestone. The train was filthy, it hadn't been cleaned before its journey and there were beer cans rolling up and down the aisle.

My abiding memory of that visit was the smell of urine in every public stairwell and rubbish everywhere - it was as if every cleaner in the country had been sacked.

Shortly after my arrival there was a train crash involving a commuter train to London, I was not surprised because the railways seems to be on their last legs (the train that died of shame?). I was told it was because Thatcher was running them down to sell (I don't know if that is true)

The whole country seemed run down, colourless and depressed; I also stayed in Glasgow and Cheltenham during that trip (I was driving to Glasgow on the night of the Lockerbie plane crash) - I have never been in such depressing country either before or since and I was living in the UK during the three day week and it was nothing like that.

When I visited a few years ago it was a completely different place - much improved, I would say almost unrecognisable compared to 1989.

Re: Thatcher

It's a bit like someone doing you a favour, because it suits their agenda, that's politics for you.

Re: Thatcher

I'm not sure what you mean by reunification. Do you mean the period since the Second World War or do you mean the period since the reuniting of East and West Germany. Either way, if we go back to the period just after the Second World War the Germans received a great deal of low interest financial help from the allies in order to rebuild. An ideal opportunity to restructure the country, particularly one who is people have the work ethic the Germans have. They had that help up until fairly recently. But credit to the Germans they've worked and worked pretty hard to achieve their position in the world.

On the other hand the UK had a great deal of debt which they had to repay. war loans taken to finance the war which were made usually by the US at normal rates. The reason for the loans was because we were broke due to the First World War. Although Churchill prophesied the war which was inevitable he was ridiculed and branded a warmonger, a label still used today by certain ignorant people. So great deal of money had to be borrowed to build up the war machine.

After the war we were faced with much the same structural damage although not quite so severe as Germany but of course guess what? We had to borrow even more money to start to rebuild again at normal rates in addition to paying off the war loans. Some on here, some years ago now may even remember the Conservative government of John Major announcing the last war loans had been paid off.

Some of the working population went to work to try to rebuild but others, like organised unions seem to be deliberately obstructing the rebuilding for their own selfish ends. Britain became paralysed with strikes and work-to-rule disruption and became known as the sick man of Europe.

That's what Margaret Thatcher faced when she came to power. I'm not saying she got it all right, she didn't, but much of what she did needed doing and she was tough enough to do it and thank God she was. Personally, I think she stayed in power just a bit too long and became a little bit arrogant toward the end of her premiership. By and large though I think she got more right that she got wrong.

Re: Thatcher

What a fairy story!

Re: Thatcher

Let them dream of their airy fairy land, we know much better, don't we comrade!!!

Re: Thatcher

Comrade? You are both living in the sixties...your time has come and gone, you both missed the bus.
Hang on to your little red book, your poster of Che and the communist manifesto, they are becoming a collectors item.

Re: Thatcher

I thought that reunification of Germany obviously referred to the removal of the wall and borders between East and West Germany. Surely the end of the second world war was the division of Germany into four sectors?

Thatcher was dead against a reunited Germany as I recall and actively conspired with Gorbachev to prevent it. Presumably she wanted a two state solution.

Anyway, in the early 90s Germany was faced with a vast new population of basically poor people with absolutely no infrastructure and a currency that was effectively valueless. They had to reshape and rebuilt their economy to be able to spend the trillions of Euros it took to rebuild East Germany.

Yet here they are still the richest and most powerful (if the comments in this forum are anything to go by) nation in Europe. That is how you restructure not by waging war on your own population - even if that is somewhat of a British tradition - The Reformation, Peterloo, the 1926 General Strike to give some examples (and Britain is not alone in this)

Re: Thatcher

Oh do sod off, back to your 'nasty party' dream land!!

Re: Thatcher

I agree.

One thing I didn't like about Maggie, though, was that she sold off the very successful ITV companies, especially the 'big five'. In those days, they each made some excellent, high quality programmes and certainly exceeded the output of the BBC which, in fairness, was also good.

Friendly competition again, you see.

Now ITV is one large company that produces a lot of crap.

Perhaps the decline in society also has something to do with it; they seem to produce the sort of rubbish that 'modern society' seems to like anyway.