Thatcher has died

Tegan, I was thinking of Ausgrandma's comment that we live in a Christian country - I don't know what that means.

Galen, No but I remember difficult calvings by torchlight (you held the torch between your teeth), and being up all night every night with a three month old baby seriously ill with whooping cough and the stewed flasks of tea to keep our spirits up.

I remember the power cuts!
Have you ever tried to diagnose a rash by taper light?

...I was trying to be sarcastic ....

Tweedle24 You did say an "elderly couple". They would only be liable for income tax on their pensions, which we all have to pay if we receive over the limit set.

And if it's a working individual, again, everybody has to pay income tax over a certain limit. Presumably an individual that owns a £4 million house would have an income relative to that. I believe the higher income tax rate at that time was 40%.

What are 'Christian values', as opposed to atheist values, for example?

POGS I agree with you that the relationship between employers/government/trades unions was becoming increasingly problematic during the 60's and 70's.

Anyone who was an adult in the 70's will recall the various strikes and the power cuts - I was a working mum and I remember sitting in the office trying to work by the light of lamps, so I experienced those things too.

I think that historically the UK has had a bad record of worker/employer relationships. Where companies in Japan and Germany, for instance, encourage worker representation and a less rigid division between top management and workers, in this country we had a very hierarchical structure, as exemplified by larger companies having restaurants for the "bosses" and canteens for the "workers". It's hardly surprising that industrial relations were tainted by this sort of attitude.

I believe that Mrs T would have pursued her "free market" policies even if there had been no industrial strife - but people like Arthur Scargill actually played into her hands. She was a staunch believer in Milton Friedman's economic philosophy that the market can be left to its own devices and that government should neither own key industries nor have any regulatory function.

On being elected, Mrs T: lowered direct taxes and increased indirect taxes. increased the interest rates and reduced expenditure on social services and education. Her approval rating fell to 23% in December 1980 and there were riots in 1981. By 1982 over 3 million people were unemployed and manufacturing output had decreased by 30% since 1975. The Falklands war in 1982 restored her popularity.

At the same time, North Sea Oil revenue which was at its highest level between 1980 and 1987 was used to balance the economy. From around the 1990's that revenue fell rapidly.

Now that unions have nowhere near as much power as in the past, we we find that there is a huge increase in zero hours contracts, workers being paid minimum or very low wages that need to be made up to more realistic levels by taxpayer benefits, more and more workers being denied sick pay, etc. Meanwhile, we are almost entirely dependent on the financial and service sector, and now the financial sector (which holds no allegiance to any country) holds the country to ransom - threatening to move elsewhere if the government "oversteps the mark" in trying to regulate them.

How does being able to paraphrase St Francis mean that she followed Christian values? I can quote from the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah and the Guru Granth Sahib. Does that make me a Christian Islamic Jewish Sikh?

She used the words of a good man as a sound bite. Cynical photo/sound opportunity.

Mice

OK Thanks.

The last one, I think! Was to Eloethan? 400 posts, and four threads, I'm just a little confused. I think we need a techy gransnetter to produce a spreadsheet so we can backtrack and reference everything each one of us has said.

But, having said that, without going back and doing a textual analysis of everything Eloethan has said, I sort of think that she and I are in general agreement.

I'm sure she'll put me right if that's not the case.

Micelf

Are you answering my post at 15.12 or answering my 'respectful' request to Eloethan. I have no issue with what you say just trying to understand why you posted to me by name. Albeit very nice.

Good post, MiceElf! Puts things in perspective.

POGS there are 400 posts on this topic, and I must say its quite a task to keep track of everything everyone has said (on this thread and on others) but if you do have the time to scroll back, you will see that the views of those of us who do not feel that Mrs T and her supporters are candidates for canonisation have a perfectly sceptical and nuanced view of events prior to 1979. We do not extoll everything that every union did. We do not assert that Scargill and others were correct in their behaviour. We do not, even, blame Mrs T for the developments of Western Capitalism in Europe, which, by and large, is pretty much the same wherever you look. But we do say that Mrs Thatcher was the epitome and embodiment of a particular manifestation of selfish individualism which took little account of the poor and dispossessed and substituted one kind of unelected hegemony for another - the financial institutions who equally hold the country to ransom and against whom there are no sanctions.

I hear what you are saying, Eloethan, but presumably, if they could afford the £4M house, they would have been paying higher taxes anyway.

I was actually thinking of like for like. I think the principal was a good one but, hope there would have to have been a way of ensuring a fair share being paid.

In those days, remember, the high earners paid a much higher percentage of income tax and the tax on unearned income was very high too.

I am pleased that I do not have to make those decisions but, I hope that if I did and was convinced that those decisions were best for the country, that I would have Mrs T's courage to stick to my guns

Eloethan

May I 'respectfully' ask if you read my post today at 15.12.

I am obviously aware we are not in agreement on much but I am interested in your opinion.

May I ask in a civil manner. Do you believe, or can accept, or obviously not, that the period prior to Margaret Thatcher becoming PM the unions were, as a lot of us have expressed our feeling, out of control. As I said in my post I am not anti union, although I appreciate my posts will appear that way. That is because I have been talking about my life and rememberence of that era, not todays union business. I think I may have shown a different side to me in that post, or at least I hope I did.

I am asking this as I think a lot of the 'issues' that are being discussed do stem from our personal views of how the unions affected us all as individuals for good or bad reasons just as much as the government of 'that era'..

*Tweedle24" But what if that elderly couple were living in a house worth £4 million?

I too agree with Hattiehelga about the poll tax. My understanding was that poll tax was to be paid by all income earners - to my mind, much fairer than the elderly couple alone in their house having to pay the same as a house where there were grown-up children earning.

hattiehelga The Poll Tax didn't take into account income or property ownership and was based solely on the number of people living in a house, rather than its estimated value.

This meant that a family of seven crammed into a small house because they couldn't afford to rent or buy anything bigger, would pay substantially more than a wealthy individual living in a large expensive house.

Nicholas Ridley, the then Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment boasted that "A duke would pay the same as a dustman".

Is that fair?

I don't know how old you are but I'm nearly 63 and was around during Mrs T's leadership, as I suspect many of the posters on GN were.

My grandson, who is married with two children, has to work very long hours on a construction site and has been forced to declare himself self-employed, which he clearly isn't, just to save his employers his NI, holiday pay, redundancy entitlement, etc. This is happening to thousands of decent , hard working people. Unfortuantely, there is no union to represent them. I am hoping HMRC will take a firm stand with such employers but given the antics of the last head honcho I am not optimistic.
It seems that some people here believe that all employers are saintly, altruistic souls who have their employees best interests at heart. I wish.

I am with you Hattiehelga well said.

.

Eloethan, I just want say well done on an extremely well researched and referenced post. No polemics, just facts.

Movedalot It's hardly surprising that bluebell was angry when you referred to her "artificial indignation" - as much as saying she was feigning indignation for dramatic effect.

And "I did think anyone ........ would be intelligent enough" - it's really not very courteous to question someone's intelligence is it?

hattiehelga I agree.

Whilst in the newsagents the day after Mrs T's death I noticed the range of front page headlines. All very predictable (nothing wrong with that in the circumstances, I suppose) but one stood out - The Star's "Maggie dead in bed at Ritz". It sounded almost racy.

I started watching the debate in the H of C yesterday and got hooked - it was fascinating. This is history and I remember some of it!