Do we expect too much as a right in Great Britain?

Well, she has been reincarnated on this thread, so perhaps you can have a word with her and get her to admit the error of her ways.

Nothing to do with the extra few million people that came in under Blair's government then? Or the dismal failure to build enough houses during his reign?

Statistics can sometimes be useful. I wonder if anyone can extrapolate information that would prove that there would not be a housing crisis had the population increased at the rate it was increasing under the last Tory government? Or the obverse, of course. I will not be partisan, just interested.

With 13 years in power and a booming population, you would have thought Labour could have had the nous to do something about it. Just a thought.

Well said, rosequartz!

I was in no way a fan of MT. But I have to say that there are two ways of looking at this. Yes she did allow the sell off of council houses. The big mistake being that the proceeds were not used to build more houses. However on the plus side it did allow many thousands of people to own their home, which is a good thing. It has also helped turn some bad housing estates around with people taking more pride in their home and surroundings.

And, of course, John Prescott and Yvette Cooper knocked a lot down under the Pathfinder Housing Scheme. But don't let me get started on that

gillybob, Thatcher was an opportunist bitch. Thatcher sold off council houses to get votes.

I never agreed with the selling of council houses, they were built for people who could not afford to buy.

Please do not refer to any woman using that word, it is offensive

harrigran, not when describing Thatcher it isnt!

Well said Harrigran.
I agree with Gillybob. The area where I worked for nearly twenty years was predominantly council property, and over the years the tenants bought the properties and improved them. The whole area improved as a result.
As you say, the pity was that the money was not re-invested in new houses, but during the time I have lived here the stock of council property in North Tyneside has been extensively refurbished and improved for council tenants.

Ivanhoe, this was my OP, we were having healthy debate before you arrived on the forum. Please desist from lowering the tone.

Ivanhoe MT had many fault but the selling of council houses was not one of them. It was the failure to reinvest in new housing stock that was the problem. The right to buy scheme allowed people like my parents to own their own home, something that would have otherwise been way beyond their reach.

My post: Mon 19-May-14 10:38:33

Anyone interested or clever enough or with enough time to find out the information? I am curious to know but not very au fait with statistics. I am interested in a straightforward, non-politically biased answer.

The things I don't like in Ivanhoes posts are not his politics - he is sincere in that and not as alone on GN as he seems to think - but the way he rants on so about an individual as though she were the AntiChrist, come with malice aforethought with the deliberate intention of destroying lives, and his assertion that Gransnet members are the same, colluding with those whose sole aim is to wreck the country. That and his air of such uncontrollable anger that if we were speaking face-to-face I truly believe that he would strike me physically if I did not agree with him.

Now take a long drink of cold water and a deep breath and start fulfilling your claim to be objective, Ivanhoe.

If you can't, then take up boxing, or some other sport which gets rid of the aggression without directing it at non-combatants.

I say this quite objectively. I am not praising MT. I am not attacking you. I do not need to be blasted in your next post, and I don't need anyone else to leap to your defence and accuse me of being a bully or of attempting to "silence debate" or stop you voicing your concerns.

Well said, Elegran. Thank you.

I was beginning to think that, despite the efforts of Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. we were still in the midst of a Cold War.

Gold star, Elegran. I abhorred MT and her policies. However, the present lot are doing more than she did to dismantle our welfare state to the extent that 'welfare' has become a dirty word in some mouths. Ivanhoe, you are living in the past by venting your spleen on a dead woman.

annodomini, "This dead woman" lives in in this coalitions ideological agenda to remove the welfare State and privatise the NHS, under cover of reducing the deficit.

Thatchrism plagues our country still, because it's all about greed and selfishness.

MY OP AND I WOULD LIKE TO

_______________________________________________________________________________________

IF CAPITALS MEANS I AM SHOUTING, YES I AM. Just in case anyone cannot hear me.

So concentrate on the policies. Raving about the woman does nothing to change those. In fact, raving does nothing to change anything. Logical argument from statistics and individual cases does that. Raving can even set people against the very things you want to happen, because you have alienated them.

All parties have picked a course between the welfare of their citizens and paying outside debts, ever since the first concept of public welfare - which was conceived as a safety net for those who had no other lifeline, not as a universal guarantee of an income in whatever circumstances. Sometimes the balance has swung one way, sometimes the other, and when a lot has been spent on supporting those who could have supported themselves, later decisions have been harsh.

The best route to full employment and no hardship is an economy where what is made here, and services offered here, are sold to people in other countries, bringing in more money than they cost to produce. Taxing those who have money (from business profits or as income tax from decent wages and salaries, or from the goods they buy with that money) would then pay for welfare for those who need it.

No-one could argue with that! But there are other countries out there trying to do exactly the same. They want to raise their own standards of living, or keep it up - of course they do, no-one is going to go without so that we live well - and there is a world-wide recession going on. No government has a magic wand to wave. There is a tightrope to walk between spending money to help businesses to succeed and spending money to look after those who have no work because businesses are not succeeding.

They re damned if they concentrate on one, damned if they concentrate on the other!

Sorry, Rosequartz My post took rather a while to write, and by the time I posted, you had drawn that line.

I would just like to see a level playing field Elegran where all businesses and individuals are treat the same (taking into account percentages of tax obviously). What we have at the minute is individuals on low incomes paying tax and individuals such as Gary Barlow (another topic I know) avoiding tax. Huge corporations such as Boots, Amazon, Starbucks etc. avoiding tax and my little micro business paying up in full.

gillybob, Our tax system has been with us since Thatcher, yes Thatcher, over 30 years ago.

Thatcher reduced income tax in the 80's for all UK workers.

So would I, Gillybob.

Ivanhoe

If your intention is to belittle anybody who votes Conservative or does not agree with you then I have to tell you it is not working.

I can assure you and some other posters that it does in fact remind me why I stopped voting for Labour or the left of politics.

Your only purpose to joining a thread is to spout a diatribe of political hatred and that tells me that those who are to the far left have nothing more than it had years ago, the same old, same old vacuous ability to debate, engage in dialogue of any meaning and spout the same old clap trap of class warfare and desire to bring down the 'Establishment'

If you only make a statement then you are only inviting agreement or disagreement from those who can be bothered to respond. There is hardly anything clever in that.

Your rhetoric is the kind of language I remember oh so well whilst I was growing up. My father was a Union Shop Steward and then a Union Convenor. He had a change of heart many moons ago after a attending a Union Convention and he realised the movement back in the 70's had become nothing more than an aggressive, up it's ass movement who were intent on bringing down the establishment and to be frank did not give a s--t about the workers who by now had to toe the party line. They were men who were happy to allow families to go hungry to satisfy their desire for 'The Comrades' to dominate and overpower the 'Boss' and the 'Establishment'. There was no structure for rational discussion just pure bloody mindedness and it became the eventual downfall of what could and should have been a progressive party that genuinely did act for the good of the labour force.

Hatred of Margaret Thatcher, lack of progressive thought, historical rhetoric are all some people have who cannot accept life has moved on since the 80's. This is 2014 and the generations that followed us do not have the hang up's we have, THANK GOODNESS.

Carry on, Elegran, I enjoy your reasoned and informative posts.
Along with many others of course.
I just think that every thread with a political theme has suddenly been taken over by someone who obviously has strong views but cannot listen to anyone else's viewpoint. I cannot quite work out what is being said except a lot of negatives and not any pros for any party in particular. Perhaps all will be revealed before voting day.

In fact I have not learnt anything and have already sent in my postal vote.

POGS, you could have been describing my father too. I was brought up on Labour and Trade Unionism, with DM occasionally piping up to say that she didn't care, she was going to vote Conservative anyway!

And my father lost faith at about the same time as yours and resigned from the Labour Party.

I remain very open minded towards politics. I was a member of the Labour party for years until I had my eyes opened to what local politics is really about. Mainly people scratching each others backs, voting each other onto various commitees depending on the perks, claiming expenses for anything (and by god I mean anything). Bullying old people into voting for them by picking them up in their car and standing with them while they put their X in the "right box". I thought I had joined to change things, to make a difference.
I didn't have a snowballs chance in hell against that lot !