Democracy hahahaha

I don't care how many come over providing they write like madmeg.
A brilliant post.
Time to stand for parliament?

Well written and thought out post Madmeg. I am intrigued as to why we have so many Mums coming over from Mumsnet - very welcome of course, I am just intrigued.

Bravo, Madmeg
I like a post one can get one's teeth into

Perhaps you were too young to remember it MaizieD but I had two small children and it was miserable

Don't be patronising, Jalima. Try reading my post a bit more carefully.

What you describe was not a nationwide phenomenon.

And candles at the ready was a different, earlier strike of the miners during the Heath govt, surely?

Whow! madmeg i admire your stamina!!! As well as the content

I doubt the dems would prop them up, they have just about detoxified their brand after the last time. I think they may have IF the tories promised to offer a vote on the final deal.

Brexit and this election have been tory vanity projects. So many people falsely blamed the EU when it was austerity measures that were harming them.

Lots of lively stuff on here, and some people have incredible memories (that have jogged mine). There are two key issues for me. The first is that under the Tory government, austerity measures have been incredibly cruel and damaging for some individuals and families, the like of which we have never seen before. Most people can cope with a change in benefits or tax that costs them a few pounds a week, but we are talking in thousands of pounds a year in some cases. The second is Brexit. We had the Referendum because Cameron was terrified of the upsurge in the support for UKIP after the financial crash of 2008, who were determined to convey to the public that all their ills were down to immigrants who were taking their jobs, bleeding the economy by claiming state benefits, and this applied equally to immigrants from the EU as well as war-torn developing countries. Cameron needed something to focus on and, confident that he would get a result that would please his members, he decided to have a Referendum on membership of the EU. That's two Tory MP's in succession who are incapable of judging the public feeling on things - not surprising as they don't actually KNOW any members of "the public" as such.

The referendum failed to get the result Cameron wanted, and he resigned. The public fell for UKIP's blarney by a very small majority for such a major "decision", and so we are leaving the EU. We didn't need to leave the EU, the referendum was only an indication of public feeling and not a legal message that we had to leave, but Mrs May decided to treat it as a valid vote to leave, and a chance for her to go down in history as the PM who successfully took us out of the EU. She thought it would be a doddle. She was wrong. She is wrong. She will be wrong.

It is all so sad and unnecessary. Even the Remain voters have given up any fight (including Corbyn) for the biggest decision of our lives, following a vote that was taken on the back of lies and serious misrepresentations to the public at large, who are very fickle.

So now we find ourselves with Theresa May and the gang of ten about to ruin our country with immeasurable effect. No relief now for the thousands affected by the Bedroom Tax or the Fitness for Work shambles. No time to even THINK about the NHS, and the police only get a look-in because of three major atrocities carried out.

What a sad, sad country we have become, faced with all this mess. What happened to our welfare state where, in the 1960s, compassion was shown to those with severe health problems, with extra money to help replace their lost incomes or pay for additional help so they could enjoy their lives? What happened that caused men like Nick Clegg to lose his seat after all the effort he put into the country between 2010 and 2015 to moderate some of the even more terrible things that Cameron would have done, had he had the chance, and why does everyone remember him for the one mistake he made in promising the abolition of tuition fees when he wasn't able to carry out his promise, and in any case the revised scheme only affects the middle and upper classes in reality, most of whom can cope with it easily. Let's not forget that it was LABOUR who introduced tuition fees, and really the new scheme is just a graduate tax, which is not an unreasonable idea. Following Tony Blair's pledge to get 50% of teenagers going to University, the only result of that is that Unis were full of kids who just scraped in with the bare 3 A-levels (sometimes only two, and there were other routes in), struggled with the level of work required of them, and ended up working in call centres. There simply isn't room for 50% of people to have graduate-level jobs and there are better routes to good careers for the majority who are able.

So two things matter to me - or have I now made it three? One is the poverty caused by Tory austerity measures that we were all supposedly "in it together", one is Brexit, sold to the people on the basis of lies, and is now making us look stupid in the eyes of the wider world for allowing an "advisory vote" to dictate to us. And the that has now wheedled its way into my thoughts is why did Theresa May not seek her extra votes from the Lib Dems (who would definitely NOT have considered a coalition), but are a party that most of the British people at least know, and understand what they stand for, and they are not extreme in their views.

I never could do short emails.

ambulance drivers - sorry

It was a freezing cold winter and thoroughly miserable; gravediggers went on strike that is why bodies were 'piling up' in a factory which had to be hired, ambulance divers on strike refusing to go to 999 calls, unqualified medical staff deciding which cases had priority, candles at the ready for if the lights went out, rubbish everywhere and rats.

Sunny Jim was accused of being out of touch with the electorate.

Perhaps you were too young to remember it MaizieD but I had two small children and it was miserable.

Was that when Saatchi and Saatchi designed that poster 'Labour Isn't Working' with a large dole queue? There was one on a billboard down the road which we saw on the way to school.

I've been googling the Winter of Discontent because my memory of it isn't very clear. As I recalled it it was caused by frustration after a 2 year cap on wage increases. Plus the fact that industrial action was much easier to take then. I was right about the cap. Compared to today's pay cap for public service workers of 1% it seems mind bogglingly generous; the first 'cap' was of increases of no more than £6 per week, then it was a cap of 5%! However, bear in mind that inflation was in double figures during the period and you can see that it restricted pay increases to well below inflation, so reducing their real worth. The public workers' strikes were triggered by private sector increases which breached the agreed 5%.
So far so good, but was it a Very Bad Thing? Although there were instances of unburied bodies and rubbish piled in the street it wasn't nationwide. It didn't happen in Sheffield, where I was working at the time. And, of course, it let Thatcher in to increase unemployment from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000, destroy manufacturing and sell off the family silver... And spread the persistent and damaging myth that a nation's budget is like a household budget.

Iam64 thank you for your kind wishes, yes, am having a superb holiday so far thanks.Just popped in here before dinner, have looked at this page, but haven't seen the remark you mentioned and certainly won't be looking for it.

Some bodies were stored in morgues and some funerals were delayed, there was a lot of rubbish around to.

Not quite as bad as having to use a food bank to feed your family, or being declared fit for work when you are dying.

Madgran77 "I am sick of politics!!" So do tell me why you seek out threads with them on. Are you just naturally contrary or did you land here by chance?

I don't see myself as curmudgeonly and I'm delighted to acknowledge my fears about Jeremy not being able to persuade large numbers to vote Labour were misplaced.

You really are a very gracious poster Iam.

Luckylegs did you see the "bodies stacking up to be buried". I don't remember any such problems round here but I do remember lurid headlines from the gutter press.

the 1978 Winter of descobtent, believe me you wouldn't if you lived through it

I imagine the vast majority of us on here lived though it Luckylegs. So you have to ask yourself why you have one view and others do not. Your opinion is just that - your opinion; not everyone shares the view of that time with you.

GGMK2: Your comments have to be taken together with the conditions of the time. After WW2 the whole of UK industry was on its knees. The war effort had particularly hit both steel and railways. There was no private capital that could have rescued them.

Indeed Cardiff, but that just goes to show that different approaches are needed at different times - that is what you have said. After 10 years of austerity of which only two or three were justified this could be exactly that time.

mad why on earth are you on this thread then?

I am sick of politics!!

Maizie, a very interesting link on The Regularity of the English Language but not about the railways!

I can't open that link maizie but renationalising the railways is easy, realistic and should make a profit.

I keep posting this link to the report on privatised rail services. Has anybody read any of it; just the summary perhaps?

The Great Train Robbery

tinyurl.com/ya74f7os

Has anybody noticed the number of times people have pointed out that East Coast main line turned in a profit when it was temporarily state run? But that doesn't fit with the 'story', does it?

David Cameron and George Osborne relied on that note from Liam Byrne for six years so that all their austerity measures could be blamed on Labour's apparent mismanagement of the economy. Which was a total distortion of the truth.
Tories are far worse at managing the economy and creating debt as others have pointed out.
But they managed to fabricate this myth and the Tories still maintain it now.

bodies stacking up to be buried Lucky, that is nothing compared to what people are living through now. People are dying days after being declared fit for work, disabled people committing suicide in droves because their support network has been ripped away. Families living in poverty and reliant on food banks even though both parents work. That is so much worse than the dead going unburied. If you are going to refer to that and use it as a stick to beat labour then you need to acknowledge the despicable way that the tories have treated it's citizens.

It is such a false equivalency and I am fed up that it gets trotted out all the time.

Maggie, I read they had the Liam Byrne note laminated to keep it safe for regular production and waving about.