willb said:
There are no facts in this post, it is all socialist opinion.
A more useful post would have been to actually put down real statistics and then make an observation from this!
Now a good post now would be to form an unbiased view based on these facts. It is all too easy to find something to back your case on google/choice of newspaper and blind yourself to both sides of an argument. You could probably even find an argument to support jimmy savills actions!
My view on what I have just posted, Thatcher played an important part in giving the majority of families a chance of home owner side however her neglect to build more social housing for those that needed it is a sorry oversight. These figures however are also biased by job losses due to union strike action, but that is a completely different post.
Nothing is black and white, ever. The difficulty is when your family have been directly effected by a decision for the worse, but the majority may have benefited. Visa versa.
Boom and Bust:
"Britain got hit by two major recessions under Thatcher, which sandwiched the boom of the 1980s but even that boom never saw GDP grow by more than a couple of percent." - So even in her Halcyon days as PM, she couldn't manage the economy properly.
Property:
At the same time as the council house sell off, interest rates rose to record levels of 17% and repossessions rose to match. In 1991, 75,500 properties were repossesed, the peak, and 186,649 cases reached the courts.
Poverty:
Poverty went up under Thatcher, according to these figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 1979, 13.4% of the population lived below 60% of median incomes before housing costs. By 1990, it had gone up to 22.2%, or 12.2m people, with huge rises in the mid-1980s.
Inequality:
With it came a huge rise in inequality. This shows the gini coefficient, which is the most common method of measuring inequality. Under gini, a score of one would be a completely unequal society; zero would be completely equal. Britain's gini score went up from 0.253 to 0.339 by the time Thatcher resigned.
Interactive Graph:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts
Rather a sharp peak there, and society has yet to recover from it.
Rest of the points have been more than referenced enough already. Gay, poor, etc already more than aptly covered, so I shall not carve those out again.
An unbiased post in return to my original, would not make such assumptions that I am a socialist - of which I am not. There are many socialist ideals that I far from share. I do not have a "side" or a "colour" to which I am affiliated to, the world changes and your priority as a country must change with it or you become isolated.
In fact I believe socialism can actually damage a society at its core, because once again you are forcing a system of living upon those who do not want it - much like the Thatcher based capitalist crud we have now. Neither work practically in the extreme of "normal" politics, as proven by the 70s and 80s. The populous is far too diverse to have extremes of either end.
So, you tell me how she didn't deregulate the city, didn't contribute to the highest levels of poverty and recessions, hasn't contributed to this one, was a champion of gay rights and equality, kept the interest rates and economy stable, kept people in the homes they'd bought (which, when homes were repossessed, where did they go, because tons of the social housing stock and been flogged? Even cheap houses are not cheap at 17% interest!)
The mistake you made here Will, is you tried to defend Thatcher's policies in a way I don't believe even she would appreciate - she was proud of how she ran the country, unashamedly so, that is her main redeeming feature. When you argue falsely against the issues it caused, you detract massively from that fact.
"Is he one of us?" Was Thatcher's calling card. She took what she believed to be tough but necessary decisions for the good of her ideals, which she believed would work, and they did. You never heard her apologise for the damage she did, because she stuck by the principles that she believed in and succeeded massively in implementing the majority of them.
You cannot be a Thatcher apologist for her policies, and not accept the manner in which they were born out. It isn't like she shirked away from them!
You took one example, derided all the other thoughts in there which were summaries based upon her own policies, many of which have been adequately detailed numerous times already throughout the thread, and concluded it was all just socialist opinion.
If you were on her side and embraced her ideals, you were fine - if not, you were screwed, and she was proud of that fact, and it is in fact precisely that, which led to her ousting as party leader. This is kinda, Thatcher 101 stuff to be honest.
She destroyed society, as she proudly believed there was no such thing. Proven by marriage figures dropping dramatically and a selfish, self centred attitude being born we are paying dearly for now. You only need to take a peek outside to see the remnants of this everywhere.
Thatcher's legacy is indeed, self evident.
