"yes unemployment is one of life's realities!"
Not what I said - I said it is inevitable under the system we live in if you sign up to the values which that system adheres to.
Thatcher set out to make greed and acquisition respectable and in doing so, she split Britain very sharply in half - the haves and the have nots.
The divide she created has widened considerably (you've tried to claim that was not the case but have gone silent on that fact since you have been given the statistics).
Old Labour believed they could compromise with the system to lessen its effects on tho less well of, but since Blair, it has abandoned any pretence of supporting the people who created the party and have settle into holding office in one form or another, as 'Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition', or, if they can manage it, as part of a coalition.
Mass unemployment has become a permanent feature of British life, whoever is in power, and unless or until it rebuilds an industrial base, that will remain the case.
British industry was no more "crap" than the troops who fought in World War One were the liars you described them as.
Britain had an excellent manufacturing and engineering industry - it was sacrificed because it was cheaper to buy inferior goods and materials abroad, leaving us with nothing to sell and reliant on foreign imports.
We've seen the effects of a fucked-up, profit based economy through the continuing crises, financial balls-ups and political corruption - that's what the right has to offer.
It's the 'Patriotic' Right who claim our industry was crap and our workers parasitic no-marks.
Jim Carroll