The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #109286   Message #2283552
Posted By: mandotim
09-Mar-08 - 08:42 AM
Thread Name: BS: The last days of Thatcher
Subject: RE: BS: The last days of Thatcher
Interesting thread, this. Aside from all the obvious hatred stuff, I think history will be particularly harsh on Margaret Hilda Thatcher (although it's probably to soon to tell just how harsh). Not because of the dogma and revenge driven inhumanity, but because of the strategic mistakes that have left the nation so weak in so many crucial areas. A short list;
Destroying the coal industry. This left the industry without the means to raise investment capital to clean up emissions, and removed a strategic asset by rendering most of our immense coal reserves (aka dependable energy) unrecoverable due to neglect.
Destroying the fishing industry. Another strategic reserve gone.
Abolishing Industrial Training Boards and the associated levies on employers, leading to the almost complete loss of apprenticeships, which we now see as the gross skills shortages in many important trades.
Raising European integration as a spectre in the minds of the population, with no actual gains. (All the alleged 'money back' gains were surrendered later). Given the current trend towards globalisation, there is a clear strategic advantage in being part of a large trading bloc.
Reducing the level of manufacturing industry to 30% of the pre-Thatcher level, leaving Britain dependent on an increasingly unreliable global market for imported goods.
Creating a society where cooperation and support for the less able was anathema; any form of collaborative or altruistic effort was seen by Thatcher as potential socialism, and was ruthlessly discouraged. This has led to Thatchers Children; a generation where many lack the moral code that places a duty to help ones neighbour. All that matters is self-enrichment, and people's worth is judged by their wealth, not their value.
The Internal Market in the National Health service; I was part of this one, and it has led to the siphoning away of huge amounts of resource into non-patient related activity.
An assumption that the best way to reduce crime was to lock up more people. The evidence discredited this, even at the time, but dogma won the day. As a result we have one of the highest prison populations per capita, and one of the worst re-offending rates.

I could go on and on, but the arguments are already well-rehearsed. Perhaps the biggest damage of all was the setting of a political agenda that has led all subsequent administrations into the trap of trying to be 'tougher' than the last, in the belief that a right wing, low-wage/low tax liberal economy is the only way to be competitive in the global marketplace. It's far from the real situation, but dogma has now become accepted wisdom, and seems irreversible; people have been conditioned not to vote for any party that seems to have the potential to tax individuals to enrich the common good.
Enough for now; Thatcher will die in her own good time, and I wish her peace, as I would for any other human being. What matters is what we make of her legacy; do we allow it to persist, or take the brave step to change course?
Tim