Baroness Thatcher dies overnight

[BoristheBiter]

... fighting fire with fire eh. One wants to keep jobs, the other wants to maximise profit... hmmmm, decisions decisions. Are we any better for not having the unions? I'm going for a no. Me maw was union rep at a place she worked and other than being a Tory, she was respected and did her job well for those who she represented. No doubt there were those in other places of work who had to play hardball against hard nosed employers. As ya say, time have changed



Or even talk to yer rep face to face. Doh, not so much any more.

The govt seems to be taking up that slack... after all you need to be licensed to scratch yer arse these days and they're all dying to tailor Uni course to what the workforce needs. Still though, employees are two a penny, cut them loose as and when and worse case scenario is that the ex-employee has money and takes it to court. Shame many don't and get discarded. Having said that though, short-term contracts do that job these days.

And I can also say

the NZ Meat workers union are a bunch of self serving back stabbing money grabbing , Holden commodore driving useless ,,,( you can fill in this space )

they are letting a whole lot of good people down , people that really do need their help

this is from first hand , behind the scenes knowledge

Stephen

The problem with unions that most forget is that they are a business.
yes the might help the workers but you have to pay for them and when their numbers go down they put the subs up and every now and then they make noise so you think you need them.
But in the end they are the same as any other business.

[Robert Taylor]

Here's a fitting Eulogy.


1. She supported the retention of capital punishment
2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry
3. She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws
4. She abolished free milk for schoolchildren ("Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher")
5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)
6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration
7. She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)
8. She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million
9. She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands
10. The poll tax
11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad
12. She compared her "fight" against the miners to the Falklands War
13. She privatised state monopolies and created the corporate greed culture that we've been railing against for the last 5 years
14. She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS
15. She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits
16. She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA
17. She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control
18. Section 28
19. She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as "that grubby little terrorist"
20. She support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and sent the SAS to train their soldiers
21. She allowed the US to bomb Libya in 1986, against the wishes of more than 2/3 of the population
22. She opposed the reunification of Germany
23. She invented Quangos
24. She increased VAT from 8% to 17.5%
25. She had the lowest approval rating of any post-war Prime Minister
26. Her post-PM job? Consultant to Philip Morris tobacco at $250,000 a year, plus $50,000 per speech
27. The Al Yamamah contract
28. She opposed the indictment of Chile's General Pinochet
29. Social unrest under her leadership was higher than at any time since the General Strike
30. She presided over interest rates increasing to 15%
31. BSE
32. She presided over 2 million manufacturing job losses in the 79-81 recession
33. She opposed the inclusion of Eire in the Northern Ireland peace process
34. She supported sanctions-busting arms deals with South Africa
35. Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitkin
36. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher
37. Black Wednesday – Britain withdraws from the ERM and the pound is devalued. Cost to Britain - £3.5 billion; profit for George Soros - £1 billion
38. Poverty doubled while she opposed a minimum wage
39. She privatised public services, claiming at the time it would increase public ownership. Most are now owned either by foreign governments (EDF) or major investment houses. The profits don’t now accrue to the taxpayer, but to foreign or institutional shareholders.
40. She cut 75% of funding to museums, galleries and other sources of education
41. In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions
42. 21.9% inflation
43. Covered up the Hillsborough disaster to protect the police.

You forget one very important point . Maggie allowed Bobbi Sands and his fellow IRA hunger strikers ( guests of her majesty ) to starve to death. And just desserts that was for the murdering bastards.

So given that you painted things as so dire ( yes there was a lot of pain before things improved enormously ) why did the Tories win 4 straight elections in a row? Perhaps the populace at large didnt want to return to unsustainable Labour party policies? Eventually of course they did, back to a culture of unsustainable borrowing to fund grandiose social schemes. The economy was already overheating and Botchup Brown just kept borrowing more and failed to put the brakes on well before the current financial squeeze.

Why as an immigrant to the UK in 1981 ( 3 million unemployed )was I able to get a job, no problem?

[Swoop]

Millwall fans rioting, Maggie dividing the nation, nuclear war threatened...

And people say Britain isn't backward.

[Banditbandit]

The problem with unions that most forget is that they are a business.
yes the might help the workers but you have to pay for them and when their numbers go down they put the subs up and every now and then they make noise so you think you need them.
But in the end they are the same as any other business.

Yes ... Trotsky said that Man has dignity and Labour is not for hire ... Unions are part of the capitalist sytem because they accept that Labour is for hire - and are just arguing about the price ...

[Banditbandit]

????? you get to hold to account the govt at election time just like unions.

Bwhahahahaha ... how naive ...

And I can also say

the NZ Meat workers union are a bunch of self serving back stabbing money grabbing , Holden commodore driving useless ,,,( you can fill in this space )

they are letting a whole lot of good people down , people that really do need their help

this is from first hand , behind the scenes knowledge

Stephen

Yes. Exactly my experience fo the meatworkers union .. at one worksite the union head always got promoted after he served his time as union head and kept the workers under control ...

I pissed one off by forcing him to take action - action he dd not want to follow and which jeopardized hsi chance of gettign the coverted promottion ..

Fuck me .. I'm union branch chair at my current workplace ...

[MisterD]

Here's a fitting Eulogy.

2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry

False. She turned off unaffordable taxpayer support for uncompetitive twilight industries. Pre-Thatcher British Leyland was a laughing stock (sorry Indy, it's true) in the UK Thatcher created, Nissan's Sunderland plant is their best performing factory.

5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)

Quite well, see above.

6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration

Well justified fears, and as we can now see from the recent BNP experience, those votes' natural home appears to be the Labour party.

11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad

154 to be precise in her 11 years in power, which compares with the 211 closed under the Wilson government in 5 years.

14. She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS

Yeah ok, you got me there. "Gradual" was a mistake.

15. She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits

That's what those institutions are like. She at least made it possible for them to be in the UK generating foreign exchange income for the country, rather than being soley in places like HK.

16. She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA

No, Churchill (being half American) did that. Thatcher just got on well with Reagan.

17. She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control

Don't understand "Nato" do you?

19. She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as "that grubby little terrorist"

On the basis that it would unfairly impact the predominantly black workforce in SA, and she pushed the case for Mandela's release with de Klerk so hard he cancelled a planned press conference outside number 10

[BoristheBiter]

Bwhahahahaha ... how naive ...


.

please show me where that is wrong.

[HenryDorsetCase]

Fuck me .. I'm union branch chair at my current workplace ...

I'm sorry, but that is the worst pickup line I have ever heard.

[Brian d marge]

Millwall fans Maggie

And people say Britain isn't backward.

All mouth and trowsers them lot


The Firm is where its at

Stephen

ps, we won any games of late?

[mashman]

Not great at all – the Thatcher government’s economic record and legacy... paints a very different picture to the one the right whingers have swallowed... something our dear JK seems hell bent on emulating.

Oh, and Orcon has been sold off despite turning a consistent profit to a small ISP and "The price paid in the privatisation has not been disclosed".

[Banditbandit]

please show me where that is wrong.

You think that elections hold Governments to account ... that's pretty naive ...

[FJRider]

I'm sorry, but that is the worst pickup line I have ever heard.

Not if "The Red Banner" is a favorite tune you sing regularly. Or you're at a Union meeting ...

[Banditbandit]

Not if "The Red Banner" is a favorite tune you sing regularly. Or you're at a Union meeting ...

Bwhahaha .. I like Billy Bragg's version .. and yes, I play it regularly

[blue rider]

Not great at all – the Thatcher government’s economic record and legacy... paints a very different picture to the one the right whingers have swallowed... something our dear JK seems hell bent on emulating.

Oh, and Orcon has been sold off despite turning a consistent profit to a small ISP and "The price paid in the privatisation has not been disclosed".

she surely was no Francis Perkins....

Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880[1][2] – May 14, 1965) was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet to remain in office for his entire presidency.
During her term as Secretary of Labor, Perkins championed many aspects of the New Deal, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor the Federal Works Agency, and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act. With the Social Security Act she established unemployment benefits, pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum wage and overtime laws for American workers, and defined the standard forty-hour work week. She formed governmental policy for working with labor unions and helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service, Perkins resisted having American women be drafted to serve the military in World War II so that they could enter the civilian workforce in greatly expanded numbers.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins

If Thatcher would have been more like Frances Perkins in her actions, this threat would like somewhat different. As for the young ones 'rioting" ....a lot of those 'rioting' today will have seen their parents loose job, house and savings in the great change that were the Thatcher years in England....and such things can alter ones perceptions.

In every country there are way more poor, or soon to be poor people than rich or ueber rich people.....it seems that this always gets overlooked.

[BoristheBiter]

You think that elections hold Governments to account ... that's pretty naive ...

Different definition of "held to account" I feel.