Yup indeed. Labour closed many more mines than the conservatives ever did. Another one of those "policies" that are remembered with some selective hearing.
I'm from South Wales and my first job was working in opencast quarrys...
Did it for 6 years before leaving, going to university etc
This is a whole other can of worms.. and yes blame is on all sides, not just Thatcher (as well as other parties)
But as this is about Corbyn being a Republican, we are again off topic!!
Nope. Unelected union leaders were trying to bring down an elected government.
And in the EU we wouldn't have been able to pour cash into state owned industry anyway. It was going to happen either via Thatcher or the EU.
With the miners strike there was scope for negotiation. If they had negotiated what was profitable must stay there would have looked acceptable and kept the public on side. Their intransigence turned the public against them and they became the enemies.
It was Thatcher's legacy that got people owning their own homes, kickstarted the introduction of new technologies like mobile phones, and she even bought over Nissan to Sunderland. That was encouraging employment. It was under the Conservatives people actually got to work.
I'll give you that one Squiffy, but only just. Bearing in mind its not only about bloody-minded communist Trade Unions.
British car factories in the 1960s and 1970s were noisy filthy nasty places to work, industrial injuries were part of a day’s work and medical problems were contracted from polluted air. The management were stuck in the Victorian times and refused to improve working conditions.
This lead in the beginning to some workers here and there refusing to work for a time in protest, but no improvements were made. To cut a long story short, over time the Trade Unions got stronger and more militant and the management more entrenched with the 'us and them' attitude and old fashioned poor management practices. In the end strikes became common place and sometimes lasted for weeks.
The rest is history, British Leyland was destroyed by a combination of bad management and militant communist-led Trade Unions.
When Thatcher won her first election the unemployment rate was 5.4%. Within three years it had doubled to 10.7%. When she left office it was 7.1% and once again rising. At no time during 1979-1997 was unemployment ever lower than the level they inherited from the previous administration. Usually it was much higher and for a considerable period almost 2 million higher.
Approximately 16 times as many days of work were lost to unemployment in 1985 as were lost to strike action in 1979.
It was only under Blair that unemployment finally fell back to where it was at in May 1979. Thatcher had many things going for her, but her record on people getting to work is not particularly impressive.
Does that count as tick on the Socialist Scoreboard though? I'm somewhat dubious.they might have brought about their own demise but that's not the same as if they'd been crushed by a Socialist Government.
I didn't have time to reply earlier, busy, it could be argued that socialism destroyed the institution of marriage. Women have for a long time now been married to the government, the payments made to women on behalf of their children thru the creation of the welfare state have changed the relationships between men and women, provision for children, housing etc. The government now has numerous wives to provide for, fulfilling the role of the dutiful obligated husband, of course with other peoples money.. Anyway that's one argument, plenty of info on that on the net, books etc..
Another long running argument is socialism thru the use of equality has ruined the educational system, grammar schools are frowned upon, as are test, knowledge and facts, to be replaced by abstraction, 'Inclusivity, empathy, creativity', fundamentals have long gone.. Again lots of info on the web, books and counter arguments..
As for the Monarch, the symbiotic relationship between the Crown and political authority, it sits well together, the sovereign cloak of duty, obligation and burden, historical ancient institution, combined with a representative parliament, is deserving of respect. After all the crown, despite having no real power, is held in the hearts of people, unlike politicians who most are glad to see the back off.
A quick point on democracy, constitutions, written and unwritten are in serious trouble, the legitimacy of power, nation states is in a period of flux, as people of all sides are constantly questioning the results of votes, transnational polis eg the EU, has been dealt a death blow by Brexit. Pretty frightening times. Much more pressing problems than an old person wearing a crown.
"A dutiful obligated husband"
"...the sovereign cloak of duty, obligation and burden, historical ancient institution, combined with a representative parliament, is deserving of respect."
Good post Neil, but the quotes above gave me pause. What you said makes me feel like grabbing a brick, joining a demonstration and going on the rampage.
(Please note that was a jest and not to be taken seriously data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
The Queen still has limited power in very specific circumstances. She can dissolve Parliament and force an election if Politicians can't strike a deal to form a Government in the event of a Hung Parliament. Something she almost had to do in the 1970's. What the Queen has done a good job of is appearing to be above the Political fray and rarely intervening directly in public. The last real vestige of direct power the Queen has is simply the fact that Parliamentary bills do not become law until she signs on the dotted line. I get a bit cheesed off with people who assume the Queen is powerless and is just window dressing for traditions sake. She is the embodiment of the Crown/Constitution.
Wrt my earlier post about "getting to work": I've been reflecting on this and I've decided that I'm really not very satisfied with unemployment stats as a useful measure. The workforce participation rate is better, I think, but still not that great. So what I decided to do was calculate the number of hours worked per person per week on average. I grabbed some data from the ONS, did some arithmetic and produced this chart:
https://www.avforums.com/attachments/hrs2-png.877173/
Mean values for some date ranges:
Code: 1971-1978 15 hours 33 mins.1979-1996 14 hours 53 mins.1997-2009 15 hours 10 mins.2010-2016 15 hours 0 mins.