Will's & Kate name the date.

[EM]

... Nationalism was/is just micro-Communism, ...

That is a remarkable claim. Surely you mean Nationalisation?

 

As for Mrs T? I smell sulphur. Evil, pure and simple.

[Ghostrider]

^^Yes, I meant nationalisation. I was falling asleep, going twice around the clock face kinda does that to you.

 

Suplhur....Hmm, not entirely an unpleasant aroma.

[Guest Anonymous]

I'll give you the Poll Tax wasn't one of her more successfully schemes....it should have been, but something went badly awry between idea and reality,

 

That would be labour controlled councils in Scotland and then England setting the rate so high that folk went apeturd.

[NewMagnie]

I'll give you the Poll Tax wasn't one of her more successfully schemes....it should have been, but something went badly awry between idea and reality,

 

That would be labour controlled councils in Scotland and then England setting the rate so high that folk went apeturd.

 

No, that would be the inequity of a flat rate tax that didn't take account of property values or income.

 

Blaming Labour councils for the poll tax? Now that takes a leap of the imagination....

[NewMagnie]

^^ I'll give you the Poll Tax wasn't one of her more successfully schemes....it should have been, but something went badly awry between idea and reality, and the public housing stock was one half of a good idea, that became a bad idea, because it was just that, half of the whole.

 

Britain's manufacturing capacity, and the miners were the architects and perpetrators of their own demise though, she just chose to let their own suicidal plans and actions run their natural course.

 

If you want to find the real culprits for the beginning of the very end of Britain's manufacturing and mining industries, you need to go back nearly a decade before Thatcher, and equal blame be apportioned to both right and left wing politicians.

 

I can't think why for the life of me it 'should have been one of her better ideas' - a flat rate tax imposed regardless of ability to pay was always doomed. The rates it replaced at least had a property value qualification. Hugely imperfect of course, but the alternative was worse.

 

Blaming the unions for the state of Britain's manufacturing in the 70's is slightly myopic as well - we can trace the decline of British manufacturing back to 1945 - if not to the industrial revolution. All the major industrial centres were bombed to caca and we were too far in hock paying off lend lease to the Yanks to afford the necessary investment. Steel and coal were stuffed long before the 70's.

 

You're correct - by inference - on one point though. Successive governments of both sides had been unwilling or unable to invest in the nationalised industries leaving them unprofitable and vulnerable to Asian and European competition (the Marshall Plan did wonders for the Ruhr valley). Thatcher's contribution was to obscure the complexity of the situation, paint a simplistic picture of out of control unions, trade on cold war paranoia and crush the unions at the cost of their industries (making her city pals rich along the way)

 

Yes, she may have temporarily brought the budget back into surplus, but she sold the shop - just at a time when North Sea Oil revenues could have been invested to set the thing right again. This effectively ensured we were market's bitch in perpetuity.

 

That nationalised industries can't be brought back from the abyss has become something of a truism in economic circles but I don't believe the case - beyond Thatcher's propaganda - has been effectively made.

[Ghostrider]

^^ The Poll Tax should have been a good idea on the basis that it is people, not property that incurs the costs of local services. A charge per person, *should* have been fairer, had it been implemented in a fair manner, it wasn't. Baseing the former rates on property values had no relationship to charging a fair sum to those who incurred the costs, nor to ability to pay, it was impossible to implement in a fair manner.

 

Yes, you're right, ability to pay should have been taken in to consideration, as should availability of services within reasonable using distance of the individuals home address, etc. They weren't, that's where the good idea went bad, it traded one imperfect scheme for an equally imperfect one. And when folked railed against it, not unexpectedly, the solution was to give us the Council Tax, which is in effect the old Rates, with a little superficial tweaking, and IMHO worse than the Rates ever were.

 

I would still maintain though that a tax on the individual, if all contributory factors are taken in to consideration, is the most fair method of local taxation. A tax based on property values, as the Rates was and the Council Tax is, has no real realtionship with how the costs are incurred that are paid for out of the funds raised.

 

I won't deny issues that contributed to the demise of British industry stretch a long way back, however by the 70's the coal industry especially had gotten well out of control, they had crossed the line between representing and protecting the interests of their membership and effectively running their industry and the country whenever Labour were in power.

 

allegedly men could only get work in coal if they were card carrying and paid up, in effect if you wanted to be employed you had to join the Union, regardless whether you supported them or believed in them or not. Democracy had been left behind, it was a dictatorship with the Union officials as the government of the coal industry. They were claiming support that allegedly had not been freely given on belief or merit, but acquired through blackmail.

 

Were it not for the alleged donations made to Labour Party funds by Unions, they'd have had buckley's chance of getting in power, they'd have been struggling to remain solvent. Labour then did what the Unions told them to do, to do otherways they were committing suicide. It was only when the kitty was empty that Labour called a halt, yet the Unions apparently either wouldn't or couldn't believe that the money was done, and persisted in squeezing yet harder, and the rest of us had to put up with the three day week etc.

 

Meanwhile, the "product" those industries produced was dropping in quality faster than inflation was rising, the coal was full of stones, and even what was coal was of inferior quality, it was either mostly dross and dust, or with a high non-combustable content, getting 30% or more ash by volume from a bucket of coal was the norm, whereas <20% would have been expected. And the cars, well all I can say is, thank god for Ladas and Skodas who carried the lion's share of jokes about crap cars, otherwise Leylands would have had to take the burden. Lack of investment etc may well have contributed to making thos eindustries uncompetitive, but it did not contribute to a year on year decline in quality control of the finished product so that it all reached a point nobdy wanted it, that has to lie in the hands of the management and/or workforce alone.

[MuckleJoannie]

The SNP still want to have local income tax, which would depend on ability to pay, rather than being a flat rate.