Wahay it Tory Boy.
I know what you mean, they were bad but this lot are different only in that they are just a bit cleverer. They shaft us all with a smile rather than a scowl on their faces. Nothing else changed.
And to add to the peripheral relevance to the US election discussion - my point is that if you have to become your enemy to win there’s no point. The policy differences between the Major and Blair governments are non-existent. Blair et al are just better at spinning and getting away with sleaze.
The rich continue to get richer, the poor continue to get poorer, public money is thrown away hand over fist, the right-wing media continue to set the agenda with their lies and Blair dances to their tune.
As you might guess i’m somewhat disillusioned. 
That’s a real problem, and one that sparks a wider political discussion. If being who you are renders you unelectable, then surely that’s a democratic indication that the public doesn’t want you. Contrast Kerry’s last-minute backtracking on fundamental issues such as gun control (albeit too little too late), or Blair’s alteration of Labour into Tory lite and subsequent election. Could Blair have remained socialist and been elected? Maybe, due to the sleaze of the previous administration, but his policy reversals sure made it easier.
The veneer of legitimacy Blair gave the invasion of Iraq was priceless political capital in the United States. As heavy as the shitstorm of political debate in the early days of the Iraq war was, it would have been a damn sight heavier without Blair to sway US moderates and even some liberals.
Without him and Colin “Sacrificial Lamb” Powell, this war would never have happened.
I don’t remember rich people’s medical bills being a huge election issue in 1997.
Oh no, not difficult choices! Please spare us from the tyranny of difficult choices!
“Public asset” is not a term I remember hearing back when British Rail existed. I do remember hearing words like “drain” and “subsidy” and “late”.
The deficit when “they” left office was 37% of GDP. It’s now over 40% and rising. Seems a bit rich to charge “them” with “running up large debts”.
Cite? Many people have commented about how authoritarian and interfering the current government is. I don’t remember people saying the same thing about previous governments.
No, the public debt was 37%, you fool.
As much as anything that was the main election issue, it was this percieved threat by the Tories to our National Health that was the biggest issue, and it signified their unelectability.
…or maybe you don’t remember the tax breaks companies got from paying medical insurance for their staff, 'cause I sure as hell do, and you maybe remember Blair reversing that.
…or maybe you don’t rmember the Tory proposal that those who subscribed to private medical insurance should get a National Isurance discount, 'cause I sure as hell do.
Perhaps you also don’t remember the way the Tories tried to bring an internal market into the National Health service, which simply created a very large tier of very well paid managers and contributed absolutely nothing to efficiency, added hugely to costs, and was seen by much of the public as a precurser to full privatisation of all hospitals, but I would not know, after all, I only worked in hospitals during the time concerned and actaully saw what happened, or do you so quiclky forget, because the reminder is all around you.
Think of how many regional ambulance services, hospitals and local area health authorities are now burdende with the name ‘Trust’ in their titles, this is a direct legacy of Thatcherite thinking.
Scaremongers suggested that this might end up being extended to private schools too, and clearly it implied that the wealthy would get tax breaks since they were a reduced cost on state services and ther rest of us would have to put up with second best.
…and of course the rest of us under such a system would certainly have had to make the decision about how much health insurance we could afford, so those ‘diificult choices’ were definately in peoples minds when that election came around.
Now you may think differantly, that the NHS was only being reformed, etc (Which is a load of bollocks because it really was being broken up) but the fact is that this was the perception of many voters and influenced their decision.
And yet, and yet… services actually got so much worse, its unbelievable but true, that such an unpopular, inefficient, unreliable expensive transport system that was so universally disliked by the nations commuters actually became very much worse when privatised, to the extent that it actually gobbled up almost twice as much in sweetening subsidy when privatised that when it was publicly owned, maybe your memory is selective, but it takes a certain type of genius to make such a crap service seem a fond memory compared to what followed.
Its only lately that services have become more reliable, railways were seriously under invested by both politcal parties for around 50 years, mere privatisation and a new coat of paint was not going to change that.
The reason its changed is that the completely unworkable model chosen for privatisation, where there was no person at which the buck stops, has been largely scrapped, and the network is back in public ownership.
Do you remember just how much they raised for the sale of public assets ? and yet we still ran up a deficit like this, income generating industries were sold off on the cheap and used to subsidise tax cuts, particularly for the highest tax payers.
We were bound to end up with problems, we were selling what we owned, living off the income, without any regard to what would happen when we had spent it all.
The Tories were completely opposed to the Bank of England becoming independant, you know why of course ? Because it is now not under political intereferance in the direct way it was, it means that if the Chancellor has a spending spree, the Bank of England will set the interest rate that will maintain our currency at a particular level, without regard to the next election. It means that we don’t have the boom and bust cycles, where chancellors used to try buy votes by cutting interest rates when such cuts were not economically sound.
You may disagee, however the Tories themselves have come around to this thinking, and have advocated that the Bank of England will remain independant even if they were to win an election.
So you don’t remember all the fuss about hippy convoys around Stonehenge then ?, nor the police raids on Raves ?,and the police being taken to court and being found guilty of various offences and having to pay out compensation, nor at the last election the Tories raising immigration and asylum as big issue when most of the press, including The Times, said they were trying to pander to the racist nationalist element ?
You surely remember that Micheal Howard as Home Secretary was found guilty under the EU human rights law more times than any other single person, for infringements of many kinds ?
Bloody hell, you must have been comatose or living in Eastbourne sipping tea with the pensioners during the last of the Tory years, I remember them as clear as day
I don’t see the Conservative government as some sort of Jackboot administration, it did do some good things, like making Britain more profitable for business and selling off unprofitable companies. Thatcher had some pretty tough decisions to make, and they only came to fruitition when she and her party left office.
Strange how you hate Blair, I actually admire the guy, he’s got the balls to support someone the majority of the world actually hates. Also what is strange is that this guy wasn’t getting called Poodle in the Kosovo war, or during all those years of the Clinton administration, quite that loudly, no, it only happens when policy decisions which are unpopular rise up, does thie nickname occur.
Anyway, go back to reading the Guardian.
And as for the OP calling us Limey assholes, heh, if we didn’t settle there you wouldn’t exist in the state you’re in. We don’t fund Israels billion dollar defense pacakges, you do, so you’re the fucking retards, you sort the inheirited problem you wanted on *your * own.
Well when we were advocating action in Kosovo, there had been a pretty good track record of what to expect from Bosnia, and from the behaviour of the Krajina Serbs.
The world looked on, and the populations of much of Europe advocated action, whilst governments talked.
You will, of course, recall that it was actually Paddy Ashdown, not Tony Blair, who was one of the main driving forces in moving government opinion in line with that of the electorate.
Kosovo had our support, we knew what was right, and we had plenty of real solid evidence and we knew that there was not the slightest justification for the way the Serbs were behaving.
The US at the time was trying to adopt a policy of withdrawin from being the policeman of the world, it wanted Europe to shoulder its share of the burden, and this is one of the big reasons Clinton was slow to take action.
You will also note that there was little disagreement in the UN, at first the Russians argued against but then dropped their objections when they found that they themselves could not negotiate or change Milosovic’s opnion and policies.
When we went into Kosovo, Blair could not lose, a wrong was being perpetrated and we all knew it.
Now Iraq is quite differant, instead of having world opinion on our side, many of the worlds major players, and most of the smaller ones, are opposed to us.
They, like us, reviled Hussain, but believed there was a differant way to deal with this.
We have followed along, but I just wonder what the popular vote would be, and the reasons behind it, since everything we have been presented with as evidence has so far been either total fabrication, or simply outright lie.
It’s simply that we don’t actually have a world consensus of what needs to be done, or how to do it, but what aggravates it is that what is being done, is being done with too few resources, remember that it was Powell himself who said that it would take around 350k troops to keep the country stable and restore order.
So now we have just over half that number, and we can’t hold the country down or together and the result is that Iraq is starting to fall apart, if we are fortunate it won’t, but its hardly the best policy - to rely on luck.
Well its possible to hold a differant opinion, but you should come up to this area and see for yourself the social distruction her policies wrought.
Yes the power of the unions did need to be brought back into line, and make them operate in the employment role they originally did rather than the overreaching political role they muscled into.
But… have you noticed the percentage rise in your rate ? or whatever you want to call it, far in excess of inflation, and this is due to the reduction in central funding.
Have you noticed just how much water rate rises hace exceeded inflation ? Strange how they seem to do the same things they did before and now it costs so much more.
We have already looked at rail privatisation and what a disaster that was, the Dome was originally planned by the Tories, and many of the contracts signed before ever Labour came in and made an even bigger lash up of it.
Yup, we are profitable, but we have replaced skilled work with unsilled and semi skilled work, such as call centres.
Before Thatcher we had a rail manufacturing industry, we had a ship building industry, a coal industry, we had a steel industry which has virtually withered away, we had a fishing fleet, and we had a car industry.
It’s all now either foreign owne, merely a screwdriver assembly job, or simply does not exist, we make far less than we ever have.
Now this might be profitable for GB PLC, however, this latest generation of workers actuall expects to be worse fothan their parents, maybe the shareholders will be better offf, but somehow I don’t even think that it true, since when I look at my missold mortage endowment policy(aniother legacy of Thatcher years) I notice that there is no chance whatsoever it will make the amounts I was assured it would, and I took the lowest risk version and made higher payments than was supposed to be necessary.
Try telling the Endowment policy holders that Thatcher make the UK profitable, because it is not reflected in their holdings, or perhaps you’ve also forgotten that shares are well down on what they were.
Then tell me how good Blair and Thatcher are.
[QUOTE=casdave]
Yup, we are profitable, but we have replaced skilled work with unsilled and semi skilled work, such as call centres.
Before Thatcher we had a rail manufacturing industry, we had a ship building industry, a coal industry, we had a steel industry which has virtually withered away, we had a fishing fleet, and we had a car industry.
It’s all now either foreign owne, merely a screwdriver assembly job, or simply does not exist, we make far less than we ever have.
QUOTE]
Well thats because those sort of industries aren’t profitable when protected against 3rd world and 2nd world competitors, did you know the investment, protection and Union power were the main purposes why the UK wasn’t a performer in the global market and the main reason why it was the sick man of Europe. The only reasons why those industries were heavily subsidised was to ensure a healthy employment rate and a another election victory.
Anyway, try and compare Callaghans government with Thatchers, and you’ll see which one was better.
Blimey casdave! It seems you and me were living in totally different Britains before 1979.
The one I remember is where fuck-all worked, you had to go on a waiting list for a phone line (and then you got a party-line; the symbol of state provided services is sharing a phone line with strangers).
I also remember absolutely everone being on strike all the bloody time (usually over some cobblers like “demarcation disputes”). Rubbish piled high in the streets and the dead going unburied.
I also remember the lights going off everytime some bolshie miner wanted another grand a week to dig out tiny anmounts of overpriced coal that no one wanted.
Furthermore I remember the Austin Allegro - socialism’s finest moment (it had a square steering wheel. That was about it for it’s good points.) That’s when the wankers at longbridge could bring themselves to wake up the night-shift and actually attempt to build a car (work was optional in the nationalised industries).
I also have a fair recollection of tax rates of 98% and not being able to take more than £250 out of the country (not that it helped much - the british quid was as much use as the Albanian Lek abroad - others could see the mess we were in)
Britain pre Thatcher was a second rate, third world hell-hole. It was like living in Poland, even down to the food.
Where were you to have this marvellous recollection of the sunlit uplands of socialist Britain? Legoland’s model Britain?
Thanks for helping me make my point. Couldn’t of said it better myself.
No incumbant government could have withstood the inflationary pressures of two oil price hikes, these, coincidentally, happened during Labour administrations, and are what led to inflation and those industrial disputes.
The unions were naiive, and relatively uneducated leaders seemed to think they had the solutions, at least just for their own memebers and sod everyone else.
However, can you deny that the problems at BL were management based ?
Seven differant classes of eating facilities, or that when productions targets had been met then everyone was allowed to down tools?
Much of the legislation that has improved our health and safety, water quality waste recycling, pollutions controls from cars to goods and sewage actually have their origins in EU law, not the wonderful Thatcher, who I will remind you had to fight a war which she could have easily prevented, just to get re-elected, or have you so reaily forgotten just how bad the state of this country was back in 1982 ?
How about 79. The Conservative Government knew that radical changes were needed to get the economic performance of the UK back on track, and some of them, which involved removing barriers to competition, employment, were necessary. The crappy performance of the UK can be traced all the way back to the Atlee government in 45’
But now, the words most often associated with british railways seem to be (at least over here) : “a joke” “unsafe”…and still “late”. This british experiment became the bogeyman mentionned each time soemone wants to privatize something somewhere in Europe.
I have to say that’s a bit revisionist. Certainly there were mistakes made with regard to the Argentinian position on the Islands which were laid out in the postwar enquiry, but it’s not like the opposition parties were jumping up and down screaming ‘we must defend the Falklands’.
What the hell are you talking about? Or, would you card to expand on your point?
Even later, actually.
Nitpick : that wouldn’t be the “EU human rights law”, but the European court for human rights, which has nothing to do with the EU.
Atlees new Jerusalem policy.
I fully expect Richard Lionheart to be soon blamed for current british economical problems…