Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:58 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Inflation was just under 10% when Mrs Thatcher left office in 1990 so it's hard to say that she was a raging success on getting on top of inflation.

As for a pattern, when the Tories get in you usually get
- industrial unrest
- social disorder
- high unemployment

What we need is strong governments that can deal with unions and strikers, focus on the rule of law so people don't think they can take liberties, and clamp down on the lazy and scroungers but Tory governments breed all three problems.

What bit of monetarism is flawed did you not get?

Social disorder/industrial unrest will always happen when government policy makes the going tougher, usually when the tories have to sort out the crap they inherit from Labour.

High unemployment - again when you have a reality check and accept you cannot just keep borrowing to grow the public sector, unemployment will be inevitable - this is what happens when the Tories have to sort out the profligate nature of Labour policy towards public spending.

Funny how disability benefit claimers grew significantly under Labour strange that given: more spending on the health service, less manual labour, better diet etc.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 6:11 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

... when the tories have to sort out the crap they inherit from Labour.

... this is what happens when the Tories have to sort out the profligate nature of Labour policy towards public spending.

Presumably this was the mantra all the way through from '79 to '97 with two deep recessions en route ?

It certainly seems to be the only excuse being used by the current incumbents.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 6:34 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

High unemployment - again when you have a reality check and accept you cannot just keep borrowing to grow the public sector, unemployment will be inevitable - this is what happens when the Tories have to sort out the profligate nature of Labour policy towards public spending.

Why would it be inevitable, surely reducing the amount of resources swallowed up inefficiently by the state means that those resources are free to be used by the efficient sector (the private sector) and so will create jobs and reduce unemployment?

This is why the Conservatives said they were going to end Labour's toxic legacy of social failure and get people off the dole and into work. Remember that's what Mrs Thatcher came in to do, to end those long unemployment queues in 1979.



I'm sure you will agree that jobs are created by the private sector and the private sector creates jobs when they have a government with market credibility that has an economic plan that they can believe in, so that private sector investment is stimulated.

Now fortunately thanks to George Osborne keeping the UK's triple AAA credit rating because of the confidence he has inspired in the markets, we have record low interest rates and this should trigger a boom in private sector investment that will soon solve the unemployment programme as long as the Conservatives can manage the economy with a degree of competence, would you agree?

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 6:52 pm  

McLaren_Field wrote:

Presumably this was the mantra all the way through from '79 to '97 with two deep recessions en route ?

It certainly seems to be the only excuse being used by the current incumbents.

You should understand by now that unemployment is a price worth paying.

Although for some reason, the people who claim this never seem to have to worry about themselves.

Odd that.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:59 pm  

Mintball wrote:

You should understand by now that unemployment is a price worth paying.

Although for some reason, the people who claim this never seem to have to worry about themselves.

Odd that.

And along with that need to not have to worry about your own job comes a vilification of those who are not quite so fortunate and who must inevitably now be milking the system for all its worth.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:03 pm  

Why does a drive to "get people off benefits and into work" always seem to coincide with rising unemployment?

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:08 pm  

Mintball wrote:

You should understand by now that unemployment is a price worth paying.

Although for some reason, the people who claim this never seem to have to worry about themselves.

Odd that.

It's unfair to say that Tories are unconcerned with unemployment.

They made it a centrepiece of their election campaigns in 1979 and 2010. In Opposition they can always be relied upon to bring up unemployment.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:11 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

It's unfair to say that Tories are unconcerned with unemployment.

They made it a centrepiece of their election campaigns in 1979 and 2010. In Opposition they can always be relied upon to bring up unemployment.

And in government they can always be relied upon to drive up unemployment

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:13 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

Why does a drive to "get people off benefits and into work" always seem to coincide with rising unemployment?

It doesn't always - in the late 1990s the drive was for "a hand up not a hand out" and the drive focused on ending the Tories poverty trap, by introducing a minimum wage and working families tax credit to make work pay, unemployment fell.

Re: Poor Lady Thatcher? : Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:44 pm  

McLaren_Field wrote:

And yet as we saw then and we have seen again in the past twelve months the "demon" of those who apparently spend all day long sitting on their doorstep drinking cheap lager on the proceeds of "the dole" while "society" picks up the tab is seemingly untouchable while those with genuine debilitating illnesses, the one who should be in the safety net, are the ones who are soft targeted by zealous civil servants driven by an office target to strike off as many of those "demons" as possible - there are several who use these boards who will relate.

Spot on. The reason is, of course, that too many of those whose day to day job it is to say yea or nay will pick off the targets of least resistance, leaving alone the professional claimants, the aggressive, the nasty and the abusive. It isn't a trait restricted to benefits agency workers, and their pay may be so low and the job so depressing that the aggro of declining a violent and loud asshole may be a game not worth the candle.

It's a trait often mirrored in modern society. Not that people should be excused from speeding, or parking illegally, but it is always the ones who have registered their cars at DVLA and so can be traced that are the soft target. Whereas the millions who drive illegally, unregistered, uninsured and untaxed and cannot be traced go largely unmolested.

McLaren_Field wrote:

Its certainly a conundrum to see how to get "the demons" back into work at a time when the formally employed are joining their ranks in increasing numbers, if the aim is to reduce dependency on state aid at a time when more are requiring it (even in the short term) then again, that is a cruel failure of a government to protect and aid its population and you have to ask if they are not prepared to accept that responsibility then what is the purpose of a government ?

Largely agreed. But it is a while since Thatcher was in charge, and while in the immediate past we have had the Cleggerons foisted upon us, the last lot had no appetite for this either.

In fact the only major noticeable trends which they seem to be getting better at each year are (a) the art of spin, to be spun relentlessly sometimes at teh total expense of actually doing anything; and (b) the quite recent realisation that in fact, if you brazen it out, and let the fuss die down, you can ride out the worst of your excesses, or maybe at worst take a 6 month sabbatical before getting a double pay job back. (New Labour of course became the masters of that).