You had to be there to grasp the scale of Margaret Thatcher's revolution

[AtW]

You are not answering my question. Should she have continued pouring money into a loss making car industry at the time?

Yes, she should have at the same time making long term alliance with the Japanese on a strict condition that R&D will be split rather than just assemble cars here.

[Menelaus]

gamble

[DodgyAgent]

Yes, she should have at the same time making long term alliance with the Japanese on a strict condition that R&D will be split rather than just assemble cars here.

Why should she save the car industry and not others?
How do you know that the Japanese would have been interested?

you have the advantage of hindsight. How was she to know what was going to happen to the car industry? As far as she was concerned the country had gone bust, the IMF were laying down the law.

Try and apply a bit of historical perspective. For people like you to turn round now and say that she made marginal differences with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight is quite ridiculous.

If on the other hand you want to argue a logical point about how this country would have been better off or only even marginally better off with the alternative, then do so instead of taking the easy route with cliches and glib throwaway remarks.

[AtW]

Why should she save the car industry and not others?
How do you know that the Japanese would have been interested?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_(...over_and_Honda

"Rover and Honda

In 1979, British Leyland (or as it was now officially known, BL Ltd.) began a long relationship with the Honda Motor Company of Japan. The result was a cross-holding structure, where Honda took a 20% stake in the company while the company took a 20% stake in Honda's UK subsidiary. The deal was thought to be mutually beneficial: Honda used its British operations as a launchpad into Europe, and the company could pool resources with Honda in developing new cars."

Check year.

you have the advantage of hindsight. How was she to know what was going to happen to the car industry? As far as she was concerned the country had gone bust, the IMF were laying down the law.

When you don't know how to drive well you at least look at others and do like them - Germany and France kept industry, so did USA. Throwing industry out from the country where it was born is stupidity at best and treason at worst.


Thatcher has got good PR but the more I dig into what actually happened the less I like her - the only reason I don't dislike her strongly is because Nu Liebor by comparison totally fked up country when they inherited some good bits.

[sasguru]

Dodgy - you have been so brainwashed that markets are best, that you can't see alternatives.
According to your logic, the most free-market country in the world, the US, should let GM go to the wall. The market dictates it.
But guess what they won't because it's considered strategic.
This country has not got anything anymore - perhaps you're right that the car companies (and other manufacturing) should go.
But if you advocate that, the question YOU must answer is: what can and should the country do instead?

[DodgyAgent]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_(...over_and_Honda

"Rover and Honda

In 1979, British Leyland (or as it was now officially known, BL Ltd.) began a long relationship with the Honda Motor Company of Japan. The result was a cross-holding structure, where Honda took a 20% stake in the company while the company took a 20% stake in Honda's UK subsidiary. The deal was thought to be mutually beneficial: Honda used its British operations as a launchpad into Europe, and the company could pool resources with Honda in developing new cars."

Check year.



When you don't know how to drive well you at least look at others and do like them - Germany and France kept industry, so did USA. Throwing industry out from the country where it was born is stupidity at best and treason at worst.


Thatcher has got good PR but the more I dig into what actually happened the less I like her - the only reason I don't dislike her strongly is because Nu Liebor by comparison totally fked up country when they inherited some good bits.

Well done. But you have not explained why the car industry and not others and where would the money have come from and how and what reforms were necessary to change it?
The point about Thatcher was that she was no more than the cure for our indulgence with socialism. Compare this with what Eastern Europe and Russia have had to go through since their revolution she did a pretty good job of redistributing power.
She was not voted in to create a car industry, she was voted in to stop the country going bust and to stop it becoming a communist dictatorship. If the car industry failed it was because of the way it was run for years and years, so what was the point of keeping it going?
I am still waiting to hear one of our leftie apologists make a case for keeping the Trade Unions in the manner to which they had become accustomed

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Quentin Letts does a fab appraisal of Mrs T (and plenty of other Tory and Labour gits too) in his excellent book "50 People who buggered up Britain"

[AtW]

Well done. But you have not explained why the car industry and not others and where would the money have come from and how and what reforms were necessary to change it?

I caught you on factual error - when a foreigner like me who lived in USSR during Thatcher time points out this elementary stuff to someone like you who lived here, it means that you should stop argueing: better do some work - ask for 2 "references" or something, you know the drill, or do I have to teach you that stuff too?

I am still waiting to hear one of our leftie apologists make a case for keeping the Trade Unions in the manner to which they had become accustomed

I don't like trade unions of her time and it was right to crack down on them, however in process of doing so she destroyed the industry along side with unions.

[leeperry]

I don't like trade unions of her time and it was right to crack down on them, however in process of doing so she destroyed the industry along side with unions.

Not to mention devestating communities which depended on it and not putting anything in it's place.

[DodgyAgent]

Dodgy - you have been so brainwashed that markets are best, that you can't see alternatives.
According to your logic, the most free-market country in the world, the US, should let GM go to the wall. The market dictates it.
But guess what they won't because it's considered strategic.
This country has not got anything anymore - perhaps you're right that the car companies (and other manufacturing) should go.
But if you advocate that, the question YOU must answer is: what can and should the country do instead?

I am not saying that slavishly following markets is an ideal that should be followed without question. They act as a crude and effective measure of what works. I am not even saying that GM, Ford and Chrysler should be left for the dogs. What I am saying is that if we buck the markets there is a price to pay and the monkey on the back of British Leyland is not our problem any more thanks to Thatcher. I am not sure we want a large British car maker given how hard the rest find it to make money. We are far better off developing advanced technologies through motor racing and running relatively small businesses in the components sector.

The reason we dont make things anymore is because the costs of land and labour are so high. If the government stopped overtaxing work and invention and squandering it instead on taking people out of work and making them welfare dependent then we could build things again.

We have been far too reliant on the banking and finance Industry and I hope that the next government will carry out the reforms needed to get manufacturing back.