Some people take this "Thatch" hatred too far

[GreenLabel]

Global corp makes decisions to maximise profit, viability isn't a consideration when totting up the spreadsheet, nor is social impact.

If you were the owner of that corporation, with competitors snapping at your heels, what would you do? Continue to pour money into an inefficient and unprofitable operation in the name of caring for these communities? Or take steps to keep your business profitable? It's all well and good to grab the moral high ground and be seen to be caring and compassionate, but at the end of the day the market will decide your fate.

Those jobs were never feasible and should never have been created in the first place - the workers should be grateful that they got a subsidised ride for as long as they did.

It's sad that people like you care so much about some faceless corporation yet so little about the communities they toss aside.

Why is it the responsibility of a company to make a loss providing jobs for people in these communities? What about the responsibilities of the people in those communities to get off their arses, adapt, and find or create new jobs?

[SupremeSpod]

If you were the owner of that corporation, with competitors snapping at your heels, what would you do? Continue to pour money into an inefficient and unprofitable operation in the name of caring for these communities? Or take steps to keep your business profitable? It's all well and good to grab the moral high ground and be seen to be caring and compassionate, but at the end of the day the market will decide your fate.

Those jobs were never feasible and should never have been created in the first place - the workers should be grateful that they got a subsidised ride for as long as they did.

Why is it the responsibility of a company to make a loss providing jobs for people in these communities? What about the responsibilities of the people in those communities to get off their arses, adapt, and find or create new jobs?

What a simplistic/short-termist view you have.

You'll learn.

[GreenLabel]

What a simplistic/short-termist view you have.

You'll learn.

Like it or not, we're in a global market. Nobody ever survived by sticking their heads in the sand and denying reality.

You'll learn.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Since the second World War Britain was at it's most successful under Thatcher's leadership. There can be no question that is the truth.

The UK has to remember that the NHS was largely paid for by the Americans and when that money dried up we were stuffed. Thatcher was the first PM to deal with the problem of the UK spending more than we made. Sadly that has now been reverted.

I don't usually jump in to the Thatcher threads, feeling that there is a kind of Godwin's law there (as soon as Thatcher is mentioned in a thread, it is dead to rational discussion).

But I can't let such a concentrated set of balderdash go by:
There can certainly be question. I would question, even deny it. Thatcher's long term in office saw highs and lows, like any other. The highs were nowhere near as high as her fans remember them. If they do remember. The lows were possibly not as bad as the folklore either, in the sense that much the same would have had to be done by any administration. And would have been: it did not take Maggie to do it, and she didn't necessarily do it well.

The NHS was not largely paid for by the Americans, we spent their money on propping up our imperial ambitions. When that money dried up we liquidated the investments of generations (pro-Thatcher: Privatisation; anti-Thatcher: selling off the family silver) and then squandered the brief but spectacular gift of wealth from North Sea Oil to the same end, unlike say Norway who used theirs to ensure that their people will never be poor again.

[RichardCranium]

Like it or not, we're in a global market. Nobody ever survived by sticking their heads in the sand and denying reality.

Indeed. Just look at Fidel Castro.






Where's Marx and Trotsky and Che when you need them?

[sasguru]

Interesting debate. I used to be left wing as a teenager, became right wing when I started working.
Now as I approach middle age and have some experience I'm beginning to see that both sides have a point.

First point: those of you who say corporations must do what they have to do are right - provided that you also understand that what corporations do is now increasingly against the national interest. Companies outsourcing large amounts of work to the east are deskilling and hollowing out the West's middle class. Of course they don't care about this as their future profits are going to come from the young populations and growth areas of the East. I'm not sure what the solution is to this.

Second point: We shouldn't believe the propaganda we are subjected to by our political elite. In the 80s and 90s we were told that no advanced economy could rely on manufacturing and that we should become a dynamic service economy. The Germans, being more intelligent didn't subscribe to that, and as a result are the biggest exporters in the world, per capita and until recently in absolute terms, which is phenomenal achievement. But they also have the largest sofwtare company in Europe: SAP. So clearly we have been taken for a ride. Our "boom" was in fact a borrowing spree of unprecedented proportions and we are just about to pay for it.

Thirs point: Thatcher was necessary but limited. I guess you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, but her ideological beliefs blinded her to the truths I have outlined above.

Finally we are were we are - our economy is now about the size of Italy's. I blame Thatcher - and Macmillan and Wilson and Heath and Blair and Gordon Brown. Essentially we have had piss poor leadership for the last 50 years.

[BlasterBates]

I often hear this argument of "we squandered North Sea oil".

If you've been running a budget deficit since the second world war, you can't create a fund to prevent Britain from being poor again until you've actually paid off the deficit. All that tax revenue just went into the "bottomless pit" of public spending.

Norway has a tiny population and never had a "bottomless pit", never had to go to the IMF because it was on the verge of bankruptcy because of huge public spending.

"we squandered North Sea oil" is one of those myths that sounds good on a soap box in Hyde park.

If you want to create a huge fund to stop people being poor, then you need to run a surplus for 40 years.

Switzerland has done it, Norway has done it, and they have really generous benefits because they can afford it.

I doubt that Britain could run a surplus for more than about year before all the greedy hands start sticking their hands in the pot, and you don't need North Sea oil either, just a bit of fiscal discipline, some hope.

[Ignis Fatuus]

I have to say I used to buy into the "Thatcher closed everything down and now we have no industry", and then I went to Germany and the mines and the steel works all closed there as well, it was just slower, but didn't make a lot of difference, in the end there was just as many steel and mining ghosts towns as there were in the UK.

In fact I was listening to my mother the other day and she said the problem in the hospitals was that the Mrs Thatcher had outsourced the cleaning and so the hospitals were now full of death bugs, and then I thought , but they have the same problem in Germany, oh and in Holland and in France.

I'm sorry, but with respect, there are some things in there that are not quite so.

The mines and steel works in Germany are indeed closed too, but other industry has replaced them. What we did wrong (and I believe that Thatcher was only the cheerleader for this widespread tendency, not its sole agent) was to go only for the easy money: City, privatisations, and Oil.

And yes, Germany, Holland, and France have the same bugs, but the infection rates are much lower because the cleaning services are in-house rather than outsourced so their targets are medical rather than financial; and when a case develops the patient is isolated. We just don't have the capacity to isolate MRSA or C Difficile cases, because we skimped on the health service.

[Ignis Fatuus]

I often hear this argument of "we squandered North Sea oil".

If you've been running a budget deficit since the second world war, you can't create a fund to prevent Britain from being poor again until you've actually paid off the deficit. All that tax revenue just went into the "bottomless pit" of public spending.

Norway has a tiny population and never had a "bottomless pit", never had to go to the IMF because it was on the verge of bankruptcy because of huge public spending.

"we squandered North Sea oil" is one of those myths that sounds good on a soap box in Hyde park.

If you want to create a huge fund to stop people being poor, then you need to run a surplus for 40 years.

Switzerland has done it, Norway has done it, and they have really generous benefits because they can afford it.

I doubt that Britain could run a surplus for more than about year before all the greedy hands start sticking their hands in the pot, and you don't need North Sea oil either, just a bit of fiscal discipline, some hope.

There are some truths in there, but at bottom it seems to me that Britain did not spend more on public services than comparable countries, certainly not more than Norway. It was not public spending as usually understood that caused us to be poor. It was mainly the fact that we failed to make money, and also the huge spending on attempting to maintain our perceived position as a world power.

I would have to add, if the tax revenue from North Sea Oil went into a bottomless pit, it was Thatcher's government that put it there. It was a very brief period of somewhat large income, and it was used to make it look as though the Thatcher government was doing something successful with the economy, whereas in fact it was not.

[BlasterBates]

I'm sorry, but with respect, there are some things in there that are not quite so.

The mines and steel works in Germany are indeed closed too, but other industry has replaced them. What we did wrong (and I believe that Thatcher was only the cheerleader for this widespread tendency, not its sole agent) was to go only for the easy money: City, privatisations, and Oil.

And yes, Germany, Holland, and France have the same bugs, but the infection rates are much lower because the cleaning services are in-house rather than outsourced so their targets are medical rather than financial; and when a case develops the patient is isolated. We just don't have the capacity to isolate MRSA or C Difficile cases, because we skimped on the health service.

I disagree I have been living in Germany and I witnessed Germany's transition first hand. It was very painful indeed. The unemployment rates in West Germany (East Germany is a different story, no comparison possible) were very high indeed in the Ruhr, (20-25%), still are though they've come down. I worked on and off in the Ruhr area and it was absolutely devastated by the closure of the pits and steel works in the 90's. Hagen and places like that resembled all those hollowed out towns in the North of England. As for infection rates in Germany, wild horses wouldn't get me into a German hospital, their record on infection is absolutely abysmal. In Holland they had the same problem but tackled it.

In the 90's I witnessed Britain getting wealthy my home town in the North of England was a lot better, it was absolutely booming compared to Germany.

Germany has now gone through a pretty painful transition and it's getting on it's feet again, but slow.