What were you doing when Thatcher was at the peak of her power?

[fullyautomatix]

Spent 10 tedious years writing programs to test increasingly tedious semiconductors.

99% of it in FORTRAN IV, with bits of CAP16 assembler and 8085 assembler.

Until I finally went & left.

hey Zeity, you probably were right in the center of action and directly in the war zone, so to speak, being in Wales and all. What was your experience of Thatcher's years ?

[Sysman]

Nothing much really.

She didn't do anything that affected the semiconductor industry that I can remember.

I'd forgotten about this one.

She let the Yanks steam roller my employers out of business.

Gawd knows what favours she got in return for that.

[xoggoth]

The biggest changes came after her downfall, as gradually everywhere I've ever worked* has shut down.

Same here, including big ones like Blue Circle Cement, Rediffusion and Marconi. So many big manufacturing companies I never worked for either, like ICI. All brought by foreign companies, closed down, broken up. What has happened to this country over the last 40 years has been insane.

[Sysman]

Oh yes, selling Inmos to ThornEMI was a good move too.

Which reminds me of the National Enterprise Board getting privatised.

Which in turn meant that royalties for a software product I worked with ended up belonging to a couple of guys in an office in London.

They wouldn't drop the licence prices so development stopped.

Pity 'cos it was a nice little earner.

[sasguru]

The core labour vote base still have that same attitude of "I am british, the state should help me live a royal life". That is the reason why Labour's social engineering tactics have wrecked the country. It has made people completely dependent on the state and made them feel that hard work does not pay. There are millions who work part time or not work at all because they get more in benefit hand outs if they stayed at home. It is that lot that keep hating her and blame her for their own failures.

Have you ever thought of creating a Dail Wail cliche generator as a "Plan B"?

[Sysman]

Same here, including big ones like Blue Circle Cement, Rediffusion and Marconi. So many big manufacturing companies I never worked for either, like ICI. All brought by foreign companies, closed down, broken up. What has happened to this country over the last 40 years has been insane.

Ditto.

[SueEllen]

Have you ever thought of creating a Dail Wail cliche generator as a "Plan B"?

Someone has beaten him to it - well with the headlines.

[cailin maith]

I'd not even started nursery school in 1979.... I can't say I am that au fait with her policies etc.

Don't think the Irish were keen on her (I know the IRA tried to blow her up) Christy Moore refers to her as "that ol'd whore in No 10" in one of his songs.

[Doggy Styles]

I don't know enough about politics or economics to critique her policies but I know better than to argue for them in a pub in the valleys!

Do they still do that game where they put saucepans over their heads and bash into each other?

[Pondlife]

Do they still do that game where they put saucepans over their heads and bash into each other?

You're confusing valleys folk with Daleks.