On Thatchers Legacy for Better and For Worst and More Worst....

To be frank, I thought the auld battle axe was dead already. I can't say it is with any particular bitterness, neither is this with any tears I write.

As a vehement anti Thatcher student in the late 80s, it made my blood boil as she removed housing benefit from us while forcing people in need of social housing into over priced private housing paid for by of course, housing benefit as a massive subsidy to the Rachmans and rip off merchants.

On the other side the UK benefits greatly by having competitive modern industries, a unique financial sector and a large private service economy. There by a net tax income which was able to fund ambitions of the last three Labour governments until the finance crisis ( which they seem to get the blame for when it was bankers, not known for their societal sympathies, who actually caused the collapse in the credit system). Also enough of the good old Keynsian economic cycles to help maintain one of the lowest unemployment rates for Europe, excluding oil rich Norway and countries like Switzerland and Lichtenstein where unemployment is illegal....

Later I discovered both that private industry is best left to flourish and  the efforts of business people is more important to the economy than the actions of government. Also I discovered a lot of the hypocrisies of the Thatcher years and subsequent governance, which have  lead directly, to the finance crisis and so much social inequality in the Uk and much of the world.

I believe that Thatcher deserves far less credit for for the changes in the economy than she gets, and far more credit for the negative effects on poor communities and marginalised people than is attributed to her reign: Tories blame those people for their own fate, while they are the weak people government should set about providing for where the market mechanism will never.

However, the tory landslide of 1979 was as deterministic in the future wealth on the one hand, and the bad health of the country as that of Clement Attlee defeating Churchill in 1945. Victory over the fascists at the end of WWII, and in 1979 victory over the communist fringes of the labour movement who commanded too much power even by the Labour party's own admission then (with the failure of Ted Heath to tackle the unions in the energy crisis years) and the creation of new political climates under which the country could recover and eventually thrive.

The one dire legacy is the "I'm alright jack" view point of life I touched on above:  which is now pervasive in the UK, especially England: a view that everyone should be nice middle class Christians who run small businesses and don't have any need for the devil of social workers and the NHS.  The view of life of denial that any other life is acceptable and that people who aren't "successful" in middle class terms are failures. A self centred view point, as Thatcher had also to the positive in ignoring the old public school gaurd of stodgey conservatives. A view point like that of Queen Victoria, who deemed that Homosexuality amongst women need not be illegalised because lesbianism did not exist in Britain.  An affluent middle class, and the coy working class small business people,  that fail to understand people who are not just like them.

That is a very fundamental conservative weakness which limits social mobility and demonises people with long term illness: A weakness in being myopic. A lacking by  having no empathy for people who are different to them: ordinary working people, people with mental health problems, poor families with intelligent kids, single parent families, people of non Christian religion, gay people, starving people, dying people.

"Labour isn't working" was the poster, lots of young tories queuing up in 1979. More people were on benefits when she left office than when she entered, and inflation and the national debt were only eventually offset by the IT revolution enabling growth, and knowledge based industries emerging as competitive on a world arena.

Thatcher did some hard, proper work against the unions and against subsidies to manufacturing industries." As our first female Prime Minister She Achieved Much Against All the Odds" which is true. However she got really lucky at several points in her time in office: Britain was almost bankrupt in her first couple of years, as companies who were on the brink, went under and people were paid to be inactive rather than economically active in subsidised industries. ITN had a job counter. In Scotland long before the coal pit closures, it was ship building, tyre plants and biscuit factories that fell in the early 80s and that was due to a lack of long term investment more so than them being unionised.
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She and Reagan are kind of being given more credit than Gorbachev himself for the Glasnost-Democracia-Perestroika reforms, which have lead to what? They didn't help when he was dumped in favour of drunken puppets and eventually an anti democracy leadership. That is the legacy there. Better the bear we knew and a slower revolution than the belief he was given by the vaneer of those strong personalities. Gorbachev became over confident in relation to his political personality and wieght he could punch to alone: He killed the monster of the old politburo  while  his rather academic personality, his discursive nature and even a kind approach to reform were weaknesses and he  was not strong enough to contain the wolves which rushed into the power vacuum he had created himself on the flames of belief which were ignited by the other two world leaders.

House ownership: an over priced bubble housing market only held up from catastrophe by labour policy on repossessions. A large proportion of the country with more than four times family income
'invested' in this rash-and-crash market. Social housing as I say, becoming a subsidy to landlords with little caps on housing benefit available for local authorities to impose.

 Today marks a passing of an era to which we live in debt to now: literally, we live in the debts created by a run away banking system which was open to abuse and corruption in both the private sector and the interface to governance vis a vis the sub prime catalyst

Who can manage capitalism best?

On my labour party membership card, bourne also by the self confessed marxist-leninist hijacker loony left fringe, there was in black and white clause 4 of the constitution, " the means of production should be owned by the state except where industry can deliver better" . Really this should have been turned by 1984 into " the means of delivery of social services, education and health should be owned by the people and industry should be supplied with nothing more than roads, rails and healthy, well educated people".

I think it was inevitable that industries like Rover would go under, run by the stock market or by the government. The miners striked, the coal came from communist poland and also coal from New Zealand: subsidised. Followed by closing the industry in massive swathes and allowing american protectionism to continue while aritficially denying British Steel value adding capacity such as the strip mill Gartcosh. Basically then forcing many communities who had no culture for enterprise or migration for working, into being benefit center dependents

On Europe, well there she has had some of her own way: dominant national interests demanding that weaker members pay their way. An obsession with privatisation and compulsory tendering. Strasbourg being a paper tiger and token to democracy, a lost chance for a europe who's citizens are involved with its running, while instead the strongest national interests call the tune. She would like that, but of course little Davey Cameron isnae in the driving seat and can be an unruly teenager to appease the eurosceptics, the island monkeys who have some strange belief that the UK would be better off without access to the EU markets on an even basis. Those who beleive in the British Empire,  expanded once by military conquest and commercial piracy and reigned over by the largest beaurocracy the world will ever see.


Her victory in 1979 was as inevitable as the right's defeat in France in their last election for President: the last epoch had run its course and needed radical change, even if some of that change was going to be unpopular and cause long term damage to society. The damage would be larger if the old epoch had continued.

Today the old epoch in need for change is the result of Thatcher-Reaganomics: they started the long run to anarchy in the banking sector and over borrowing on the promise of liberalised economy return in growth ( public borrowing went grossly up in the 1980s to pay the dole and for Trident). We are seeing countries facing austerity across Europe and further a field, and we will see the resulting rise of political movements who want to redress the imbalances of distribution of wealth.

With Margaret Thatcher's death then we can also lay to rest the excesses of the laisez faire and weak governance of the financial markets and at some point soon, the public will re-examine social justice on a national and global scale and ask what it is we want to acheive with democracy and good governance, and not what we want to achieve with allowing the rich to run the place.

David Cameron Talks...Britain Suffers

David Cameron Talks...Britain Suffers

David Cameron talks a good talk. That's why his rich backers in the UK are so pleased with him, and the top rate tax reduction in April.

However like Mitt Romney's billions of campaign dollars, they will fall on the stoney ground of a British Electorate which will not vote Lib Dem ever again, and is seeing the economic injustices and imbalance as creating a US , laisez faire ghetto-and-condo society.

In April the new lower rate comes in for top tax payers. In fact I am not against a lower rate for those earning up to £60,000 a year: it actually isn't a lot of money in London and also these are people in positions of responsibility often in the public sector who at least declare all their income. However of course in the same month, the very poorest subsistance families and those WORKING families on a single minimum wage will have their kids clothes, their holidays, their christmas presents stolen by Dear David and his rich chums, all in the aid of "balancing the books and getting people back into work".

This is where his rich pals and former Eatonite fund managers can't paper over things: it was his rich, yuppie funny-money backers who caused the recession. It was them who leant money and took their cut and made a housing market boom based on a house-of-cards of credit. But it is they who don't have to pay, and in fact will pay less after April. It is many of them who are defering their bonuses based on some recovery from abject failure in 2012 into the April tax year. Britain is becoming an obscene party for the rich as the expence of a public, with the Tories trying very hard to blame labour for the catastophy.

Labour of course did over spend or rather spend in relation to the up phase of the "economic cycle" lasting for another term. So did many other states, and several conservative governments. They tried this trick in the US too, blaming the president who sat on top of the Bush approved bubble and a congress and senate legislature largely strangled by the super rich backed fascists and oligarchs in the Republican party and right of the democrats.


However raising taxes at this top rate doesn't always work of course: they are the very high earners who can employ accountants and find tax effective mechanisms, and they have enough power within their organisations to negotiate further bonuses, share options and foreign employ to avoid tax. But this is not the whole picture: now there are many more highly paid middle managers, engineers and technocrats. So there is a rich seam to be taxed above around 55K and of course a new super rate could be imposed above 80K for example, to claw back in some cash from those overpaid GPs for example. This also forces more people in the private sector into actually buying shares or indeed setting up their own private companies to supply their expertise and take a profit while enjoying the business tax-write-offs.

Effective taxation means maximising revenue. If you raise top rate too much, then you don't bring in so much tax. However as there are far more salaried high earners who don't have ready access to "mechanisms" then let them eat Dan Cake.

The Great PR Fraud of the Century

All governments try to blame the last outgoing who now sit in opposition. The problem is though that Labour despite having a very good opportunity for winning the next election, are losing the PR battle because the Tories are much better at it.

The tories know who they represent " the hard working types who want to get on" which is the same types who think there is no need for minimum wage OR benefits and that is kind of implied as in Labour then getting the " wasters who want to turn up and take the cash and deliver poor services" which the tory voter believes in, and many of those struggeling on low incomes also see as time wasters. We could come in a situation like in the USA where white-trash vote republican because of this aspiration-desparation effect. Their lives will get worse under a right-wing slow down but they will still aspire and blame big-bad-government.

Labour have lost their way and the big PR machine for the rich the Tory party is, will slowly convince enough people that labour are the route of all ills, and not their rich backers who favoured the laisez-faire, puny-weak governance of stock and capital markets. I hope the press do not forget this.