Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

To blame Margaret Thatcher for today's problems is to misunderstand history

The real story: Manufacturing rose under Thatcher and fewer mines shut in the 1980s than the 1970s

While many of her reforms fortunately live on, she can be held responsible neither for the state of today’s manufacturing sector, nor for the financial crisis. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand history, her own philosophy and the nature of our present problems.

She inherited a basket case of an economy, crippled by obsolete state-owned firms, a legacy of decades of poor policies. Management was insular and demoralised, the workforce used as pawns by militant union leaders who would call strikes at every opportunity, customers treated like dirt and production techniques stuck in the past.

Productivity was appalling, overmanning the norm and the quality of UK-made goods notoriously poor. Britain was sclerotic, anti-entrepreneurial and anti-innovation, often specialising in industries with no long-term future.

Yet it is a little-known fact that manufacturing output actually went up during her time in office, despite the necessary liquidation of so many unviable plants. Even the uncomfortably high pound, which shot up as a result of North Sea oil, wasn’t enough to throttle the recovery.

British factories boosted their output by 7.5pc between the second quarter of 1979 and the third quarter of 1990, when she left Downing Street, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Output had grown another 4.9pc by the start of 1997, when the Tories were booted out. Given the bitterness of the 1980s’ recession, caused by the desperate need to wring out extreme levels of inflation from the system by using high interest rates, it shows just how effective her supply-side reforms turned out to be.

The real decline happened under Labour: in the second quarter of 2010, when Gordon Brown left office, the output of UK factories was fractionally lower than it was when Thatcher took her last, tearful ride in that ministerial Jaguar. It was significantly lower than when John Major left. Total industrial production including coal rose even more substantially under Thatcher than just manufacturing, thanks to North Sea oil. Far more miners lost their jobs, and far more mines were shut, in the 1960s and 1970s than during Thatcher’s time in office. Britain is suffering from a bout of collective amnesia.

Today’s ultra-efficient car industry, and its record exports, is a direct product of the Thatcherite revolution. Any government would eventually have had to tackle unproductive or loss-making industries, and manufacturing as a share of GDP has collapsed in all wealthy economies. Thatcher simply got the blame; it would have been more damaging to keep zombie firms alive, and in the absence of the Thatcherite medicine, we would have ended up with a far smaller economy and even less of a factory base. It is preposterous to claim that she actually enjoyed shutting factories or mines, or that she hated industry. Of course she didn’t; but there was never any genuine choice between preserving unviable mines or low-skilled manufacturing jobs, or growing the financial and professional services sector of the economy. The former would have vanished anyway; the latter would have ended up being provided abroad.

It is equally wrong to claim that her reforms were the root cause of the present financial crisis. Most of her changes still make sense today, and are incorrectly blamed for problems that have nothing to do with her, but were caused by a pre-Thatcherite philosophy that took hold many years after she left office. She was right to slash income tax, to repeal capital controls and to shake up the City of London (LSE: CIN.L - news) with Big Bang. Most of her reforms to retail banking, including allowing banks and building societies to compete with one another, were spot-on.

LOL. Did Napoleon get a fancy funeral?

Napoleon had a huge funeral, bigger than anything seen ever in the UK.

What is the benefit of wasting money for an exceptional funeral?

Simple funeral by the family is what everyone would be happy with. CAMERON does not need to cause so much disputes, hate, and anger due to the waste... It is not only selfish but dividing the nation.

£10-£20 million waste is NOT acceptable

Respect for the dead & their contribution?

No you deal with it or Ill deal with you in the real world . And thats not a threat.

Your such an ignorant man Harry, this is not the first time you have shown your pig ignorance.

What contribution ?, from the Midlands to the tip of Scotland people are cringing at whats going on now on TV in the house of commons.

Its sickly, I dont know how the labour MPs can stomach it.

A Yougov poll published today has Thatcher as the greatest PM since the war with 28%, Churchill was second with 24% and Blair third with 10%. Heath got 0.

If we didn't have so many yobs in this country then we wouldn't need to spend so much money on security and ensuring that people behaved in a civilised manner at her funeral.

No you deal with it or Ill deal with you in the real world . And thats not a threat.

Now that is 'goldsponger at his most demented. That is surely worth a complaint to MAM.

Hay,

Go and talk to real people on the street, rather than listening to manipulated data published by some ignorants.

see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/04/margaret-thatcher-state-funeral-protests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-critics-celebrations-funeral

Guardian - now which political party might that newspaper support?!

Gf. See your post 23120. Have copied, pasted & ready to report 23347.

ahoj
You won't find real people mentioned in the Guardian. It is a left wing mouthpiece.

DB if thatcher hadnt taken this country down the greed route family life wouldnt have spawned the yobs of today.

How can you deny the people of the likes of The Yorkshire coalfields and Newcastle Liverpool areas the hate for her.

You can report what you like Harry no way are you slandering/ defamition of character on me. Either apologise or I will take legal steps, simple as that.

'goldfarter' is getting sillier and sillier.

harry police dressed as miners to course trouble fact not fiction

i was also can tell you this the flying pickets most of the trouble was not by them
and i worked on the sites
i could open your eyes and that man off the tv was not guilty fact not fiction
hillsbough police giveing out false accounts
and many more things happend

harry you are are low life and just a poor man with no life

So its Fred, goldfinger and Tanker for the asylum then.