Westminstenders: Tory Natural Selection

[RedToothBrush]

Here we go again...

[LonelyTiredandLow]

It will indeed be interesting to see what we decide to omit from other areas of EU Law. I can't shake the feeling this has been brewing for some time and that Cameron and May were some odd last line of defence.

I am a bit young to remember much about MT; other than Poll Tax and Miners Strikes. Seemed a lot of angry people were on TV every night and with the IRA bombs on top, comparing it to present day's apathy is startling. I think despite social media, or maybe because of it, the masses are less informed and organised than ever before.

[mathanxiety]

For me - personally - I don't want to live in a Federal Europe
Clavinova

You are going to love living in the equivalent of Puerto Rico then.

[Peregrina]

Thankfully I am getting on in years and hopefully won't see the UK become a vassal state of the USA. My DCs will have long left the UK.

[borntobequiet]

I’ve got a (small) stockpile of medication and food. That’s not because I’m a member of the bourgeoisie, it’s because I need both to function.
“Check your privilege” is one of those retorts of last resort, when someone has nothing sensible to say.

[NoWordForFluffy]

I’ve got a (small) stockpile of medication and food. That’s not because I’m a member of the bourgeoisie, it’s because I need both to function.
“Check your privilege” is one of those retorts of last resort, when someone has nothing sensible to say.

Looking after your children includes keeping them fed, sometimes with their favourite stuff and sometimes with a treat. The stockpiles are for sustenance and sanity, not about being bourgeois.

And it's something we can control. In all of this sad mess, we have very little control over our destiny. At least with a stockpile / forward purchasing, we can have control over .

'Check your privilege' is just a lazy way of trying to make somebody feel bad.

[Iambuffy]

woman

I hear you.

I agree.

I have a stockpile. I also got my kids an EU passport (lucky I know) and have saved up about £8k to get the fuck out of here if it comes to it (some of it in euros)

[MockerstheFeManist]

.....And he's thinking of withdrawing.

[Dongdingdong]

I also got my kids an EU passport (lucky I know) and have saved up about £8k to get the fuck out of here if it comes to it (some of it in euros)

Why not just go now?

[Iambuffy]

Dh.

[The80sweregreat]

I was a young teen when Mrs Thatcher was first in power in 79 and I always thought she was very much in favour of the EU and Free movement of people ; she went over there and managed to negotiate a big rebate , but she was also a fan of the whole set up ( as I saw it at the time)
I'm sure that she would have stood on a remain platform ( as David Cameron did) if she had been alive and supported that ideal. I'm convinced of it.

[1tisILeClerc]

Like all leaders, and everyone really, they have good ideas and bad ideas. Some work out, some get thwarted by 'opposition'.
Thatcher was in favour of the EEC/EU, especially as the UK was in a privileged position at the 'top table' and she managed good things for the UK.
Her failings in policy, in particular dealing with unions and the rapidly expanding global market were less of a success. I think it has been said she started to 'lose the plot' in her later years in power and we can only speculate how things might have turned out if her real 'internal' plan for the UK had happened.

[AllInADay]

I was also born mid 1950's. I recognise some of the analysis of the 1970's and 1980's here but not all of it. Also, Margaret Thatcher did not win power until 1979, so she had little influence on the 1970's apart from the ministries she served. (Education being one of them). Regarding the Callaghan government of the mid-1970's, I don't think there has been a worse one. Also, the febrile union environment of those times. I lived in the West Midlands at that time and was working in factories by the late 1970's. I always remember men talking about getting a foreman to "get them on The Track." To get on a car production line with the union protection it offered plus wage rises of 17% and employment protection was highly envied. Mining: Arthur Scargill didn't see fit to pass on to his members the generous terms that Thatcher's govt. offered in advance of the proposed closures. He preferred to stir up unrest and hardship amongst his members instead. He applied the same determination to hang on to his expensive grace-and-favour Barbican flat in later years when he no longer had a right to it and the union just could not afford it. Comrades indeed!

I don't have cosy memories of unions and union leaders. I once saw a set of union officials completely humiliate the first black manager we had in our factory taking him on in a dispute which he'd hitherto tried to handle with sensitivity and dignity. They went out of the room laughing and making monkey gestures! I'm always baffled at why union leaders are held up to be such noble heroes! In a few months time Fiddler's Ferry Power Station will close. Only the so-called green Germans are keeping up so many coal-fired power stations. We would have had to close unproductive mines, anyway with the green agenda.

Some of Thatcher's policies were idealistically naive and damaging, but had she not taken on the car unions and Scargill we would never have made the economic strides in the 1980's that we did.

[mathanxiety]

You can have as many beans as you want temporarily, but you will not have human rights

People are still going to need the beans though.

And people always stockpile when political situations and the economy seem to be going through upheaval of many sorts It's not particularly English or bourgeois to stockpile, barter, exchange food coupons, steal stockpiles, pilfer warehouses, create a black market.

[mathanxiety]

www.economicshelp.org/blog/630/economics/economy-in-1980s/

You sure you're talking about the same 80s that these people are, AllInADay?

[prettybird]

...we would never have made the economic strides in the 1980's that we did.

But the point is, we didn't

Our "boom" economy was built on a foundation of sand, with all the emphasis on a service economy that favoured the South East - and de-stabilised the rest of the country, while the benefit of North Sea oil, which could have funded a UK wide investment in infrastructure was frittered away

Instead of using that opportunity to address the fundamental problems of UK working like - the disjoint between "workers" and "management" - we (or rather the UK Government) saw the Unions as the problem and didn't see that the problem was on both sides: in the Board Room (and our Stock Market's short termism) as well as within the unions.

Hence the UK's continuing crap productivity record. Unhappy and frustrated workers are not as productive as happy and contented ones.

Ironically, the Workers' Councils used in Germany and credited with a lot of its productivity were introduced and encouraged by the UK post war (so my Uni Economics lecturer told us) Plus they used their Marshall Aid to build infrastructure and invest in the future, unlike the UK, which used its (greater amount of) Marshall Aid to try unsuccessfully to hold on to its Empire ....but having wasted the Marshall Aid, it could still have chosen to use the unexpected windfall of North Sea Oil to build infrastructure, and again, failed to do so and squandered it instead on tax cuts (at the same time as "selling off the family silver" )

Plus there is a far better record of investment in training on the continent than there is in the UK.

So no, I don't have time for Maggie - but nor do I have time for those that succeeded her, who could - but didn't - have chosen to address those issues

[Peregrina]

Agree with that prettybird. I think most workers want to do a decent job, but in all my working life, I have had more poor managers than good ones. I don't know why it should be. Is it the UK public school tradition of 'the Gifted Amateur'?

[prettybird]

Yup - over the years more years than I care to remember , I have had some great managers, from whom I've learnt a lot (the sort who would give those under them the credit if things went well and take the blame themselves if there were a cock up - but give you a bollocking in private ) and some crap ones - either just plain inefficient or out and out bullies

Guess which ones got the most out of me and the rest of their staff?

[1tisILeClerc]

There is an interesting (well for some) programme that is on Youtube about the introduction of the InterCity 125 train.
Warning, includes clips of Jimmy Saville.

Introduced at a time when British Snail was nearing it's depths of crappiness it was seen as an inspirational project. 125 MPH is about the fastest that was 'safe' and practical on the routes proposed. The APT was supposed to be capable of 155 MPH but needed to be a 'tilting' design to cope with the corners. It was too advanced and went many years late and was then discontinued as it wasn't 'right' as an experience. Interesting interactions between unions, government and public.
Maggie 'promoted' the Channel tunnel largely because it was a private enterprise.
Interesting to see that 'politics' is still involved in the public experience of train journeys, with 'arguments' over trains and operators on a London to Cardiff route in today's Grauniad.