Maggie Thatcher & The Government

of course, some would have liked a ballot but Mr Scargill refused to have one. you must have the mandate first.

the general public would have done but they were hung out to dry!! The miners supported all the other unions throughout the 70's but in their hour of need, where were the others? already defeated?

The day you bring about legislation that forbids any citizen the right to withdraw their labour is the day you bring about a Fascist state. Labour for reward is a voluntary act by an individual and as such you cannot morally, legally or physically force an individual to carry out that labour, therefore to call for certain sections of society to be "not allowed to strike" as Dave did on this thread is a call for a Fascist state.

If I decide I am not going to work for any reason Dave, what do you propose happens ~ that I am frog marched from my home and forced to work like a slave?

So you are now going to claim that those in society who in your opinion "should not be allowed to strike" should then lose their jobs? Brilliant, who's going to drive the bloody trains then? There are hardly a "reserve" team of train drivers waiting in the wings to step in are there?

This was the position of strength I and my London Forest workmates were in when we put the bastards who wanted to cut our pay by 20% and increase our hours by 20% out of business. We refused to work, they lost their routes and who did the replacement companies need to drive them? Why us of course. No we didn't get ALL the terms and conditions that we had previously enjoyed, but we got a damned sight better deal than we would have got from London Forest.

The more senior and experienced ones were even able to virtually name our own shift terms....................I never worked another Saturday in my life for instance. Hell's Bells I was laughing. I worked the routes I wanted, when I wanted and all I had to conform to was the overall wage structure and holiday agreements.

When will the Tories and other Fascist minded people get it into their thick heads that no-one forces a British worker to give of his labour if he chooses not to give it.......................not if he puts his mind to it!

I would agree their is little difference between B Liar's New Labour and Tory philosophy.................that was an act of political expediency with gaining the favour of the centre right to gain election. A "we can be a better conservative (small C ) party than the Tories" and that was what the majority of the country voted for.

This country has still to return a Conservative government since the last one was thrown out over thirteen years ago by the way, it has returned nothing. A coalition has hence been set up between the Tories and the scoundrel Liberals who have committed a political act unheard of in British politics in going directly against the mandate they received from those who voted for them. Can anyone honestly say they voted Liberal to prop up a Tory government? The Liberal Party will pay heavily for such opportunism and lack of moral fibre.

Forcing people to work IS a Fascist act and no other sector of political thought expouses such theories but the Conservatives (with a capital C)

To use hotel workers as an argument against the actions of skilled transport operatives is just playing into the hands of those who recognise that train drivers/ bus drivers, pilots ARE skilled workers who cannot be replaced overnight at the drop of a hat. How long does it take to train a train driver? How long a pilot? A bus driver, I agree takes a lot less time but then avail yourself of the accident and incident rates of the new bus driver when set against the experienced one and you'll soon discover you only get what you pay for in the labour market.

Tory policy if breaking up large publicly owned institutions was not about bringing about better value for money it was about getting snouts in the trough of privatisation and creaming off profits against providing excellence of service.

I don't care whether I work for a publicly owned business or a privately owned one as long as I am paid the proper rate and treated with the respect and security that I am due. Many, many people including myself can point to times in their life where the arrival of a private operator in the workplace was the catalyst for a drive down in wages and a drive up in time demanded to earn that wage.

London Forest had no more intention of providing an excellence of service to the public of North East London than they did of playing croquet for England. The company was set up as a political act of antagonism to try out the Tory intention of "taking on the TGWU" ~ it failed. The current private operators STILL recognise the same union (now called Unite), still pay the best rates of pay and offer the best terms of holiday and sick pay. That is because of the solidarity and resolve of those workers of nearly twenty years ago, now can the workers of Devon's and most other provincial buses make the same claims? I would suggest they cannot and I would further suggest that is because they did not show the same resolve and determination to stick together in the face of an attack on their standard of living.

The "Modern Tory Party" is still an Old Etonian, Bullingdon Club elite in Cameron's cliche and STILL unelectable in numbers to gain it a working majority in the House of Commons. It will inevitably receive less support at the next general election and the Liberal vote will dissipate under the abhorrence of many of their voters at the defiance of Clegg against their wishes when they voted for them.....................what does that tell you? It tells you that Labour (no longer "New" Labour will gain support once more under a more in touch and less elitist regime than B Liar presided over and Brown struggled to kick into shape.

I would anticipate David Miliband becoming the next leader of the Labour Party and he, a far more politically trustworthy and principled character than B Liar ever was will provide the "shiny young face" so beloved of the red tops and "thirty second attention voters" who have such an influence in the way this country votes.

Like his brother Ed, he comes from a principled background (his late father Ralph was a highly respected and knowledgeable East End Jewish Socialist in the same mold as Tony Benn and Michael Foot and he will carry the respect and the support of the party. Dianne Abbott too is a highly principled and honourable person who I have met and spoken to for over twenty years since she was once my near neighbour. I feel she needs to overcome her public persona of being the aloof, intellectual ~ she really isn't like that ~ before she could ever seriously contemplate the levels of support needed to lead the party.

Anyway, given the precarious nature and past history of "coalition government" in this country I reckon the next leader of the Labour Party will become the next Prime Minister of this country.

I think you are in for a disappointment if you think David Milliband will offer much of a break from New Labour. His brother Ed is more likely to do that, but also slightly less likely to win the leadership of his party imo.

I also think you are wrong on about the Liberal Democrat's 'betrayal'. It is certainly true that many on the 'left' voted Lib Dem, but maybe those individuals should have paid closer attention to what people like Nick Clegg, David Laws and Danny Alexander actually said before the election. Those MPs are not socialists, not even social democrats, and were always going to find it relatively easy to work with Clegg's pledge before the election to enter talks with the party with the largest share of the vote and Parliamentary seats, which polls always showed was going to be the Conservatives.

We have a Parliamentary democracy in this country; there is no obligation on any party to 'go it alone', nor is there any benefit, in my opinion, in allowing a minority government to stumble along before collapsing. The question should not be why the Lib Dems chose to go in with the Conservatives, but why Labour failed to secure even 30% of the popular vote at the General Election – if that's not a rejection by the electorate then I don’t know what is.

Good point. Seems like one rule for some and another rule for others...



For me, the thing about politics (as well as religion) is that it is not a subject with which you can argue a case that will change people's views. In general, we all form our political opinions and allegiances based on our background, upbringing and personal circumstances. These things tend not to change.

There are some people who believe that Thatcher was the best PM of the modern age, some the worst and a lot who might be indifferent. There are also an increasing percentage of voters who will have no adult experience of her leadership: anybody under the age of 38 won't have been eligible to vote until after she left office. I accept that they might have preconceptions but I still cling to the naive thought that people make their own minds up based on their owns experiences.

While we can hopefully debate trade unions, the right to strike, the effects of strikes, Bob Crow etc because there is always something to be learnt from the wealth of information that such a debate brings to the fore, can we discuss ex-Prime Ministers to the same effect? Our opinion of Thatcher depends on us balancing out the positives and negatives as we see them of her behaviour in leading this country.

For example, there are some who felt that the sinking of the Belgrano was an inhumane and cowardly act, others who felt that it was a legitimate act of leadership in war. Some feel that the increased power of the police under Thatcher that enabled them to arrest and detain anyone without charge and to completely seal off all access to entire towns and villages for days at a time was a legitimate policy to destroy the unions, others felt that it betrayed our civil liberties as laid down in the British Constitution.

I was first eligible to vote on 1979 so my opinion of Thatcher is based on my experiences during the 1980's. Its up to us all to decide what we feel based on our own conscience, and debating that is unlikely to change our opinions of the people who led our country in office.

However, we can certainly debate the strength of the current political parties, especially as there appear to be far too many socialists who still (incredibly) believe we have had a Socialist government for the past 13 years when in fact the Labour party had stolen all John Major's policies for themselves, to replace the election promises they had no intention of keeping (eg PFI).

My opinion is that until the voting process is changed to the extent that a much larger percentage than 65% of the population actually vote, even a party who gets a majority of the seats can be said to have been rejected by the electorate.

I love a good stat and I was surprised to discover that the number of votes won by the Conservative Party in 2010 (10.7m) was 99.8% of the number won by Blair in 2001 (10.72m) and 112% of Blair's 2005 return (9.56m). While we insist on having a constituency seat arrangement, too many eligible voters will see no reason to vote in a safe seat, of whichever party, as they don't see any chance of their vote "counting".

If it is considered safe to run our banking system online (personal as well as business) then why can't we create a safe online voting system? Its not straightforward but no-one* can persuade me that this country isn't intellectually gifted enough to create a safe, workable system that meets the majority of the population's needs.

*I see he scored the GAWS' winner yesterday...