I find it ironic that some of thatchers main defenders on here....

Now you sound like Cameron!

 

to be fair,and I hate scroungers as much as anyone,but i've got to say that a lot of them are doing exactly that as a direct result of the thatcher years,,the wholesale destruction of all our industry and manufacturing got rid of most of the working class jobs,certainly those that paid good money.Crime and drugs escalated under the tories not labour,and theres no way could labour turn it around,and neither will this lot whos in now.We had real short term gain under thatcher after she either shut everything down or sold it off,but the long term damage is off the scale for me,we've lost all the skills and work ethic that had took centuries to build up.
I would also point out that crime dropped under labour,,
like you say tho' we are all entitled to our opinions.

 

I blame the Thatcher government for all that including the weather! They took away the pride and self respect and community spirit of the working classes. That is her biggest crime.

 

Yet everything you've posted is a direct consequence of Thatcherism.

 

Was never like that pre Thatcher if a miner heard anyone swearing a clip round the ear was the order of the day .she has a lot to answer to this community but hey take the easy way out and blame what I call thatchers children

 

All the attitudes that you mention are a direct result of Thatcher's anti-society ideology. Encourage people to grab what they can as quick as they can. Attack and denigrate all civil institutions. Sell off all public assets to individuals or big business. Ignore consensus just use blind conviction.

I'm not having a go at you personally. Just have issue with where you lay the blame for the things you don't like. You obviously have every right to live where you want. Millions of people have done exactly what you have both away from and into our country. Whether the move you have made has been successful because of the level of petty crime/ litter/ swearing you encounter I very much doubt.

 

With the aim of ever increasing growth capitalists aim to extract the most profit possible from goods and services. Therefore in competition with each other Capitalists look to decrease production costs rather than increasing the prices of their goods. One method of doing this is by increasing the efficiency of their workforce by for instance, making them work longer hours. This brings the capitalists up against Unions. Time is money to the Capitalists and although they have succeeded in reducing the power of the unions who protect their members they have other ways of increasing their profits.

An alternative is the mechanisation of production. The lowering of production costs increases the ability of the Capitalists to produce more of a product. By using machinery rather than humans (who dont need toilet breaks, take time off sick and strike) they can reduce costs over time and therefore increase profit.

The problem with this is that by laying off workers and making them unemployed they are reducing the numbers of people who could buy their product. This in turn leads to a fall in those goods prices, due to a falling of demand. In one 10 year stretch the USA lost 35 million jobs due to mechanisation of industry. When they were finished extracting all the money they could from machinery, they decided to off-shore the jobs to foreign countries where they could save more money by employing cheaper labour. What's happened? The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.


So it helps perhaps to understand about Thatcher, and her fellow Capitalists, that they are interested in, and only interested in, profit. By virtue of this some people made money (handy if your finger is already in the pie or you have the ability to put it there, but not so handy if the only skills you have are now entirely redundant). Sure, you can retrain and find other jobs, but there’s only so many to go around.

A couple of decades later and you have lots of people who are used to being unemployed, who have or believe they have no future and find it easier to do nothing than do something.

Quelle surprise.

 

It was Thatchers government that created the benefit culture. They introduced Incapacity Benefit and unemployed people were encouraged to claim it so unemployment figures didn't look so bad.

 

Id also point out that the 'Brave New World' of automated industry was supposed to leave us more free-time, more leisure time, more time to spend with our families. Yet in this country we work longer hours than ever whilst suffering cuts in wages and the threat of the sack.

They could of course stopped the rot of society and the mass unemployment levels (far higher than any official total will tell you) by sharing out those profits, by realising that for the good of all they can spread the wealth, have machines do jobs that we dont and to some extent put right what they put wrong by being governed by greed.

But you see, for the greedy man there is never enough.

 

All helped by the brainwashed elements of the working classes that help them put this into practice

 

No, but what I am saying is that life is way more enjoyable here because we don't have a "benefit culture" (that I believe was brought on by Labour in my time in the UK) and I don't come across petty crime, litter and unnecessary swearing when I walk down the street and use public transport like I did when I lived in the UK. People can argue all night long who is to blame for the way society is today in the UK, but I gave my reasons as to why I live where I live now and that was primarily because I felt that my taxes were being spent in an appalling way under the Labour governments I endured in my working years in the UK. My personal experience, that's all.

 

The benefit culture was created by the Tory government long before Labour got in to power. It was convenient then to use it to disguise how many they'd put on the dole, so they encouraged people to go on sickness benefits. IMHO I do think it continued to be nurtured by Labour.

 

I guess it just depends on where you live. No doubt there are areas in Calgary where petty crime, litter and swearing is rife. I live in a Yorkshire village where there hasn't been a crime in living memory, there is no litter and only the old folk swear. It's more to do with wealth than anything else.

 

No it wasn't! If there's one thing you can't level at Thatcher govts it's that - I've not read much about her compassion and interest in the less fortunate people on here today. That's a first.

 

I'm sure there are places like that in the UK also where everything is rosy . But there is plenty of crime, drugs homelessness and ghettos in Canada that are just as displeasing in fact its probably a lot crueller with the harsh winters there if you have wealth you can avoid the knowledge and existence of these paces in whichever country you reside

 

Yes it was! People were actively encouraged to go sickness benefits to hide unemployment figures -FACT.

 

That's why The Sun and Daily Mail exist. Divide and Rule. I mean what would happen if people realised that what is happening here and what started under Thatcher, was the removal of jobs for the increase in profit.

People moan about the Benefit system and its cost, but its bugger all compared to what those companies have made from making those people unemployed and operating at higher profits. Which is where the cheap lending came in.

Capitalist: "People cant afford to buy stuff, quick throw lots of cheap loans at them, keep the profits coming!"

Then they began packaging those debts together and selling them on at inflated prices for more money. All in the name of increased profit. Eventually of course those too went tits up (as everyone realised they were holding items that had **** all intrinsic value). So what happened then?

Ask the poor for more money! Strip them of their benefits, cut services - DO ANYTHING TO KEEP OUR PROFITS COMING IN!!!

And so it will continue. Higher and higher up the ladder they will go, raping and pillaging people to keep themselves and their psychopathic behaviour happy. Marx said that Capitalism would lead to the breaking of their chains by the working class (which most of us are, middle class or not). I hope it's true.

 

not everybodys experience of Canada is as pleasant either.

I know a bloke who went to work down a pit in alberta in the 80's,he came home after about a year because the locals were calling him a job pinching *******, and his kids were getting grief at school..they were basically getting treated like scabs for being immigrants,and this when they couldn't get Canadians to work in the pit.

 

Kanecat's right. The Conservative's encouraged those made redundant from the pits and associated industries to go on to incapacity benefit so they wouldn't be classed as unemployed and damage their figures.

Added to which Thatcherism and consequent neo-liberalism doesn't work with full employment. They need unemployed to keep inflation down to make the economy more competitive. The biggest secret in politics that. All these politicians claiming they want to make work pay. They have no intention of creating an economy with jobs for everyone

 

dek they still cant, i went over to Calgary actually to work,as a carpenter, because they cannot get canadien people into these jobs. I must add i didnt like the area of Calgary i was staying,more to do with not been able to cook as there were no facilities in the basement i was renting.

it was clean,low crime rate,one of the lowest in Canada, the people were very welcoming. It is a city i will visit again and love.

Its not because the people dont want to work but its the same as whats now happening in the UK everyone is encouraged to go to University and higher education.
thus making the main industries like mining both oil and coal,and construction with no apprentices to learn the trades that are the back bone of the country.