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Started off with the miner's strike, 3 day week, blackouts and nearly a general strike.
Then we had 'stagflation' with inflation rates in the teens and all the way up to 20%. We also had rising unemployment.
We also had compulsory wage 'restraint'. In other words, it was against the law to get a pay raise so you got poorer each year as inflation ate into your pay.
When Margaret Thatcher was elected the first thing she did was to raise interest rates. Wonderful for those of use who were already struggling to pay our mortgages.
Compared to the above, the 'winter of discontent' was nothing.
Thatcher wasn't elected until June 1979. By that time, Wilson, Barbara Castle, Callahan and the people pulling the labour party's strings had done massive damage.
Mr Solomon Binding [remember him? - the Solomon Binding promise which was going to rein in the unions? (almost as good as 'the pound in your pocket')] was as much use as **** on a bull.
I remember getting weekly pay raises (not very big - my pay was low - but inflation was so great that a pound one week was worth significantly less than it was the previous week.)
I remember having to choose between eating and heating. - And I had a (supposedly) well-paid prestigious job.
Here are the UK inflation rates over a 10-year period:
Thatcher took over in 1979. There was a (temporary) significant drop in inflation during 1978 - the lead-up to an election year. (Whoever would've thought that might happen?)
During the period 1974 - 1979, my pay rose by 15% (AFAIR)
During the period 1980 - 1983 it doubled.
There was much to be said for the Clement Attlee years, and also much to be said about the constant battle by conservatives to destroy any social programs that have endured until now. Thatcher was just the serpent to come along with her economic and social drivel and shift Britain to the right, and a set of policies to which this day has not recovered.
Posters above may have a few points about Thatcher, but thats only when looking at certain things in isolation: the basic tax rate fell from 33% to 25% and the top went from 83% to 40%. Everybody enjoys more disposable income right?! The average salary rose from £5,427 to £15,252, and like the above poster stated she also oversaw a decline in the annual number of working days lost in strikes from 29.5m to 1.9m.
Alas, For the millions of ordinary Britons who endured eleven years of her wretched reign, Margaret Thatcher was (and still is) an evil serpent of a woman totally oblivious to the social collapse she presided over. Maybe the posters above will recall the idiotic monetary policy that Thatcher and her ilk instituted causing inflation to double within a year (not falling to pre-recession rates of 2-3% until the late 80s). To get to such a low level, indirect taxes had been hiked (VAT rose from 8% to 15%), as had interest rates (topping 17%). Subsidies for industry were reduced. The result was a massive rise in unemployment from 1.4m in 1979 to 3.5m by 1982, or one in eight people out of work. Brilliant!
What followed was economic and social decay. Long-term unemployment blighted an entire generation in Northern Ireland (where 20% of people were left out of work), Scotland and the NE and NW of England (16%). A disunited kingdom emerged, as some parts of the country flourished while others faltered. Industry declined in the north; new sectors such as financial services boomed in the south. She went further, advocating both economic and moral belligerence. There was "no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families." People should look to their own and not rely on the government for help. BitXh. She left Britain in recession, with unemployment, inflation and interest rates rising.
Above all, not only was she bad for the country during her reign, she continues to be bad for the country today. The causes of the present slump - unrestricted credit, deregulation and too much financial speculation - all date back to the 1980s. No successive government dared reverse these decisions: a blessing to her legacy, but a curse we must now all share. And guess what? We are still having the same moronic arguments about social programs and government spending now!!!
Do we even need to mention her crazy "allies"? Pinochet for example? Maybe her calling Mandela a terrorist? The Falklands etc
No time warp. I referenced the 1970s and Thatcher came into power at the end of the 1970s (May 1979, not June) just as Ted Heath was Prime Minister for the first three years. And I remember it well. As I referenced above, Thatcher's first actions were to raise interest rates by either 2% or 3% (don't remember exactly) which hit all of us struggling to pay a mortgage and she increased VAT from 8% to 15%. At the time it made her extremely unpopular.
My comment was about the 1970s which was a pretty awful decade for Brits. As I said, I left the UK in April 1980. I had enough and didn't plan to stick around.
There was much to be said for the Clement Attlee years, and also much to be said about the constant battle by conservatives to destroy any social programs that have endured until now. Thatcher was just the serpent to come along with her economic and social drivel and shift Britain to the right, and a set of policies to which this day has not recovered.
Posters above may have a few points about Thatcher, but thats only when looking at certain things in isolation: the basic tax rate fell from 33% to 25% and the top went from 83% to 40%. Everybody enjoys more disposable income right?! The average salary rose from £5,427 to £15,252, and like the above poster stated she also oversaw a decline in the annual number of working days lost in strikes from 29.5m to 1.9m.
Alas, For the millions of ordinary Britons who endured eleven years of her wretched reign, Margaret Thatcher was (and still is) an evil serpent of a woman totally oblivious to the social collapse she presided over. Maybe the posters above will recall the idiotic monetary policy that Thatcher and her ilk instituted causing inflation to double within a year (not falling to pre-recession rates of 2-3% until the late 80s). To get to such a low level, indirect taxes had been hiked (VAT rose from 8% to 15%), as had interest rates (topping 17%). Subsidies for industry were reduced. The result was a massive rise in unemployment from 1.4m in 1979 to 3.5m by 1982, or one in eight people out of work. Brilliant!
What followed was economic and social decay. Long-term unemployment blighted an entire generation in Northern Ireland (where 20% of people were left out of work), Scotland and the NE and NW of England (16%). A disunited kingdom emerged, as some parts of the country flourished while others faltered. Industry declined in the north; new sectors such as financial services boomed in the south. She went further, advocating both economic and moral belligerence. There was "no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families." People should look to their own and not rely on the government for help. BitXh. She left Britain in recession, with unemployment, inflation and interest rates rising.
Above all, not only was she bad for the country during her reign, she continues to be bad for the country today. The causes of the present slump - unrestricted credit, deregulation and too much financial speculation - all date back to the 1980s. No successive government dared reverse these decisions: a blessing to her legacy, but a curse we must now all share. And guess what? We are still having the same moronic arguments about social programs and government spending now!!!
Do we even need to mention her crazy "allies"? Pinochet for example? Maybe her calling Mandela a terrorist? The Falklands etc
May her legacy rot.
Since her government (who were responsible for the first regrading of nursing positions since heaven knows when) no one has given a rats ass about the appalling pay of nurses and many others working in the NHS.
When this regrading came about (maybe in 1990?) I was graded as a Grade E staff nurse and went from earning 7,500 GBP to 12,000 GBP.
When I left the NHS 3 years ago, 19 years later, I was earning 28,000 as an advanced practice nurse-despite all the hype about Agenda for Change and how it would grade everyone in the NHS across all professions and sectors (except Doctors!) fairly. BS.
I guess "Ian" believes the government was socialist enough in the 1970s.
I think it was "socialist enough" pre the 1970s.
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