I think the Bank of England was only nationalized by the postwar Attlee government.
She's dead
- Thread starter jexykrodic
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
Question 5 was the stupidest of all. I chose the Liberal party simply because the other 2 aren't threats whatsoever, and it's hard to imagine how they could be. Actually on that basis I probably should've voted for Argentinians. Unless they mean the modern Lib Dems, then I voted right. I think.
Stupid question.
Stupid question.
Indeed. We have not had a song for a while though. I love Mudhoney and they have a new album out. I find this quite fitting
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4aIEbzKZiE
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4aIEbzKZiE
It was really, but I voted the same way based on the Lib Dems' slavish support for the insidiously undemocratic "European project".
As did I, for the same reason, & cos they're morally bankrupt, as evidenced by their turnaround on university fees.
You're very lucky you don't need one
Indeed. My dad was a active trade unionist (with arrests & pictures of him in hospital to prove it) but I know truly understood how effective they could be when I joined the revenue, don't get me wrong, there's problems with them & some people do take the piss, but the good they do in the bigger picture is well worth it.
Although I don't believe Richey is actually a politician as such, Parliament is the biggest fucking union going
(Incidentally, that's not biggest as in physical size, but power and influence)
I joined a union as soon as I started work. In those days (mid-70s) some unions weren't constructive in their approach, and I actually joined so I could have a voice within my workplace to try and prevent daft, destructive decisions being taken. As time went on, though, I came to see how necessary they actually were on the ground in individual workplaces, so I made sure I joined whichever union covered the workplace I was at/went to, for positive reasons. The worst excesses of past trade union action are a matter of record now, but based on my experience over a 32-year career I suspect (a) they probably prevented serious trouble in at least as many cases and (b) they're now more necessary than ever.
There's nothing wrong with unions at all, the problem is when they're given special privileges. But then the same applies to business.
JJ makes a v good point about the EU as I forgot about that. I was more referring to awful stuff like the mansion tax.
JJ makes a v good point about the EU as I forgot about that. I was more referring to awful stuff like the mansion tax.
One of the factors that made British industrial relations so bad in the postwar years, was that the unions never accepted the proposition that the success of the enterprise that paid the wages had even the tiniest place in their list of objectives. If the company was losing money, that was the management's problem and nothing to do with them. Union leaders frequently said so publicly. A different attitude prevailed on the Continent, where unions and management adopted a much more co-operative attitude.
In my opinion the major reason for this was a refusal to embrace a minimum wage.
Minimum wage had been part of collective bargaining for decades in many other countries and as such there was much more pressure to seek higher wages to keep in line with inflation. It took us until 1999 to get a very modest minimum wage in place!
Employers and government (often the employer) wanted price and wage predictability when there wasn't any stability, especially in the cost of fuel for example. A minimum living wage would have strengthened the hand of the employer.
Each side was trying to look after it's own interests and as such disputes weren't very surprising.
There was never, in my experience, indifference to how the business was doing. In fact it was a source of pride if more orders were landed.
CO-operative means both sides Portly...when you send cops to beat the shit out of workers, its not a good way of CO-operating...
In Germany, they tried to talk and it worked quite well..
The violence was started by the miners with their bus-loads of "flying pickets." It was a political action - Arthur Scargill intended to bring down the Government in the same way as the NUM had brought down the Heath government. He didn't even bother to have a ballot before starting it, so it shouldn't even be described as a "strike."
Ha, we're not going to agree on this😉
Strikes never surface out of nowhere, Maggie got PM and her primary goal was clearly to demolish Unions, violently if necessary. Co-operation wasnt in her vocabulary.
Thatcher knew that all she needed to do was to make the unions democratic. Many of her votes came from union members in closed-shop industries, who were fed up with being bullied into strikes and other disruptive industrial actions by their unions. The compulsory postal ballot was all that was required to transform the situation. Labour had tried to do exactly the same thing with Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife" white paper but they had depended too much on union support to make it work.
Chac: I posted an article earlier in the thread that claims the government wanted to settle with the miners by guaranteeing all miners who lost their jobs a redundancy package and alternative employment, as well as injecting £800m into the mining industry. If that's not compromising I don't know what is. Scargill refused to even consider the offer.
We're having a bit of trouble with unions over here at the moment
Scargill had bigger political fish to fry. Under him the miners had brought down the previous Conservative government, led by Edward Heath, in the early 1970s and he wanted to do it again. Incidentally my understanding at the time was, and it still remains, that this kind of dishonest use of trade disputes for wider political purposes was what Thatch was targeting when she referred to "the enemy within", not trade unions in general, even though she was no friend of theirs. Unfortunately for Scargill, she was made of far sterner stuff than that pompous old bullfrog Heath.
As I recall (from reading as opposed to personal experience) weren't many of the strikes in the 70s unofficial wildcat strikes that the unions had little choice but to go along with, after the fact?
Some of them were. When I was in the 6th Form (around 1965) the school careers master organised a visit to the Dunlop factory in Speke. As we walked round the factory, being shown the various processes by the Dunlop representative, every so often a machine would stop, and there would be a haggle between a supervisor and a shop steward. I was amazed and it stuck in my memory.
During the 70's successive Governments agreed deals with the TUC, Industrial Relations Act > Social Contract > Incomes Policy. All were made to try to control incomes and prices.
The basic reason they fell apart wasn't disagreement between Governments and Unions but workers wanting their pay to keep pace with inflation which was rampant due mainly to oil prices (aka The Energy Crisis) which soared from $10 a barrel in 1971 to around $50 a barrel in 1975.
Flying pickets and all that bollocks was the symptom, not the cause. Most union members are just ordinary moderate blokes but even they could see that national agreements couldn't hold while prices outstripped nominal wage and price targets.
Even in the States in the 70's there were strikes in the Coal, Dock and Trucker industries etc and a deep recession as interest rates soared: bad times. Inflation is a scourge.
But hey, blame it on the unions; very convenient. Now there's a visible enemy. Make some posters showing lines of unemployed workers, get your newspaper mates to tell us Labour isn't working (1.4m in '79) then destroy industries to purge unions and let unemployment rip to 3.5m (everybody knows that was a bollocks figure) in the next 2 years. No unions because nobodies working. Sorted. Now we have unemployment blackspots, low skills and a benefit culture. Thatch is dead but that's where the real damage was done.
The basic reason they fell apart wasn't disagreement between Governments and Unions but workers wanting their pay to keep pace with inflation which was rampant due mainly to oil prices (aka The Energy Crisis) which soared from $10 a barrel in 1971 to around $50 a barrel in 1975.
Flying pickets and all that bollocks was the symptom, not the cause. Most union members are just ordinary moderate blokes but even they could see that national agreements couldn't hold while prices outstripped nominal wage and price targets.
Even in the States in the 70's there were strikes in the Coal, Dock and Trucker industries etc and a deep recession as interest rates soared: bad times. Inflation is a scourge.
But hey, blame it on the unions; very convenient. Now there's a visible enemy. Make some posters showing lines of unemployed workers, get your newspaper mates to tell us Labour isn't working (1.4m in '79) then destroy industries to purge unions and let unemployment rip to 3.5m (everybody knows that was a bollocks figure) in the next 2 years. No unions because nobodies working. Sorted. Now we have unemployment blackspots, low skills and a benefit culture. Thatch is dead but that's where the real damage was done.
If you really believe there weren't deeper problems with the unions you're having a laugh. They had way way too much power.
I can't remember laughing much. When your wages are going up by 5% a year and prices go up by 20% it far from funny.
I was in a moderate union with no power and as it happens didn't get into disputes so I watched from afar.
Fortunately I was high skilled and well paid but even I could see my wages bought less and less as time went by.
Inflation the cause, union stuff a symptom of turbulent times.
Worthy of a place in the Vault, rescued before it disappears into the realms of nothingness ...
🙂
Madrid’s Margaret Thatcher square vandalised less than 24 hours after being unveiled
PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 AT 3:55 PM • LAST EDITED: SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 AT 5:16 PM
LEAD, NATIONAL NEWS • 6 COMMENTS
Do you have news for us?
Click to contact the newsdesk!
A NEWLY formed square named in honour of Margaret Thatcher has been vandalised less than 24 hours after it was unveiled in Madrid.
Stickers lambasting The Lying Rag newspaper’s role in the Hillsborough disaster have been plastered across the Plaza de Margaret Thatcher.
Liverpool residents have, since 1989, laid blame for the footballing tragedy in which 96 people died at the feet of local police, the government of the day, and The Lying Rag newspaper.
The Lying Rag is still not welcomed on Merseyside and has not been stocked since publishing an article accusing Liverpool fans of urinating on police and pickpocketing the injured at the footballing disaster.
Mrs Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, was accused of wrongly backing the police against protesters and deceased fans’ families.
The former British prime minister’s son Sir Mark Thatcher attended the unveiling of the Plaza – the first in Spain to be named after an international female politician – in the upmarket Salamanca area of the capital.
Madrid is already home to streets and squares honouring Dwight Eisenhower, Salvador Allende, Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin.
Curiously it the second place in Madrid to bear Thatcher’s name – a public school in the Barajas district was named after her last year.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-n...ised-less-than-24-hours-after-being-unveiled/
Madrid’s Margaret Thatcher square vandalised less than 24 hours after being unveiled
PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 AT 3:55 PM • LAST EDITED: SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 AT 5:16 PM
LEAD, NATIONAL NEWS • 6 COMMENTS
Do you have news for us?
Click to contact the newsdesk!
A NEWLY formed square named in honour of Margaret Thatcher has been vandalised less than 24 hours after it was unveiled in Madrid.
Stickers lambasting The Lying Rag newspaper’s role in the Hillsborough disaster have been plastered across the Plaza de Margaret Thatcher.
Liverpool residents have, since 1989, laid blame for the footballing tragedy in which 96 people died at the feet of local police, the government of the day, and The Lying Rag newspaper.
The Lying Rag is still not welcomed on Merseyside and has not been stocked since publishing an article accusing Liverpool fans of urinating on police and pickpocketing the injured at the footballing disaster.
Mrs Thatcher, the prime minister at the time, was accused of wrongly backing the police against protesters and deceased fans’ families.
The former British prime minister’s son Sir Mark Thatcher attended the unveiling of the Plaza – the first in Spain to be named after an international female politician – in the upmarket Salamanca area of the capital.
Madrid is already home to streets and squares honouring Dwight Eisenhower, Salvador Allende, Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin.
Curiously it the second place in Madrid to bear Thatcher’s name – a public school in the Barajas district was named after her last year.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-n...ised-less-than-24-hours-after-being-unveiled/
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
- Locked
