I have spent many hours in conversation with Quin of Quintessential Havoc (blogroll will get you to this insightful blog) discussing Europe and the UK….I will admit that I am a bit confused with the politics in the UK and especially the EU and he tries desperately to help me understand……..
I remember (damn I am old) the days of Reagan and Thatcher……the 80’s were an interesting time at least in global politics, but (there it is again) I had a hard time trying to recall some of the policies of the Thatcher admin……sooooo…I had to go a hunting…..
I found an article by Chris Marsden which compares, at least somewhat, Cameron policies with those of Thatcher…..
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” programme offers an ideological justification for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s efforts to impose between £85 billion and £100 billion in cuts over the next four years.
Cameron is Thatcher’s heir, but he cannot display similar candour or malice, given the bitter experience of millions of people with the results of Thatcher’s slash-and-burn strategy. Instead, he cynically portrays cuts as opening “opportunities” for charities and local communities and privatization as a means of facilitating “greater local democracy.”
The paucity of the actual programme Cameron announced was in inverse proportion to the scale of the rhetoric employed. Describing the “Big Society” as a “huge cultural change,” and employing words such as “freedom” and “empowerment,” he offered up four “vanguard” schemes—in Liverpool; Eden Valley, Cumbria; Windsor and Maidenhead; and the London Borough of Sutton. These involve such initiatives as reopening a closed local pub and a volunteer programme in local museums, involving unemployed youth.
The objective of voluntary work is to force down wages, a central component of a vast privatization campaign. Last week, the Guardian reported that under the guise of an efficiency drive, ostensibly aimed at boosting productivity in the health service and elsewhere, billions of pounds are being made available for private companies.
“Outsourcing firms are preparing for a bonanza of local authority contracts to provide everything from binmen to back office bureaucrats and have reported a doubling in the number of deals on offer this year,” the newspaper reported. “Private health companies are also expected to earn billions of pounds from the planned overhaul of the NHS in which GPs would take over responsibility for spending £70 billion.”
Just a few points in the article that I found interesting……some of it sounds feasible and some of it sounds like the privatization crap of the Reagan years, which has NOT been that good for the people…companies have made out like bandits but Main Street has seen a slowing of wages and opportunities……
I would like to ask my friend Quin to comment on the return of Thatcherism…….oh crap! An overhaul of the health system…hopefully the Brits will be more adult about the debate than their American brothers…
Good post. However (makes a change from “but”) Thatcherism was never as it has been painted (mainly by the lunatics of the left). It was indeed far from perfect, but without it the UK would have gone bankrupt (and I am NOT exaggerating) a long time ago. Much of what Margaret Thatcher tried to achieve was twisted and blocked by lies and misinformation from Labour and it more Trotskyite left wing – how familiar that must be – in reverse – to much of middle class America who have seen Obama’s program twisted, emasculated and made far more complex than either he or his supporters ever invisaged – so it was with Thatcher.
However (again), the simple truth is that NO system that can even be IMAGINED can be all things to all people – from the deserving poor, through the lazy basards, the assholes, the vast majority of the hard working middle classes to the philanthropic wealthy and on to the uncaring avaricious fat-cats. And therin lies the failure of all political systems.
Thatcherism, whatever the lazy benefit scoungers and the Marxist idealists believe, saved the UK at a time when it desperately needed saving.
As to privatisation (in the UK) – it has in the main worked. Again in order to mollify the leftist ideologues to some small extent it has often been watered down and wasteful bureaucracy has been attached, but the truth is that, prior to Thatcher, much of the bigger and centrally necessary British industry was State owned and run. If you have not lived with that and you are not a pathetic jerk, then you cannot possibly IMAGINE just HOW F*CKING BADLY IT WAS VIRTUALLY ALL RUN BY GOVERNMENT! It was a bloody AWFUL MESS and anyone who has known it and says it wasn’t, is in my opinion not even delusional – they are simply an outright LIAR or off their goddamned head!
Nevertheless, it was a product of its time and I do think that possible – JUST POSSIBLY – Cameron and Clegg have got it about right and understood what people like me aftually WANT – some power over our own lives and governments to get the f*ck out of it and just do the job it was elected for and is paid to do.
Here in the US privatization has given us such grand enterprises as Blackwater, Halliburton and KBR…all are making billions and never have to answer for their f*ck ups…….I still say that it would be cheaper to let the government provide these services…like guards for diplomats, construction of runways and such……
I apologize my ignorance on the Thatcher thingy…and yes I was one of those picko bastards that bitched about Reagan and his friend Maggie….but that was then and this is now…as they say and I could not recall what it was about Maggie bitched about 30 years ago….
Thanx for the kick in the butt
Well, I wasn’t referring to you, of course, but more those in the UK with their heads still stuck up their collective ass for the last 30, 40, 50, or more years.
Nevertheless, I would still argue with you about the idea that government would do it either better or cheap – it’s never to my knowledge been done yet, so I can’t see it as likely. I guess that’s one of the things we have to agree to disagree about. No sweat, eh? 🙂
But I was one that listened to a lot of the misinformation….I hate to admit that……back in those days I was trying to convince people of crap….now I just go with the flow and try to point out the misinformation…..
Well, if you say so… however, whilst I never agreed with them at all, I found the opposing attitudes much more understandable at the time than those idiots who still endlessly deny reality when we have ALL seen the utter failure (yet again) of the Labour/Trotskyite ideology put into practice in the UK over the last thirteen years.
You will hear much about how it will affect the poor more than the rich and that is in one way true because the poor have been made more dependent on the state, but the vast majority of those most vociferous in their opposition to “the cuts” in the uK are most pissed off because it is beginning to look like they might actually have to get a job (many of them for the first time in their lives). Worse, they realise that it will no longer be acceptable for them to claim that they are unable to get a “suitable” job that will pay them the vast salary they want for doing f*ck all.
However, I have a suggestion for those people which, although it involves a great deal of effort and bureaucracy at the start, nevertheless fulfils ALL their other conditions for getting a job – if they emigrate to the US and jump successfully through all the hoops required to become US citizens, they should then run for election to your Senate – they apparently do bugger all and get paid shed-loads of money for it – of course, most of them can read (at least slowly), so that might be a stumbling block, but still…
I will try to keep an eye on the developments in the UK with the new government and will from time to time put in my two pence worth….and I will keep depending on you to keep me straight in my thinking…..as difficult of a job as that will be….lol
I will gladly give you my opinion, though that is all it is – as we both I’m sure realise…
Still what else do we have in life that is truly our own (if we bother to think about things)?