Vale Margaret Thatcher

[mantis]

WOW, this thread has gone way OT.

 

[catman 71]

Of course hard work and determination are desirable traits. I certainly want a productive society that most of us roll our sleeves up and contribute to. Of course I want to be comfortably off, at the very least.( and I am)
But your idea that everyone can get to that point by risk taking and hard work, is I suspect, pretty uncommon in the real world. Lots of people work very hard for little financial reward.
Regardless, having money or not, is not the issue for me, it is how you acquire it (by fair means or foul, am not talking about birthright here) and your attitude towards it, that are more relevant. There are plenty of wealthy people who have terrific attitudes about money. There are also plenty of 'rich' people who are greedy and that, imo, leads to destructive and unhealthy practices.

About your point that lots of people work very hard and get little financial reward is unfortunate, but there is always the option to start your own business. If you are in a profession, say law for example, you could leave a law firm and start your own practice, where you determine which clients you take etc.

A change of job may also be an idea. I know that timing needs to be considered (it is not always right to start your own business), but it is something you should think about if you feel undervalued and unappreciated. You could also seek out other similar companies, and see if they have better working conditions. Do some research. Anything is better than staying in a job you hate and a boss who undervalues you, so you may need to consider other options.

 

[Caesar]

Nothing to do with whether it's a professional skill or not. I'd still be doing it. I was arseing around with computers long before I did it professionally and if I stopped doing it professionally (which i've considered) I would still do so.

That's not really the point, though, is it? It's an area you have expertise in, and you extract satisfaction from exercising it. Everyone is in the same boat, it's just for some people that coincides with their paid occupation.

If people enjoyed what they do for work, wouldn't they be willing to do more work pro-bono? I know a lot of people do from time to time, but how many people would give up 5 hours a week, every week, to do what they do, for free, to help people out who can't afford their services? I reckon less than 1% is about right.

Why? If you are already getting paid to do it, you have no need to do it pro-bono.

Because money is one of the very prime motivators. If you didn't get paid, you wouldn't want to work. You'd rather going on regatta's wouldn't you?

Not entirely. There are things I get out of work - a sense of purpose, the opportunity to challenge myself intellectually, a field where I am genuinely talented enough to make a meaningful contribution and succeed within a large organisation - that I don't get from other areas of my life.

Regardless it proposed a false alternative - a situation where I don't have to work. Everybody has to work. From my perspective I would rather work 40+ hours a week in a challenging, dynamic career than punching the clock for 20-30 hours a week doing something just to pay the bills.

What if you were offered your dream job but had to take a 25% pay cut on your current pay? You personally might accept, but I reckon the overwhelming majority of people would reject it.

You're looking at it arse-about. The reason a lot of people would reject a hefty pay cut is not because they do their job for the money, but because everybody tailors their lifestyles to the level of income they happen to earn. The older you get, the harder that lifestyle becomes to change. I have taken a 25% pay cut to change jobs before, because I was in my 20s and it wasn't a big deal. In 10 years when I have a family to support and a larger mortgage, I probably won't have that level of flexibility.

Most people's goals are to make the right career choices early on, when they have the flexibility, so that they find themselves in a job they enjoy later on in life.

I think you might be taking me a bit too far. Of course people are going to have enjoyment in what they do and take pride when they do something well, and it's hardly wise to just pack it all in and go live on the street. Ken Thompson is one of the main reasons we have the computing systems we have now and that was all done while working for Bell Labs.

Well exactly. Which is why I don't understand this attitude that everyone who takes their career seriously is miserable, overworked and trapped in the rat race.

 

[skilts]

I think it time we 'veil' Thatcher. Especially after death, she has outlived her usefulness, as a topic of discussion, if she ever had any.

 

[Grizzly_82]

I think it time we 'veil' Thatcher. Especially after death, she has outlived her usefulness, as a topic of discussion, if she ever had any.

Disgraceful attack

 

[skilts]

Disgraceful attack

If you think that's disgraceful...you should get out more.

 

[Pessimistic]

Time to let the conversation die too

Just one last point

Tony Blair state funeral = no

Two wrongs dont make a right

 

[imadodgyumpire]

she has outlived her usefulness, as a topic of discussion, if she ever had any.

The stuff I've read about the UK in the 70s, like 3-4 day working weeks, unreasonable demands for increase in wages, Unions organsing strikes at a whim. As a result, even a fundamental service to the community like garbage collection was being ignored. You can't put up with that ****, something had to be done. However, it seems the UK have taken it a bit too far with the right-wing jibberish. These notions are irrelevant and outdated in current UK/Western communities/economies. Ah well..

 

[Power Raid]

The stuff I've read about the UK in the 70s, like 3-4 day working weeks, unreasonable demands for increase in wages, Unions organsing strikes at a whim. As a result, even a fundamental service to the community like garbage collection was being ignored. You can't put up with that ****, something had to be done. However, it seems the UK have taken it a bit too far with the right-wing jibberish. These notions are irrelevant and outdated in current UK/Western communities/economies. Ah well..

yep, like thatcher or not someone needed to stand up, someone needed to do something and she took the initiative and got the job done.

60m other people could have taken charge but they didn't. if she is considered a failure, then 60m others failed more because they didn't rise to the occasion at take the country in the direction they would have preferred.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

yep, like thatcher or not someone needed to stand up, someone needed to do something and she took the initiative and got the job done.

60m other people could have taken charge but they didn't. if she is considered a failure, then 60m others failed more because they didn't rise to the occasion at take the country in the direction they would have preferred.

The more I read this thread, and the other Thatcher thread I was following, the more I find out about UK politics/society, the more I think the UK's problem is deeper than just union bashing or corporate greed. It's a cultural problem.

 

[Contra Mundum]

The more I read this thread, and the other Thatcher thread I was following, the more I find out about UK politics/society, the more I think the UK's problem is deeper than just union bashing or corporate greed. It's a cultural problem.

The Unions where out of control in England no doubt about it but Thatcher is a classic example of an ideological market leninist that failed on her own metric of measurement. The cure was as bad as the disease.

 

[Malifice]

Under Wilson 600k of miners went down to 300k.

Under Thatcher it went down from around 240k to 120k.

Labor was every bit as guilty of the same things leveled at Thatcher.

Australian Labor also implemented a massive bolstering of social security (and education) to handle/ mitigate the resultant problems that would be caused by 'the recession we had to have'.

Something Thatcher couldnt give two flying *s about. There 'is no society' remember.

Keating and Hawke implimented just as serious economic reforms as Thatcher, but managed to mitigate the resultant poverty as they went along.

I agree the UK needed those reforms at the time, but by God it could have been handled a tad bit better and with a fraction more empathy and thought for the millions of Britons she turfed out of work.

 

[Malifice]

What do you mean what happens to them? They get caught by the safety net. Thatcher didn't dismantle the welfare state.

She didnt do anything to make it any better either did she?

Contrast with Hawke/ Keating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawke-Keating_Government

Economic reform included the floating of the Australian dollar, deregulation of the financial system, dismantling of the tariff system, privatised state sector industries, ended subsidisation of loss-making industries, and the sale of the state-owned Commonwealth Bank of Australia. A fringe benefits tax and a capital gains tax were implemented.

During the course of the Eighties and early Nineties, government benefits substantially improved the incomes of the bottom 20% of households, with rent assistance, family payments, and sole parent benefits all substantially boosted in real terms.[10] According to some historians, when examining the economic reforms carried out during the Eighties in both Australia and New Zealand, “some modest case can be mounted for Labor in Australia as refurbisher of the welfare state”.[8] From 1983 to 1996, improved service provision, higher government transfer payments, and changes to the taxation system “either entirely offset, or at the very least substantially moderated, the increase in inequality of market incomes over the period”.[8] During the period 1983 to 1996, Australia was one of the leading OECD countries in terms of social expenditure growth, with total social spending increasing by more than four percentage points of GDP compared to an OECD average of around 2.5 percentage points

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawke-Keating_Government

Thatcher:

She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation,[80] introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing.[81] Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher#Domestic_affairs

 

[Sanders]

Because the vote was split such the she could get elected with only 42% of the vote in both re-elections...

You might want to educate yourself on UK politics.

 

[Sanders]

What does the 90s mean . Thatcher was mentally incapacitated by then check your timelines

More gibberish

 

[Caesar]

She didnt do anything to make it any better either did she?

Contrast with Hawke/ Keating:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawke-Keating_Government



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawke-Keating_Government

Thatcher:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher#Domestic_affairs

Not this Wikipedia rubbish again. The second bolded section is factually wrong, spending on social services grew under Thatcher:

They're not remotely comparable situations anyway. Hawke and Keating did not have to deal with a tenth of the problems inherited by Thatcher's government.

 

[Pessimistic]

The point is they dealt with similar issues in a much more balanced, less extremist approach.

There didnt have to be the pain to the extent under thatcher

 

[Happy Mastenator]

Not this Wikipedia rubbish again. The second bolded section is factually wrong, spending on social services grew under Thatcher:

They're not remotely comparable situations anyway. Hawke and Keating did not have to deal with a tenth of the problems inherited by Thatcher's government.

chart looks like spending wouldnt have been increasing at the rate of inflation, and then went flat in the second half of the 80's, so actual spending would have been decreasing as a real amount. Though hard to tell as that chart doesn't have much info on how it's calculated.

 

[Power Raid]

The point is they dealt with similar issues in a much more balanced, less extremist approach.

There didnt have to be the pain to the extent under thatcher

the difference was thatcher had to take control of a country that had lost its way

in australia, the governor general had to take control of a government that had lost its way


hardly comparable situations

 

[skilts]

the difference was thatcher had to take control of a country that had lost its way

in australia, the governor general had to take control of a government that had lost its way


hardly comparable situations

Which is to say that he had no option. This is patently false. Anyway, he didn't "take control of the government", he handed that control to the Liberal Party, the biggest mob of empty-headed, unethical, unwarrantedly ambitious urgers in Australian political history. He too divided a country, and harmed its political fabric to such an extent that it has never recovered. As a result of his actions, it is now acceptable, if not mandatory, to do 'whatever it takes'.

 

[Caesar]

chart looks like spending wouldnt have been increasing at the rate of inflation, and then went flat in the second half of the 80's, so actual spending would have been decreasing as a real amount. Though hard to tell as that chart doesn't have much info on how it's calculated.

Spending did in fact grow in real terms under Thatcher.

 

[Power Raid]

Which is to say that he had no option. This is patently false. Anyway, he didn't "take control of the government", he handed that control to the Liberal Party, the biggest mob of empty-headed, unethical, unwarrantedly ambitious urgers in Australian political history. He too divided a country, and harmed its political fabric to such an extent that it has never recovered. As a result of his actions, it is now acceptable, if not mandatory, to do 'whatever it takes'.

Sorry mate, I was just throwing out the bate to see who would bite.

I couldn't help myself!

I think it would be agreed that whitlam was a maverick to the point he was dangerous. it would also be agreed by most that frazer was an A-grade unimaginative underachiever.

I personally believe that the era under hawke and keating was the great modernisation of Australia. This was followed by Howard who provided the stability and consolidation that Australia had to have post such great change.

Since then we have gone down hill at a rate of knots; the Rudd the Narcissist, Gillard the Betrayer and possibly Abott the Insipid.


No wonder the electorate are frustrated.

 

[chelseagle]

She's been dead for over a week now and has been effectively dead in public life for around 20 years. For all of her transformative powers politically and economically, the UK has returned back to being in a hole with excess debt and a bleak future.

How truly influential are you if your influence is so short lived? It looks to me as if she made a select group of people a bit better off for a short amount of time. Well done, most people never even get to do that, but she isn't the hero so many make her out to be.

 

[Power Raid]

She's been dead for over a week now and has been effectively dead in public life for around 20 years. For all of her transformative powers politically and economically, the UK has returned back to being in a hole with excess debt and a bleak future.

How truly influential are you if your influence is so short lived? It looks to me as if she made a select group of people a bit better off for a short amount of time. Well done, most people never even get to do that, but she isn't the hero so many make her out to be.

Doesn't they say more about the people before and after her?

Surely that makes her achievements even grander (even if you didn't like them)?

 

[Happy Mastenator]

She's been dead for over a week now and has been effectively dead in public life for around 20 years. For all of her transformative powers politically and economically, the UK has returned back to being in a hole with excess debt and a bleak future.

How truly influential are you if your influence is so short lived? It looks to me as if she made a select group of people a bit better off for a short amount of time. Well done, most people never even get to do that, but she isn't the hero so many make her out to be.

or maybe her legacy was to leave the groundwork for the entering of the hole?