I think this is the big difference between us - I am looking at things how they impacted society and people (and the country) in general, and you are looking at things how they impacted you personally.
On a personal level, it is unlikely she would have had any impact on my parents/family as we are quite a determined lot and I think would have made it no matter what. So it’s very much how she wrecked the lives of others and spoiled things on a wider societal level that I despise her for.
Azz. so you despise her for what you read??? not personally. Seems a bid odd to me believing other peoples opinion from news reports, that usually has a bias against.
We all know, or should know, the media prefer to report and blow up on what is sensational at the time not on what is actual fact.
How many times was she reported to do what said that was for good??? very little because of the lop sided reporting by the press and their union bosses.
What Thatcher did was to create an environment of competition and free up the markets so that you didn’t have fat cat executives producing expensive goods that nobody could afford to buy and nobody wanted to import. She liberated the markets but that liberation created its own set of problems. The rise and fall of reginald perrin sums perfectly up the sort of work culture we had. Why would we want to help companies that are so inefficient going? In many cases their history of inefficiency goes right back to their equally fat cat imperial formations.
If she is guilty of anything in respect of the economy it’s freeing up the markets which is a pandora’s box in itself because it’s a highly risky move, but you can’t say she didn’t have guts and vision. Efficient production is not about a government propping up poor management structures and bureaucratic fat cat company cultures.
Every time a government goes back and tries to prop up failing industries they face huge criticism. I don’t agree with what she did with the housing boom and freeing up lending etc but economically you cannot say what existed before should have continued. The country’s economy a complete mess when she was elected. I was a child but can still remember how absolutely awful those years were. The social problems too. Everyone had hand outs but those without still lived in grinding poverty.
I will never forgive her for what she did to the NHS though. Totally immoral.
Azz people were extremely unhappy all across the country just before Thatcher was elected. Those were awful, awful years. So I’m not clear how Thatcher made things worse for people. I only saw improvements and opportunities in the 80s. The Poll tax was her big mistake for ordinary people. That’s what upset everyone, but came later in her terms.
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No, for this:
That is not conjecture that is widely recognised as her legacy.
I think she narrowed the gap between rich and poor. In the 70s some people were never going to own their own home, they would never be in a position to aspire to anything. A lot of budding entrepreneurs and people with talent from disadvantaged backgrounds were able to be “upwardly mobile” because of thatcher’s policies. She shifted privilege away from the old school tie brigade and opened up opportunities.
She ironically contributed to the long term housing crisis by creating the housing boom.
They were awful years as you say @AnnieS, I remember sitting in a cold dark kitchen with just a gas ring to try to get some warmth because of the miners’ strike which caused the power stations to have to ration electricity due to the lack of coal - at the time I was nursing my new-born son, it was horrendous. That is just one example of the effects on ordinary people before Thatcher came to power and sorted it all out.
Even Arthur Scargill tried to use Thatcher’s right to buy scheme much to the disgust of his union members.
Scargill used Thatcherite policy in bid to buy London flat - BBC News
She got one thing right (Spit) “There is no such thing as society” YES YES AND YES 
That is a strange claim to make. As you pointed out in your previous post, Thatcher freed up markets and reduced constraints on businesses. In particular that was removing any constraint to pay workers a fair wage and removing any constraint on how much the executives got paid. That has directly led to a massive enrichment of the lucky few and a massive impoverishing of the majority. We can have a year when GDP grows and you’d expect all wealth to grow - but actually the wealth of the bottom half won’t grow. Just the wealth of the top lot.
The claim that the gap between rich and poor narrowed under Thatcher and continued to narrow afterwards is so very patently false. So false I cannot find any evidence that it is correct (can you? please share) and I am astonished that you make this claim. Check out worker pay to CEO pay ratios over the last decades, please.
The tether of the mortgage certainly “Upped” productivity 
That is a well considered reply.
I didn’t say that it continued to narrow forever after. It narrowed during her tenure. Her economic policies gave many young people opportunities that they would never have had. In the 80s there were many jobs and careers to be had in the new service industries. Particularly financial services and IT. Retail is another sector that experienced a boom, lots of people made a great deal of money from buying houses and renting them out. The last situation has created a problem in house prices and debt. But at the time, during the heady days of the 80s there was a financial feelgood and people of my generation (X) suddenly had a future that wasn’t there in the miserable 70s. Times have of course changed in recent years. There is a limit on how much you can link the impact of her economic policy in the 80s to the situation we have globally today. I don’t think she had that much influence on global economics.
“You don’t negotiate with someone who marches into another country, devastates it, killing who stands in his way. You get him out, make him pay.”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AR19BSRk5lw
I hope you’re listening Netty and Trumpy.
Thank you for your considered reply. I think, overall, you have simply confirmed my point. Thatcher’s policies and decisions might have worked in a limited way - for a few people, in a few places and for a short time. But the outcome was not beneficial - housing problems, finance sector boom & bust, permanent loss of employment for many regions, diminished manufacturing sector., privatised utilities ripping off consumers.
As with a couple of others on this thread there has been a depressing tone of “I did well then so Thatcher was great”. I’d paraphrase that to “if I ignore the millions that were so very badly impacted by Thatcher then I can only judge her by how well I did”.
PS the boom in IT in the 80’s was caused by … wait for it … IT. Not Thatcher. Just saying.
Thatcher was responding to world economic conditions, part of which was the rise in service sectors including IT. Had we stuck to manufacturing we would have become extremely uncompetitive on the international trade arena. People complain about manufacturing but they would like a situation where workers are reimbursed a high enough wage and don’t look at the ramifications of that for the country. You can’t have your cake and eat it, literally the food on our plates would not be affordable for most.
The issues being discussed here would have happened anyway - our manufacturing, infrastructure and energy sector (coal) were simply uncompetitive. You cannot give people consumer choice, affordable food and housing and a life worth living with such a situation. Until Brexit and subsequent wars and pandemic impacts, we had it good, cheap food plenty of jobs etc. The main problem is a) a huge increase in population (that’s down to the country being so attractive as a result of the economic policies of Thatcher and New Labour) and b) a huge increase in the cost of property (that is Thatcher’s main long term detrimental legacy)
Blair continued Thatcher’s economic policies and expanded on many of them other than the NHS which he should be credited in hugely investing in and improving during his tenure.
What happened under Thatcher would have happened anyway but taken longer and led to dragging down of those who did do well as a result of the opportunities in the service sectors. You can’t just create IT opportunities without creating the environment for that (which she did)
Just to be clear I am no fan of Thatcher, I didn’t vote for her, (of course I was too young to vote until her later years! But I used to vote lib dem in those days anyway until they became condem…), but having lived in those times and seen all the changes which led to opportunities for my generation I have to disagree with the myopic video clip. There were good and bad aspects to her policies. Ultimately these led to the deep 1990 recession, the horror of the Poll tax and near destruction of the NHS, but there were also positives for the economy and development of the UK.
You are completely right about an inevitable decline in some aspects of manufacturing. All western economies have shifted from manufacturing to services. And you are also right that certain parts of the manufacturing in the UK in the 70’s and 80’s was poor, in need of massive investment and not suited to a high cost economy like the UK. I did not intend to imply that change in this area was not inevitable.
Yet how is it that Spain, Italy, Czechia (let alone France and Germany) have a thriving automotive sector? These are well paid workers and most significantly high export earning businesses. There are train manufacturing plants in the UK - owned by non-UK companies. Serious train manufacturing and the profits reside outside the UK.
The closing of so many production sites was not just “would have happened anyway”. These were government decisions. Somehow Thatcher found hundreds of millions to help Nissan and Honda to set up UK plants. Yet the same hundreds of millions were not found for existing factories to continue and grow.
Same for any investment and support for UK businesses. Where was the Thatcher industrial strategy to grow our export capability? If IT was the future how come it is a Dutch company that makes the machines to produce semiconductor chips? How come only France has an alternative to payment processing outside the US owned Visa and Mastercard? How come you look at Sage and see a minnow compared to SAP? How come the fledgling tech sector in Scotland (remember silicon glen) was allowed to die before it got anywhere?
It might be true that Thatcher was following the economic winds - yet she was also fanning those winds. Thatcher wanted the shift away from union dominated industries. That and away from state ownership. The irony that one of the main UK energy businesses is EDF and a major owner of UK water is the German state water company. My guess is that my electricity here in France is about 2/3 the price that you pay. Which policy is proving to best for the majority?
You are right that housing under Thatcher was quick returns for the lucky few and long term issue for everyone else. But does that not also describe everything that Thatcher touched?
I don’t understand why the Thatcher issue is still bought up 35 years after her premiership. No point in living in the past
As we have mentioned her legacy lives on, things she did affect Britain and its people today.
Some folks just can’t let Maggie go
