The Milk Snatcher

[Pontificator]

Campbell and Stewarts Leading; Neil Kinnok, absolutely brilliant listen. In part two he lays bare the wreckage her policies inflicted on the UK, damage we are still living with today. He doesn’t just describe it, he makes it visceral. No ocurrent politician comes closs, what an intellect.

What (or where) is this, Ponti?  I'm up for listening if it's a normal podcast thing.

The Rest is Politics: Leading

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Campbell and Stewarts 

Is there a bigger pair of cunts in the UK? Serious question.

Campbell has the blood of nearly 200 young British working class kids on his hands. Never mind tens of thousands of Iraqis.

He belongs in the same circle of Hell as Mandelson.

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The Falklands saved Thatcher. She was facing a vote of no confidence due to her economic policies, that were making the Tories hated. The Tory backbenchers wanted her gone, then Argentina invaded the Falklands and her popularity soared.

But her 'laissez-faire' policies of deregulation, selling off services to ensure dividends to shareholders to the detriment of the customers and her and Reagan's obsession with 'trickle down economics' laid the foundation for UK economic policy for the next 40 years. Even Blair and Brown followed it. She destroyed our manufacturing base and was responsible for the current housing crisis by implementing "the right to buy", but banning the building of any new affordable social housing.

Can I ask what state you believe our manufacturing base was in between 1970-1979?

See everyone on my street worked at Jag, Fishers, Cincinnati or Hardy Spicer. During the 70s they spent a great deal of time at home on strike, including my Dad - which is why we had very little money. Britain's manufacturing base was on life support for a decade and more before Thatcher. The unions, the oil crisis, Japan and Germany saw to that. It was an act of kindness to put it out of its misery.

The very reason I'm a Thatcherite is that I grew up in the carnage of the 1970s.

And you'll have to clarify your last point, because at face value it's simply untrue.

Classic Mr P lets talk about Iraq FFS

And that really is the crux of it. Yes, the relationship between unions and management was dire, but whose fault was that? Thatcher chose to treat the unions as the enemy. In Germany, unions were embedded in decision-making, and free collective bargaining was seen as a strength, not a threat. What, exactly, is wrong with that?
A genuine leader would never have confronted the miners in the way she did, nor unleashed the police as a paramilitary force against people defending their livelihoods and their communities. A genuine leader would have had an industrial strategy, one that managed change while protecting industry and people.
Instead, Britain got confrontation, contempt, and a government that seemed to regard large sections of its own population as the problem. That sneering, superior attitude towards working people was unbearable.
How anyone can look back on that period with pride is beyond me. She was a disaster. supported by a disgusting right wing media, without whom she could not have existed. Talking about lives lost 255 service men and nearly 700 argies sustained her as PM