Morrisey: 'Margret Thatcher did not give a shit about people'

Discussion in 'TV & Media' started by Shaka Zulu, Apr 11, 2013.

  1. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Ok, so I got that wrong. But a tax on which everyone pays the same can't be said to be unfair.

    Generally no matter the value of the property in which you live, you as a person still get the same provision of services from your local government. With the community charge the idea is that each adult paid the same amount for the same level of service provision. With the rates based system someone living in £100 000 house pays less than someone living in a £250 000 house. So the person living in the more expensive house pays more, yet recieves no extra service provision. Now you can argue that this is redistibution of wealth.

    And yes I paid the community charge.
     
  2. DarthPipes

    DarthPipes Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Really? Someone is going to put any weight into the words of Russell Brand? And a couple of punk rockers?

    Reagan and Thatcher were great leaders, the likes of which we sadly won't see again.
     
  3. Relayer1

    Relayer1 Admiral Admiral

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    I don't know about Germany, but France were as deep in it as we were, and managed to get to where France along with Germany are pretty much the dominant economic powers of Europe.

    Without Thatcherism and ripping the heart, compassion and industrial infrastructure out of the country.

    We don't make anything now. We are a nationwide call centre awaiting being outsourced to India...
     
  4. cultcross

    cultcross Postponed for the snooker Moderator

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    Worth reading the words people actually write rather than dismissing them because of the author. Brand's piece is remarkably insightful.
     
  5. yousirname

    yousirname Commander Red Shirt

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    It absolutely can. Consider the flat rate as a percentage of income, for example. Those earning the least are paying the highest percentage of their income.

    It's also true that poorer families tend to have more people living under the same roof (on account of being poor). So four cohabiting adults in Council housing would pay four times the amount that some elderly spinster in a multi-million pound house would pay.

    I call it asking more of those who can give more and asking less of those who can't give as much.
     
  6. The Mirrorball Man

    The Mirrorball Man Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Thanks to this thread, I have now a completely different opinion about Russell Brand. I liked him before actually, but now that I've read things he's written and seen a couple of interviews of him, he strikes me as being a particularly bright and articulate man, one that can talk faster than most people think. The man's a national treasure and I think it's time for our British friends to forgive him for the long hair and the high-pitched voice.
     
  7. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    those aren't the reasons people dislike him. for every profound and insightful thing he says, he does or says something obnoxious or stupid.
     
  8. The Mirrorball Man

    The Mirrorball Man Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Actually I think those are the reasons why some people don't like him. Others have equally vapid and vacuous reasons of their own, and I'm pretty sure a minority of people have genuinely relevant reasons to dislike him. That being said, there are many very real reasons to like him or at least to tolerate him, and that's what I wanted to underline.

    Never in my life have I met anyone who would not fit that description.
     
  9. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

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    We manufacture as much as France apparently, and frankly I wouldn't hold France up as a model of efficiency. Riven with strikes, high youth unemployment and in many respects crying out for the kind of radical reform the UK had...plus Hollande has recently proven than taxing the rich to high heaven doesn't actually work.

    As for Germany, well the Germans live frugally, they don't earn as much as many other Europeans and don't get into as much debt, most haven't had a pay rise for many years...that'd go down a storm here wouldn't it!

    As for call centres, I've worked in several, I've never been down t'pit but frankly I know which job I'd prefer!

    Anyway this is interesting... FactCheck: the Thatcher myths and this isn't the Mail or the Telegraph or Fox News this is channel 4.

    Not that it matters, people have been storing up vitriol for so many years that I don't think many of them care what's true (and I wouldn't deny a lot of it is) and what isn't.

    I think the best verdict on Thatcher comes from Andrew Marr.

    "She wanted to remoralize society, creating a nation whose Victorian values were expressed through secure marriages, self reliance and savings, restrain, good neighbourliness, hard work...Yet Thatcherism heralded an age of unparallelled consumption credit, show off wealth, quick bucks and sexual liberation.That is the thing about freedom. when you free people, you can never be sure what you are freeing them for."

    I kinda suspect she wanted us to behave like the Germans!
     
  10. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    If we're lucky.
     
  11. the G-man

    the G-man Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Very true.

    As for all the "ding dong the witch is dead" nonsense and the like, during her lifetime, Mrs. Thatcher took that and worse all in stride:

    • Her former speechwriter John O’Sullivan recalls how, some years after leaving office, she arrived to address a small group at an English seaside resort to be greeted by enraged lefties chanting “Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher! Fascist fascist fascist!” She turned to her aide and cooed, “Oh, doesn’t it make you feel nostalgic?”

      She was said to be delighted to hear that a concession stand at last year’s Trades Union Congress was doing a brisk business in “Thatcher Death Party Packs,” almost a quarter-century after her departure from office.

    Like any real adult she understood that children, and the childish, when they don't get their way, will act out. They'll cry "it isn't fair," scream about how they "hate" you and wish you were dead.
     
  12. stoneroses

    stoneroses Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    They should have had Straight to Hell for the single Mick Jones needs the cash more.
    We don't make anything in the UK anymore because of Thatcher
     
  13. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

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    Can you provide some factual information confirming that the UK now has zero manufacturing?

    From the Guardian:

    So whilst manufacturing delined during her time in office, it actually declined more in the 9 years before she came to office.
     
  14. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Yes but from a rates point of view a person on say £100 000 living in a £100 000 house would pay the same as someone earning £25 000. living in a £100 000. There is no redistribution of wealth from that. If you wanted to go along an ability to pay form of rates. Then you go down the route of % of income.
     
  15. yousirname

    yousirname Commander Red Shirt

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    Yeah, the rates had their own problems, but I'm not sure there are too many penniless people living in incredibly high-priced houses. Seems like an issue that would have affected far fewer people.
     
  16. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Both the Poll Tax and Council tax are hideously flawed systems. Poll Tax because it wasn't progressive, and Council Tax because it attempts to be progressive but by using the most absurd measure of one's wealth they could come up with.
     
  17. Shaka Zulu

    Shaka Zulu Commodore Commodore

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    And all you`ve got are just a few factories from two Japanese firms (Toyota, Honda, and Nissan) making cars. That`s only slightly good, but not enough for a nation like the UK.
     
  18. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

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    Source
     
  19. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

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    Just to stress, that's just automotive manufacturing in the UK!
     
  20. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I went to a few of the warrent sales up here in Glasgow at the time of the poll tax as a protest and hopefully to stop them, and it was heartbreaking to see people with nothing but a roof over their heads having what meager possessions they had forcebly taken from them all because they simply could not afford to pay the poll tax from their brew money, and in the proccess making them even more poverty ridden, where was the sense in these actions.

    All they had to do was set fire to their home after they had taken their stuff and we would have been back in the middle ages, and i dont believe that they made any money on the stuff they were forcebly taking as it might have been of value to the people who owed it, but they were not really of any monetory value to anybody else other than fire wood.

    Horrible times, i was glad when warrant sales were made illegal because there for the grace of god go us.