Broken Britain - Thatcher's Legacy

Towards the end of last year, a couple we are friends with gave us a small package, and sniggered as they did so. It was a commemorative plate of Margaret Thatcher. It was amongst the effects of their late mother/mother-in-law. 'Was she a fan of Thatcher?', we asked. Apparently not. She couldn't stand her. They felt sure that someone had given it to her as a joke. So why were they giving it to us we wondered? We loathed Thatcher too. Their reason for giving it to us? They felt sure we would know what to do with it. So a couple of months ago they came round to dinner, along with another couple who just happen to come from Syria.

After dinner we all trooped out to our balcony armed with our weapons of choice to deal with the porcelain pornography in a fitting and proper manner. With two cameras set up we videoed, for posterity, justice being done. And, despite being somewhat bemused by the proceedings, and not really understanding who this vile woman was, fair play to our young Syrian friends for joining in with the spirit of the event.

I've now taken that footage and mixed it with some other material to make 'Broken Britain - Thatcher's Legacy' and, with apologies for the speak your weight machine style commentary, here it is:

Also, if you are interested, here is the transcript from the video:

Broken Britain - Thatcher's Legacy

If you didn't live through the Thatcher era you possibly won't understand the contempt and loathing that the majority of right thinking people felt for what she did.

Jo Brand summed her up very well: “God, what a depressing day that was and what an irony that Britain’s first female prime minister had to be Margaret Thatcher. She was the woman who asked, ‘What has feminism ever done for me?’ Well, dear, if you need to ask that question then you’re obviously not very bright”

Thatcher broke Britain. She presided over the ruination of our nation. When she entered Nº10 all decency left.

Unity is strength

I’m a member of Unite, the union. As someone whose politics have all his adult life been on the left I’ve struggled off and on with my affection for the trade union movement. No one can deny that we owe them a great debt but I’ve also always held them partly responsible for Thatcherism. In the late 70s and early 80s they played right into the hands of the evil Thatcher and her henchmen. I often think the union movement and the Labour movement in general has never fully owned up to their part in failing to effectively fight the Thatcher Reich. I’m no Blairite but Tony Blair certainly ‘got it’ in terms of understanding the Thatcher rise to power.

I’ve long maintained that the remit of trade unions is far too narrow. I don’t like what Thatcher did to this country but we are where we are. With a continuously crumbling industrial base unions need to branch out into the wider community. I don’t support violence or mixing religion with politics but I do have a slight admiration for the work of Hamas as an organisation not only do they strive for political power but they try to look after the welfare of the people they seek to represent. We still have some semblance of a welfare state despite the debauched excesses of the current Tory government but it might not be too long before organisations do what David Cameron wants and caring people start picking up the pieces of Tory Broken Britain.

My union, Unite, has recently started something called ‘Community Membership’. It’s union membership for those not in work. The idea is to encourage those in the wider community to organise and fight the injustices in our society. It’ll take a lot of hard work to establish something that can challenge the moneyed establishment and counteract the lies of their lackeys in the press, but if enough people get to know about community membership and actually get involved things could change for the better. It’s a big if of course. Getting people to get involved is an uphill struggle. But if an organisation like my union could pull it off the lives of so many people could be transformed for the better.

You can’t fight the establishment on your own!

Happiness anyone?

Anyone who includes the sentence “I blame Margaret Thatcher although I tend to blame her for pretty much everything.” In the first paragraph is assured to get my attention. Those are sentiments that i agree with. Thatcherism was a shameful but pivotal moment in our history. Thatcher took away the opportunity from so many for so many to be happy.In his blog post John Linney muses on being happy and perhaps what it takes to get there. Read it. It’s a good read.



For me happiness can be attained provided you have the Maslow basics, an open heart and mind plus much love to give.

Are we all totally fucking mad in this country?

Yesterday the BBC reported that “Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has claimed £535,000 of taxpayers' money over the last five years, government records have shown.” She is not alone of course, other ex-PMs are at it as well, milking the expenses scam that John Major set up when he was in office. Thatcher’s claims are particularly galling because of what she did to this country and its people, bringing large swathes of the population to their knees. It’s as if our noses are being rubbed in it! I don’t actually have a problem with ex-PMs claiming expenses in principle, like I don’t have a problem with MPs claiming expenses, as long as they are fair and reasonable, but £535,000 over five years is taking the piss big time. I suppose it’s a case of once an evil cow, always an evil cow.

As if that wasn’t bad enough we awoke this morning to the news that “Pay for the directors of the UK's top businesses rose 50% over the past year, a pay research company has said.” Whilst most of us have suffered minimal pay rises or none at all, which has effectively eroded our real income, company bosses have been dipping into their proverbial tills with gay abandon. Thanks to the recklessness by the financial institutions of the world we are in a recession, profits are down, companies are making thousands redundant and yet company directors see fit to up their pay by an obscene amount. It is immoral. But not only that, it doesn’t make good business sense either; there is no logic in upping the pay of those that are measured by results when they are currently not performing. Just remember every £1Million of bonus paid out to some festering fat-cat could pay the wages of 50+ people; food for thought.

These are just two examples of nest feathering at their most offensive. The rich and powerful are raping and pillaging this nation. The majority of us aren’t filthy rich. The majority of us don’t hold public office. The power and wealth in this country is held be an elite few. And, we allow that!

Yes, we allow it. We must be mad to do so. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Ultimately it is us, the majority, who hold the real power. We just need to wake up and exercise that power.

Oh yes, now, what was that ConDem motto again? Oh, that’s right, “we’re all in this together”. Like fuck we are!

Frankenstein’s Britain

Listening to the radio at lunchtime one couldn’t not help but be moved by the accounts of so many unfortunate folk that have been injured, threatened and had their possessions and livelihoods ruined by the rioting in London and elsewhere. These are real people really suffering; innocent law abiding citizens. As a pacifist I could never excuse or wish to justify any violent act. But, to dismiss those who are rioting on the streets of London and other cities in England merely as gangsters, looters and thugs is to totally misunderstand what is going on in this country. When David Cameron used the term ‘Broken Britain’ in many respects he was right. Oh dear that’s twice when I’ve agreed with him lately. I suspect where we differ though is on how we perceive ‘Broken Britain’ and how we would ‘fix’ it.

For my sins I travel on public transport most weekdays. At either end of my journey from Norwich to Thetford I walk to and from both stations. Almost on a daily basis I see people whose behaviour is just so alien to my neo-polite upper working class sensibilities that I often cringe and wonder how they can be so, quite frankly, horrible, selfish and rude. The dysfunctional behaviour that is displayed by an increasing percentage of the population is both staggering and horrifying. I’m not just talking about what is increasingly and sadly being referred to as an underclass but right across the socio-economic divide. Too many people are just too bloody selfish.

It would be so easy to say that it is all Thatcher’s fault! And I fear I might have been guilty in the past of such a comment. But whilst the seeds of society’s decay were sown in the Thatcher era, “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families” both Tory and Labour governments have perpetuated and allowed the decay to continue. We live in a me, me, me society where I’m alright Jack sod everyone else prevails. It would seem that in this pseudo-libertarian age it is okay for individuals to break the rules. They apply to everyone else but not me. This approach pervades all sections of society; breaking the rules is now acceptable. It doesn’t matter if it is rudeness, dropping litter, queue jumping, never switching your mobile phone off, driving whilst holding you phone to your ear, speeding, phone-hacking, awarding yourself large pay rises and bonuses, or good old fashioned looting and rioting people, right across society so many individuals just do not give a shit about anyone else or the consequences of their actions. To a certain extent we are all guilty of perpetuating this downward spiral into anarchy. But it doesn’t have to be like this. If enough people want it to change it will. Thankfully we still live in enough of a democracy to make it happen.

The big challenge is to persuade the majority that it is in everyone’s interest to try and improve social cohesion and that equality is the key to improving the society that we live in. It is easier said than done of course as so many people take a burying their head in the sand approach and will just dismiss it as liberal Guardian-reading woolliness. The bigots will call for short sharp shocks, more police and other oppressive solutions, but these are sticking plaster solutions to deal with society’s broken limbs and slashed arteries. Unless we have a society where everybody has genuine opportunities in housing, health, education and employment we will never progress. Unless we recognise that equality really does make a difference and recognise that the wealth gap between the top and the bottom of the economic scale impacts on the quality of life that we all live nothing will change. Looting is going on at both ends of the economic scale. A small minority of undereducated, undernourished under fulfilled poor kids are grabbing all the headlines with cries from the general public of “something must be done” whilst quietly company executives award themselves ridiculously high salaries and ridiculously high bonuses and at the same time making thousands redundant and paying too many others the minimum wage. Looting on a grand scale, causing hardship and ruination to so many good people, and there is simply nothing that anyone seems to want to do about it. Most rich people don’t get rich through pure luck. They get rich through exploiting a situation, people or both. We are not yet a civilised society me thinks.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrates what most humans strive for in their lives. But if you take away the opportunity and the hope of ever improving the human condition from millions of people there are bound to be consequences. More equality won’t solve all this country's ills over night. In fact it’ll take a generation or two before any substantive change will be noticed. But if we make no attempt to even things up matters will just continue to get worse and worse.

These two articles, one from the Guardian and, surprisingly, one from the Telegraph that hint at some of the many complex reasons for what is going on.

The death of Thatcher

I always said that when Thatcher died I would celebrate by getting roaring drunk. Having witnessed the nonsense on the news about the death of Osama Bin Laden I now realise that rejoicing over anyone’s death, however evil you might perceive them to be, is barbaric and inhuman. Acts of love and peace should be celebrated and never the taking of life.

The Day the Immigrants Left

Last night’s programme The Day the Immigrants Left introduced by Evan Davis had a predictable outcome. Centred in the Fens it took white English unemployed and put them into jobs that these days are mostly done by immigrant labour. Predictably most, although not all, of the unemployed failed to cope with the jobs they had been given. They were unable to work as quickly and as efficiently as their immigrant counterparts. This was in effect a ‘reality’ television programme so it was hardly scientific. These were false situations and they were being measured against experienced people. But the programme did make some interesting points.

I know that it is stating the bleedin’ obvious but we sadly have an underclass in this country that is virtually unemployable. The reasons for this underclass are complex and varied but a lot of the responsibility lies, as I’ve said before, with Thatcher. On last night’s programme training was mooted on a few occasions which I found an incredulous notion. Why is the goal of a job now seen as the be all and end all of human existence in this country? In my opinion we have too much training and not enough education. What many of the poor souls in last night’s programme seemed to lack were life skills. The fundamentals of forming working relationships and operating in a polite and respectful manner. Why should they have these skills? No reason at all, as they have been failed by society for several generations. What comes naturally to someone of my generation and background doesn’t exist necessarily in the world of the white long term unemployed.

I suspect the desire of the programme was to redress the balance on the argument that immigrants are taking English people’s jobs and thankfully I think it succeeded at that. I think that this country has benefited both culturally and economically through immigration. Immigration is a red herring with regard to the plight of the white underclass. Their problems have very little to do with unemployment. It’s deeper and wider than that. When are we going to stop failing these people?

Thatcher

A while back on my RealAleBlog I referred to a beer brewed in honour of Thatcher, and called ‘Iron lady’, as a ‘fuck-awful name for a beer’. Some ‘commenters’ couldn’t understand why I hated her so much:


A lot of lefties will cite the miners’ strike as one of the many disasters of the Thatcher era. I don’t get quite as emotional as many about what on one level was indeed a human tragedy, but on another level was an example greed and gross stupidity. I felt quite sick when Thatcher came to power, sick and betrayed. I didn’t understand how working people could effectively cause self-harm by voting that way. No doubt some will argue, citing the popular vote, that the working class didn’t vote for her, but they did. I was there, and those Sun reader types were just so behind her.

Thatcher’s legacy is quite pronounced, and whilst it is difficult to fully comprehend what His Vagueness the Shallow David Cameron means when he talks about ‘Broken Britain’, he is clearly referring to that section of society written off by Thatcher’s work. A part of Britain is broken it is a section of the population that might well be best described as the disenfranchised white out-of-working-class. Those second and third generation Burberry wearing no hopers who can trace their creation back to Thatcher’s reign when their forefathers, and mothers, were consigned to the scrap heap as the Tories laid waste to vast swathes of British industry. Thatcher didn’t believe in ‘society’ but just in case it existed she put measures in place to see that it wouldn’t survive past her Reich. Those measures were most successful.

It is so sad that we have a defined underclass that has no manners, no idea about social responsibility, considers unemployment to be the norm, reproduces from teenage years onwards, is poorly educated, poorly housed and with no doubt very few if any aspirations. It may sound patronising and belittling to say that they can’t help it because they don’t know any better, and I’m probably guilty of that, but they really don’t seem to know any better. You could even say I’m making excuses for them in a condescending middle-class liberal valued woolly and judgemental way from my safe ivory tower. But think about it. If you were brought up in the same sort of run-down area that your parents were brought up in and your grandparents lived in. Received the same sort of education as your parents. Had the same sort of job ‘opportunities’ as your parents and grandparents, were subjected to the same cultural deficiencies generation after generation, then it is little wonder that we have spawned these communities of ‘broken’ individuals. Then to have that all reinforced by the professional classes, with their self-centred, money grabbing, the ‘individual is king’ attitude, along with the ‘do as I say not as I do’ approach, just seals it.

Many people never twigged what a cultural change the Thatcher administration brought about. It was quite a fundamental and seismic shift. The Britain that I was born into ten years after the Second World War ended was a society where Britons were culturally individual but economically collective. A society where people had a sense of neighbourhood and community. Where people took pride in the work they did. Post Thatcher and it’s all about looking after number one and screw everybody else. The attitude, ‘I’ll do as little as I can, take no pride in doing anything well, and expect loads of money for it!’ pervades. We are now a nation that is culturally collective and economically individual. This is why bankers and captains of industry continue to get richer and richer whilst at the same time pissing on the little people below. The little people are mostly anaesthetised by ‘celebrity’ worship, Big Brother, East Enders and the X Factor, so they don’t notice that they are getting wet. They’ve got us exactly where they want us and there is no easy way back!

Money for nothing

One of the great myths of the modern age is that of ‘cost savings’!
Since the days of Thatcher ‘cost savings’ has been a buzz-phrase that has been bandied about by politicians and captains of industry alike. Yes you can on occasions buy the same product or service cheaper (although face value isn’t always a correct measure), and yes you can occasionally change a working method to a more efficient approach, but it is my opinion that these are the exception rather than the norm.

There are some that say never trust any politician. I’m not that cynical, I’m sure that the majority are trustworthy upright citizens. But, what I will say is, don’t believe a politician that tells you they can make cost savings in government, because they rarely can. Think about what cost or efficiency savings really mean. They mean either just not doing the job or getting someone else to do the job for less money. Don’t forget that there are associated costs in taking this type of action:

• First there is the cost of the consultation with existing employees
• Then there is redundancy payments
• Then there is the cost of outsourcing the existing service, if applicable
• Then there is the new service to pay for, if applicable
• Plus, don’t forget that there’ll be the feasibility studies to be carried out prior to any changes and the inquiries after the changes to find out what has gone wrong. These all cost money

Another myth is that private companies can do the job better, for less money and make a profit. This is essentially cobblers, and involves the maths of cloud cuckoo land. I’ve been employed in private companies all my working life. Rarely are they efficient, nearly always they exploit. They make a profit by exploiting workers and suppliers alike. Morally it’s wrong, but putting aside the morals of worker exploitation it doesn’t make sense financially. Exploited worker pay less tax, will often need other social payments and benefits, and are less likely to take much pride in their work, especially if they have previously been employed at a higher rate or were on a more generous benefits package. You really do not get something for nothing


Cost savings = some poor sod losing their job and another poor sod being paid a pittance (that could well be the same person)


Efficiency savings = cutting corners and producing shoddy work

A similar principle applies when buying products/things.

The age old adage ‘you only get what you pay for‘ needs to be remembered more often than it is.

Classical gas

I get quite irritated by talk of energy shortages and price rises. It was known when North Sea gas first came ashore that it had a finite lifespan. In fact it has lasted a bit longer than 'the experts' said it would. So why the fuck haven't successive governments planned for it?
I suppose the answer to that is easy. Thatcher!

When I was a lad we produced all of our own gas. Town gas it was called. It was made from coal, and the wonderful ventricle-clearing smell of coal tar hung in the air around every gas works. Now I’m not suggesting that we return to those heavily polluted innocent days. But is it that difficult to make gas?

Why aren’t we producing our own natural gas?
Natural gas is essentially methane, and it's all around us emitting from our compost heaps, from rubbish on our land fill sites, from farms and from sewage works. I'm sure that human crap alone would be enough to cook the nation's dinners and that's before we've even scratched the surface of bovine flatulence.

Disposing of all our garden waste, rubbish and shit is a major problem, but it wouldn't be if we treated them like the valuable resources that they are. I suspect that costs involved in developing the technology and setting up the plants is currently what is holding things back, but if the government can rescue the banking industry it can surely subsidise the investment needed for natural gas. Or better still force the energy companies to invest in such projects as with the energy efficiency initiative.

I can't believe that it would be that difficult to return to the days when we were self-sufficient in gas. After all it's not rocket science!