"John Cartmell" wrote in message
...
In article
ws.net,
:::Jerry:::: wrote:
That is your take on the facts, but if the UK was in such a good
state (economically) why did Callaghan lose?

People were fed up of tightening their belts - getting the raging
inflation
down without damaging industry or people is hard. And Thatcher
promised much
reduced unemployment which was slowly creeping up to 1million.
And the Liberals left the coalition/alliance to gain political
advantage and
the tabloids swooped on strikes by low paid workers and whooped it
up.

That is the point, companies / countries can only pay what they can
afford, and when they are paying ten people to do one mans work....
The problems started in '74, when Wilson gave the miners what they
were demanding, every union then played catch-up...


I'm not defending most of what Thatcher did, in retrospect much
was bad if
not vindictive [1] but I do think that the reconstruction of the
British
manufacturing base (yes I do mean the cutting out of out-dated
and
uneconomic work practises) was necessary and beneficial to 'UK
industry
Ltd'.

It was necessary - try reading the 'White-hot Technology' speech of
Harold
Wilson in Glasgow. No one questioned the need. The problem was that
most of
the shake-up was required in management and the Labour government
wanted to do
it without irreparable harm to industry or workers.

But the problem was with manning levels, ten people doing one persons
job, if anyone was to blame it was the unions - trying to keep their
members - the more members they had the more cough they had within
the TUC and at the pay bargaining table.

It could have been done
but had to be done slowly and carefully or it wouldn't work. Only a
blithering
idiot would have (let's get the DIY ideas in!) pulled the house
down in order
to sort out bad old plastering - and blame it on the wallpaper!
Part of the reconstruction would come from the income from North
Sea Oil.
Instead that was used to pay for high unemployment levels designed
to destroy
industry.

If that was the only problem you might well be correct, but if the
house is in such a bad state of repair it's sometimes quicker and
better to just demolish and rebuild. What ever you did with it,
renovate and modernise or demolish and rebuild, you are going to 're
house' the occupant in the mean-time.


Thatcher's idea was that if the statistics showed that, at any one
time, 30%
of hospital beds were empty then you could close 30% of hospitals.
She didn't
appreciate that by trying to get 100% hospital beds full you had
people lying
in hospital corridors for days and endemic disease.

Couldn't agree more, but we have changed from industry to hospitals,
the last 25 years has not been good for the hospitals at all - to
many non medical staff trying to run them, and it's still going on
under a 'Labour' government!

She didn't appreciate that industry employed people who weren't
particularly
bright to do mundane work. She wanted such people out. Out where?
Out on the
streets drawing benefit that the rest of us, and industry, had to
pay for
instead of making the best use of their capabilities and making
them a useful
part of society.


So, north sea oil reserves should have been used to keep people in
non existent jobs, or making things that people didn't want or
wouldn't buy due to cost? Yes, I can see benefits in doing that,
keeps people happy, keeps people off the streets and keeps union
membership high no doubt...