Christopher Hitchens: What Did Margaret Thatcher Do for Britain? Iron Lady & British Politics (1987)
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Thatcher led her party to victory in the 1987 general election with a 102-seat majority. More Hitchens: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=tra0c7-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=58949799fb264af5b7baf1db23be23c5&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=hitchens Riding the Lawson boom against a weak Labour opposition advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament, Margaret Thatcher became the longest continuously serving British prime minister since Lord Liverpool (1812 to 1827), and the first to win three successive elections since Lord Palmerston in 1865. Most national newspapers supported her—with the exception of The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Independent—and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. She was informally dubbed 'Maggie' by the tabloids, and political protesters were given to chanting the slogan 'Maggie Out!' Despite her third straight victory she remained a polarising figure, her unpopularity on the left is evident from the lyrics of several contemporary pop-music songs. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, overreacted to a market fall with his reflationary 1988 budget, stoking inflation and precipitating a slide in the government's fortunes. By the time of Thatcher's resignation in 1990, inflation had again hit 10%, the same level she had found it in 1979. Overall, the Thatcher government's economic record is disputed. In relative terms, it could be held there was a modest revival of British fortunes. Real gross domestic product had grown by 26.8% over 1979--89 in the United Kingdom as against 24.3% for the EC-12 average.[83] Measured by total factor productivity, labour, and capital, British productivity growth between 1979 and 1993 compared favourably with the OECD average.[11] However under Thatcherite management the macro-economy was unstable, even by the standards of the Keynesian era of stop-go. The amplitude of fluctuations in gross domestic product and real gross private non-residential fixed capital formation was greater in the United Kingdom than for the OECD.[84] In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions,[82] but there proved to be no simple trade-off between equality and efficiency.[82] The receipts ratio did not fall below the 1979 level until 1992.[82] The expenditure ratio rose again after Thatcher's resignation in 1990, even climbing for a time above the 1979 figure.[85] The cause was the heavy budget charge of the recessions of 1979--81 and 1990--92 and the extra funding required to meet the higher level of unemployment.[82] Though an early backer of decriminalisation of male homosexuality, Thatcher, at the 1987 Conservative party conference, issued the statement that "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Backbench Conservative MPs and Peers had already begun a backlash against the 'promotion' of homosexuality and, in December 1987, the controversial 'Section 28' was added as an amendment to what became the Local Government Act 1988. This legislation was repealed by Tony Blair's Labour administration between 2000 and 2003. Welfare reforms in her third term created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the workfare model from the United States. Thatcher, the former chemist, became publicly concerned with environmental issues in the late 1980s. In 1988, she made a major speech [86] accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain. In 1990, she opened the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research.[87] In her book Statecraft (2002), she described her later regret in supporting the concept of human-induced global warming, outlining the negative effects she perceived it had upon the policy-making process. "Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Margaret_Thatcher
Comments
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Christopher Hitchens was a gift, Thatcher was a reactionary opportunist who would have been booted into touch had it not been for a shower of Argentine military idiots. However, without US support she wouldn't have allowed our service personnel to get into a fight, that, is a well kent fact.
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Seriously? If this is democracy, I would hope theocracy and dictatorship comes back. Seriously. If people can't listen to one another without interrupting, they do not deserve a voice.
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Before thatcher, if you was born into a working class family, chances are you were going to die working class.... After thatcher it's all dependent on you as a person. Until Thatcher, the leftwing were perfectly happy with allowing these people to fester at the bottom whilst they lived their bourgeois lives in the capital.
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who's the other speaker?
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"The average newspaper idiot" Thanks Hitch, I'll use that.
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Chris Hitchens is such an eloquent speaker. RIP.
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Shows you for sad sod you are theN
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Look at the state of the housing today, Maggie sold off council houses cheaply to tenants and stopped Councils building new houses, resulting in high rents and homelessness today. She set out to destroy GB saying 'there's no such thing as Society, only Families and individuals' . . .she literally wanted us to go back to Stone Age existence when there indeed were no society as we know them today. What a stupid arrogant cow !!!!!
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What a fantastic video! Thank you for sharing! A debate conducted with manners, and compelling rationale from both men. I wish that debates, for example on BBC Question Time, were conducted today with the same decorum.
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Hitchens looks so youthful here!
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ding dong the witch is dead 'm still singing ^^ heheh.....
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The reason Thatcher was able to implement such a radical agenda was that there really was massive dysfunction and chaos in the economic and labour systems. Unfortunately many of her solutions were severely flawed and simply created new chaos and dysfunction, particularly in finance and privatisation.
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I loved this woman, UK would be a better place if she was in office today.
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The heckling was due to those in the audience not accepting the ballot box!
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it isn't parliamentarians heckling at the start
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THAT IRON BITCH MARGRET THATCHER FELL HARD.
AND GET OUT OF THE FULKLAND ISLANDS. -
wheather you like or hate her, she was never beaten at a ballot box.
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She ran the last nail into a coffin containing British once proud manufacturing. And she opened the ghost of City, banksters should keep photo of her in their wallet. Bitch.
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Some people are better off than others. This will always be the natural order. I don't have a problem with that as long we look after those who genuinely need assistance. Unfortunately too many people expect assistance who don't need it. To those in this country who think they are hard done by, there are millions if not billions worldwide who are worse off than you.
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