Margaret Thatcher dies

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I thought today's tributes/comments re MT by MPs were rather well balanced from all parties, much less nausiating than they might have been.

[ahinton]

Can't recall names (I don't 'collect' left-wing loonies) but back copies of the Eye's Rotten Boroughs column would throw up a good few. Even this week I see they're still at it but Lambeth is way out in front, setting the bench-mark for left-wing hypocrisy as they evict residents from cooperatives so they can cash-in on the property boom.

What? Now? What "property boom"? That's surely long been and gone!

I think Thatcher's point was that she didn't want any government body running housing

If that was indeed her point, she did little about it merely by enabling social housing tenants to apply to buy their homes or even by clamping down on any local authority plans to build more of it. In order to realise a desire to cease all running (and, by implication, ownership) of housing by local authorities, she would have had to make the sale of all such property not merely possible but compulsory; even she didn't do that and even she would never have succeeded in so doing had she wanted to.

why should they other than to regulate such matters as planning and building regulations?

If they didn't do so, some other organisation would have instead to own and manage the social housing that has not been sold off; can you imagine any private firm being prepared to take on the ownership and management responsibility for social housing, given that they'd not only never be able to generate a profit out of do so, they'd go bust by trying to do so! If you're to have any social housing at all (and there's still plenty of it left today, albeit by no means enough to satisfy demand), someone has to own, maintain and manage it.

Mrs Thatcher's ideal of a "property owning democracy" was not, to my mind, flawed in itself as a principle; it was the practice that made such a horrendous and damaging mess of it, because (as I've written previously), no thought was ever given to the question of the extent of ex-tenants' ability to meet mortgage repayments on it over the borrowing term and no consideration was given to how to continue to house those who could not afford to make such purchases. I daresay that she would have liked eventually to see every social housing tenant buy their home; great, if they can afford to do it, but absurdly impractical if they can't. For there ever to be the remotest chance of achieving such a goal it would be necessary to eradicate poverty to such an extent that everyone could somehow be guaranteed an income of not less than the national average at any time and that the prices of homes would likewise be guaranteed never to exceed an average mortgage lender's multiple, e.g. some three times that national average income; clouds and cuckoos come to mind.

[Beef Oven]

Sorry, but I'm afraid that I am unable to agree that; the reason for this may be found in my previous post in which I wrote
"some would seek to illustrate the fact that we still have poverty in Britain today by pointing out the vast gap between the wealthiest and the poorest and the fact that it has widened considerably over the years; whilst I don't think that the one does necessarily illustrate the other, there can be no doubt that this gap has indeed widened"; as you will see, I agree that the widening gap between rich and poor in Britain, whilst a fact and a worrying one, does not of itself illustrate that poverty does or does not still exist there and I added that "living standards and individual wealth/poverty alone [are] no proof of the actual overall wealth of the nation of which they are citizens (or vice versa)". So whilst we're broadly on the same wavelength on that, I cannot see the validity of your argument that if I "earned[,] say, half the average income, and you lived in S Arabia, you would fall within a contemporary definition of poor, but you would have an extremely high standard of living". I assume that, by this, you mean half the average income in Saudi Arabia rather than half the average income in Britain, but if I did earn that and lived in Saudi Arabia, I might "fall into a contemporary definition of poor" by Saudi standards, not by British ones. Not only that, but the width of the gap between rich and poor in any particular nation must be a factor in determining how I might be defined in that nation as one who earned half of its average income; the narrower the gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor, the more likely it becomes that I might be classified as "poor" in that country. I am also struggling to figure out how in any case the average income in Saudi Arabia proves whether or not poverty exists anywhere else.

Wealth and poverty, be it in terms of assets or income or both, is indeed relative; poverty might nevertheless exercise the poorest in any society all the more when the gaps between the poorest and the wealthiest are very wide and widening.


Then it should evidently have been me that put together Elgar's Third Symphony, although my tinkering would have had less than 1% of the brilliance and perception of that of Tony Payne!


By your reference to "absolute" and "real" terms for this I assume you to be taking on board factors such as inflation, which would indeed make quite a difference. That said, I have already written that the overall wealth of a nation is a separate factor from the question of whether individual poverty exists within it; perhaps more importantly, however, comparative national indebtedness would also need to be taken into account in order to assess the net wealth of a nation at any time and there can be no doubt that this has increased vastly between 1945 and 2000, in both "absolute" and "real" terms. Also, cash per se and readily realisable investments (i.e. those amenable to encashment) are valued in the currency of the nation concerned and this means that the value of the currency is another factor in determining the wealth of a nation; during the Thatcher régime, for example, the British pound was at times very high compared to its value in more recent times and its comparative value today only looks as "good" as it does because the values of almost all currencies are falling, so a realistic and meaningful evaluation of the current net worth of Britain is by no means easy to come by.

Phew! Glad we agree on all that Al (I can call you Al?). Otherwise it was going to be a long night!

I am afraid that I can't reply to your detailed points (I have read them and I can't argue with most of it) because I'm going off to meet a friend for an early evening meal and a few pints of Ruddles (that's as good as it gets around here) in my local chavvy Weatherspoons.

[Flosshilde]

But as one Labour MP said on the lunchtime news, why go to the extra expence of re-convening Parliament today, when they are back from the Easter break on Monday? Are the tributes so urgent that they couldn't have waited a few days?

[ahinton]

I am afraid that I can't reply to your detailed points (I have read them and I can't argue with most of it) because I'm going off to meet a friend for an early evening meal and a few pints of Ruddles (that's as good as it gets around here) in my local chavvy Weatherspoons.

Enjoy your evening, as far as is possible in your "local chavvy Weatherspoons"; I don't at all envy you the pints of Ruddles (which could almost sound like Cockney rhyming slang for "puddles"), however, but that's only because I cannot stand anything remotely beery at any price; not particularly British of me, I know, but that cannot be helped, I'm afraid, since when I drink something I like to be able to retain it for a while...

[amateur51]

Yes, that is slightly strange until one remembers that those were the days of councils lead by such luminaries as Derek Hatton.

I'll see your Derek Hatton and raise you a Paul Beresford

[amateur51]

Who are these other luminaries?

Ok, accepting for a moment Hatton's failings, who else?
Were our local politicians really less suited to running housing, for instance, than the Westminster crowd?

Ah the blessed Lady Porter of Tesco, what a shocker

[amateur51]

To cut a long story short, we don't have poverty any more. We may have relative poverty and a small section of society may be in the most unfortunate circumstances, but masses of people will never have to undergo the poverty that previous generations had to endure.

I mourn Thatcher because she stood for those things that have emancipated working people in the longer run.

I'll mention this to the next refugee family I see

[Flosshilde]

What also puzzles me though, is that Galtieri and his fascist henchmen were arguably worse. We brought that dispicable regime down in the Falklands conflict,

I'm sure that was considered to be 'co-lateral damage' by MT. It wasn't the primary (or even any) objective in the Falklands fracas.

[amateur51]

But as one Labour MP said on the lunchtime news, why go to the extra expence of re-convening Parliament today, when they are back from the Easter break on Monday? Are the tributes so urgent that they couldn't have waited a few days?

Hear, hear!

[Flosshilde]

I mourn Thatcher because she stood for those things that have emancipated working people in the longer run.

Emancipated them into 'flexibility' for example, including such enlightened employment practices as zero-hours contracts. Any protection working people have comes mainly thanks to the European Union, which DC threatens to leave.

[french frank]

I think Thatcher's point was that she didn't want any government body running housing; why should they other than to regulate such matters as planning and building regulations?

Social housing is surely identified as a public service? How far would not-for-profits be able to cope with 'housing that is let at low rents and on a secure basis to people in housing need'? With so much of the council stock sold off cheaply to those in lesser need (i.e. who were able to purchase their houses) the whole provision would be left to charity, NPOs and commercial landlords. And with no council money spent on replenishing the stock, the balance would then fall entirely on some form of 'private enterprise'.

Housing would in my view rate with education and the NHS as being essentials which public funding should supply for those who can't afford to pay.

[eighthobstruction]

Housing would in my view rate with education and the NHS as being essentials which public funding should supply for those who can't afford to pay.

Hope so....my son cannot keep coming back home everytime there is a recession....

[Beef Oven]

I'll mention this to the next refugee family I see

You must

[Julien Sorel]

Social housing is surely identified as a public service? How far would not-for-profits be able to cope with 'housing that is let at low rents and on a secure basis to people in housing need'? With so much of the council stock sold off cheaply to those in lesser need (i.e. who were able to purchase their houses) the whole provision would be left to charity, NPOs and commercial landlords. And with no council money spent on replenishing the stock, the balance would then fall entirely on some form of 'private enterprise'.

Housing would in my view rate with education and the NHS as being essentials which public funding should supply for those who can't afford to pay.

The multi-millionaire son of a Tory minister who presided over the controversial “right-to -buy” scheme is a buy-to-let landlord owning scores of former council flats.

A Daily Mirror investigation found a third of ex-council homes sold in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher were now owned by private landlords.

In one London borough almost half of ex-council properties are now sub-let to tenants.

Tycoon Charles Gow and his wife own at least 40 ex-council flats on one South London estate.

His father Ian Gow was one of Mrs Thatcher’s top aides and was Housing Minister during the peak years of right-to-buy. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...#ixzz2Q5LMhPj5

(The estate is Sherfield Gardens, Roehampton.)

How anyone can not be disgusted and appalled I simply don't know.