h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can anybody think of any successful socialist utopia where accumulation of wealth at the expense of the weak was not in abundance somewhere?

I wish it weren't true, but capitalism (and shits like Reagan & Thatcher) seem to me to be the economic extension of evolution by natural selection. Maybe "compassionate conservatism" might produce a better balance, but it's still a battle against basic human nature. People are greedy, some don't pretend otherwise.

Morning Chris

Allowing for your obvious bias, doesn't the current situation in Russia - that bastion ofSocialism - stike you as being similarly "dog eat dog". the very rich on top of the poor ?

Novo

sorry, Bouncy, I wasn't clear about what my criticism of Thatcher is re. women.

It's because the red-mist descends whenever I hear her name (or that of the German family Minister Ursula van der Leyen) because we often have to hear how she did all that and was a mother of two yadda yadda. A lot of how politics and government works automatically means that women have less interest and less chance because of how families work.

I would hope that the women who do get up there would realise that making it possible for more other women to do so would be better all round. But they don't. And (and I am fully aware that this is my own take on Thatcher) she in particular seemed more than ready to exclude women just because.

Creating wealth for the country: good. Spreading it around her cronies and the greedy who are more than prepared to trample others underfoot to get to their next billion: bloody insane.

As for his socialst utopia just mentioned: Why does it have to always come down to a "free market economy" (where only money and the monied count) and socialism (nice idea but due to human character it doesn't seem to work)

Why can't we have a socially democratic liberal democracy? Is it really necessary to keep some people below or at the poverty level? Because that's what Thatcher and those like her want. And I'm don't enjoy belonging to a society like that.

That was exactly my point novo. Capitalism crept into every corner of the world because it was invited to.

Fair one Chris,

But I will say that there is as much anger at Mrs T, for what she did, as there is now at B liar. And in both cases it is often born of political dislike allied to poor memories. ALL leaders who are tough, determined and brook no dissent are going to get vilified, either at the time , or later as with Thatcher. T's day will come too.

I understand Sho's point ( I think it was Sho but may have been Fanny - apologies ladies ) that the caring sharing heart was ripped out of Britain, leaving the social mess brought about by the pursuit of wealth, and carried on now of course.

But that is to look at only one side of the coin. Thatcher may have brought about the opportunity for wealth creation, but she didn't make people worship Mamon, the people grabbed the chance for themselves, You may as well argue that The National Lottery is a "sin" but how many millions of us have a go each week?

When I was at school in the 50's I remember Clydeside shipyards being shut down by strikes about who drew the chalk line on steel plating, for the oxy-acetylene cutter to follow. It didn't take long for that sort of idiocy to get the Polish Shipbuilders at Gdansk to pinch orders.

Traditional UK heavy industry was in a mess - read MESS. Incompetent management resulting in situations like Red Robbo and the phantom nightshift at Longbridge. And they were building crap cars! The motorcycle builders were no better - they laughed at the Japanese machines, certain under God that BSA and Norton would see them off without changing anything, how wrong and how stupid.

So management was inefficient and complacent. The Unions however where equally dinosaur in their attitude, and their "Spanish Practices" which hobble any possibilty of progress. Remember "The Winter of Discontent", remember the stoppages in the Fleet Street press rooms, strikes at car plants? We were pointed at as the "sick man of Europe.

As for Scargill, the man was a fool. Any Union leader who lets himself get manoeuvered into a stike when British Coal had 7 millions tonnes stockpiled above ground, was more that a fool...

SOMETHING had to be done to drag the UK out of it's complacent view that the sun would always shine on British workers. Thatcher did it , she chose the battleground and won.

Inspite of the social cost for which she is damned, she forced UK industries to innovate, to become competitive, or die. IMHO had she not done so we would not have the thousands of companies that we now do, and the lazy giants would have gone anyway - their jobs with them.

All that being said, I hold no brief for her subsequent megolamania and blindness to see what needed to be done to restore the 'heart'. In that she is not unlike No 10's current occupant! So a plague on both their houses perhaps, but don't condemn the Iron Lady for all that she did.

A lot was not only needed, it was essential.

Novo