I did thats why I was made redundant then back in work on Monday

Time for a little historical perspective here, at the time of entering the Exchange Rate Mechanism which was to be the pre-cursor for entry to the Euro, both opposition parties had been screaming their heads off for months and complaining that the Tories were dithering, indecisive etc, and that it was essential for the UK's future prosperity that we join asap. Well we joined, much against the best instincts of many senior Tories incidentally, and pretty soon it all started to go wrong. I'm no economist but as I recall it had something to do with us pegging the value of Sterling to the Deutchmark. At any rate when it did go wrong we needed the Germans help and they refused. Interest rates had climbed steadily and peaked at 15% (for a few hours only though). We then took ourselves out of the ERM and it is generally accepted that from that point on our economy began to grow strongly. Interest rates plummeted and we began to get seriously rich as a country. Unfortunately for the Tories, they got no credit for this (the Voteless Recovery) and despite the UK finances being in better shape than they had ever been they were booted out at the next election - 1979.
New Labour inherited the best set of economic ciconditions ever bequesthed to an incoming Govt. After keeping to the Tories spending plans for two years Brown then embarked on the longest period of Government spending ever known, billions of pounds were fire-hosed at health, education, welfare and god knows what else. At the end of this binge we are on the bones of our arse, our hospitals are plagued with MRSA and bureaucracy, our schools turn out functioning illiterates and our exam system is a joke. Best of all we have about 2.5 million offically unemployed, (the unofficial is about 5 million, and rising!) 3 million immigrants and the prospect of our population rising to 70 million within 20 years, most of it due to immigration from the Third World.

Thanks Labour, you've been f**king great!

Labour has apparently sold the Dartford crossing. I have no idea who to, probably the French company which owns both severn crossings. I have tried without sucess to find out under what government leadership they were sold.

Oh Labour also sold steelworks to the Indian company Tata, which promptly closed them or laid off thousands o workers.

On the immigration point, I think it's more of an EU directive that each country has to take a set number of refugees.

Boll0x!


See that big bit of water called the 'English Channel'?


The only way people can cross that is because the Liebour Government has left the fvcking port doors open deliberately!

www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...viser.html

If you had the right connections, bottle green phones were also available.

A minor example of how backward Britain was in the 1970's. As a nipper I used to be awe struck by American TV shows like Rockford Files and Quincy because they had push-button telephones! I had never seen a phone without a rotary dial and it would take another 10 or 15 years before you could get them in Britain.

Another personal experiance, on my first day of full-time employment I was working with a typical 1970's throwback. At the end of the day, he physically threatened me for "working too quickly"! Considering this was my first day and I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I couldn't have been working slower. But, of course, it was showing him up, as I didn't take a two hour lunch break, three half hour breaks during the rest of the day and didn't spend half my time chatting to other people.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said it was more like 6 million a few weeks ago. DWP like to hide people on New Deal where they become trainees so do not show up on the unemployment figures + all those on Sickness Benefits who should really be unemployed.

I've got a niece who has a live-in boyfriend of about 22 who has never worked, and probably never will, because he gets, wait for it ..... 'panic attacks' if he has to go to work. Nothing humiliating like signing on is required, so he doesn't appear in any unemployment figures, he just sits on his bloated, fat, thick arrse all day drinking from cans of lager and knocking out kids like there is no tomorrow. They have two so far and another on the way. For this 'hardship' he gets a couple of hundred quid a week and all the benefits you can think of. Oh, and a nice new Barrett house on a brand new estate.

Maggies fault, obviously.

And he would only need a mono-goggle if such a thing exists.

Well, in fairness she did introduce incapacity benefit. To hide the real level of unemployment.

OK, I'll put it another way. The average family in the UK had far more resources to use/consume in 1995 than in 1975.

Agreed, but the level is now up to nearly three million and climbing up from a few hundred thousand in 1994. So either the country is suddenly crippled by illness, or the criteria to claim have been lowered to the ground. At least Cameron has said that he will seriously shake up the system.

Probably by using doctors.

Aside from the fact that the people who actually won those tete a tetes were the Soldiers and Sailors of Britain - what you have posted above is actually Shabite.

It was a Government of National Unity featuring the best from all parties. It was led by a Tory who was considered an outsider because of his constant crticism of the TORY Governments Policy of Appeasement under Chamberlain.

Churchill was actually a liberal before a Tory, and changed his political views and clothes more often than most. It was precisely this that made him such a Good unity leader.

Bless. Its like a four year old dressing up in mammies shoes and underwear. You have some of the things in the right place, but you still just look stupid to everybody else.

Right - what do you mean by resources? Are you counting levels of debt? Do you mean they had ownership of or access to? And does resources equal happiness? Was life better or worse in 95 than 75?

What do you mean by the average family? Mean, mode, median? Have you removed outliers for that average? Have you considered family size in your calculation?

etc. etc. etc. etc.


Or, are you just randomly dragging words from your brain and spilling them onto the internet?

the major signings to the political EU happened under thatcher and major?

thatcher and reagan could have even closer lovers than blair and bush.

why was powell so concerned then? could it be that under a tory government for example indian immigration to britain peaked during heaths government and the first 2 years of thatchers rule?

no just our institutions.

needs definition.

lol suez?

Didn't sell us out to Europe managed to get a large rebate of our now squandered money, that was happily handed back over.

Yes Mrs T and Raegan were close but we were not sold out or lap dogs to them

I am sure that Enoch Powell was talking about what could happen not what did happen,


Are you trying to blame Suez on Thatcher/major?

no 0.o. it was a conservative government under eden correct?

read my post again. it *did* happen. the highest point of indian immigration to this country happened under heath (tory) and thatcher (tory). powell was prompted by current events not randomly spouting predictions.

trident put our independent nuclear ability into US hands.
used our bases bombing libya
bending over when the US invaded a commonwealth nation (grenada)
never mind the behind the doors deals on intelligence etc.

sure we benefited from the relationship but to pretend we werent subservient is ridiculous. thatcher relied on the US for legitimacy on the world stage.

Are you living in a box? Take a look around you FFS!


lol suez?[/quote]

Well there are those who would argue (Andew Roberts for a start) that far from being unnecessary, the Suez operation ccould have done a great deal of good had it been allowd to succeed. It could have destroyed Nasser, a thoroughly bad influence on the middle east, he was a Ba'athist remember, and the root cause of many of our problems there. Anyway, the Tory PM at the time, Anthony Eden, was a seriously ill man, the result of a number of botched operations, and his erratic behaviour was widely attributed to the medication he was prescribed. How many other "needless costly wars" have the Tories gotten us into by the way?

Suez:

It really wasn't needless at the time and proved costly to us because Eisenhower and the US made it so. They were pretty keen to reduce British influence in the middle east amongst other reasons, including having the frighteners put on them by Russia. In political terms it became a disaster, but in military terms, was a huge success.

Not brought the country to it's knees.

Hmm, nothing to do with the reason that you are emigrating then

Last edited by Monty417 on Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

Get you. I am not interested in a flame war, it is my opinion that for most working class families they had more wealth in 1995 than a comparable one in 1975.

If you want to refute that go ahead and I will respond.

im not arguing labour are better, ive never voted labour. im making the point the assertions on the tory government highlighted are wrong.

quite, supported by the US, however plans didnt work out, a lot of people lost their lives and it cost us dear. we arnt working with "could of happened" this actually happened and it happened under a tory gov. it was a national disaster.

i hear brown is ill...does that mean we negate his affect on our country? or are you asserting eden acted alone and none of the other tory's supported his action?

depends entirely on your definition of needless.