Moor Larkin

Yes. Blair was wise enough to know that if you go to other people's countries and blow them up, nobody really minds too much. But if you merely press your own electorate to get with the modern world, you're a twisted old harridan.

If you made a movie about it, nobody would believe it.

batman

That's true, he knew his days were numbered and at least left with some dignity.

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Steve Crook

Many people did mind, a lot. But he ignored them
"Press them to get with the modern world" or send in armed police to force them? A slight difference I think.

Yes, it had to be done. But it was the way of doing it that was totally unnecessary and unfeeling

Steve

DB7

Many object to Blair chiefly because of Iraq, I'm not sure he conjures up the same level of outright hatred that Maggie does particularly in those areas hardest hit by her policies.

Maggie provided a social backdrop to many British films (notably Leigh, Loach and the FilmFour stable) of the 80s but they appeared to struggle projecting Blairs Britain.

Marky B

Whenever the man fell in dung,he always came out smelling of roses. He should have been out longer before he went,taking that awful wife of his. Brown may have had some misfortunes to hit him since he took over,but I wonder how things would have turned out if Brown told Bliar to shove "The Deal" up a place where the sun wouldn't have shined and he became PM in 1997 instead.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Moor Larkin

It could be that they failed to properly project Maggie's 80's. There has never seemed much of a will to recall the crucial back-drop to understanding much of what motivated support for Maggie: fear of soviet communism, and the scary tyranny projected by the likes of Scargill:

The dispute was extensively televised and Mr Scargill, with a thick head of ginger hair, soon became a media darling. His uncompromising language produced excellent soundbites; his celebrity was guaranteed.

That year, the miners won nearly all their demands and came out with a 27 per cent pay rise. By February 1974, another miners’ strike had toppled the Heath government.

The NUM would never repeat such success - yet, for Mr Scargill, it was a template of political virtue. He always looked back to Saltley and believed that with one more shove, perhaps two, socialism would take command.
The Scotsman - An era over as Scargill bows out

By viewing Thatcherism as merely a nationally-internal phenomenon, film-makers entirely fail to 'explain' one of the big reasons why that movement remained as popular as it did, for so long. The five or six years of Majorism that followed is completely ignored too. He was a far more easy-going 'negotiator' but seems largely dismissed nowadays.

oxfam1uk

I prefer to draw attention to the positive aspects of the Thatcher years and the general improvement in the quality of life for the majority of British people.

Just about the most popular thing Maggie ever did was allow people to buy their own council houses, and then move on to the larger properties ordinary "Working Class" people had always dreamed of. Then easier borrowing from banks allowed just about everyone to buy a car, go on foreign holidays, etc.

Yet from people like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh the films are always negative, negative, negative. I just think it's very self-revealing of them.

DB7

Yes, Maggie sold off a great many things for a fraction of their real market value. And people stopped voting for her when the free lunch was over - quelle surprise.

Yes there was a consumer boom, but this was followed by a bust.

At the time I was in slave labour (the super YTS) on my 20 odd quid per week so no red braces, VW Golf, or BT shares for me.

Moor Larkin

Some of it at least went to ordinary people, unlike the billions promised to a failed yuppie bank and the millions being given to properous doctors for doing less work than before, whilst most of us pay just the same or more tax as we ever did, but don't have a pension to look forward to.....

There was a woman on the TV News last evening 'justifying' the police unrest at the moment. She said something about 'public sector' workers getting an average 40% pay rise over the last decade whereas the coppers have only had 20% ............... My heart bled for them all.

Who's coining it now?

No surprise about the voting patterns in any age really, except we keep voting for any of them

Lord Brett

Was owning your own council house such a good idea? Within Europe only the British have such an obsession with home ownership, meaning many people crippled themselves with mortgage payments for decades and there was suddenly a chronic shortage of affordable housing.

Sure, something had to change by the time Thatcher was PM, but that doesn't mean that, to paraphrase Thatcher's famous words, there was no alternative to her slash-and-burn economics.

Steve Crook

Could that be because we're a lot more crowded onto this little island?
Discounting some of the smaller places like Monaco, Gibraltar, Malta and the Channel Islands, we are only beaten for population density by The Netherlands and Belgium.

France has less than half of our population density

Steve

VladTheImpala

Probably the garlic.

Lord Brett

I work with the public every day, and some of them really are dense!

batman

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Hackett

Loach and Co should be happy now then as Blair and Brown have managed to get us all the way back to pre Thatcher. Maybe a good title of a film to sum up thier term is "BACK TO THE FUTURE"