penfold

Were you here at the time Wolfgang?? the early 80's in particular??

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

merryowen

I was.

I bought my council flat.

The repayments were way beyond my means, but we had double digit inflation which meant double digit pay rises which meant all I had to do was hold my breath for a couple of years until matters came back under control.

God bless you Maggie !

Steve Crook

You know what it's like in Germany at the moment? Especially in places like the Ruhr with high unemployment and high inflation and everybody unhappy? That's what it was like when Maggie was in power.

Steve

David Brent

Can the average Brit really say that they have benefited by being part of the European Union?
Britain certainly pays more into the coffers of the EU than most member countries.
Yet from what I'm told you are still paying far more in Britain for petrol, motor vehicles ect.. (and still paying higher taxes) than most other European nations.
How can that be? Isn't there supposed to be parity amongst members?
The UK is also in danger of losing it's sovereignty with many new laws and trading restrictions coming straight from the dictators in Brussels.

All this accompolished without giving the British people the democratic chance to vote for or against the merger with the EU.

You certainly have a lot to thank Heath, Thatcher and the Tories for. :

Dave.

penfold

1) We haven't merged with Europe, and that's fairly obvious from this range..
2) We are paying more for fuel because our governments have taxed it to those levels, nothing to do with European influence
3) Benefits of EU? No international European war for 60 years and counting?? Or did your Anzac grandfathers enjoy the last two so much ?? Because ours hated them...and have ensured no repeats.
4) We had a referendum,1973, on European membership. Not everyone agreed on the question, but then, that's referenda for you. No doubt your compatriots could say the same about your 'Head of State' referendum a few years ago.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

penfold

Ah, that explains it...you were one of the voters Maggie bribed directly.

Now the housing stock of public rented accommodation is so small, kids now are having to live with their parents into their thirties because private accommodation is beyond their reach....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

samkydd

With this I meant that instead of the police just targeting people with bank accounts and addresses like the average motorist, or people who can't afford to pay their council tax etc they should try and go after slightly more difficult targets; burglars, muggers, vandals, drug dealers, human traffickers etc. but it's as if the police and CPS are on performance related bonus schemes or something and focus largely on areas of crime where it's easy to get a result (like shooting fish in a barrel)!

The Cortina went out of production in 1982/83 when the Sierra came in (Y Reg), and the Sierra was quite a bit more expensive than the Escort, even if you bought one on the drip! At the time I took Tebbit's advice and got on my bike to look for work and bought an old Datsun Bluebird Estate for £50 and travelled to work 150 miles from home and slept in the car all week, going to a leisure centre near work in the mornings for a shower and shave. Oh what happy times they were back then!

Materialism seems to be the way people have always gauged their worth and status in society throughout history, even The Crusades was regarded as an extended cross-Channel shopping trip. The Crusaders had red crosses on their tunics whereas the young men working in The City in the 1980s had red braces!

NB. The Crusader was also one of the last Cortina models to be made, with a a little Crusader motif transfer on the bodywork just like the Daily Express one!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Steve Crook

The most important part of Thatcher's legacy was in making the Conservatives enelectable for the next 50 years

Steve

penfold

I sincerely hope your optimism isn't misplaced......

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

samkydd

Well Mr Blair would have been a Tory but he realised that the rise up the greasy pole to the top would be a piece of cake in the Labour Party, which at the time was in some disarray thus providing a golden opportunity for anyone with ambition, guile and a sleazy smile to take advantage of the situation. The only reason he keeps Prescott close at hand is to remind him which party is in government!

Politicians are all mostly self-seeking, loathesome, unscrupulous greedy con artists, and these days there seems to be little to differentiate between the parties in terms of political stance. The marketing image of each leader seems to be more important than anything else, which is one of the reasons why Brown's Number Ten tenure will be very short lived, he's too ugly!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Pye

Not that I like him as an actor but Bill Nighy could make a passable Hestletine. Thatcher I could see Mirren doing. And Scargill's Jim Broadbent. He's the A list northerner when it comes to casting these days. Followed by Alun Armstrong, although AA's never quite carved much of a career in films.

DB7

We're lightly taxed in comparison, have the second largest EU economy, but contribute less than the Germans, French and Italians so it's no big problem.

merryowen

That is me Penfold, bought and paid for like a whore in the street.

I didn't want a new heaven and a new earth, just my own front door and the chance to live in an area where the drug dealers are out of nappies

So no change there.

I spent half the 70s in squats and the other half at the town hall waiting for some low grade incompetent to explain why I wasn't entitled to a council flat.

The only difference between then and now is that now property is expensive, in the 70s it didn't exist.

716Jones

The most important part of Thatcher's legacy was the creation of New Labour, Tories by another name. Whoever you vote for now you're going to get a Tory government.

smudge

Something not unlike like flooding a region with hundreds of police, wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer's money in the process, just to suppress a few men on strike pay (or less) with families to feed then ?

We must face facts that nothing ever changes and whoever gets elected in this cock-eyed 'democracy' will always please himself first, his cronies second and make sure that the 'common man' is kept as far away as possible.

Ah and there was I thinking you were being literary Sam, whilst you were simply being literal... :



SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...