On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:28:39 +0100, killermike 
said in <g8u51a$idf$1@aioe.org>:

>>> Some of her policies were hard on communities in the North. 
>>> However, she modernised British industry.
>> Modernised in the sense of shut down.
>You're saying that there are less jobs now than there used to be?

Britain's industry was decimated under Thatcher.  It could perhaps
have been saved, but she hated organised labour so much that I don't
believe she ever gave any serious thought to how that might be
achieved, choosing instead to simply drive it to the wall - a
process in which something the union leaders gleefully collaborated,
of course.  But the politicians should have been wiser; it is the
job of unions to work for better conditions for their members, it is
not properly the job of peacetime government to engineer
confrontation and precipitate civil unrest.

Britain manufactures very little these days.  It's my view that if
India and China ever wise up and stop doing the scut work for us, we
will be left with a generation or two who are trained only to hold
doors open for each other.  An economy which is not based on
consistent value added - producing things that people need, rather
than running shops and insurance companies - has no sound financial
basis.

Guy
-- 
May contain traces of irony.  Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:28:39 +0100, killermike 
> said in <g8u51a$idf$1@aioe.org>:
> 
>>>> Some of her policies were hard on communities in the North. 
>>>> However, she modernised British industry.
>>> Modernised in the sense of shut down.
>> You're saying that there are less jobs now than there used to be?
> 
> Britain's industry was decimated under Thatcher.  

Decimated?  As in record increases in the output of our production 
industries?

1981 to 1989 saw an increase in production of 24.5% - an average of 3% 
per year.  Thatcher was PM from 1979 until 1990.

Following a levelling-off between 1990 and 1993 when it briefly dropped 
by 3.3%, then grew back by 2.6%, it grew again between 1993 and 2000 by 
14.8% to an all-time high, at an average of about 2.1% per year.  Major 
was PM from 1990 until 1997.

 From 2000 to 2007 it dropped by 5%.  By 2007 it was back to the same 
level that it was at in 1996.

-- 
Matt B