Going way off thread, I blame most of our lack of wealth (Mr Average) on the the Thatcher years. According to her master plan nothing should be subsidised and nothing should be owned or run by the state. This resulted in the basics of life, water, gas, electric etc being privatised, with the private companies being given a guarantee that they would be allowed to hike up prices by 5% above the rate of inflation year after year.Originally Posted by Win2Win
The word is 90%+ of the population is bankrupted, and now has to spend 10-20 years paying off the governments debt.....rich my
As a result, those on modest incomes found that more and more of their desposable incomes was used up just on utility bills and food. I think she did do some good things like taming the trade unions which made the UK far more competitive, but overall her government stuck rigidly to their "free market" dogma where nothing was judged to have any value to the people or the nation as a whole, if it wasn't paying it's way without government subsidy.
Thats the main reason I say were all skint in this country is that the amount of disposable income Mr Average has left over after he has paid for the essentials is far less than it was in the 70's in real terms, whilst the rich, those who could afford to spend thousands of pounds on those privatisation shares, have become even richer.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Gordon Brown or new labour either, we just swapped one dogma for another when labour came to power. The trouble is, now it looks like we'll get the other lot back in again in about a year or so, with their propensity to look after "our" people as Thatcher used to call them, the die-hard core of Conservative supporters, instead of the nation as a whole.
Iain.
