Thatcherism 40 years On.

[crazy canuck]

Deregulation

[garbon]

For those not in the know:

A curate is an Anglican priest, and the egg is a golden egg--normally the most valuable item in an English village. Curates would hide their eggs where no one could find them, but if someone ever did find them then he would become the new priest and the curate would become the village dungmaker, living with the sows. Hence, a curate's egg is something transformative and valuable.

WTF?

[Grinning_Colossus]

Germany kept its manufacturing base somehow. It may be the case that the US and UK saw a similar pattern of deindustrialization/financialization/movement toward a service economy because they were governed by roughly the same ideology during the same time period.

[Malthus]

For those not in the know:

A curate is an Anglican priest, and the egg is a golden egg--normally the most valuable item in an English village. Curates would hide their eggs where no one could find them, but if someone ever did find them then he would become the new priest and the curate would become the village dungmaker, living with the sows. Hence, a curate's egg is something transformative and valuable.

WTF?

For the non-English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate%27s_egg

[Tamas]

Germany kept its manufacturing base somehow. It may be the case that the US and UK saw a similar pattern of deindustrialization/financialization/movement toward a service economy because they were governed by roughly the same ideology during the same time period.

Or Germany is the exception due to its size, strengths, and location.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It is not just about the loss of manufacturing industries though; which I agree was fairly inevitable.

Thatcher also sold off large quantities of social housing; the remaining council housing becoming largely a ghetto for the poor. Meanwhile rents and house prices went on a 40-year rampage. I lived in comfortable 2-bedroom flats when I was a factory worker in London back in the 1970s and 80s; compare that to the situation now.

She also gutted local government; not only was this bad in itself but it put a stop to a system which saw local councillors become national politicians if they had the interest and aptitude. We see the consequences of this in the lacklustre politicians of today.

There were other things; turning state education into a training scheme for capitalist employers for example.......though that has been mainstream so it may be unfair to blame her for that.

[Tamas]

Fair enough.

[garbon]

I lived in comfortable 2-bedroom flats when I was a factory worker in London back in the 1970s and 80s; compare that to the situation now.

But that's also something that can be said of most major cities (that people want to live in ). Close to my own personal experience, rent has also skyrocketed in SF and NYC.

[HVC]

Housing has gone crazy in the rest of the west too, hell i'll never be able to afford a house in Toronto. Gutting local government I agree was a stupid thing to do.

[Tamas]

Housing price madness was several years late in Hungary, I think because they were also late in plummetting interest rates totally to the ground. Then they introduced "help" for families to pay for property and the steady rise turned into an explosion.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I lived in comfortable 2-bedroom flats when I was a factory worker in London back in the 1970s and 80s; compare that to the situation now.

But that's also something that can be said of most major cities (that people want to live in ). Close to my own personal experience, rent has also skyrocketed in SF and NYC.

That is a good point.

It is a bit of a "what if" situation. After WW2 there was a dreadful housing shortage in the UK; despite the difficulties of the immediate post-war economy the state enabled local authorities to build large quantities of council housing https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2013/03/let-councils-build-and-borrow/ . If we had kept this up the UK would have 4m extra houses; but as you can see from the graph in the link government moved out of building houses during the Thatcher years........and has never returned.

[garbon]

On the flipside, I think social housing would need to be radically re-designed. At least in what I've seen inside and out in London and Manchester, council housing/former council housing feels a bit soulless and oppressive*. Not that it isn't better to have a home than not but many of the buildings seem they weren't designed with how people actually want to live vs. more how councils/architects aspired for people to want to live.

*and unsafe when you consider some of those ones that had scores of 'skywalks'

[crazy canuck]

On the flipside, I think social housing would need to be radically re-designed. At least in what I've seen inside and out in London and Manchester, council housing/former council housing feels a bit soulless and oppressive*. Not that it isn't better to have a home than not but many of the buildings seem they weren't designed with how people actually want to live vs. more how councils/architects aspired for people to want to live.

*and unsafe when you consider some of those ones that had scores of 'skywalks'

Agreed.  Design is important.  One of the things the City of Vancouver is doing is requiring developers to incorporate social housing into their development plans so that the people living in the social housing units within the larger development will enjoy the same amenities as those who purchase the market rate units.  The trade off is the developer needs to sell the market units at a higher price to make a profit, but over the last 10 years that has not been a problem. 

[Zanza]

Disclaimer: I don't know a lot about her or her policies.

That said, my impression is that while she may have done a lot of necessary and beneficial things for Britain's economy as a whole, she did harm British society. Her ideological standpoint did not allow for policy measures that would have helped to alleviate the harm done by the structural changes in industry so that this harm was worse than it could have been with a less ideological politician. She excarbated the harmful effects on the former industrial area by austerity, reducing local political power and no positive industrial policy that could have fostered replacement industries in the harmed areas.

She did however push for the Single European Market and a lot of liberalization (e.g. airline market) that we take for granted these days are founded in her market liberal policies. As I consider the common market one of the great achievements of European integration, that's a definitive plus for her in my book.

A personal note as a German: It is known that she was actively resisting German reunification, which of course taints her in my view, as I consider the peaceful German reunification one of the greatest success stories in international relations of the postwar period.

[Richard Hakluyt]

On the flipside, I think social housing would need to be radically re-designed. At least in what I've seen inside and out in London and Manchester, council housing/former council housing feels a bit soulless and oppressive*. Not that it isn't better to have a home than not but many of the buildings seem they weren't designed with how people actually want to live vs. more how councils/architects aspired for people to want to live.

*and unsafe when you consider some of those ones that had scores of 'skywalks'

It was built on the cheap and often shows that; but we are a far richer country now so theoretically should be able to produce 200k good quality council houses per annum.

There was also the problem with the "streets in the sky" movement that you refer to; any future push for increased housing has to allow for the fact that British people like houses rather than flats , in the past this has been treated as almost a moral failing.