Mister H
01-11-2023, 07:21 AM
I can distinctly remember a week or two before the 1979 General Election meeting with a dear, well-intentioned neighbour ( now long deceased), who memorably said to me "now, you know what you've got to do next week."
You will recall the country was in some disarray with strikes, inflation and an air of revolution.
We all know what happened. But when one looks back now and considering we who now are, being a certain age, what might be called the political children of Baroness Thatcher, one has to acknowledge I think, the immense damage she did to the country in a sense in which, like the first world war, we have never really recovered from. We all know the situation was bad. But then to seek for solutions as she did from the lunatic Friedman was suicidal.
Friedman rejected the obvious truism that money is a creation of the state. Free trade (whatever that means) certainly meant for Friedman acting without restraint, laws, even morality which has put the world economy in the position where it now is, under a Himalayan amount of unrepayable debt no one knows how to get out of. Friedman said there should be no rules standing in the way of capital and that all state assets must be sold off, so all the assets - that had taken decades to build up with know -how and investment - should be transferred into private hands. The result of this looting in Britain was mass unemployment and a economy and production contracting to a third world level. One aspect (now ignored) is that many former state industries were saddled with vast amounts of debt as private entities.
I stupidly voted. But haven't done so thereafter.
You will recall the country was in some disarray with strikes, inflation and an air of revolution.
We all know what happened. But when one looks back now and considering we who now are, being a certain age, what might be called the political children of Baroness Thatcher, one has to acknowledge I think, the immense damage she did to the country in a sense in which, like the first world war, we have never really recovered from. We all know the situation was bad. But then to seek for solutions as she did from the lunatic Friedman was suicidal.
Friedman rejected the obvious truism that money is a creation of the state. Free trade (whatever that means) certainly meant for Friedman acting without restraint, laws, even morality which has put the world economy in the position where it now is, under a Himalayan amount of unrepayable debt no one knows how to get out of. Friedman said there should be no rules standing in the way of capital and that all state assets must be sold off, so all the assets - that had taken decades to build up with know -how and investment - should be transferred into private hands. The result of this looting in Britain was mass unemployment and a economy and production contracting to a third world level. One aspect (now ignored) is that many former state industries were saddled with vast amounts of debt as private entities.
I stupidly voted. But haven't done so thereafter.