On Neil Kinnock's "Speech of a lifetime"
A friend linked to this: http://planetpmc.blogspot.com/2011/10/neil-kinnock-speech-of-lifetime.html - Neil Kinnock's 1983 "Speech of a lifetime".
Sorry, but that speech is balderddash. Had Labour won the 83 election, amongst other things they'd almost certainly have implemented the Serpell Report, just as Labour in 64 implemented Beeching with a frenzy that surprised the Tories who'd originally commissioned it. We would no longer have a railway network, and public transport would have more or less ceased to exist. London would be like LA.
Instead the Tories won, the economy boomed, Serpell was rejected and BR given funds to invest, which turned out to be just as well given what followed from both an environmental and oil-price perspective.
I know it's popular in Yorkshire to hate Thatcher, seemingly mainly because she is blamed for having killed the coal industry. Because of course it's very important that everyone should have an opportunity to spend their working lives digging coal far underground in an industry that is amongst the most dangerous on earth and which if it doesn't manage to kill you, will almost certainly give you a chronic lung disease that will in turn kill you not long after you retire, thus saving the pension funds a fortune.
All Kinnock's comments on credit and mortgages are nonsense too, the 80s saw a massive rise in home ownership as people swapped rent for mortgages and bought their council houses. This was taken to extremes in the 21st century housing bubble, but the 80s Tory policy was sound and sensible.
Labour in the 80s was a shambolic disaster. Electing them would have been national suicide.
Sorry, but that speech is balderddash. Had Labour won the 83 election, amongst other things they'd almost certainly have implemented the Serpell Report, just as Labour in 64 implemented Beeching with a frenzy that surprised the Tories who'd originally commissioned it. We would no longer have a railway network, and public transport would have more or less ceased to exist. London would be like LA.
Instead the Tories won, the economy boomed, Serpell was rejected and BR given funds to invest, which turned out to be just as well given what followed from both an environmental and oil-price perspective.
I know it's popular in Yorkshire to hate Thatcher, seemingly mainly because she is blamed for having killed the coal industry. Because of course it's very important that everyone should have an opportunity to spend their working lives digging coal far underground in an industry that is amongst the most dangerous on earth and which if it doesn't manage to kill you, will almost certainly give you a chronic lung disease that will in turn kill you not long after you retire, thus saving the pension funds a fortune.
All Kinnock's comments on credit and mortgages are nonsense too, the 80s saw a massive rise in home ownership as people swapped rent for mortgages and bought their council houses. This was taken to extremes in the 21st century housing bubble, but the 80s Tory policy was sound and sensible.
Labour in the 80s was a shambolic disaster. Electing them would have been national suicide.