Re: Take Your Democracy And Shove It (Part 1/2)
anonymous
May 12 2010, 21:58:55 UTC
I don't really want to use the kinkmeme as a soapbox for political debate, but to answer your question in a nutshell...
She used Scotland as a guinea pig for unpopular laws and taxes, such as the Poll Tax, which was introduced in Scotland for a year as a test run. When it was introduced in England, the English revolted against it and it was scrapped but Scotland was forced to pay it for a whole year before this happened.
She opposed trade unions, took away the rights of the Scottish working class and ran Scotland's main industries (mining, shipbuilding and steelworks) into the ground. She cut spending to the public sector, forced hundreds of thousands of Scots out of jobs.
She also took away the free milk in schools (which sounds like a really small thing, but the milk was introduced to prevent rickets and calcium deficiency in kids from poorer families, which was a HUGE problem back in the day).
She dragged the country into a war that the Scots didn't want. She tested dangerous weapons off the cost of Scotland. She continually denied Scotland the right to any kind of autonomy or self-governing, refusing to even compromise and give it a devolved parliament for its own local affairs. She acted in the interests of England alone, despite the fact that she was supposed to be governing *Britain*.
She basically widened the divide between the rich and the poor, brought a culture of greed, privatisation and brutal capitalism on the United Kingdom and Scotland, a country mostly relying on working trades and industry rather than corporate business, was the nation which suffered most as a result, and continues to suffer now.
And yeah, a right wing conservative government is pretty fucking scary. After Thatcher's disasters, conservatism collapsed in the UK and it's been on the left ever since.
But I guess voters have a short memory because it's not any more.
She used Scotland as a guinea pig for unpopular laws and taxes, such as the Poll Tax, which was introduced in Scotland for a year as a test run. When it was introduced in England, the English revolted against it and it was scrapped but Scotland was forced to pay it for a whole year before this happened.
She opposed trade unions, took away the rights of the Scottish working class and ran Scotland's main industries (mining, shipbuilding and steelworks) into the ground. She cut spending to the public sector, forced hundreds of thousands of Scots out of jobs.
She also took away the free milk in schools (which sounds like a really small thing, but the milk was introduced to prevent rickets and calcium deficiency in kids from poorer families, which was a HUGE problem back in the day).
She dragged the country into a war that the Scots didn't want. She tested dangerous weapons off the cost of Scotland. She continually denied Scotland the right to any kind of autonomy or self-governing, refusing to even compromise and give it a devolved parliament for its own local affairs. She acted in the interests of England alone, despite the fact that she was supposed to be governing *Britain*.
She basically widened the divide between the rich and the poor, brought a culture of greed, privatisation and brutal capitalism on the United Kingdom and Scotland, a country mostly relying on working trades and industry rather than corporate business, was the nation which suffered most as a result, and continues to suffer now.
And yeah, a right wing conservative government is pretty fucking scary. After Thatcher's disasters, conservatism collapsed in the UK and it's been on the left ever since.
But I guess voters have a short memory because it's not any more.
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