DAME MARGARET THATCHER 1925-2013.

LADY THATCHER PAVED THE WAY FOR
TONY BLAIR'S "NEW LABOUR" .

POST SCRIPT - Midday 17th April 2013.

Lady Thatcher's funeral, at St Paul's Cathedral, City of London, has just concluded. It was a gathering of the British Establishment - The Great and The Good -  with pomp and ceremony only previously granted  to Prime Minster Winston Churchill. Many fine words of praise have been heaped upon the first UK female Prime Minister. She was a unique politician and a deservedly lauded lady. But, before memory fades and witnesses pass on, on behalf of those of us who lived through her reign of terror and reaped the aftermath, and as a witness who understood the economics of her policies, I want to balance the historical record - before it is set as hysterical adulation and before any proposal that she be canonized into the sainthood (Saint Margaret of Westminster).

Margaret was a paranoid warrior. She saw every encounter as a battle and she killed and wounded her "enemies" without mercy. Her first premiership from October 1979 came after a decade of economically crippling, stupid industrial strikes and wage increases that plunged Britain into The 3 Day Week, due to power cuts, rubbish /garbage lying in the streets and third rate products from our factories. I ran a small business; I blamed the industrial and banking managers and executives. Margaret blamed the workers - and attacked them with all the resources of our police and armed forces. 

She deliberately created mass unemployment and sabotaged British industry, both large and small, with no provision or plans at all for regeneration. This was class and civil war. It was wrong, bullying, and short sighted. She plunged Britain into recession from 1980 to 1999. She bankrupted hundreds of thousands of hard working small businesses (Let Them Suffer Market Forces) while liberating "The City" to siphon off all the UK's liquidity - and steal everything they could "Monetize".  After her resignation, her aggressive, blaming policies and short-termism had taken root. Allegedly socialist Tony Blair faithfully followed in her footsteps for another ten years. Her legacy is therefore the current parlous state of the UK economy - unprecedentedly high unemployment, industrial wages subsidized by taxpayers at below The Living Wage - and from 25% to 50% unemployment of our university graduates who live without hope of any meaningful careers. In place of industry, she and her acolytes have shoveled trillions into "The City" who have in turn shipped it offshore to tax-havens - as are the Thatcher Family and Blair Family assets. In war, these would be traitorous and treasonable acts.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-tax-snatcher-mystery-1828441 

Yes, she was an astonishing, brave, handbag swinging, chariot scything, bold Boadicea - but she attacked the wrong people - she bullied the poor, soft, defenseless, easy targets and sold out her neighbours, colleagues and countrymen to the pimps, loan-sharks, tax-evaders, fraudulent bookkeepers, incontinent gamblers and the selfishly greedy who today think that they "own" Britain. Dame Margaret Thatcher - and Tony Blair - could have made Britain Great again. She chose not to. She was no match for Churchill or any other great predecessor.

During the great funeral, I watched for, but thankfully did not see, the coffin lid slid sideways by a sepulchral hand. The Mummy may not be returning.

9th April 2013.
Margaret Thatcher, “The Iron Lady” died yesterday, 8^th April 2013, at her apartment in the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly, London. A Conservative or Tory Party leader, she was the longest serving UK Prime Minister of the 20^th century, eleven and a half years from 1979-90; winning 3 successive elections until she was booted out by her own cabinet colleagues.

I believe her downfall followed one headmistress-like insult too far, when in Cabinet she publicly berated her most loyal and able Minister Geoffrey Howe, denounced by her as a Tory-Wet, for not learning his foreign office brief. Howe in attack mode had been mocked by socialist MP, Dennis Healy, who said “…it is like being savaged by a dead sheep”.  But Howe proved to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing when he decimated Thatcher in his resignation speech – directly causing her forced, tearful, resignation on 22^nd November 1990.

MY THATCHER BIAS? In my early twenties, I belonged to a Tory debating group in Manchester, The Winston Circle. I voted for Thatcher twice – but not the third time. I was owner-manger of two small businesses in 1979 employing 80 people, when she came to power – and I lived through her regime as a “small business owner”; the class she grew from and most promoted as the backbone of Britain. I was born and raised as a True Blue Tory. As such I comment on Thatcher’s policies with long experience and balance.

WHAT THATCHER DID RIGHT:

1) She was the first and so far only female UK Prime Minister. This was a great, momentous, historic achievement – deservedly celebrated in The Hall of Fame.

2) She knocked UK management’s heads together to stop the endless, silly strikes at Britain’s factories and coal mines. E.G. Our local Oxford car makers, British Leyland, employed 13,000 people who made the worst cars in the world and who struck three times a day. I know, because a close friend was a Personnel Officer at BL in the worst years, and I employed a few of their most skilled craftsmen to make Mallalieu Bentleys in 1977-80.

3) She earned a science degree at Oxford University – Margaret could think.

4) She sold 1.5 million Council Houses to the tenants – making them proud homeowners. She privatised British Telecom and made the phones work for business, for the first time. But, she privatised British Rail and we still suffer the awful mess it caused. The privatisation of Energy and Water might be good or bad – the jury is still out after 30 years of trial and error.

5) She saved the English speaking Falkland Islands from invasion by Spanish speaking Argentina.  

6) Thatcher was a courageous, hard working, fast action fighter who did not court popularity. She truly was a World Statesperson.

7) She worked with President Reagan and Soviet Leader Gorbachev to end the Cold War and eventually to bring down the Iron Curtain.

WHAT THATCHER DID WRONG:

1) She decimated British industry and via monetisation she transferred all the wealth to parasitical mediocrities in The City and overseas – cleaving zealously to the idiotic Monetarist “Free Market” ideology. She wrecked the Real Economy in favour of the Paper Economy. She may not have acted in ignorance – she appears to have profited personally.

2) She bankrupted hundreds of thousands of small UK engineering businesses in her war on the trade unions, by increasing the Bank Base Rate to 15.1% in 1981. This enabled any rich person or company anywhere, to deposit cash in Britain, to “earn” risk-free up to 17.5% interest. We small business owners, employing 60% of the workforce, went bust paying the unsustainable 17.5% - 20% charged on secured, all risk overdrafts, much of which went to USA “investors” and crime syndicates, all guaranteed by tax-payers. 

3) She abolished the UK Courts’ cap on usury – which up to 1979 usually ruled that any money-lending at more than 30% a year interest was illegal and unenforceable. This opened the UK door to USA Mafia Loan sharks who still thrive today, now lending £1.2 billion in pay-day loans to the very poorest, charged at up to 4,000%. This is a very great evil.

4) Thatcher Family wealth is now shrouded in mystery. What sort of business was husband Dennis Thatcher in? What is the Family worth and where do they pay tax?   Did Margaret glorify personal greed and tax-havens – not least by the public example she set in picking up millions of Republican dollars for "speaking fees" after resignation, December 90 to June 91, and sticking them (tax-free?) initially in a so called Thatcher “charity” in Berne, Switzerland. When in power she slipped her son Mark £10+ million “commission” diverted from Cementation and major arms suppliers to the Middle-East. This was the base of Mark’s rise to wealth and to a foolish, embarrassing life.

This family example and tax-precedent, in my view directly led to today’s $2 to $3 trillion of tax-evasion-capital-flight from the UK to tax-havens, another great evil that has wrecked the UK economy. Financially, Margaret was a greedy, selfish, short sighted sociopath. Ex-Prime Ministers Thatcher's and Blair's sources of personal wealth are rooted in America. Remember whistle-blower Deepthroat’s advice about the Watergate trail “Follow the Money”.

5) She consciously created mass-unemployment, in her (very necessary) war on the unions, but had no thought and took no action to create alternative modern industries to re-employ people. Her battle cry “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” only applied to the undeserving rich, feather-bedded in The City, to her friends and family and to herself. 

6) She publicly insulted her close colleagues – and latterly referred to herself as “We”. Even my mother – who adored Margaret Thatcher – could not accept the “Royal We” – which in Britain is reserved for The Queen (or King). Thatcher exhibited signs of mental instability.

ON BALANCE – Lady Margaret Thatcher deserves her fame, a place in history, and her notoriety. She was remarkably single-minded, she rescued Britain from the previous decade of being wrecked by daily strikes – but she swung the pendulum too far, decimated Britain’s manufacturing base, and, professing belief in the industrious magical fairies and miracles of the self-governing, self-correcting Free Monetarist Markets, she opened the nation’s major arteries to massive tax-evasion-capital-flight and banker abuse – which may yet, 25 years on, end in social chaos. Ultimately, for British interests, she was blinkered, sociopathic and extraordinarily short-sighted.

As her enemies are singing in the streets, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead” indeed. Let’s hope she won’t rise again on the 3^rd day.


TAX AND ECONOMICS ARTICLES 29TH APR 13