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      Right to buy is an abuse of public funds for political ends | Letters

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 18:35

    The idea to sell off council houses was Tory bribery, writes Michael Meadowcroft , while Toby Wood laments the decline in state control over housing, and Dr Orest Mulka says Labour should offer private tenants the right to buy

    Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy is even more sinister than the rightly critical article by Phineas Harper sets out ( Councils now sell off more houses than they build. Thatcher’s legacy, right to buy, is a failure, 26 March ). Putting it bluntly, it was a brilliant way for the Conservatives to bribe a large sector of mainly Labour voters to switch.

    The significant discounts offered made buying one’s council house a huge bargain. What is more, in terms of housing provision, it did not benefit the sitting tenants as much as giving a substantial gift to their children, who often provided the initial capital knowing that they would inherit the house and make a big gain on its sale or on its subsequent letting for profit.

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      Councils now sell off more houses than they build. Thatcher’s legacy, right to buy, is a failure

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 07:00

    The right still reveres her flagship policy, but the repercussions are more homelessness, spiralling rents and bankrupt councils

    Of all the policies imposed on Britain by Conservative governments, few have reshaped the country’s fortunes as enduringly as right to buy . For a lucky few, the policy has meant colossal windfalls and the chance to snap up some of the best properties in the country on the cheap. For the rest, right to buy has meant rising homelessness, spiralling rents and local authorities facing bankruptcy as the social housing stock dwindles, year by year.

    In a mere four decades, Margaret Thatcher’s flagship initiative, forcing councils to sell off public housing at huge discounts, has seen two-thirds of British council homes privatised. City halls across the country are now on the brink of insolvency , in large part due to the enormous cost of having to provide temporary accommodation without enough council-owned homes left to go round.

    Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

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      Forty years on from the miners’ strike, unions are flexing their muscles | Larry Elliott

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 25 February - 10:50

    While numbers may not have fully recovered the climate is now in very much in trade unions’ favour

    Forty years ago Britain was hurtling towards the pivotal industrial struggle of the postwar era. The National Coal Board, backed by Margaret Thatcher’s government, wanted to close pits deemed to be uneconomic. The leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers opposed the plan.

    The scene was set for a strike that went on for a year and which ended in defeat not just for the miners but for the trade union movement as a whole. The NUM had a formidable record of winning its battles and in the early 1970s had twice inflicted defeats on Ted Heath’s government.

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      Humza Yousaf likens Labour to Margaret Thatcher over oil and gas plans

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 19 February - 14:52

    Scottish first minister says plans to extend fossil fuel windfall tax are throwing workers ‘on the scrapheap’

    Humza Yousaf has accused Labour of behaving like Margaret Thatcher by throwing oil and gas workers on the “on the scrapheap”, as he announced the SNP would not back Labour’s proposals for extending the fossil fuel windfall tax.

    In a campaign speech delivered in Aberdeen, the UK’s oil capital, Scotland’s first minister accused Labour of risking 100,000 jobs after Keir Starmer promised a “proper” windfall tax on oil and gas firms earlier this month when he scaled back his party’s £28bn green investment pledge .

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      Sale of historic Downing Street visitors’ book halted due to ownership row

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 13 February - 17:39

    Government claims volume from time of Thatcher and Major, signed by the queen and many major figures, is crown property

    The sale of a Downing Street visitors’ book from Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Major’s times in office has been postponed amid a dispute about its ownership, with the government claiming it is a piece of the nation’s history – and property.

    The red leather book contains the signatures of famous visitors including royalty and world leaders such as the former US president Ronald Reagan and Diana, Princess of Wales.

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      ‘People said it did in his career’: 33 pictures that defined British politicians

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 3 February - 07:00

    From the Bullingdon boys to a bacon sandwich; Margaret Thatcher in a tank to Theresa May dancing … these landmark images shaped how we saw our leaders

    There’s a type of hard-boiled political operative who always has the TV on in the office – sometimes more than one – permanently set to the news channels and almost always with the sound turned down. You might think that’s because they need quiet to work, and should something of interest appear, they would turn the volume up. But that’s not quite right. This brand of political professional believes that, when it comes to watching news coverage, the sound is all but irrelevant. What registers with people – with voters – are the pictures.

    Does the leader look strong and in command? Or weak and hesitant? Is the candidate smiling, brimming with confidence? Or brooding, head in hands? Do they look natural, at ease with ordinary people – or gauche and awkward, a visiting alien from Planet Politician? For any of these judgments, you don’t need to hear the words. The image alone tells the story.

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      The Guardian view on Tory ideology: Thatcherism isn’t working – it never did | Editorial

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 6 December - 18:25

    There was no miracle, only a myth manufactured by the Iron Lady herself. It’s time Westminster woke up to that

    A spectre is haunting British politics. Its outline is instantly recognisable to every Briton of a certain age: hair coiffed into a halo, shoulders firmed up with pads and, jutting out from the left wrist, the inevitable handbag.

    More than three decades after she was driven out of No 10 , and a decade after her death, Margaret Thatcher still casts a long shadow over the country she once ruled, and her party. Rishi Sunak sat in her old Rover ( and tweeted about it, naturally ) and Liz Truss copied her wardrobe . She influenced the Labour party under Tony Blair, though this admiration was first tempered by Labour under Ed Miliband and even more under Jeremy Corbyn . Sir Keir Starmer’s praise for Mrs Thatcher is perhaps more about internal Labour politics than about the Tories’ “ leaderene ”.

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      Thatcherism is the worst kind of model for Labour | Letters

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 6 December - 17:27

    Readers criticise Keir Starmer for praising the former Tory prime minister and her plan for entrepreneurialism

    Regarding your article ( A word to the wise, Keir Starmer: whoever advised you to praise Thatcher got it wrong, 4 December ), Keir Starmer, as I understand it, was using Thatcher as an example of a prime minister who was effective and governed according to identifiable principles, which is certainly a major contrast with the last 13 years. Starmer was obviously hoping that we would believe he also would be effective, but with different principles. It’s rather like saying Michael Gove was effective as education secretary. In both cases, the effectiveness greatly increased the damage they caused.

    However, Starmer should have known that he would be widely misunderstood, so it was a tin-eared thing to say. He is right in that one of the most salient characteristics of the current Tory government is ineffectiveness, and in particular a complete failure to plan for any future. There’s a constant drizzle of horrendous examples – a stubborn refusal to tackle climate change, failure to provide services for postnatal mental health difficulties, with huge potential damage to the next generation, and failure to tackle obesity.

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      Trois femmes d’exception : Arendt, Rand, Thatcher

      ancapism.marevalo.net / Contrepoints · Wednesday, 8 March, 2023 - 07:53 · 3 minutes

    Présenter trois femmes d’exception à travers trois films est une occasion rare. C’est ce que l’on va s’essayer de faire en citant :

    Hannah Arendt

    Hannah Arendt fuit l’Allemagne nazie à 27 ans pour la France où elle est internée en 1940. Elle s’en évade pour s’installer aux États-Unis où elle deviendra une des plus grandes philosophes politiques du moment, enseignant dans les meilleures universités. Son reportage en 1961 pour le New Yorker sur le procès d’Eichman en Israël est l’occasion pour elle d’illustrer son concept de « banalité du mal » : des hommes ordinaires deviennent acteurs de systèmes totalitaires par absence d’idéologie. Privés de pensée, ils deviennent prisonniers de schémas qui interdisent la réflexion, voire l’analyse critique. Chacun est piégé par ses dogmes. Bien sûr, toute ressemblance avec des personnages actuels… ne serait pas fortuite.

    L’origine de la pensée d’Arendt doit beaucoup à celle du philosophe Martin Heidegger, dont elle fut l’étudiante, la maîtresse, et après guerre, le témoin à décharge dans le procès de Heidegger qui avait publiquement défendu l’idéologie nazie. Ce soutien qu’on lui a évidemment reproché ne doit pas cacher la rupture philosophique de l’élève avec son maître, qu’elle décrit dans the Life of the Mind : le refus de résistance à la domination est d’abord un refus de la volonté. La pensée de Hannah Arendt est donc au premier chef, une valorisation de la liberté responsable, notamment par l’action politique.

    Ayn Rand

    Ayn Rand quant à elle, fuit l’arrivée au pouvoir des bolchéviques en Russie, en Ukraine puis en Crimée pour finalement s’installer aux Etats-Unis où elle devint scénariste, romancière et philosophe universellement connue sauf… en France ! Deux romans ont eu des succès planétaires et ont été adaptés au cinéma: The Fountainhead (1943) ( la source vive ), et Atlas Shrugged (1957), traduit 50 ans plus tard sous le titre La Grève .

    La vertu d’égoïsme décrite par Ayn Rand, est une éthique rationnelle du savoir et de la raison. Sa philosophie inspirée par Nietzsche est fondée sur « le concept de l’homme en tant qu’être héroïque, ayant son propre bonheur pour éthique de vie, son accomplissement productif pour occupation la plus noble, et la raison pour unique absolu. »

    Ayn Rand a dénommé sa philosophie « objectivisme », parce que celle-ci est basée sur la prémisse que la réalité est un objectif de perception absolu pour chacun d’entre nous.

    Un puissant antidote a l’idéologie  judéo chrétienne du partage et sa version moderne dite de « justice sociale « !

    Margaret Thatcher

    Margaret Thatcher est elle mieux connue pour être, selon la doxa de la pensée unique, l’ultra libérale haïe par son peuple, aux méthodes brutales et autoritaires. Renaud lui consacre une chanson ou il la traite de « conne ». Un qualificatif qu’il a sans doute oublié puisqu’il vit aujourd’hui… à Londres.

    C’est oublier également qu’elle a bénéficié  d’un soutien sans faille des Britanniques qui l’ont réélue trois fois de suite et qui a gouverné pendant plus de onze ans.

    Margaret Thatcher accorde une grande importance aux valeurs victoriennes du travail, de l’ordre, de l’effort et de self-help, qu’elle reçut dans son éducation, dénotant un lien puissant avec L’éthique protestante Méthodiste et l’esprit du capitalisme de Weber.

    De façon générale, le « thatchérisme » puisera son inspiration politique et économique dans les théories de l’école monétariste de Chicago, incarnée par Milton Friedman, de l’école de l’offre d’Arthur Laffer et de l’école autrichienne, connue à travers Friedrich Hayek.

    A noter l’influence des think tanks, en particulier le Centre for Policy Studies, think tank libéral fondé en 1974 par Keith Joseph .

    Trois femmes d’exception qui, de façons très différentes, et chacune à sa manière, marqueront durablement la vie politique et philosophique, et méritent d’être ainsi davantage connues à travers le cinéma.

    Article publié initialement le 15 juillet 2013 .