Privatisation, Consumerism and Thatcherism in the 1980's.

An exploration of the revolutionary economic reforms conducted by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative administration in Britain during the 1980's. Andrew Marr discusses the stock market boom, the rise of consumerism and one of the key pillars of Thatcherism - privatisation - a policy that has since been replicated all over the world. "If you see sid, tell him!"

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• 1980s
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• Margaret
• Thatcher
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• Neoliberalism
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[MRwonderman1]

The end point sums up my view entirely.

THis whoe blame Thatcher for human greed ethos that goes around these days, all she wanted was for each man to prosper and be sensible, greed is a flaw of mankind arguably an instinct not a creation from Thatcher.

[UnitedBritannia]

@MRwonderman1 Yes indeed. But it's easier to blame one politician for the country's ill's rather than to look to and confront the unsettling frailties of human nature. Some socialists seem to believe that greed simply didn't exist before the Thatcher revolution - what they are struggling with in reality is the fact that ordinary working class voters were liberated from the dead hand of the State in the 1980's and became what lefties simply couldn't abide - home-owning Tories.

[CocacolaCowboy1919]

@MRwonderman1 God Bless Thatcher and Reagan.

[ameroffsky]

Once again, Andrew Marr's closing statement sums things up perfectly well. As a non-British person, I think the "big bang" and conspicuous consumption of the 1980s were a sort of necessary first step in order to create a calmer, more orderly prosperity and entrepreneurial spirit. This showed itself in the Britain of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

[38pt3]

I love Thatcher on youtube, it's always posted by some lone wolf loony and unleashes a wave of 'out and proud' Thatcherites now that they're anonymous on the net. Then you get some simpleton rhetoric thrown about by her supporters, usually quoted from her Little Blue Book, about Lefties and Socialism not working etc followed by more credible responses that are dismissed by some paraphrased version of Hobbes Leviathan. As for the thumbs up comments, it's like we were watching different videos

[MaxWeberz]

What a joke, Thatcher tripled the number in poverty and the actual growth in incomes wasn't anything compared to the post-war years, the only new thing was consumerism.

What's more, literally the poor got poorer and the rich got richer as incomes increased for the rich and decreased for the poor.

[teenageriot123456]

@ericclaptonismygod31 making three million unemployed, sure.

[davh1231]

@muzzster1970

couldn't agree more, it's up to you, it's out there, go and earn some money.

[davh1231]

@ericclaptonismygod31

spot on, lefty 1970's dribble we hear even now.

[GMoneyStillTippin420]

@UnitedBritannia I'm American but I'm part Scottish. Truth is she did destroy the working classes, but doing that enabled millions of bright hardworking enterprising young people (many of them anti establishment punk rockers in the late 70s ironically enough) from Scotland and the North to become upwardly mobile in ways never possible under post war national consensus socialism. People assume that if we have more freedom its right back to some Dickensian Gilded age which just fucking wrong lol.