Hard News: Thatcher
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One also has to remember that the old Post Office was terribly under-staffed and undercapitalised (just plain not enough copper in the ground, in most of North Dunedin in the 80s they had just not laid cable since the 30s, unless the Uni paid them to, and never given the resources to put more - unlike say a govt that pays to put fibre everywhere) - we were also saddled by a technical miscalculation from the 30s when someone bought a whole bunch of cheap phones with dials with numbers that were in a different order from everyone else on the planet - not a problem until you want to go to an electronic exchange, or direct dial out of the country
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Russell Brown, in reply to
A local example would be the weeks it used to take the old Post Office to provide a new customer with a phone….all fixed by privatisation…..except it wasn’t. Peter Troughton fixed it pre-sale as CEO while Telecom was an SOE. Then it was sold. But revisionists like to claim that service improved after Telecom was sold.
Testify. I have grown weary of pointing that out. And also pointing out that a hell of a lot of the capital value in the company -- like all exchanges being upgraded with digital links -- happened at the same time. What came next was basically cost-cutting and value-extraction.
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Stewart, in reply to
Thanks Lilith. I kinda see what he's on about now, but does he really believe that? It just seems that he has a completely strange idea of what the population thinks they pay tax for.
It never occurred to me that my tax was anything other than a means for the government to provide the necessary education, health & social welfare provisions of the population for whom it works. With a little to subsidise Bellamys, pay for a toy army, etc. -
Lilith __, in reply to
It just seems that he has a completely strange idea of what the population thinks they pay tax for.
It never occurred to me that my tax was anything other than a means for the government to provide the necessary education, health & social welfare provisions of the population for whom it works. With a little to subsidise Bellamys, pay for a toy army, etc.I agree. The cost of living in a society that treats ALL its members as worthwhile.
Bit of a threadmerge with Emma’s post on education funding for children with special needs .
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
The reversed dial. I don't think I knew that.
But it would have made little difference to an electronic exchange - just a software switch to change the pulse interpreter. It'd make pulse dial from a modem odd though - I wonder if people translated the number, or if modems for NZ were 'special'.
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Islander, in reply to
this is not mourning; I want closure, after some thirty years I want to be rid of the outrage and helplessness that feel when that name comes up. Which is why this is no celebration either
Very well put, the entire post-
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Ken Livingstone has the killer fact:
In the 31 years before Thatcher came to office the [UK] economy grew by about 150%; in the 31 years since, it's grown by little more than 100%
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While I'm not suggesting anyone watch it in full, some peverse soul put up the entire three-hour rolling coverage of Thatcher's 1990 resignation on Youtube.
Just catching snippets of it, and I'm struggling to think how an event that momentus would be covered now. Visually, it seems so much less cluttered than it would be today- social media would be absolutely nuts.
But god, how fiery is the debate in Question Time? There are real, boiling emotions beneath the theatricality.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
One thing Thatcher never did was to introduce a Henry VIII law
But...she already had a son with Denis. Why would she have need to break with the church in order to divorce and sire a heir?
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Rich Lock, in reply to
It never occurred to me that my tax was anything other than a means for the government to provide the necessary education, health & social welfare provisions of the population for whom it works. With a little to subsidise Bellamys, pay for a toy army, etc.
Taxes pay for Civilisation. Time to dust off that old soundbite, methinks.
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Sacha, in reply to
fixed it pre-sale
Just like our electricity companies about to be privatised. How hard is it to remind the public of something that has happened before?
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Testify. I have grown weary of pointing that out. And also pointing out that a hell of a lot of the capital value in the company -- like all exchanges being upgraded with digital links -- happened at the same time. What came next was basically cost-cutting and value-extraction.
If anyone still thinks out loud that rent-seeking is a property right and functioning competition is theft, rather than the other way round, just ask them if they have a spare $8 billion to plant their own wires in the ground. Even before Bernard Hickey turned apostate, he called for what is effectively a Transpower model for the copper wires: "No private company will invest the billions needed to make this happen." TelstraClear tried, and failed.
A friend of mine who used to work for NEC NZ and is now with a boutique ISP has it on good authority that the central Wellington exchanges - running on NEC hardware installed in 1984 - haven't been seriously upgraded since then, and continue to need expensive air-conditioning to cool them.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that it's just like a Polish shipyard, the only difference being that it's listed on the sharemarket.
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81stcolumn, in reply to
Taxes are an insurance premium ?? There’s a Thatcher legacy, right there.
For info:
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Lilith __, in reply to
For info:
National Insurance
How fascinating! So it predates Thatcher by quite a way....
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Who is this Paul Thomas fellow? And what do those more familiar than I with Thatcher's reign and British politics think of this?
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
…as a mark of proper respect I see NZ is sending our most apt politician to see her interred…
I would expect to see the entire National Govt. inturd, Very soon.
Oh, interred. -
Lilith __, in reply to
Who is this Paul Thomas fellow? And what do those more familiar than I with Thatcher’s reign and British politics think of this?
...a Mao apologist! Tempted to think he's just trolling, but...
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
Who is this Paul Thomas fellow?
At a guess, one of NZ's few crime novelists?
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Emma Hart, in reply to
At a guess, one of NZ's few crime novelists?
Yeah, probably not the guy who just won a Feminist Porn Award for "Friends with Benefits".
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Also, we haven't had this one yet, have we?
Nor this I think. Elvis kinda lays it on the line his way
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Clockwork cosmos….
…and right on time, for a post funeral flyby*
we enter The Lyrid Meteor Shower
aka the decaying trail of Comet Thatcher!*morning of April 22
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Right On.
Thatcher - where the Nats and Key get the bullocks on creating an Arsepirational Society.
The conduct of the House - is telling in omparison to the conduct in NZ's parliment.
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and this:
Tidal wave of guff.
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Catching up...
If I ever manage to write a book about this endless, endless goddamned internet argument from which I can apparently never escape, it will be called: Identity Politics Ruined the Left! How These Dudes Know What’s Really Important And The Rest of Us Should Just Shut Up.
Hear hear. I may have mentioned it before, but the more I look back on my time in student activism in the 1990s, the more I'm convinced we lost it because we lost the language debate. Once we were arguing about the public/private benefit of tertiary education, the other side had won - we were just arguing about how much they should charge.
If we'd put a stake in the ground and argued only that this public/private benefit debate was an argument not undertaken for the rest of society where the state provides financial support, the whole battle might have looked quite differently.
And frankly, when Mandela dies I suspect he’s going to end up being a lot like Thatcher in this respect – when the dust settles, his life is going to be a lot more nuanced and ambiguous that his fans or detractors will comfortably admit. That’s how clear-eyed history tends to work.
I'm going to go with Mandela being looked upon a lot more kindly in the history books than Thatcher.
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Sacha, in reply to
If we'd put a stake in the ground and argued only that this public/private benefit debate was an argument not undertaken for the rest of society where the state provides financial support, the whole battle might have looked quite differently.
Yes, and the same goes for the unions in the 80s who floundered aimlessly as Douglas rogered the nation. Citizens and voters deserved a better choice.
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