Petition to oppose Blair's Knighthood

[nightjar]

The reports of the honour say she views him as a friend, but I think you are right that he was not her favourite PM. The two are not necessarily related.

[nightjar]

A few with quite specific aims, like extra legal protection for Police animals, do. Protest petitions generally don't, even if they get massive support.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

[Andrew]

Nonsense. In 1990 Germany re-unified and the costs of that re-unification meant that German interest rates went up to

9%. This then meant that UK rates needed to be even higher, not helped by Lawsons previous foray into shadowing the Deutchsmark as part of the ERM, plus an unsustainable housing boom in 1988 which could only end with much higher interest rates or much higher taxes or much higher unemployment.

Higher taxes were out of the question with Mrs T in Number 10.

QED If you must blame anyone for sky high interest rates between

1989 and 1992 (and they were only 15% briefly) then blame the British for their usual lack of self control re soaring house prices (and inflation) in 1988, and also blame the Germans for their uber-rapid re-unification plans, plus of course those other usual suspects like currency traders. That infamous Hungarian Soros made a billions out of forcing the Pound out of the ERM. He wasn't the only one, plenty of UK investment banks were merrily selling the pound in October 1992 because it was a one-way bet.

When we crashed out of the ERM in October 1992, UK rates plummeted, the stock market boomed and the economy recovered pretty quickly. By 1997 it was doing pretty well, interest rates were well below 8% and tax revenues were soaring. Then we had an election in 1997 .....

[Andrew]

Many people say he was the best Conservative PM that we never had. Pity he was surrounded by all the usual Labour dross and he really should have had the guts to sack Brown from the treasury well before 2000.

Andrew

[Robin]

ITYWF that there were spaces before this death - and are still after Blair - because HM and Royal Knights don't count towards the 24.

[R Souls]

I'd go along with that. He would have slotted in perfectly into the Nasty Party.

[Tim Streater]

He was already leading it.

[Pancho]

That's not quite fair. Thatcher's policies caused a recession. You might argue that it was worth it to reset the economy, but it wasn't really a consequence of the position she inherited.

To me, Thatcher appears unique amongst modern PM's in that she genuinely tried to implement a vision, as opposed to just bumbling along. Maybe Atlee was similar, in this respect, but it was before my time.

[newshound]

Three terms seems to send a British PM slightly insane these days. That's what happened to Thatcher and Blair. Perhaps Atlee was lucky. A lot to be said for two term limits (c.f. US presidents).

If anyone deserved the Earldom and Garter, Atlee did. Wounded and MC in WW1 iirc. Tireless and highly effective manager on the home front in WW2. And fantastic delivery on health and education in his first term.

[JNugent]

Education?

Surely that was the 1944 Education Act (the "Butler Act") passed by Parliament during the wartime coalition in which Churchill was PM and RA Butler the education minister?

[Tim Streater]

Whatever she did, she was basically only able to do because of the Winter of Discontent. People finally got fed up enough with the Unions that a govt could pull them kicking and screaming into the 20thC without everyone wetting thmeselves. Whoi thinks about Unions these days? No one, basically. They've done the job that needed to be done to protect workers but then got too big for their boots. Maggie was able to correct that.

[newshound]

Fair point, I would certainly not down-play the many qualities and achievements of RAB. I was only trying to say that the implementation came under Labour.

Those were the days when senior politicians were all highly honourable men. When lying in Parliament was a resigning offence.

[newshound]

Really? Which contemporaries do you think could have handled 2008 better?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Hence all the so called self employed working and zero hours contracts etc.

But I'm sure you make great use of those services provided by near slave labour.

[critcher]

not true by any means.

[JNugent]

Completely true.