Tag: UK

Thatcherism a catastrophe story

Thatcher

Hearing the news of Margret Thatcher’s death I felt a sudden urge to express a deep felt anger about her, about her policies and the critically wrong path on which she led the Britain of my teen years. I turned to my wife and asked “how do you express outrage in public” she is a professor of urban studies and therefore has studied such ideas. She stopped for a moment and then said to me “eloquent writing”. This was not the simple answer I was looking for. It then struck me that what she said was “eloquent writing” not “your eloquent writing”, so here is another collected reading with 5 eloquently written pieces that take thatcher apart piece by piece and reveal failed public, international and monetary policies and show her shameful legacy. – KP

BBC to play Ding Dong in chart show despite anti-Thatcher Facebook push

“Among the 16- to 24-year-olds, a lot of people are saying they are not 100% sure who Thatcher is. Even though this seems extraordinary, they may not understand who that song would chart,” said a BBC source.

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Source : Guardian

No minutes silence for Thatcher is testament to footballs bad relationship with the former PM

She used this realm when it suited her, asking British athletes to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for instance. (Some competitors did stay away but many more, including a disgusted Sebastian Coe, refused.)

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Source : Independent

The mayfair set

The Mayfair Set is a series of films that study how buccaneer capitalists of hot money were allowed to shape the Thatcher government in Britain during the 1980s. The series focuses on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith and Tiny Rowland — all members of The Clermont club in the 1960s, and how their distinct financial roles influenced the Thatcher government…

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Born poor? Bad luck, you have won last prize in the lottery of life

Yet it is this bad capitalism – and the socially immobile society that accompanies it – that has brought the British economy to its knees. A regular visitor to No 10 tells me wryly that the reason the government has lost the competence gene is that almost everyone he meets is an ex-public school boy like him.

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Source : The Guardian

Alan milburn / social mobility

 Yet, in an example of the increased social exclusivity of the top echelons in Britain, Milburn found that while 30% of members of parliament were privately educated in 1997, that proportion increased to 35% in 2010. In the Labour government’s last cabinet, 32% were privately educated but this increased to 59% in the coalition cabinet that entered Downing Street in May 2010.

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Source : The Guardian 

The Changing Face of Urban Farming in London

The presence of Spitalfields and other farms not only demonstrates ways in which Londoners are attempting to remain connected to how food is sourced and produced (as evidenced by the rise of boutique markets such as Borough and Brixton), but also serves as a means to maintain a multicultural identity and re-establish communal urbanism in a city that increasingly isolates its citizens.

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Source : Polis

Crisis doctors fastfood deals ban

“Doctors think it’s inherently unlikely that huge companies that make money from selling high-calorie foods and drinks, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, are going to persuade their customers [to eat more healthily]. It’s like asking the petrol companies to say to people, ‘why not go on your bicycle?’. It just does not seem likely that’s going to happen.”

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Source : The Guardian