The question is whether any of it was sustainable. Now, there is a growing and dismaying recognition that too much growth in the past 30 years has been built on an unsustainable credit, banking and property bubble and that Britain's true long-run growth rate has fallen to around 2%. The productivity gap is widening. All that heightened inequality, the unbelievable executive remuneration, wholesale privatisation, taking "the shackles off business" and labour market flexibility has achieved nothing durable.

This bitter realisation has been sharpening in non-conservative circles for some months. The pound has fallen by 20% in real terms since 2008, yet the response of our export sector to the most sustained competitive advantage since we came off the gold standard has been disastrously weak. Britain's trade deficit in goods climbed to 6.9% of GDP in 2012 – the highest since 1948 – and February's numbers were cataclysmically bad. Britain simply does not have enough companies creating goods and even services that the rest of the world wants to buy, despite devaluation.

The legion of Mrs Thatcher's apologists argues she can hardly be blamed for what is happening 23 years after leaving office. But economic transformations should be enduring, shouldn't they? Thatcherism did not deliver because dynamic capitalism is achieved through a much more subtle interplay. She never understood that a complex ecosystem of public and private institutions is needed to support risk-taking, the creation of open innovation networks, sustained long-term investment and sophisticated human capital. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/thatcher-economy-talk-based-fraud

Perhaps the most profound legacy of Baroness Thatcher is that she managed to produce such spectacular effects on the other side of politics.

The British Labour Party almost imploded whilst in opposition and it had to reinvent itself under New Labour.

People hated her then and now and that political hate is arguably self-defeating and self-destructive.

Have we seen that level of hate in Australia? Yes we have

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/australian-update-april/4625744

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Circumstances and carpe diem can have a profound effect on the balance of politics... Thatcher got pot luck that English Labour then did not have a leader to spank her butt... Thatcher used the common practice amongst dictators to find a weak enemy and stick to it like a dog with a bone... With this, she needed an accomplice which she found in a certain then young Uncle Rupe, who had his own battles at Wapping.

Thatcher's "enemy" were the simple folks: the miners, the unemployed, the young people, the workers, the unions... In her despotic folly against these she gathered on her side the accountants, the Lords and the shop-keepers (Open All Hours)...

The Labour Party in England, while being shafted by Mr Murdoch, had also been corrupted by a few union officials, who like Eddie and the woman from Jacksonville, were more or less annoying opportunists or plants from the other side sent to sabotage the common good...

At this point in time, in Australia, we have a leader who has chosen to fight against a more powerful entity in the miners, the rich, the excessive capitalists — not to stop them being what they are but to stop them oppressing and robbing the community — all for the protection of most people and that of the environment with proper steps for the future.

Under the constant push by the same now old Mr Murdoch who prefers gambling to equality and environment, this country might dice Gillard and replace her with a moronic little despot who has no idea of economic dynamics, who has no idea of science and sees everything in relation to his fascist days at the seminary...

If there is a god, a real one, please, oh god make sure that little rat does not get there, otherwise god, you're bloody sadist...

And yes Amanda, we've seen that level of Hate in Australia... That hate is generated by the little rat Abbott, who like B A Santamaria won't stop throwing punches around, until he gets his ways... Unless his trousers are pulled down and he can't say a word:...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=zyY-xI6zgfk&feature=endscreen

We are in the midst, apparently, of (another) class war. Questions, without ready answers, arise. Who's winning? Have the Battlers defeated the Elites? Has Struggle Street been taken? Has ''Fair Go Mate'' suffered collateral damage?

In March last year Treasurer Wayne Swan added some momentum to the issue with his article ''The 0.01 Per Cent - The Rising Influence of Vested Interests in Australia''. Clive Palmer, a Queenslander, said that Swan was ''an intellectual pygmy'', and decried the notion that ''vested interests'' had too much influence in Australia.

Quite quickly, for having the temerity to talk about equality of opportunity and outcomes, the opposition's shrillest voices were accusing the Labor government of indulging in class warfare.
This conveniently overlooked the fact that a bunch of heavy-weight miners - Gina Rinehart, ''Twiggy'' Forrest, BHP, Rio, among others - had recently squelched the Resource Super-Profits Tax with some hysterical special pleading about how punishing life would be if this modest redistribution of wealth were to take place.

The Liberals had tapped into the well-worn idea that people hate class wars because most people aspire to move up a notch. This affects people's responses to just about every political policy position, from superannuation tax reforms, education funding, health insurance, and the national disability insurance scheme (where a class of lawyers will be done in the eye).The physical embodiment of the front line of defence has been a collection of well-padded people: Rinehart, Palmer and now Amanda Vanstone.

Vanstone, this week in these pages, decried the fact that ''rock stars and movie moguls [who] acquire mega wealth'' don't do enough to defend capitalism.

Capitalism needs all the support it can get, as Vanstone said in a flurry of mixed imagery: ''We should understand that every time a bad apple gets away with a misdeed another cancer cell is implanted in the capitalist system.''

Vanstone warned if the wealthy are attacked they will take their businesses and factories elsewhere.

Labour opposition leader Andrew Fisher in 1908 swept fattist sensitivities aside when he told Parliament: ''The fat man calls for one grand scheme of reform, but declines to support any measure which benefits one class.''

So the 0.01 per cent are back at it, defending and expanding their patch, with rhetorical pump priming from the opposition.

The implication is that the wealthy are suffering because of Labor's class war. Obversely, this suggests that inequality in Australia is reducing because the well-to-do are losing their share of the pie.

It's a proposition that doesn't bear close, or even superficial, scrutiny. Last month, the Productivity Commission released its Trends in the Distribution of Income in Australia.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/theres-only-one-winner-in-this-phoney-class-war-20130418-2i2tp.html#ixzz2Qt0zfZrh