Mark, I too lived there (Scotland) from way before her time, and I did have the personal experience of busines life under the Grand Masters Wilson and Callaghan, who when not turning Downing Street into a union leaders' pork-pies-and-beer chomp-shop, were making it impossible to quote for work without writing in clauses stating that final prices were dependent on rate of inflation at time of delivery of goods! (Could be 20+%!) Yes, I had to do that. Imagine, you price a calendar at say, fifty grand in February or March, and don't know what it will cost in December when you deliver it and the invoice. Who'd be a buyer or producer? I also had the experience of having to buy 'official' artwork 'stickers' from a friendly blockmaker's business before SLADE would allow my designs and photographs to be handled by the printing companies - and I had nothing to do with SLADE! I think that benign technique was called closed shops... Roll on the socialist movement! Let's all sink to the bottom together in a spirit of true brotherhood.
I have, on and off when the need arises, pointed out some of the factors shaping her perspective and alternatives, but to no avail.
IMO, her basic advantages were two:
1. she knew about self-employment and the reality that nobody owes you a living;
2. she also knew from the simple, family-run shop experience, that money spent can only come from money earned. Break that, and you are in debt, as we have seen proven, time after time.
Maggie's rule was the one that finally took the UK out of its huge wartime debts and provided the level starting line once more. Clearly, it wasn't to be maintained very well or for very long: her own staff did their utmost to stab her and take the power for themselves, never mind the best efforts of the loonie lefties. But hell, even the Tories have their own lunatic right, undermining away with the best/worst of the rest.
From those two basic economic realities she understood that a country is just another model of a big shop or large indiustry - the same economic realities apply, and the only way to run them with success is to find the right staff. And there the problem: you just can't get the staff these days. You could say that the change from concerned people to career politicians has muddied the waters or, worse, sucked out all of the oxygen and what's left are the flying fish, surfing to exist above the rivers of effluent...
À propos of the recent charge of my being anti-Scotland, levelled at me in conjunction with my status as expatriate, the reasons I came to this island have been documented on LuLa before, and they dealt mainly with business and having suitable photo-locations on the doorstep rather than by expensive trips away.
However, the general climate there has steadily depreciated, to the extent that it’s now a pop-joke that in Scotland, there are more pandas than Conservative MPs. At last checking, in a country of around six million or so souls, there is but a single such seat. The future and mindset, clearly, isn’t far from where I thought it to be. But the country itself is so full of natural beauty that the human despoliation seems even tougher. Oh well, look upon me as the Conservative MP for Scotland in Mallorca, just as Mr James Bond is the Scottish Nat. one for Lyford Cay, New Providence, Bahamas.
Peace, brothers.
;-)
Rob C
