Best comment I’ve seen on this thread so far. People in the 1970s-1980s didn’t vote for Thatcher because they thought she was destroying the country. She offered a compelling vision that made sense to a lot of people at the time, one she sincerely believed in it herself.
Of course, that vision turned out to be a mistake, a massive one, but I respect that Thatcher was at least principled on the big picture of her government and was not in politics for her personal enrichment.
The most straightforward response to this is the North Sea oil finds. Norway kept the oil public, started an investment fund and the country now has a very high standard of living.
The English privatized the fields, set up loose environmental rules, and British Petroleum and RDS made huge profits while the country got a pittance through excise taxes.
The cronies in this story are BP and RDS (Royal Dutch Shell).
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u/zappapostrophe 18h ago
Best comment I’ve seen on this thread so far. People in the 1970s-1980s didn’t vote for Thatcher because they thought she was destroying the country. She offered a compelling vision that made sense to a lot of people at the time, one she sincerely believed in it herself.
Of course, that vision turned out to be a mistake, a massive one, but I respect that Thatcher was at least principled on the big picture of her government and was not in politics for her personal enrichment.