[CB..]

i think the problem with going back to Thatcher looking for a positive time (i know your not doing that exactly) is that
she laid the ground work for most of what we have today..good and bad...and there is still some debate over wether the Falklands was in part a battle to maintain the territorial rights to antartica..with a eye to future oil/gas exploitation..Britain needed a realsiticly argueable territorial claim to the area..dunno tho ..

it's the unions...

history tells us that it was the unions that put the back bone into real socail justice and reform...and Thatcher killed the unions...stone dead...

the unions tho were losing the plot it seemed at the time and who would want to return to the industrial unrest of the period..i dunno again...but it was allways the unions that kept governments "honest" and accountable...without that restriction they were able to some how sell the idea of "lifestyle" wholesale...and made the idea of LIFE a laughing stock..a mildy amusing naive mistake..and with a "lifestyle" everything is optional...morality truth everything...throw in the spin doctors to utterly confuse the issues and one may as well try to write poetry on parchment under water with an old fashioned feather quill and a pot of ink....and everybody is far too "clever" these days to attempt that..or gawd help you if you do try

makes you want to weep some days..

still the economy is doing well....(here in the uk) ...so they must be right?
i guess it all boils down to what the word RIGHT means...and the spin doctors are very good at their jobs so that's well and truly taken care of...resistance is futile...you will be assimilated..arghh...it's a nightmare...