Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Youngian wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 12:55 pm flog off what you can to cook the books.

Not to mention putting the older unemployed/redundant onto incapacity/disability benefits to keep them off the unemployment register.

Never has the phrase "History is written by the winners" been more appropriate than in studying the eighties. Those too young to live through the time will believe it to be an era of opportunity, when the post-war decline finally ended, the unions that had held the country back were defeated and the nation revelled in an era of unprecedented wealth and consumerism. Their belief is Duran Duran and Wham hanging out with supermodels on Carribbean beaches. Reality was the Specials and Ghost Town.

Teaching in an inner-city school in the 80s was often pretty grim as industry closed or went abroad and Tory councils cut spending to the bone. As was trying to bring up a family on ever-eroded wages whilst we watched our national assets (including North Sea oil revenues) pissed up the wall. A shit period.