The political participation of people are now less inclined towards political parties than they once were, and instead care about pressure groups. The membership change has been entirely and devastatingly negative: since thatcher, the membership of the party had halved, and since 1945, the membership has quartered. The majority of the people have become disillusioned with their political party. Now, people have been joining pressure groups instead: Greenpeace has doubled its members since 1950. This growth has meant that political activity has shifted towards pressure groups.
Examples include the large fuel tax protests of winter 2000, the Make Poverty History campaign, the march against the Iraq war in 2003 – which drew 2 million people - and the widespread social movements of 2011, such as the now-famous ‘Occupy London’. The decline in electoral turnout could merely reflect a preference for different forms of participation, especially single-issue campaigning – which increased with the emergence of new issues, such as feminism, environmentalism or globalisation. This may be caused by the decline in party identification (as mentioned above) and the trend towards class dealignment, which further decreased indentification with a party system traditionally based around class. Changes in the governmental structure, such as the introduction of ‘e-petitions’ – where a petition getting 100,000 signatures triggers a debate in parliament – reflect this. This strongly suggests that political participation cannot simply be measured in terms of electoral turnout, as other forms of participation are becoming more popular.
John majors government came into office after the downfall of Margret Thatcher, which ultimately created divisions within the party. Not only did the party suffer from the internal conflict but also faced the problems of the recession after the ‘Lawson boom’. In order to stabilise the economy he joined the ERM getting a good deal but ultimately resulting in ‘black Wednesday’ causing Major to raise interest rates to 15%. This was political suicide and he soon lost the support of the press we had once relied so much on to get re-elected in 1992. The housing market also plummeted leading to negative equity, which the majority of the working class could not afford resulting in the repossession of their houses combined with the drastic increase in unemployment Britain was in a mess.
The UK government in recent years has had to resort to financial cutbacks due to the recession, especially funds for the public services. This had has a large impact on the public services, majority of them being negative. An example could be there have been many Fire station closures within the UK. The fire service in recent years has vastly improved, this can be show by the number of fires is annually decreasing. This means the government does not see the need to have as many fire men/women and therefore made many redundant and closed down fire stations in order to save money.
Recession- The recession is an opposite of boom stage. The unemployment increase, most of firms are losing confidence and stops invest or expand. They may change their planning and started to survive. The customers are likely to save money then spend and the percentages of loans are high and may increase. Individuals are losing jobs and the government have to spend more money of benefits.
Social Trust is the idea of ‘faith in people’. Today less Americans believe they can rely on their neighbours and people around them than ever before. Putnam view is this is due to the declining numbers joining group activities and never fully explores other reasoning for this, for instance the media. Most news broadcasts lead with negative reports, as bad/devastating news grabs more attention. The medias delivery of a negative viewpoint is bound to have an impact on it subscribers, their view of the world and society could become more
List a few reasons economists speculate could be the cause of the slump in productivity increasing presence in the work force of women and teens (had lower skills, less likely to take full time jobs),declining investment in new machinery, general shift of American economy from manufacturing to services B. Sharply rising oil prices in the 1970s also fed inflation, but its deepest roots lay in government policies of the 1960s—especially Lyndon Johnson’s insistence
Health Care Reform Project Part I HCS 440 Bruce Peterson December 24, 2012 Summary The rapid population growth in the United States along with the continuously rising health costs makes managing the health care industry difficult. Because of technologic advancements both in healthcare services and medicine, people are able to live longer lives. However, as the aging population grows, more will need healthcare and more services will need to be provided. In the 1950s, not that many people lived longer than their 70s (Getzen & Allen, 2007). Furthermore, in the 1950s there were larger families so elderly care was more commonly given by family members.
The article “No Babies” by Russell Shorto discusses how the population in Europe is drastically decreasing because the low birth rate and higher death rate. He discusses how the birth to death rate is very unbalanced as well, which is a result of the declining population. European culture is feared be lost due to the fact that the majority of the European population is mainly made up of older generations and few younger. In the article Population “7 Billion”, Robert Kunzig discusses how the population worldwide is increasing drastically. He discusses that although the population is growing, our planet may not have all the resources it needs to accommodate the growing population.
Changing Attitudes For much of the nineteenth century, most people believed that people were poor because they wasted their money. By 1900, public opinion was changing. People realised that poverty could be caused by many factors. They also felt that the government should give some help to the poor instead of leaving it all to charity. Social Reformers This attitude change was partly down to the work of social reformers.