ABSTRACT “Welfare policy successfully weathered an economic hurricane in the mid 1970’s and an ideological blizzard in the 1980’s” (Le Grand, 1990, p350). A statement suggesting that the welfare state in Great Britain had survived a crisis period in history. In the early 20th century it was highlighted in regards to the amount of poverty that men were suffering. Reforms after WWII were implemented and with Keynesian Economics there was an effort to improve the living conditions of the British people as well as the economy. This policy found itself in trouble on a few occasions but during the 1970’s there was a worldwide crisis and Britain asked the IMF for a large loan.
Chartism is a fairly dispersed movement, its large nature and appeal coupled with many different opposing viewpoints, make it really difficult to categorize, and equally difficult to find a defined origin. Chartism in its rawest definition was the world first working class movement, which by its definition would give it a huge backing politically. But why exactly did it come about in the around 1838? One of the main reasons would have to be the failure of the so-called “Great” reform act for most people. Effectively the act benefited the middle classes, who were now given an electoral voice in parliament, while the working classes were largely ignored, causing widespread anger and resentment for the act, and all those it benefited.
If you look at the percentages of votes for the three major parties (Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem) in each social class for the 2010 election it can be seen that a pattern does still exist. In classes A and B the Conservatives received 44% of votes compared to Labour’s 26% and the Lib Dem’s 29% whereas in classes D and E Labour received 40% of the votes in comparison to the Conservatives 31% and the Lib Dem’s 19%. However these figures do not tell the whole story as there are some members of the population who believe those running the country should be of a higher class as they are the best educated to do so, this is called differential voting and takes place amongst the lower classes. It also works the other way though with some members of the lower middle class deciding to vote labour as the high taxes mean they are given benefits such as a free health care, this is called Proletarianisation. These two occurrences show that your social class doesn’t always define who you vote for.
2. Question : (TCO 6) In the 1980s, Caterpillar was negatively affected by a strong dollar and lost significant market share to Japanese competitor Komatsu. The situation prompted Caterpillar to revise its global strategy and by the 2000s, the company was in a much better position to deal with volatile currency values. More recently, a strong dollar has actually helped boost Caterpillar’s bottom line. In the 1980s, a stronger dollar hurt Caterpillar’s competitive position, but in 2008 a stronger dollar did not seem to have the same effect.
It is logical to assume that a Prime Minister’s degree of power will be very dependent on the size of majority his party enjoys in the House of Commons. In the case of Blair, he enjoyed a very large one, with 63.4% of the seats filled by Labour MPs. Since the party won the right to govern, the Prime Minister carries all the elective authority with him. Also, with little opposition, it allows the Prime Minister to exercise his powers more efficiently, which would undoubtedly be very helpful when wanting to pass new laws. Cameron in turn, should expect to enjoy less power as he had to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, in order to achieve a majority.
The election of the leader is very important part of political parties as people now vote more for a prime minster than governing party, for example conservative’s won over Labour because David Cameron was seen as more enthusiastic and inspirational then Gordon brown, where he was seen as dull and boring. This means individual members in Labour have a significant role and power in the party. However in the conservative the individual members don’t have as much power as the Labour members. The election of the party leader is different to the Labour party, the MP's select the two final candidates for leader through numerous votes, and the members only get to vote at the end of the process for party leader. This means that individual members don’t have the same amount of power than the MP's.
Why is Labour Productivity in the UK so low? There are a huge variety of reasons why, in comparison to other countries, our labour productivity is so low: One incredible important reason is that the government drive for full employment has been taking hold. As we can see here; our employment is faring well in comparison with other countries. However, a real problem is the government implementing policy that favours short term social benefit (like for example, mass employment, creation of needless projects simply to provide jobs), rather than long term economic benefit. There is a failure to realise that long term better economic welfare also means general higher standards of living, as people have enough money to buy everything they need and some of what they want, competition is rife so drives quality up and prices down, and the government are able to take in more taxes from firms who are much healthier financially.
Microsoft though, since it has a big chunk of market share as far as operating systems is concerned, is for hackers to mess with since 70% of all hacking tools is for windows only. Windows has more vulnerabilities than Apple. I'm not saying Apple is perfect even though that statement could have been true 5 years ago but the quality of their products is much better than Microsoft. Apple is also better than Microsoft simply because of Steve Jobs. His ideas and way of thinking is unimaginable.
Song Project During 1980, Britain was going through a period of major change that included: education reforms, the rise of power dressing and the finishing of the Northern Ireland peace process, however one thing did not change, that was there government. In June 1987 the UK General elections were held in which Margaret Thatcher, leader of the British Conservative Party won a third consecutive term in office and had been in office since 1979. At that time many people dislike Margaret Thatcher because she had destroyed Britain’s manufacturing industry and her policies led to mass unemployment, she supported capital punishment, and she brought on a social housing crisis. Mass unemployment was the nail in the coffin that made many dislike her. It led to two major recession that hit Britain's economy while
However, it was surprising to see UK focus more on growing its empire and foreign investments instead of investing in domestic initiatives. The lack of investment in domestic manufacturing led to UK lagging behind in manufacturing and unable to compete with other western nations in capital intensive industries. Furthermore, it was surprising to see UK implement free trade much earlier than several of the other nations. While other nations sought to protect and grow domestic manufacturing, UK had to be careful not to upset other nations as it was greatly dependent on them for goods and investments. Despite trade deficits, UK still continued to show growth and continued to remain a power in the modern society.