Word: thatcherism
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...Dublin bristled with blue-coated Irish policemen as the leaders of the ten European Community nations gathered for a two-day summit last week. Irish officials were holding their breath: less than two months after an Irish Republican Army bomb almost claimed the life of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an I.R.A. splinter group had vowed to try again. Instead, a different kind of assault came from an unexpected source. As the meeting drew to a close, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou threatened to torpedo its major goal: a painstakingly constructed agreement on the terms under which Spain and Portugal...
Papandreou campaigned against Greek participation in NATO and the E.G. when he came to power in 1981, and he has been difficult ever since. Community decisions must be unanimous, and Papandreou has used the veto threat while demanding special benefits for Greece. He borrowed the tactic from Thatcher, who stalled the Community for five years while she insisted that Britain deserved a rebate on its Community budget contributions. In Dublin, Papandreou dragged the summit for five hours beyond its scheduled closing to argue that Greek, French and Italian farmers will need massive financial aid to help them adjust...
...scramble at the London Stock Exchange last Monday resembled a rough-and-tumble rugby scrum. In the first day of trading in British Telecom, hundreds of brokers fought to get some of the action. The government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was selling off 50.2% of the company as part of a program to return some nationalized firms to private ownership. Around trading posts adorned with yellow balloons and huge red, green and blue plastic model telephones, 800 million Telecom shares changed hands, a London record for one day's activity in a single stock...
...sale of the telecommunications giant's stock is part of the Thatcher government's program of turning state-owned nterprises over to private investors. The Conservatives hope that this will help make the companies more efficient and profitable. They also feel that thousands, or even millions, of happy shareholders would make it all the more difficult for a future Labor government to renationalize companies that have gone private...
While the idea of privatization sounds appealing enough to Conservatives, it has been difficult to achieve in practice. So far, only Jaguar, Britoil and a handful of other nationalized firms have been turned over to private hands. Within the Thatcher government, squabbles have broken out over what companies to take private and when...