Felt like the Westland scandal handicapped him from anything greater than cabinet material and the failed challenge was more of a means to an end for the party…
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I forgot about Westland!
Maybe because they heard of this great football club in England and was so desperate to come…
I remember the 80s. Heseltine helped bring Thatcher down. He was an old school politician - independently wealthy, and into politics to serve for the good of the country, at least, as he saw it. He was strong enough to stand up to Thatcher, which was quite remarkable at the time. She cried when she was ousted, partly because she couldn’t believe it.
I didn’t agree with his policies, or many of them, but I thought he was a decent sort. His critics would have seen a bit of a flamboyant playboy, but in comparison to many today he was a statesman.
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I don’t disagree with your points. The problem is we are too busy trying to score political points on each other. This isn’t a recent issue, maybe Handsworth is a victim of dated politics and kind of been forgotten about. But it’s not the only area in Birmingham, or in the UK.
I agree that we live in a world where the rich get richer, etc, but we can’t keep falling back to this rhetoric. Enough money has been given to Councils like Birmingham City Council and been mis-spent. Handsworth has a history of high poverty and high unemployment, 40+ years of it and yet it still has the same problems. Why is this?
You refer to the “social contract”, why is it being stretched/broken?
@Bekloppt you are right, I did mean division. @SBYM knew this, as did the rest of the forum. But then again, when…
Sometimes he lets his fancy corporate lunch affect his mind.
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A good post.
To clarify I am not anti Immigration, I have previously mentioned that my Grandparents were Irish. My opinion is that we already live in a Country that is struggling to provide the basics for its inhabitants and Yes, sure there are a minority of people who will have racist views, but to label them all as right wing is wrong. This is what stirs up hatred, suppressing a voice and stereotyping.
Take the Epping situation, unless you live there you don’t know the situation. Protesters who have had enough are called racist, it is easy to do so when it’s not on your door step. The Government has no history on this man, they couldn’t confirm his age, his profession and he couldn’t speak English.
So he claims he was a teacher but can’t speak English. So the State are going to have to teach him to speak English, whilst housing and feeding him. He has been found guilty of sexual assault so now fails the CBS criteria so cannot teach, so what now?
*I accept that this is one person and not a true reflection of all.
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Lol, some of your responses are so opinionated and suggestive.
Yes as a Country we did invade and colonise, as did a lot of countries, I think it was the Portuguese first.
There is apparently 1.5bn English speakers worldwide, and yet the UK has a population under 80m - assuming everyone speaks English or have moved here because of the language.
Albanians made up the highest number of boat crossings in 2023 (I think) yet Italian is a more common language and surely it is much easier to cross the Adriatic? Also a census 2021 stated 67,000 Albanians living in the UK, Italy 470,000 in 2022.
So a question, if you lived in Albania, a country on the “safe list”, where speaking Italian was more common than English. A Country (Italy) being a short distance by car, or a safer boat trip where would you travel to???
Syrians colonised by the French, Iraq adopted the Turkish language, African countries dependant on colonialism but South Africa is closest predominantly English speaking country.
And by the way, don’t tell me people speak English everywhere. Because there are parts of the UK where that doesn’t even happen.
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He was a very capable politician and was what you would describe as a One Nation Conservative. We had him as a minister for a while (at least, there was overlap between his department and the Scottish Office) and he gave a lecture on regeneration after they lost power.
He was one of the very few ministers that offered any support to Liverpool in the early 1980s, although he did mention that he was criticised because they wanted jobs and all he offered was a garden festival. I actually spoke to him about that said that he should have explained the strategy better at the time, which he rather agreed with.
He was still very much a Conservative, believed in free markets and the like, but he did seem to regard his political work being for the greater good.
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Why is this even fucking necessary? We were have a reasonable discussion until this Brexit tackle. Shall I just ignore it, and try and keep it civil?
I said it was a contributing factor. There are other ones, existing familial ties, other people from the same backgrounds, cultural exposure. But the language is obviously part of it.
The other answers to the question are a) they don’t have to and b) they don’t anyway, and they are probably more pertinent answers, but I think the language issue is an interesting point as well.
The point is that people don’t have to seek asylum in the first safe country - that’s a myth - and they don’t all pass through Europe trying to get to the UK to steal our benefits and be given PlayStations anyway. The UK is 17th in the European Rankings. There are 16 other European nations who take more asylum seekers than we do.
The right wing sells this issue to us as if the rest of Europe is taking the piss out of is. The reality is that the UK is already taking far less share of the problem than most other European nations.
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As a scouser I have to say Heseltine is something of a hero of mine and I don’t have many..
For his contributions, Heseltine was awarded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2012 by the Labour-led city council (imagine that), an honour he described as “one of the most moving moments” of his life.
The Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place was established in his honour at the University of Liverpool.
Heseltine has returned to the city on multiple occasions, including for the Liverpool Literary Festival in March 2025, to reflect on his work and discuss public policy.
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Surprised his connection to Liverpool took so long to come up in this discussion.
When Thatcher was planning to abandon Liverpool to ‘managed decline’ (this was the term used), Heseltine was one of the few to stand up to her. He fought tooth and nail to get support for the city, and was given the freedom of the city.
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No she really wasn’t and I think you know that. It was a policy allegedly proposed by Geoffrey Howe but quickly dismissed and Thatcher went with Heseltine’s ideas who was always a bitter opponent of hers. I have no love for Thatcher but it was one policy that she should at least get some kudos for…
No, she was seriously considering Howe’s counsel, and her views on Liverpool - that the City’s problems were result of a moral deficiency in its people - were well documented.
The accounts I’ve read suggest that Heseltine had to lobby a lot to be given the power to intervene in Liverpool. He wasn’t merely ‘dispatched’ as the BBC article suggests.
It was never a “policy”. It was a letter from Howe suggesting it…but as I said she went down the opposite route and the rejuvenation of Liverpool over the last 40 years is majorly down to Heseltine and whisper it…Thatcher listening to him. I grant her that at least. It was a brave and somewhat risky decision.
Divide and conquer. No surprise that we persist with a dated first past the post system either.
Victim of a dated system that creates this.
I’m afraid we have to given that no one has ever addressed it.
Agreed
I’d argue it hasnt, and the Council is equally guilty.
Councils are guilty of shrinking their workforce to show cost savings but then outsource that work scope which then results in less stuff being done at an ever increasing cost. Also a typical council’s list of statutory things they have to do has increased, but their budget has not. Only this week has Kent CC under Reform were elected on reducing waste and peoples council tax bill. They found nothing to save on and are now increasing Council tax bills by the maximum 5%.
Do councils and public services waste money? Hell yeah, and it does need looking at, but I think its all part of a broken system that allows money to be removed from it.
Ok. To me the “social contract” is where we pay our government, through taxes, to provide services we need to operate as a society. Roads, bin collections, health service, education, all of that stuff. Across the UK that means there is a lump of money that goes into that pot. How much of it actually delivers those things? I’d argue less and less year on year and that is ultimately down to how our economies are run. Wealth or money is extracted by people, companies, organisations, losses, waste etc. That pot gets smaller and smaller, so they go and get more money to fill the pot by selling stuff, print more money, borrow it and so on. But it is ultimately a downward spiral.
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It was a delicious stake, too.
Learn to spell/edit when talking srsly.
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Parts of the UK where people don’t speak English…
A very predictable return to form.
What kept you so long?
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Yeah the part that dont speak english as a first language is technically called Wales, and its a home language that predates England , so maybe all of England should learn Welsh…
Coming from a Welshman that cannot speak it🤣
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