BS: Where now Thatcher haters?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 02:10 AM

Re the necessity of sinking the Belgrano ~~ what is the saying, just remind us, beginning "He who fights & runs away..."?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 03:16 AM

Mike, you've obviously got something going when it comes to blondes....Ruth Ellis, and now Margaret Thatcher.

I understand totally..... with me it was Barbara Windsor and Dusty Springfield, Mary Travers...andto a certain extent Jet Harris.

I don't like to think of you calling people cunts. You'll be shouting at people in the park as you eat your pasty, and going round with a dog on a piece of string - not the way to go at our age.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 03:31 AM

"It was based on the advice of the military"
With a little help from her friend.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/sinking-the-belgrano-the-pinochet-connection-7609047.html
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 03:48 AM

Actually, Al ~~ I make it a policy & a principle to avoid expletives far more than almost anyone else on this forum. Must have been peculiarly incensed, but hard now, even after so short an interval, to recall quite why. I do occasionally suffer from pain from a bit of inflammation left by an otherwise long-cured gastric ulcer I suffered from 30 years ago, which always has a baleful effect on my irritability-factor: maybe that was bugging me. Sorry all...

Re blondes: my wife Emma is a blonde, and my first wife Valerie was of lightish complexion; funny really because my ideal physical type has always been slender very dark brunettes ~~ Audrey Hepburn or Sophia Loren or Jane Russell rather than Marilyn Monroe. Neither Thatcher nor Ruth Ellis [whom I met but once, after all] had any physical attraction for me.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:21 AM

Somebody once said "It's the economy stupid".

All things political are done in its name.
Mrs Thatcher served the system well and provided us with a few years of faux prosperity, her policies were continued by messers(not a typo) Blair and Brown, but most of us knew where the credit boom was leading......now we have it in spades, all the horrors described by MP, and far worse to come....beleve me!

Every set of politicians from the sixties onwards have been labouring to ensure not the wellbeing of the British people, but the survival of a system which is completely unsustainable in the social world of "entitlement" which "liberalism" has created.

Forget the hate figures of the past, there is nothing new to learn there.

We must go back to the drawing board....it will be hard...i reckon a couple of generations and there will be no time for "liberal lunacy"

Unless of course.....you have an alternative?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:58 AM

Well I often call people cunts (usually in my car). But somehow - i don't like to think of you doing it, as I feel that you're a much nicer person than I am.

with great affection

al

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 05:11 AM

Well, thanks, Al. Don't quite know what to say...

As one of the Nat Service generation, that sort of verbal obloquy comes fairly instinctively to me. And when I first joined the Cat I adopted much of the contentious obscenity that so many posts were couched in. Then it occurred to me that this was both unworthy, and weakening to one's argument; so I explicitly forswore it in a post 3 years back at least, and have stuck to this resolve since [tho not, of course, like you, Al, necessarily when driving!]. Sorry again that a bit of my nerve-pain should have knocked me off the self-chosen course whereby "scoundrel" or "rascal", of at worst "swine" or "rat", would be the lowest level of abuse to which I would permit myself to sink.

Apologies to all again ~~ esp to pete cockermouth. Very sorry, pete!

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 05:44 AM

"Owen Woodson is an even more stupid and vindictive nonentity than Steve Shaw"

Like I said, "The best thing to do with MtheGM is to ignore him. The man is incapable of saying anything beyond stringing together a load of unjustified and unjustifiable petty insults".

Of course I've heard of Thomas Mann and Jane Austen, and read both of them. I read a biography of Beethoven once as well. He called a critic a double barreled arsehole. MtheGM used to be a critic, did he not?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 06:08 AM

Still a critic, dash-it, even at my advanced age ~~ google emls [Early Modern Literary Studies], for which I still do a column for each issue on renaissance drama [Shax &c] in Cambridge. But denouncing critics as a race rather beneath even your usual standard of invective, surely? Esp quoting so notoriously touchy an authority as old Ludwig Van.

Of course I really knew you had read Austen & Mann, Owen. I detest what Julian Fellowes described in one of his fine novels as "The kind of person who insults you and then says, Can't you take a joke", but don't push that particular bit of backdoor evasion too far. Doesn't do for you to be too touchy, you know, or you will knock all the sweetness out of the joke, my duckling. After all, you are not Beethoven, nor were meant to be...

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 06:28 AM

Will someone tell me what MtheGM has been smoking? I want some of it.

I never said I was Beethoven. He was after all rather better at knocking out the odd symphony than I. Nor did I denounce critics as a race. They are not. Nor are they a species, although I understand a fair number of them have been stuffed and mounted in their time.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 06:35 AM

I should have added that I never insult anyone unless I mean it.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 07:02 AM

I smoked my last small cigar on 3 April 1975. Have not smoked a thing since. So you're welcome to all I smoke.

Of course you don't, Owen my dear chap. "Spiteful" was the word I used before, which seems to describe you well enough. Can't imagine why you take such pride in making yourself so obnoxious; but I suppose we all have our hobbies.

Not even as if your views are even general. Take a look at Eliza's post of this very morning on the currently going on 'BS:People's Impressions' thread. You are, of course, as entitled to your opinions on any subject, including that of me, as anyone else. But they are somewhat restricted to you & Shaw, is my [I think not entirely self-conceited] impression.

So groove on, my dear fellow. Go on long enough &, in the poetic old phrase, I expect you'll ultimately poison yourself with your own sour spit.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 07:13 AM

Gosh, "Michael," you do sound scared. Just walk away slowly from the thread. No-one will follow you.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 09:48 AM

Jim, your Independent link is compelling evidence that Belgrano was a very real threat to the task force.
Perhaps you would have sacrificed thousands of British sailors just because the Argentine Naval communications were intercepted by Chile, but an elected PM would never have been forgiven by the British people.

"a member of the War Cabinet has revealed how Argentine orders intercepted by Chile convinced the British that their enemies' prize cruiser had to be sunk"

"It was unanimous that if we had let the Belgrano go and it had sunk a carrier, we would all have been finished. We would all have had to stand down, if we had presided over the death of hundreds of British sailors and had the chance to avert it.

"What we didn't realise [was] the Argentinian destroyers took off immediately and they didn't search for survivors. They thought they would all get sunk..."

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 10:46 AM

"compelling evidence that Belgrano was a very real threat to the task force."
I was pointing out the liason between Thatcher and a fascist butcher - whatever I might think of the sinking of the Belgrano it is irrefutable evidence that Thatcher's friendshhip with a mass murderer and her turning a Tory Party conference into a mini Nuremberg Rally was an indication that she was a wannabe fascist dictator herself.
Thatcher was a politiical thug who sucked up to political thugs guilty of extreme human rights abuses, and that is what those who still brown-nose her are defending - albeit with their silence
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 10:58 AM

I now see a man smaller but more conceited than I thought - one who collects and stores everything said about him - even comments on an internet forum. That's really rather sad. Even sadder than my finding that I agree in some respects with Olly and Ake.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 11:08 AM

The Belgrano...

If you shoot someone in the back, it isnt easy convincing the police he was attacking you. They may work on the idea he was running away from the confrontation. We werent at war with Argentina by the way. Our rules of engagement were defensive, and unless and until Parliament are informed otherwise, preemptive attacks are, by our own laws, war crimes. Doing dirty deeds on behalf of a bloodstained dictator over the border is not a legitimate defence measure.

But like I said, so long as her tomb has a sprung dance floor and so long as she doesn't die the same day as Scargill, (I don't like champagne THAT much) I'll be content.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 11:59 AM

Doesn't Bridge keep files? Why, what an efficient professional he must be!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 12:33 PM

Our rules of engagement were defensive
No they were not.
I was pointing out the liason between Thatcher and a fascist butcher
Galtieri was a fascist butcher, and Thatcher went to war against him, and he is gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 12:49 PM

Are we nearly there yet?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 01:09 PM

I always feel a little sorry for folks who use women's genitalia as terms of abuse....without c****s we would not be here?.....a very useful, multi-purpose piece of apperatus in my opinion.

Using the word as a term of abuse, often says more about the abuser than the abused.

I'm sad that you continually view me through one distorted lens Richard, I find most of your input very witty, often insightful, and find myself in agreement with much that you present here.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 01:12 PM

"Galtieri was a fascist butcher,"
Which makes two fascist butchers and a wannabe fascist butcher who befriends war criminals, helps them escape justice and even puts her party at his disposal to respactabalise his butchery - what's your point?
"and he is gone. "
So are the 3,197 victims of Thatcher's friend's regime. Luckily the "30,000 Chileans who survived imprisonment and severe torture by agents of Pinochet's secret police electric shock, beatings, near-drowning, and rape in secret detention facilities" hung around long enough to provide ample evidence of Pinochet's war crimes - and Thatcher's idea of "democracy". Are you really suggesting she was right ('right' being the operative word) to cherry-pick her favourite fascist buther as a role model?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 02:14 PM

Keith,

With respect;

You can say our rules of engagement were not defensive as much as you like, but on this; repeating it doesn't make it true.

The rules of engagement were under "green card." This is the same set of rules as used in Northern Ireland at the same time. If you accept The Falklands as being offensive, you have to say that Northern Ireland was too.

And that generates a whole concert of new songs.....

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 02:34 PM

without c****s we would not be here

Crunts? Counts? Clunts? Chairs? Cheers? Chains? Crisps?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 02:50 PM

Re the Belgrano. My thoughts on this are, had it been the other way round, the Argies would have done the same to one of ours.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 03:19 PM

Sorry Steve....my old eyes are not as good as they were...but I'm sure you know what I meant?

Re Belgrano....I think John is probably correct....I used to get all fired up about what i saw as a war crime.....but look at the even greater atrocities that were to come, under subsequent governments both Labour and Conservative.

We dont even blink an eye wnen the Chief of Staff kills thousands from his chair in the Oval office.

and this is only the beginning.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:10 PM

well whatever she did, is did.

If history teaches one thing, its that the past is always open to re-interpretation.


Thomas Cromwell has always been a nasty git to the story tellers. But the historians have always had a good word for him - even the story tellers are coming round nowadays.

Historians of the future will be able to see from this thread that she was a controversial character - lots of shades of opinion.

I think maybe you had to live in a mining area to really hate her. They will never put it right, what she did. Whole communities gone. Families rent assunder. Children you thought would grow up in trade ,paying a mortgage, having a family - living on the streets, heroin freely available in every small town.

There again, I guess the Boleyn family wouldn't have had much good to say about the hero of Wolf Hall.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: GUEST,sturgeon
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:18 PM

The use of the 'c' word is absolutely abhorrent at all times and in all circumstances.

Michael Grosvenor Myer is an obnoxious, anally-retentive toad.

Steve Shaw, were you referring to the famous actress Diana Dors (née Fluck)?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:19 PM

Very philosophical Al....and very true.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 04:31 PM

When I were a lad, both General Custer, and Bonnie Prince Charlie were heroes.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 05:04 PM

Aye...an' whit aboot "Bufflo bill" he wis a hero tae...the kin'a hero ye nivir hero.
Ma gran faithur seen him an' Sittin Bull at Fa'kirk Tryste 1911!!

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: GUEST,petecockermouth
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 05:22 PM

this has all gone a bit strange while i've up been up in edinburgh - still hate that thatcher ch*p though - some things don't change

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 06:46 PM

MGM is not obnoxious in the ordinary way of things. He has explained he was poorly, and apologised.

he is a nice person - we don't agree about much. But Mike and i agree that he is very nice.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 06:52 PM


The rules of engagement were under "green card." This is the same set of rules as used in Northern Ireland at the same time.

The rules of engagement are decreed by the government.
The task force was dispatched to retake the Falklands by force of arms, as the Argentinians had taken them.
The Conqueror sought and was granted permission from the government to engage.
The rules of engagement were to sink her.
Belgrano was under orders to sink a British carrier.
That is all established fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 08:44 PM

MGM is not obnoxious in the ordinary way of things. He has explained he was poorly, and apologised.

he is a nice person - we don't agree about much. But Mike and i agree that he is very nice.

OK, let's compromise: he's a very nice utterly self-obsessed self-serving egotistical puffed-up twat. I've been poorly too on many occasions, but I still don't resort to calling people cnuts whilst acting all offended when someone calls me something much milder. Do not defend the indefensible.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 10:07 PM

'he's a very nice utterly self-obsessed self-serving egotistical puffed-up twat. I've been poorly too on many occasions, but I still don't resort to calling people cnuts whilst acting all offended when someone calls me something much milder.'

So in the bronze medal postion is me, who isn't very nice - calls people cunts all the time.

The silver goes to Mike, who only calls people cunts when he's poorly and is nicer than me.

But in the gold medal position for niceness, comes Steve who does not resort to calling people cunts - but calls Mike 'a very nice utterly self-obsessed self-serving egotistical puffed-up twat.'

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 12 Aug 12 - 10:36 PM

"The use of the 'c' word is absolutely abhorrent at all times and in all circumstances.

oh no it's not.....!!!

it can be a very funny, affectionate and cuddly word in the right context and company...


..but then I've never been much of a fan of sanctimonious miseries [whatever their political persuasion]
imposing their petty narrow minded absolutes on all us scruffy unruly uncouth plebs....

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Musket
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 03:07 AM

Keith;

The established facts have not been established yet and are still locked away. It may well be that procedures had been followed, although it can hardly be offensive when the ruddy thing was effectively running away. It is an established fact that The Belgrano had orders to destroy British shipping and perhaps in the moral overview of 20/20 hindsight it averted a much larger carnage..

But she didn't know that, neither did her Ministers. One thing we do know is that the decision was not taken by local commanders assessing their situation but by No.10. She said as much at the time. The look on her face when a reporter questioned her at the time said it all. "How the hell did you know the decision was made here?"

If she asked us to rejoice the shooting gallery sitting duck murder of poor conscripts I can rejoice when she can no longer influence politicians through being alive. I lost a good mate in The Navy in that conflict, and allowing for single deaths being a tragedy and multiple deaths being a statistic, there were many statistical tragedies. I applaud her concern for a small farming community but wonder where her support for communities went a couple of years later?

I suppose when you have a sanction busting husband and a gun running son, you get a little confused over morals?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 04:26 AM

It was a strategic decision and rightly taken by government and High Command.
The Argentine Navy would not and did not run away.
They were maneuvering, and we have it from their Admiral that she was indeed out to get a carrier.
I'm off for a couple of weeks.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 05:03 AM

Richard Bridge. "I now see a man smaller but more conceited than I thought - one who collects and stores everything said about him - even comments on an internet forum."

Richard, are you saying that there is someone on this forum who collects and stores everything said about him, and that this even extends to comments on an internet forum? Whoever could this person be? We have to find him and subject him to psychiatric examination immediately.

It seems to me that there could be only two possible explanations for such bizarre behaviour. Either he suffers from a massively overbloated ego which could burst at any minute, or he is the victim of an outrageous inferiority complex. Either way, I'd have thought there is a serious risk of him saying 'boo' to anyone who might just turn out to be cleverer than he.

It sounds like the sort of thing Stalin would have done.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 05:14 AM

OCD?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 05:31 AM

I didn't deserve the gold, Al, as I now realise how inaccurate I was apropos of the "very nice" bit.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 06:21 AM

"and we have it from their Admiral that she was indeed out to get a carrier."
There is no certainty about this; it has been denied as having never been said.
The sinking of the Belgrano was, at best, a marginal war crime - the British government became so bogged down in defending it that they retreated into refusing to answer questions on "security" grounds.
'Security' surfaced again with the murder of Hilda Murrell.
The sinking was comparable to the machine-gunning of shipwrecked sailors by U-Boat crews on the grounds that they might "prove a future threat by returning to action".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 08:37 AM

Paranoid. That was the word I was searching for.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 12:25 PM

OCD - Orrible Chinese Doughnuts (thought everyone knew that!)

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 01:59 PM

The eyes of Caligula, and the lips of Marylin Munroe.

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: GUEST,guko
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 03:46 PM

Marylin Munroe

Who she?

Marilyn Monroe I know, but who's this other bint?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 12 - 04:08 PM

She's a ringer

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: Musket
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 04:27 AM

Which tower does she ring at?

Subject: RE: BS: Where now Thatcher haters?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Aug 12 - 04:42 AM

The bell tower of course