BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 05:03 AM

She stole our free school milk!

I've met Tony Benn too, as has Limpit, but she was a baby at the time and he's the only politician to have ever kissed her... he thought she was cute... I thought he was fantastic, and I'm honoured to own a table with one of his tea stains on it (it's got a wine glass stain from Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy too, somewhere under all the others...)

Glad you had a good time Cllr and Champagne Carol, you usually manage to!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Stu
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:46 AM

"Tony Benn!
Now there's a proper loony."

Not really - there's a man with a strong moral viewpoint that guides his politics. He recognises that above everything, people are important and every single man woman and child has the right to education, healthcare, housing, a job and the right to live peacefully within their community.

In the time I spent in the Tory party as a Young Conservative the thing that struck me most was the utter disregard for the less fortunate in society. There was very little understanding of the role of communities in everyday life especially in inner cities and the industrial heartlands; the importance of the role the large employers of the time played in cementing these communities wasn't understood in the slightest, and still isn't even though these communities have all but disappeared, replaced by the pseudo-meritocracy of the service industries and their target-driven, amorphous private-equity owned characterless companies, using people as a resource and giving very little back, and rarely engaging in the local communities they draw on for their staff (before they to flee overseas in the free-market rush to exploit the lower-paid in other countries, leaving people here jobless and frustrated).

The Tories never understood this, New Labour still doesn't and the fact ordinary taxpayers are now paying the inflated wages of those whose greed eventually crashed the system Thatcher so lovingly created and B&B courted is at the very least proof her lassaiz-faire system of economics is a failure.

I for one am glad the old crone lived to see it fail.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:35 AM

Well said Ray. The Polish banks that were never deregulated are now in teh best shape in Europe and so we are now going to Poland to work not vice versa.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: r.padgett
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:22 AM

Thanks for all of this which I have read with interest

Seems to be alot of venom encapsulated in a format worthy of many a University degree

Living through all the agro' too brings this more to life

I do not think that she has expressed any contra indications that she has done anything wrong (regretted any aspect) and I am afraid that Lord Tebbitt will continue his political views, as no doubt will Arthur Scargill

Political figures continue to egg on others and are also influenced by others with their own agendas, chiefly related to money and its uneven spread in society taking advantage of those who are not able to influence those decisions

Gas and electricity belonged to the people before it was sold off by Mrs Thatcher's administration to publicise and popularise the now discredited gambling share owning society in which we live

There is no market in gas and electricty. People are simply consumers of these essential products no matter how generated and are essentials of life ~"buy gas from electric board" if you pay by direct debit and have them both together ~ what the heck is this all about!! we will take the egg under the cap won't we!!

Biggest con and rip off cannot be allowed to continue

Renationalise them now, back into public owmwership and lets a level playing field properly monitored and subject to governmental scrutiny and accountabilty to the electorate

Ray

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: My guru always said
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 03:57 AM

Saw the title & thought 'Mike's enjoying himself then'!! Was there chocolate Mike? If there wasn't then it couldn't have been a MudGather, could it?

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 12:38 AM

If what Buik says is fact, he hangs Thatcher's deregulation by it. If what he says is fact, then that deregulation directly permitted the derivatives markets that have caused the current banking meltdown, and of course the international speculative pressure on shares would not have been possible while exchange control was in place.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM

I listened to Tony Benn at Warwick - what a fantastic speaker!
I can and do blame the Thatcher era for the systematic dismantling of UK industry and the resultant financial crisis that has followed. Selling off the nations assets so that private companies and their stockholders can push prices higher and higher and withdraw services anywhere where there is no profit regardless of the need of local inhabitants.
Sorry, Mike, I'm glad you and Carole had a good evening but that woman has caused too much misery to too many people for me to want any other news of her other than an obituary.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 04:15 PM

Maggie Thatcher didn't invent the ME generation, but she was at the helm when the movement became socially acceptable to many many more people. It was her head above the parapet. She is a politician, fair game, goes with the terror-tory (sic). She can take the flack. She offered a cure for the malais at the time, and didn't spare the medicine. We are overdosing now.

You wait till I get going on Blair. But that would be thread drift.

Red is a sartorial affectation, my political hue is that of pure, unadulterated, water, where found.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:17 PM

Facts for a change, instead of prejudices.

XG

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Cllr
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:01 PM

**It was all her fault** ha ha ha ha, gonna blame her for global warning next?
Cllr

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:57 PM

The deregulation of banking was her agenda.

And she ermoved exchange control.

Without those docrinaire blunders, banks would not have been suddenly vulnerable.

It was all her fault. And may the suffering she heaped upon others be returned to her with interest.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:37 PM

Well, you can bet they didn't do it to help out the Poles! ;-)

The French were similarly motivated by a desire to boost sales of Edith Piaf recordings, and the Germans unwittingly helped them by also being great fans of Ms Piaf.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:21 PM

Don't forget that the UK recording industry started the second world war to promote Vera Lynn's latest single.

XG

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:13 PM

Big Al ..... I have asked you before not to be obscure when you talk. Jump out, lad, and let us know what is inside .... let's have a little passion, eh?...... ***chuckle***

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 12:49 PM

Well, why is people getting in debt the fault of La Thatch...
well you'd know if you'd lived at the bottom of society in those years.

1) She initially allowed enormous pay settlemts to fuel inflation (for her own foul degraded vision of social engineering) whilst freezing incapacity benefit etc. An effective cut of nearly thirty per cent. - so if you wanted to fill the shopping trolley , or get a holiday - you flashed the plastic.

2) She pissed way kings ransoms and more on projects such as fund holding GP's and the national curriculum. Most of the money ending in the back pockets of her cronies.

3) With that money the country could have been got right after the ravages of the OPEC years. can you imagine petrol rising from less than 30p a gallon to over a pound in a handful of years - no other government has had to contend with that. And put up with the sneering morally ugly sons of bitches in the tory press.

4) She promulgated the idea of a painless war. Lots of miles away. lots of government contracts. Free dibs for all the rich cats and arms manafacturers. Victory parades. Photo opportunities , a few dead working class kids - no need to buy them more uniforms, or decent equpment on the battlefield, or let the disfigured ones get on the victory parade. Costs a bit though.

5) 28% of the manafacturing capacity gone in one year alone - so no prospect of earning money - although the adverts drip through to you on telly like the Chinese water torture - telling just what sort of life you could give your kids - if only you weren't a moral failure in tory terms.

Quite frankly if you're one of her mates - your sensibility and conscience has more holes in it than Blackburn, Lancashire.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 11:49 AM

Blame it all on someone else, never accept responsibility.
There was a telling line in this afternoon's play on Radio4, 'Adultery is no longer a resigning matter'. It was a play about politics and politicians, natch.

XG

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 11:18 AM

"Yes but, no but, she said we should borrow to finance our plans and aspirations, so it was all her fault!".

It's been a long time since I last saw anyone admitting fault, either in public or personal life. We live in finger-pointing times.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 11:07 AM

From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:06 AM

How on Earth can 'Huge personal debt problems' be the fault of Mrs Thatcher? People have borrowed way more than they should have,....

Right on the head, Paco!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 11:00 AM

I'm sure someone will do the same for him when he goes. He sounds like a hateful chap.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: GUEST,Elfcall
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:38 AM

I have a friend who has two bottles of champagne - a half bottle anf a full bottle ready for when MT finally goes. The difference?

If my friend is in work then he will only drink the half bottle if he has finished work then it is the full bottle!

Elf

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:31 AM

Tony Benn!
Now there's a proper loony.

XG

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:10 AM

Tony Benn must surely have met more Mudcatters, thanks to his folk festival tour with Roy Bailey. I am just guessing though.

I agree Mike, if only some of his colleagues had been convicted... 8-)

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 10:06 AM

How on Earth can 'Huge personal debt problems' be the fault of Mrs Thatcher? People have borrowed way more than they should have, from Banks that have bordered on ciminality by lending it to them.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Cllr
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:59 AM

I met Tony Benn a while back and while I can't say I agree with his politics, he was an excellant speaker and certainly a man of conviction which sadly cannot be said of a lot of his colleagues.
Cllr

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:59 AM

I am not calling her innocent, eric, but making the point that other guilty ones hid once (and some are hiding still) behind her skirts. So, while blaming Maggie for privatising, let's not allow the CEOs of the now private companies to go scot-free for their decisions either.

Maggie changed the cultural and moral fibre of English society. Even if one wants to apportion the biggest part of the blame to her, she still could not have done that single handed.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:50 AM

George, she may not be to blame for the current financial crisis, but she is to blame for the total gas/electricity rip off that will see a lot of old folks die of cold this winter because she privatised the power companies to make her rich friends and sharehoders richer.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Stu
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 09:20 AM

I patted Thatcher on the back when I was a Young Conservative in 1983. I really wish I'd just have twatted her around the head.

Met Tony Benn in Buxton last week, and he was a delightful chap. His integrity, moral strength and political intelligence was positively inspirational - the politics of people not profit. Wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 08:50 AM

Saw her in Aspen, Colorado, when she met with Bush senior, in the 90's.

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Cats
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 08:48 AM

Well done, Cllr & Champagne Carol. We appreciate how important she is to you both. I suspect that David Cameron, who as you know I met and locked horns with in the summer, won't hold such a legacy in people's hearts.. definitley not mine for calling teachers complacent!

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 08:11 AM

Don't get me wrong, I am no Thatcher-lover. But I have to smile at the way all the ills of the past are laid exclusively at her feet, as if nobody else ever did anything wrong, and as if many of us (the collective "us", not necessarily individuals on this forum) did not willingly follow her path of loose ethics in hope of riches. Why, I already heard her blamed for the current economic crisis. What happens when Maggie finally pops her clogs? Who will be blamed after that? I am reminded of the closing lines of Kavafi's poem "Waiting for the Barbarians":

"...And now, what will we do without Barbarians?
These people were a sort of a solution after all."

We need our Maggies/Barbarians, to makes us feel good about themselves. But how honest is that?

Mike, I know your heart is in the right place, and that you also admired Maggie. So, even as I cringe at the thought of myself ever shaking hands with her, I confess to being pleased for you!

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 07:37 AM

Here we go again!

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 07:22 AM

Is there anything she did that has proved worthwhile in the long run?
apart from leave office? eventually!

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Paul Burke
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 06:46 AM

Glad you enjoyed it. I wish the rest of us could enjoy her legacy as much.

Deregulated city- what a triumph.
Huge personal debt problems thanks to above.
Weak manufacturing, let the Chinese do it all.
Privatised utilities effectively keeping our costs down.
Best public transport system in Europe, if you happen to be running it rather than using it.
Dumbest kids for generations thanks to national curriculum.
Private pensions- oh, no, wrong there, I haven't got a private pension (any more).

Is there anything she did that has proved worthwhile in the long run?

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Cllr
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 06:21 AM

champagne carol was there so at least two mudcatters attended, does that count as mud gather? anyway Lord Tebbit of chingford aka chingford skinhead (i want that as my new mudcat name) gave the main speech which showed his usual exeptional skill as an orator, and sorry to disapoint you but maggs was in great form. We didnt expect her to come round and meet everyone but she did and was fine, a little frail, but fine. it was amazing to see her again and talk to her and shakehands champagne carol says sh will never wash her hands again!

anyway champagne carol and I had a fantastic evening.
Cllr

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 06:05 AM

You may remember her, but she won't remember you.

XG

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:48 AM

Too subtle, Richard. On her track record, a heavy glass ashtray in a handbag ?

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:22 AM

pickaxe handle?

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: GUEST,Boris the bat
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 03:52 AM

I was hanging around, hoping to share a little snort with Maggers, but was bowled over in the rush :-(

Boris

Subject: RE: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 12:52 AM

You lucky sod. ;-) I missed it, but Penelope Rutledge may have been there. I'll email her and find out.

Subject: BS: Margaret Thatcher meets mudcatter
From: Cllr
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 11:56 PM

i had the marvellous chance to say hello to maggie tonight at the Bruges dinner,had a fantastic evening. Any other mudcatters there? cllr