BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...

Subject: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 03 May 15 - 09:36 AM

Me, I hate the evil old cow and everything she stands for (including Thatcher Ice-Cream) and regard her savage tenure as one of this country's darkest hours BUT I'm sure opinions vary - especially for that happy few who benefited from others' misery and continue to rejoice in their ill-gotten filth and privilege to this day.

What sayest thou?

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 15 - 09:47 AM

It's not easy having to admit for a long time my favourite drink
was Thatcher's Cider.

'Thankfully' blood pressure and cholesterol have conspired to almost completely
resolve that dilemma..

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 May 15 - 09:52 AM

"What sayest thou?"
That this thread will disappear faster than Thatchers Ice Cream in the mid-day sun
Nice to find something we agree on though
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 03 May 15 - 10:04 AM

Mother Knows Best (Warning: Loud Rock & Roll and hot electric guitar contained in this link.)

I feel your pain, pfr. I have to use a "Reagan" 5th string capo on one of my banjos that has no RR spikes.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Musket
Date: 03 May 15 - 11:32 AM

Why the fascination with the bitch?

She is dead. Hurrah.

Move on.

Before long, History Channel will be doing documentaries asking how we can learn from her evil legacy in the same way they do now with Hitler.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 03 May 15 - 12:11 PM

the t******r cider is pretty good. i have to point and say 'pint of THAT cider please' or you can ask for a stowford press and will probably be told 'havn't got it -will this do?'
'ok -cheers'

i'm pleased to note that my hatred has only deepened over the years as i get a better understanding of what she was about.
don't need reminding of how a large minority of the country can easily reject a thoroughly decent, humane and intelligent man (foot) to elect a vicious, ignorant government who are working against the interests of all but a tiny minority of the people who elected them.

at least that could never happen these days - come on people, don't get fooled again!

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 May 15 - 12:52 PM

And yet people voted for her!
She never lost an election.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:03 PM

yeah.. funny that... neither did Hitler at the height of his popularity...???

Thatcher successfully bribed voters on our estate with the right to buy their council houses,
then within a years or so the factory the estate depended on closed down
and they were all made redundant and unable to keep up mortgage payments...

My old mum is still in her's
[despite bullying from a rogue housing agency official - who got sacked a few years ago],
because my parents stayed renters on principle..

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:06 PM

"She never lost an election."
Which is a sad reflection on her success in creating a divided country - haves versus have-nots, housed versus homeless, employed versus unemployed, North versus South.
It is also an indication of how Parliamentary Democracy only serves the better-off and the Establishment.
Her being elected in no way alters her undemocratic behaviour and her declared support of murderous extremism - straight out of the horse's mouth.
Not only was she what people say she was, she implicated the British people in her extremism - should be enough for anybody.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:19 PM

Does Thatcher's Cider have anything to do with the crazy old inhuman hag who rode our country into the ground? I think, perhaps not.

Thatcher Ice-Cream, OTOH, has everything to do with her and stands testimony to the cynical essense of the woman - i.e. sell them less and charge them more, or snatch it off them altogether.

Otherwise...

Why the fascination with the bitch?

There was a Thatcher squabble broke out above the line. Fearful of The Red Thread Death, I opened this as a more suitable arena for some theraputic corpse-kicking - or else apology for the evil old shit bag, whatever you find the most obscene really.

And yet people voted for her!

It was the closest this country's ever came a Fascist State since the Norman Conquest - the North was Harried afresh. People were bewitched by the bloody spectacle of it all - much as they were in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: akenaton
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:20 PM

Oh get real guys, it wasn't Margaret Thatcher's fault that our industry became uncompetitive, that is what happens in this type of economic system.
Investment goes where profits can be made.....why cant the "left" understand that.....Margaret Thatcher did and gained capitalism another few years grace.

We cant fix this system or make it in any way equitable, Mrs Thatcher ran it efficiently and in the interests of those who control it.

That's the way it is guys, all the "liberal" ideology is bullshit when we get down to the wire.

Mrs Thatcher although the antithesis of my political views, has been made a scapegoat for the stupidity of the liberal left.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:39 PM

"Oh get real guys, it wasn't Margaret Thatcher's fault that our industry became uncompetitive"
The responsibility for the national economy lies with the government of the day - it is why they are elected.
Whoever or whatever te reasons for the state of the economy, Thatcher adopted a policy of making the less well off pay, her main method being to create a subservient work force.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 15 - 01:48 PM

1980s - Factory closures in small provincial towns with few other large employers..

tough.. they weren't competitive enough..

..survival of the fittest / law of the jungle economics...

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: akenaton
Date: 03 May 15 - 02:13 PM

Yes PFR...exactly!.....Isn't it time we learned that?

When in the "jungle" don't walk about with your eyes closed, or your mind.

Jim you know British industry had been in decline well before Thatcher came to power.....even she couldn't fight the system....not that she wanted to.....but neither did Blair and his "Labour" govt.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 15 - 02:23 PM

ake - well.. there was more than a touch of irony and sadness/ire to what I just posted..

But, agreed, a clear objective analysis of reality is a necessary starting point...

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Stanron
Date: 03 May 15 - 03:14 PM

This was written after punkfolkrocker's post of 01:48. Apologies to subsequent posts.

It's a constant source of wonder to me as to how people who are otherwise intelligent and capable of intellectual discrimination can continue to fall for the hypocracy and dishonesty that is at the heart of today's Labour party.

Maybe it's the original idealism that is essentially 'fair shares' that keeps people locked to a party who's indisputable legacy is a history of constant betrayal of the people it claims to represent.

Here's a bit of history. Up to almost halfway through the 20th century Britain had an Empire. With the Empire Britain had a large captive market for it's industries. You'll see the names of British manufacturers all over Indian railways even today.

Ignoring for the moment which party was idealogically opposed to the whole concept of Empire, once it was gone Britain's industries were over producing, outdated, war weary and unsustainable. Some one should have managed the shrinking and reforming of our industrial base right after the war. Instead of that Labour nationalised it all and the trade unions forbade any reduction.

Every Labour government that has lasted long enough, that is a full term or more, left the country bankrupt so when the Tories got in their efforts were always in repairing the economy, rather than tackling the Unions and restructuring Industry. Maggie at least had the time and courage to take the unions on and thank goodness she won. She de-nationalised a range of industries and let the market place wield it's own axe. Brutal, I admit, but badly needed.

Of course a lot of people hate her for that but you have to be an idiot not to see that it had to be done by somebody and the later it was left the worse it got to be.

It's by no means all over. Labour still denies any overspending, still expouses the ludicrous belief that you can create wealth by spending it and still wants to pay for today by taxing the future. The Roman equivalent was 'bread and circues', but Rome only paid for that by conquest and the expansion of it's empire. In todays world we don't have that option. We have to live within our means and right now we are not even doing that.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Stu
Date: 03 May 15 - 03:25 PM

I patted her on the back once, at the Young Conservatives rally at Wembley just before the 1983 election. I was 17 and desperately homesick for Brum and had fell in with the local YC group from the posh village we had moved; they liked a drink and a good row so that was fine be me - there was sod all else to do and I was friendless. However, the behaviour of some of these little shits on the way back from the jolly to the smoke, especially towards some of the folk from the people's march for jobs was appalling, and I was pretty disgusted.

A motnh or two later an ardent socialist came to talk at our branch and every word he said made sense, and that was that. I stopped pretending to believe the tory line and left the little toffs to themselves; I was glad to be out of it.

As for Thatcher . . . a contemptible harridan.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 May 15 - 03:48 PM

"Every Labour government that has lasted long enough, that is a full term or more, left the country bankrupt so when the Tories got in their efforts were always in repairing the economy"
Nothing to do with the system that Tory Governments and now Labour governments have dedicated to propping up, of course - always the fault of "that other lot"
Past Labour Governments have attempted to solve economic problems without hurting the lesser-well-off too much - the Tories have never bothered and have just gone in with the boot from day one.
Nowadays, their policies have become virtually indistinguishable.
Thatcher made no bones about her contempt for workers rights and the conditions they/we lived in, so when she came to power, she went straight for the jugular.
THATCHER YEARS STATISTICS
THE RESULT
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 May 15 - 05:13 PM

someone organised a cider festival with all the big hitters involved Thatchers, Strongbow, Bulmers etc

one Dorset wag remarked - that ain't a praper cider festival, that a 'shit you find in the back of the fridge' festival.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 05:31 PM

Those people who think thank God, she smashed the unions, had better explain why we have governments who can ignore public sector pay review bodies with impunity, who can completely do away with any idea of job security, who can see hundreds of thousands on contracts that don't guarantee work, that ditches people off jobseekers in order to call them self-employed, that clobbers teachers with mountains of useless bureaucracy, that invents fake apprenticeships that pay kids a couple of quid an hour to keep them off job seekers and that puts unqualified people in charge of our kids in schools. I'm waiting...

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 05:51 PM

Got so mad there that me singulars and plurals got a bit mixed up. :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: akenaton
Date: 03 May 15 - 05:56 PM

Mr Blair was more successful than Mrs Thatcher in "smashing the Unions" Steve.   Don't you remember?

Thatcher polarised opinion. Blair assassinated the Union movement in his bid to privatise Britain.

The law of the jungle and Blair was a big beast, a winner of elections, a media pin up boy, a war criminal.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 06:00 PM

I was taking on a point made by Stanron. Do try to follow the threads and try to make points based on rational thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 06:07 PM

Thank you for those two links, Jim, which anyone following this thread should read. They make Stanron look like Cameron's publicity agent.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: akenaton
Date: 03 May 15 - 06:13 PM

Cant you address your posts to specific people, when that is your intention Steve?
I thought this thread was about Mrs Thatcher and her policies.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jeri
Date: 03 May 15 - 06:13 PM

Apparently, Sarah Palin liked her (apparently, a lot more than Thatcher liked Palin.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 May 15 - 06:21 PM

Its a shame Thatcher is buried in a protected military cemetery - otherwise I'd be mopre than happy to incur the cost of a trip to the UK to shit on her grave.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 07:09 PM

I can post in whatever manner I choose, Akenaton. My point about union-bashing was very direct even though I didn't mention Stanron by name in that post. He was the only person in the thread so far who had defended Thatcher's union-bashing so it was obvious to anyone properly following the thread whose point I was addressing. As I said, try to follow the threads and respond accordingly. That would make a pleasant change.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 15 - 07:11 PM

I'd pay your fare if you'd bring the bumwipe, Greg.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Musket
Date: 03 May 15 - 07:18 PM

I thought she was cremated?

If she had been buried, her grave would have needed a sprung dance floor. We ex miners have dodgy knees....

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,#
Date: 03 May 15 - 07:20 PM

I expect she was buried in the ground then cremated much further down in the earth. Just a thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 May 15 - 03:59 AM

"Mr Blair was more successful than Mrs Thatcher in "smashing the Unions"
Utter nonsense.
thatcher deliberately took on Britain's most effective and dedicated Trades Union and won - the rest was easy for whoever followed her.
There has been enough written to show that this was a deliberate policy with long-term aims.
She went to the same lengths as any other dictator would go to, falling short of actual coup, the clearest evidence was her her use of the police and her intended use of the Army to crush the miners besieged mining villages, arrests, entry into homes, open violence towards demonstrators....
THATCHER'S LEGACY
Her declared admiration for Pinochet and her description of him as a hero of democracy should convince any doubters - usually met with a blanket silence from her supporter.
Wherever she is buried, this should be her marker, so we don't forget what she was about

"Epitaph for the eighties? "there is no such thing as society"
Prime minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 04:30 AM

A more balanced view from The Independent.

"Baroness Thatcher defeated Labour at three general elections and forced the party to drag itself into the modern world by supporting market forces; privatisation; reform of employment laws to reduce the power of the trade unions; lower taxation for individuals and business; an independent nuclear deterrent; a "special relationship" with America; public services geared more to consumers than producers and the sale of council houses to their tenants.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the two principal architects of New Labour, were dubbed "sons of Thatcher" for embracing her free-market reforms. Labour's conversion was epitomised by Mr Brown. In 1989, as a rising Labour star, he wrote a book called Where there is greed... Margaret Thatcher and the Betrayal of Britain's Future. It was dedicated to his Dunfermline East constituents who, he said, "have more reason than most to look forward to the end of the Thatcher era." Yet after becoming Prime Minister in 2007, Mr Brown inviting her to Downing Street and Chequers as he tried to bolster his own credentials as leader of the nation.

After the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, the voters might not have trusted Labour to run the country again unless Lady Thatcher had diluted the unions' power. She forced them to hold ballots before strikes; opened them up to claims for damages if they took illegal industrial action and curbed the closed shop (which required workers to join a union). As shadow Employment Secretary, Mr Blair took on the unions and Labour left by accepting the key Thatcher reforms. On becoming Labour leader in 1994, he announced plans to ditch Clause IV of the party's constitution, its commitment to old-style public ownership, a change which mirrored the Thatcher privatisation programme.

Mr Blair deliberately copied the style of Lady Thatcher. He was determined to project a tough image to the public and to impose his will on his party and, when in power, on his Cabinet. Neither leader wanted to "waste time" on internal arguments. Both had a small trusted circle of people who were "one of us".

Lord Mandelson, another founder of New Labour, told The Independent: "Labour went through a near-death experience in the 1980s. We turned ourselves round but the effect of Margaret Thatcher was to remind the Labour Party that it had to listen to the public and not just its activist base in order to be re-elected. In particular, we had to speak to the aspirational working class to whom Lady Thatcher appealed and who we had to win back."

The former Cabinet minister admitted Labour would never have been able to reform employment laws or privatise utilities because of opposition from the trade unions. But because the Thatcher Government had made the changes, he said, Labour could decide not to reverse them."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-thatchers-legacy-spilt-milk-new-labour-and-the-big-bang--she-changed-ever

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 04:32 AM

Sorry, link no good.
Google some of the text.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Musket
Date: 04 May 15 - 04:33 AM

I liked the first line best. "A more balanced view from The Independent."

Nice one.

🐮💩

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 04:45 AM

Thanks Musket for your unexpected support.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 May 15 - 05:04 AM

"A more balanced view from The Independent."
You have the been given the statistics of Thatcher's reign and its consequences for the people of Britain
Whatever is claimed about what other parties migt or might not have been able to achieve - she failed and because she used us in her 'Social Engineering' experiment, we paid the price, and are still paying it.
Wouldn't it be better to actually address the facts of her reign of terror rather than digging up meaningless press opinions
Politically, she failed, but it was Thatcher's view of people (or lack of it) that made he what she was.
At least her Tory predecessors had a streak of benevolence and humanity about them - she had none - the facts and her own statements confirmed that - try addressing them.
ANOTHER, MAYBE NOT SO "BALANCED" VIEW FROM THE INDEPENDENT
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 May 15 - 05:32 AM

She turned this country into a dog-eats-dog, every man for himself philistine place in which unregulated spivs in the City could make a fast buck or million and in which whole communities were thrown on the scrapheap. She started the cut-price sell off of national assets that were not hers to sell (they were ours). She formed a special relationship with an American president who was little more than an ignorant thug and she was swept back into power on the back of a war over a lump of rock that should never have been ours in the first place (doing it with the help of a murderous military dictator). It gave those of us with a bit more conscience no pleasure at all to see Blair enthusiastically assuming her mantle.

There. That's a balanced view for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 04 May 15 - 06:00 AM

As I key this in, homelessness protesters are occupying an old Bank of England branch in Liverpool. They've barricaded themselves in so effectively that the bailiffs have been unable to serve a high court injunction on them. What's more, at a time when police resources are allegedly stretched to breaking point, the whole area is crawling with "Thatchers thugs in blue".

Homelessness.
The bedroom tax.
Cuts to local authority services.
Benefit sanctions.
An NHS which is dying on its feet.
Zero hours contracts.
Workfare.
Privatisation of everything which hasn't been privatised already.

Just a few of the things which Thatcher's legatees have inflicted on us.

I think I hear an army.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:18 AM

More balance.
Some historians writing for BBC.

Extract,
"The fact that Thatcher won 13.7 million votes in the 1987 general election, compared to 13 million in 1983, or that northern seats such as Darlington or Barrow and Furness, Labour seats in 1979, turned blue in 1983 and 1987, point to a far more nuanced approach.

As someone who was born in 1981, I do not pretend to remember much of the decade: for myself, it is as much a part of history as the 1945 postwar government. But as history, we must not allow politics to blind ourselves from reaching an impartial and balanced picture of the achievements and failings of the Thatcher government."

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:19 AM

Forgot link.
http://www.historyextra.com/thatcher

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:29 AM

And your point is.....?
Youhave yet to respond to one single researched figure put up
How can that possibly be "balanced"?
Not one of your quotes have contradicted those facts
"The fact that Thatcher won 13.7 million votes in the 1987 general election, compared to 13 million in 1983, or that northern seats such as Darlington or Barrow and Furness"
Your uncredited "more balanced" quotes come from Sir Max Hastings and Chris Skidmore, a historian and Conservative MP - lora - lorra balance there!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Musket
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:30 AM

How's the balancing act coming on Keith?

😹😹😹

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:36 AM

Paddy Ashdown,
"Though there will be many who saw her as the author of much destruction that we still mourn, much that she pulled down needed to be pulled down.

She was better as destroyer of old tired institutions and lazy ways of thinking than she was as the builder of new ones; better at defining divisions than building cohesion. But probably that's what Britain needed then. Had we on the left not grown so lazy about our addictions to the easy ways of state corporatism, she would perhaps have been less successful at so cruelly exposing their hollowness. "
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/what-did-margaret-thatcher-do-britain

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:42 AM

The saddest thing about the whole Northern Ireland conflict was that the Brighton Hotel bomber didn't manage to kill her.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 May 15 - 07:47 AM

The Economist.
"Her combination of ideological certainty and global prominence ensured that Britain played a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union that was disproportionate to its weight in the world. Mrs Thatcher was the first British politician since Winston Churchill to be taken seriously by the leaders of all the big powers. She was a heroine to opposition politicians in eastern Europe. Her willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with "dear Ronnie" to block Soviet expansionism helped to promote new thinking in the Kremlin. But her readiness to work with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, also helped to end the cold war.

Mrs Thatcher's privatisation revolution spread around the world. Other EU countries followed her example, if not her rhetoric: in 1985-2000 European governments sold off some $100 billion-worth of state assets, including national champions such as Lufthansa, Volkswagen and Renault. The post-communist countries embraced it heartily: by 1996 Russia had privatised some 18,000 industrial enterprises. India part-dismantled the licence Raj, and unleashed a cavalcade of successful companies. Across Latin America governments embraced market liberalisation. Whether they did this well or badly, all of them looked to the British example.

At home, her legacy was more complicated. Paradoxes abound. She was a true-blue Tory who marginalised the Tory Party for a generation. The Tories ceased to be a national party, retreating to the south and the suburbs and all but dying off in Scotland, Wales and the northern cities. Tony Blair profited more from the Thatcher revolution than John Major, her successor: with the trade unions emasculated and the left discredited, he was able to remodel his party and sell it triumphantly to Middle England. His huge majority in 1997 ushered in 13 years of New Labour rule.

She was also an enemy of big government who presided over a huge expansion of it. Her dislike of the left-wing councils that dominated many British cities was so great that she did more than any other post-war prime minister to bind local governments into an ever tighter net of restrictions. She had no time for the idea of elected mayors who united real power with real responsibility. Britain became much more like highly centralised France than gloriously decentralised America.
Yet her achievements cannot be gainsaid.
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21576081-margaret-thatcher-britains-prime-minister-1979-1990-died-april-8th-age

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Ed T
Date: 04 May 15 - 08:26 AM

Margaret Thatcher Died at the Ritz: poem by Anna Chen 

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 May 15 - 08:47 AM

More quotes and no response to the facts Keith
Yours was a quote from the obituary in The Economist, they always say nice things when you die and none of them mention her tearing Britain in half - or all the other atrocities she committed - I'd settle for an explanation of her support for Pinochet's take on democracy.
"the Brighton Hotel bomber didn't manage to kill her."
We spent New Years Eve in Brighton a few months after the Brighton bombing and we were standing at the par of a pub, when a total stranger, a well spoken, well dressed middle aged lady said to us:
"How do you know Michael Tebbitt is a fast reader?"
Somewhat bemused, we replied, "Don't know"
"Because he got through five stories in five seconds".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Musket
Date: 04 May 15 - 08:58 AM

I see the history revisionists are at it again.

Sanitising Th*tcher. Almost as disgusting as sanitising the First World War...

Although the dead soldiers fought for what they thought would be a better society, Th*fcher fought originally for what Keith Joseph and Nicholas Ridley told her to fight for and later fought for her sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Pro / Anti Thatcher Squabble Thread...
From: Stanron
Date: 04 May 15 - 09:07 AM

I am not a big fan of statistics, after all if you can't lie with statistics you're not really trying. However for those of you who can't be bothered to plough through the links provided by Jim Carroll here's a synopsis of one of them. It's from the BBC so I can't really attack it as dodgy at source. I'll leave it to someone else to do the other one.

Inflation down from nearly 25% in 1976 to approximately 2% in 1993. Isn't that a good thing?

In the same period unemployment doubled from 1.5 milliom to 3. Obviously not a good thing but an inevitable result of resizing our industrial base all in one go. This could have been managed over a fifty year period had the unions allowed anyone to attempt it, and the dreadful effects that came from this might have been ameliorated.

Coal production came down. Big deal. What's the point in mining it if you don't use it? I don't remember much talk about CO2 emissions back then but didn't we still have coal gas at the start of that period and North Sea gas at the end?

GDP Two recessions and two booms. The commentary links the the recessions to the attempts to reduce inflation. In the long term inflation has been reduced. I remember thinking at the time of Blaire's election that it was kind of ironic that the Tories had finally stabalised the economy only to be thrown out and unable to build on it. Is the same thing about to happen again?

Interest rates. A 17% high in 1980 down to just over 5% in 1993. Anyone fancy paying 17% on their mortgage?

Council houses. She sold em. Yes OK and she also kept the money. She was, of course, at war with Labour councils or rather they were at war with her. I presume she had no intention of funding such a vigorous opposition.

House prices. They went up until 1989 then started to fall back again. I wouldn't be surprised if they went up again later on.

So what exactly does any of this prove except that the economy was a real basket case when she came into office and it was more or less sorted before Blaire and Browne got their chance to screw it all up again.