Former prime minister Baroness Thatcher has died aged 87, after suffering a stroke. Baroness Thatcher was the first female prime minister, and notorious for being a 'Marmite' prime minister - you either loved her or hated her! However, she did have a lot of accomplishments in her long run. It is not quite so known that she had previously helped invent soft-serve ice cream! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10364876 Unfortunately, the BBC's Android news app reported that she died following a strike - a somewhat apt typo! RIP Maggie - I for one thought you did a great job as PM.
Many loved her and many hatted her. Can't say us up north liked her much. The odd thing is that Yahoo Japan had the news up a whole hour before the UK BBC news site. Just shows how much they cared I guess.
She did what she believed in, it's a pity there aren't more politicians like her. Arthur Scargill on the other hand is still trying to feather his own nest.
I live in a mining town, Thatcher destroyed my hometown when she closed the 20 local mines and my uncle took his own life towards the end of the miners strike because its the only way his family could have kept their home due to his debts, she could have solved the union problems in other ways but she just destroyed them instead taking most of the industry's with them....hope she likes the warm place she's in now.
We live in very different worlds. She ruined the country and we are still feeling the horrors of her iron fisted policies even today.
Too right, maybe we should privatise her funeral and give it to the lowest bidder...would be fitting karma for her.
Won't happen. Wouldn't she get the whole fanfare funeral? I can't comment on her as I am in Australia but i do have a few mates from the uk (england, Scotland) and they weren't fans. One of these make the rich richer types.
I think Ashdown put it correctly on the news before, "She was great at destroying things and recognising change was needed, however she was appalling at building things back up again. She was a destroyer, some of which was necessary". I've got no strong feelings for the woman one way or the other, my folks on the other hand have an absolute jet black hate for the woman and are glad she's dead. Thatcher-ism was synonymous with evil in our house growing up, I'd also heard the "make the rich, richer" saying a lot more than once as well.
Self funded as far as I know, she didn't want a state funeral ether because she was worried about the cost to the tax payer apparently...lol
I know a lot of people think like that about Margaret Thatcher, but she was all for people breaking through class barriers. She allowed a lot of people to buy their council houses at a vastly discounted price. She didn't like the layabouts who hid behind a union and acted as if they were owed everything. I dreaded having to listen to the idiots celebrate that she died, but at least they've made themselves known & we know to avoid them. However I'd take a "make the rich, richer" politician over the left wing alternative of "making myself richer". I'd blame Arthur Scargill. The original plan was to close some of the pits that weren't profitable, it was only when the pits were closed for a year that the rest lost their customers. He was only in it for the money, which is why he stole the money that was collected that was meant for the strikers & bought a house with it. The union has finally got a court order so they don't have to keep paying for his flat in London. The union members have suffered so he can live the high life. If he'd held a strike ballot and won then the miners would have been able to receive benefits, but it was considered an illegal strike. He didn't hold a ballot because he thought he'd lose and he wouldn't be able to profit from it. He thought that it would be as successful as the miners strike in the 1970's that toppled the conservative government, but Margaret Thatchers government were more prepared. She did a good job of making sure the country wasn't held to ransom like the winter of discontent under the labour government when rubbish wasn't collected and people weren't being buried. Andy Ghilchrist tried to pull a similar stunt with the firemans union, fortunately he was found out putting expensive meals through on expenses (£817 for an indian meal). I feel sorry for the people who were manipulated by union leaders, but to put the blame on the politicians who had to deal with the mess is a little unfair. So no, I'm not celebrating that she died. I wouldn't even celebrate Tony Blair dying and he did much worse things to this country.
Are you joking? Were you even around during this time?....here's just a sample of how bad she was, As Education secretary under Edward Heath in a foretaste of what is to come, stops free milk for school children.She later deregulates school meals so all they have on the menu is burger and chips! The health of the nation was not something Thatcher thought any of her concern. ------------------------------------- Shamelessly uses the 'race card' to get elected PM in 1979! "We are being flooded!" she asserts despite figures showing emigration higher than immigration and immigration at its lowest post-war level. One of her idols was Enoch Powell (the 'intellectual' racist). She promotes Keith 'Eugenics' Joseph to Education Minister! -------------------------------- Monetarism! Disastrous policy of trying to control money supply. In the first of her two recessions (the worst since the 1930's), one fifth of our industrial base is wiped out and unemployment is more than doubled, there are summer riots in every inner-city in the country. Not bad for her first 2 years in office! In the first of many U-turns, she abandons monetarism. Polls predict Labour landslide and despite the resolute support of the press, she is the most unpopular PM on record. How could she possibly get out of this one? ------------------------------------- The Falklands! In a gross piece of incompetence (or was it deliberate?) fails to avert the Falklands crisis by ignoring intelligence on the Argentine preparation for invasion in early 1982. Indeed she seems to encourage it by proposing scrapping the only warship we have there and having her defence secretary openly say we didn't want the Falklands, thereby giving the impression we are not bothered about the islands! In 1978 when faced with the same intelligence, the Labour government quietly averts a war through diplomatic channels by threatening to send a taskforce. It's the classic tale, to divert attention from disastrous economic policies at home a crooked leader engages in a foreign war. Perhaps Thatcher was getting advise from some of the brutal dictatorships she helped prop up in South America, "Would you like some more tea Mr Pinochet?". Number of British soldiers killed, 278, Argentines, 3000+. Blood on her hands anyone? ------------------------------------- Destruction of local democracy. The beauty of not having a written constitution, having the backing of the press, having a massive majority in parliament (despite only getting 42% of the vote, less than 1 in 3 of the electorate) and having a permanent inbuilt Tory hereditory second chamber is that Tory PMs can do whatever they like. If you dont like local democracy because they vote for someone else, just abolish it like Thatcher did and centralise everything from Whitehall and unelected Quangos who you carefully select. The popular GLC was scrapped despite over 80% of Londoners being opposed. Londoners have to wait over 13 years before getting an assembly back and electing Livingstone as its leader once again. ------------------------------------- Politicising the civil service. See point about QUANGOs above. Also if you dont like what statistics the statistics office is publishing, make sure you stop them collecting the statistics and stop them publishing them. The figures that were published on individual wealth and earnings each year were abolished in this way. ------------------------------------- The widening gap between rich and poor. This might not be such a bad thing if the gap had not been so massive in the first place. How can the richest 50% owning 97% of the wealth be fair? This was her starting position she moved wealth almost exclusively to the richest 10% at the expense of the poorest 50%. ------------------------------------- Spend, spend, spend! Abolishing credit controls seemed such a good idea, the economy booms on a consumer spending bubble....cue second crippling recession. Thanks Margaret! Not to mention the misery caused to millions of people suckered into debts and negative equity! Spend, spend, spend also applied to government borrowing which despite claims of financial prudence increased massively under Thatcher to fund income tax cuts for the rich. ------------------------------------- Homelessness for the young. Why should homelessness be the preserve of ageing tramps who remember the 1930's. No! Thatcher thought the opportunities should be open to all. Young beggars on the streets were Thatcher's invention. The legacy of massive youth unemployment and crime no-go areas for the police are still being fought today. There is a whole generation of people where crime and welfare culture was their only way of surviving and it became their mindset. ------------------------------------ The Poll Tax! Regardless of how you view this in theory, apart from its regressive nature, it quite plainly was unworkable. They knew that it was going to be ridiculously expensive to collect, that there was overwhelming opposition to it (it ruined the 1991 census) and was going to mean massive non-payment and it was responsible for some of the worst rioting ever seen in central London but they pressed ahead anyway. Another U-turn inevitably came! ------------------------------------- The myth of the strong leader. This was a total invention of the press. Thatcher's only strength (if you could call it that) was that she had no principles at all! She was an anti-smoking campaigner who ended up on the payroll of British American Tobacco. She had to do a U-turn on her 'flagship' economic policy after 2 years because she had wrecked the economy (see point 3) (This was just one year after her famous speech in 1980 where she assured the party faithful she was going to stick to monetarist policies-"You turn if you want to...the lady's not for turning"-yeah right!!). The Poll Tax was a disaster which she had to U-turn on (but too late to save her from being stabbed in the back!). She went to Europe saying she was against federalism but signed its most federalist law (the Single European Act in 1986). She later claimed she was tricked on this. Did she even know what she was doing? Some strong leader that is! And to top it all off, even in departure she was weak. "I fight on, I fight to win" she said in her pompous way before quietly resigning hours later when confronted by Ministers like Geoffrey Howe!!! It was the final U-turn from a weak puppet leader whose only qualities (as far as the Tories were concerned) were she did what she was told. ------------------------------------- Degradation of the social professions. Social workers were virtually denounced as criminals! Teachers were so derided and there pay so eroded it barely survived as a profession and things like mental health, just loose them out on the streets, Thatcher's government didnt care what they did! ------------------------------------- Victorian Values. Yes before its Back to Basics successor under Major, Thatcher promised to take us back to Victorian morality and she nearly succeeded. We were not far away from child labour and seething slums of humanity and disease. I reckon Thatcher needed one more term for that!! She also took care to defend to the hilt her countless Ministers who were caught with their trousers down or hands in the till or both in some cases! Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer (3 times), Jonathon Aitkin (twice)... etc. etc. the list goes on. ----------------------------------- Over-privatisation and overt corruption. Oh the beauty of it, a totally dominant monopoly privatised at a discount price to big business (lots of it foreign owned) so they can cream off profits to their hearts content. Who can do without Water, Gas, Electricity? We can charge what we like! Plus we get the bonus of nice jobs on more Quangos OfWat, OfGas, Of-with taxpayers cash we go. With Ministers interchanging between the boardrooms of the newly privatised companies and the regulating boards on massive salaries. Even husband and wife teams, remember Mr and Mrs Howe, one a consultant with a privatised firm, his wife the regulator. Anyone for insider dealing calls out Mrs Archer! Oh jolly good show! Even industries that plainly werent feasible for privatisation like bus and rail, go for it, it wont hurt. And what shall we do with the money my dear? Well my son Mark has shares in a nice defence firm! Rather, still some left over for a nice reduction in the top rate of income tax as well. ------------------------------------ Even public service broadcasting couldnt escape. Relentless bullying of the BBC was started by Thatcher, she took this to a new level with Tebbit and various other ministers calling it the Bolshevic Broadcasting Company because it failed to replicate Sun editorial lines in its news broadcasts. In one of her last acts she even managed to wreck Channel 4' s public service commitment by changing its funding situation from one of subscription from ITV who sold its advertising space to total dependence on advertising. ------------------------------------- The divisiveness of the North-South divide in wealth. Look at the political map and you can still see where the Conservatives win most of their seats in the South East because of this. ------------------------------------- Regular winter crises in the NHS became the norm. The Tories argued these were inevitable because we couldnt afford to fund the NHS properly. There are no winter crises anymore! ------------------------------------- Crime rates doubled under Thatcher. This is probably the most surprising statistic of the lot when you consider the Tories so called strong standing on law and order. It just goes to demonstrate why we need a history lesson about Thatcher and not the lies printed in the right wing owned press. And this isn't even scratching the surface!!
Being in my late 30's, I grew up through all of this and can vouch it is all spot on. Thatcher was every bit as bad as the description above, if not worse. And I'm a Southerner through and through.
I did see a clip on TV before describing how she planned to allow Liverpool to go into "Managed Decline" - WTF!?? She's basically saying fuck liverpool, let it sink. Starting to see why she was so hated...
How could you not comment? It's all over the media here. Let alone it's taken over our own politics news. Guess that's for the better anyway, it's a circus they are running here.
Yes I was. You could pull much more stuff about Tony Blair, but he knew which voters to pay off. We can't afford it anymore & the Labour cabinet were relieved they weren't going to have to clear up their mess. Because now it's up to the conservatives to do it and they know they can just keep sniping away for a bit and eventually people will forget and vote them back in again. The funny thing is that after the hereditary peers were abolished and Tony Blair put his cronies in there instead, it didn't really change anything. Like all left wingers, once they got the top job they just worried about their own interests. Of course it was popular, they were handing money out like candy. Like taking money from central government and subsidising tube and bus fairs. However on the second time the media coverage of his activities made people aware of what he was really up to and now they got Boris (at least he's less boring). People riot in London because they want something for nothing, back then it was local services subsidised by everyone else. These days it's because they want a TV or trainers. There were people who had not paid their rates, weren't going to pay the poll tax and didn't pay community charge. Then there were the "me too's" who just got caught up in it because it was a laugh. All government and laws rely on the obedience of the people, there are times when you have to walk away. Just because you come up with a good idea, doesn't mean the people will won't be manipulated into thinking it's a bad idea. You only have to look at how the first past the post vs alternative vote referendum was handled. It's shocking how uninformed and apathetic the majority of people are.
lol, I was more referring to what she did (or did not do), but from what my mates told me, she was a piece of work. I can't wait until September and that fuckwit running this country is removed. "No carbon tax under my leadership" Nek minnit "we have this new tax, we shall call it the carbon tax". What is Australia's greatest asset? Mining, so she screws the mining companies that hard they (overnight) shelve major projects. About this time last year (maybe a bit before) we were putting on about 6-12 people PER WEEK for the upcoming projects. Then BAM the majority were shelved, due to A/The price of coal falling, B/Strong Aussie dollar and C/(the final straw) the fucking carbon tax (that she said we wouldn't have). In October over 100 people laid off, earlier this year another 60. Also recall her $40k+ pay rise (in 2 lots within 3 months of each other)? Fuckin awesome. Unfortunately I don't think old mate would be any better, but a guy who will say "that's bullshit" in the ear of another politician, would be good for the lol's! Interesting read there Johnace....
