When Margaret Thatcher Dies....

Smokin Joe

fast as fupp wrote:

i'm dismayed to hear she may be fading- i hope she suffers in agony for a long long time.

looking forward to dancing on her grave.

She's going to be buried at sea, don't forget your water wings.

15peter20

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh, sorry, was getting a bit carried away.

So how long do we reckon the vile old hatchet faced harpy has left? Where will she be buried and who's bringing the stereo?

NJG

No matter what your political views are guys, how a bit of respect and decorum........

15peter20

NJG wrote:

No matter what your political views are guys, how a bit of respect and decorum........

Bollocks to that. This is Thatcher we're talking about.

amun1000

Well I never particularly liked her but she did start the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (£50/week). This allowed me start a cycle courier business (first in the North East) which in turn gave me my 15 minutes of fame

The pit closures were dark times.

StillGoing

For every one of you posting up disrespectful comments, I'll wager there's at least two that will mourn her as a great leader of this country who's like we could do with again.

peter101cycle

philthy3 wrote:

For every one of you posting up disrespectful comments, I'll wager there's at least two that will mourn her as a great leader of this country who's like we could do with again.

While Thatcher made many mistakes, she did a lot more constructive things for the country than Bliar or Brown did. Bliar should be up for war crimes and Brown should not be in charge of a Cornershop business.

Steel, coal, etc, were damaged beyond repair by the policies and work rules of the unions. I grew up in Sheffield which was ripped apart by the decline of Steel. But funnily enough, other businesses have since come in to replace them.

You can't buck economic cycles and everything has its hey day and decline

BarryBonds

Not sure why the northern labourite drones are complaining dirty coal mines have been replaced with loads of gold plated government jobs and pensions and pay rises and pay rises and pensions and pay rises and pensions and etc

Tony sorted it and everyone else is paying, eveyone that is except government employees whos taxes are only like not paying them as much in the first place. Maggy was a tough uncompromising practical and down to earth leader with respect for britain

Tony blair is a self serving greasy dishonest murdering maggy wannabe.

End of

BarryBonds

and some of the bitter bile spouted here shows you as the small people you are. I pity you.

Stewie Griffin

My Primary School used to store the milk outside, fine on a cold Winters day, not so nice on a hot Summers day.

daviesee

I do believe that is called irony Barry

Dgh

A great woman. She turned the UK from being a country that couldn't bury the dead into one that believed in enterprise again. She didn't close down any industry that wasn't dependent on subsidies, and the pain was worse because other, more cowardly politicians had declined to do so. She oversaw privatisations that turned subsidy-consumers into taxpayers. Yes, she made her mistakes, in the poll tax and her opposition to devolution, but she understood that we must live within our means and she believed in economic freedom. She was, with all her faults, our greatest Prime Minister ever.

legendary27

Dgh wrote:

She was, with all her faults, our greatest Prime Minister ever.

Absolutely !

Destroyed the NHS - I am amazed that we have got to four pages and this has not been mentioned.
Introduced and encouraged the nation's culture of greed, which we are still paying for !
Destroyed the manufacturing industry.
Vastly increased the cross-border divide between England and her neighbours.
Went to war to win an election.

How anyone with any sort of conscience or moral compass can suggest that Thatcher was a great leader, is entirely beyond me. Each to their own I suppose.

It is a terrible thing to admit, but I will not be overly upset when she goes (says a lot about my moral compass, I suppose). Apologies if this offends anyone.

Regards,
Gordon

bigmat

Dgh wrote:

A great woman. She turned the UK from being a country that couldn't bury the dead into one that believed in enterprise again. She didn't close down any industry that wasn't dependent on subsidies, and the pain was worse because other, more cowardly politicians had declined to do so. She oversaw privatisations that turned subsidy-consumers into taxpayers. Yes, she made her mistakes, in the poll tax and her opposition to devolution, but she understood that we must live within our means and she believed in economic freedom. She was, with all her faults, our greatest Prime Minister ever.

Oh no she wasn't!

rake

Dgh wrote:

A great woman. She turned the UK from being a country that couldn't bury the dead into one that believed in enterprise again. She didn't close down any industry that wasn't dependent on subsidies, and the pain was worse because other, more cowardly politicians had declined to do so. She oversaw privatisations that turned subsidy-consumers into taxpayers. Yes, she made her mistakes, in the poll tax and her opposition to devolution, but she understood that we must live within our means and she believed in economic freedom. She was, with all her faults, our greatest Prime Minister ever.

And we all know that privatised industries never recieve any subsidies (sarcasm)

Dgh

@Legendary 27 - she didn't destroy the NHS. It's alive, well, and merrily delivering worse healthcare than people in the Netherlands or Germany receive.

She didn't destroy manufacturing. Uncompetitiveness did. She just didn't believe in spending other people's money on things that they don't want. That is, after all, what subsidies do.

Increased the divide between England & her neighbours? Well, I am Welsh, and her opposition to devolution was a mistake. But massive public spending hasn't been too good for Wales, has it? Otherwise we'd be the richest part of the UK.

Went to war to win an election? No, went to war because a dictator invaded British territory. Don't you think people who invade Britain should be resisted?

Introduced greed? That's the sillest thing of all. Greed has been around for as long as humanity. It's greed that makes the baker sell us bread, or bike manufacturers give us good bikes to ride. Without greed we'd be waiting 5 years for the bike equivalent of a Trabant!

My conscience is perfectly calm at having suggested she was a great leader. I guess my moral compass must be off a bit, if I find the idea of building walls to keep people in the great socialist project horrific, and I sympathise with those who tried to get across the wall to the evil, selfish, greedy capitalist west.

The thing is, no-one ever built a concentration camp or a gulag in the name of individual freedom.

Frank the tank

Oh! and metaphorically speaking she sold the family silver and p155ed a massive amount of oil revenue up the wall of unemployment benefit.

Frank the tank

I think you'll find the British created the first concentration camps.

The Germans of course honed it and made them more efficient!

Dgh

Frank the tank - the family silver, as you call it, cost us money. Privatised steel & airline companies pay taxes.

The alternative to paying dole money was the waste money continuing to subsidise.

Dgh

Frank the tank wrote:

I think you'll find the British created the first concentration camps.

The Germans of course honed it and made them more efficient!

Yes, but not in the name of individual freedom. Think how ridiculous that would be! Lock people up and force them to do whatever they want!

rick_chasey

Dgh wrote:

A great woman. She turned the UK from being a country that couldn't bury the dead into one that believed in enterprise again. .

I think this experience was largely limited to the Southern counties, and particularly the South East.

To be 'great' surely the experiences should be nationaly of positive value, rather than confined to a particular demograph?

rake

individual freedom to hold people to ramsom.

bianchimoon

BarryBonds wrote:

and some of the bitter bile spouted here shows you as the small people you are. I pity you.

gotta agree with you, seems there's plenty of people who didn't know what was going on in this country pre-thatcher and are psuedo-fighting some long forgotten militant socialist cause, the Thatcher to pre blair years were some of the most progressive economic years this country will have in our lifetimes. Like i did after the Thatcher years made it possible stop whining and take responsibility

Dgh

Rick Chasey wrote:

Dgh wrote:

A great woman. She turned the UK from being a country that couldn't bury the dead into one that believed in enterprise again. .

I think this experience was largely limited to the Southern counties, and particularly the South East.

To be 'great' surely the experiences should be nationaly of positive value, rather than confined to a particular demograph?

If people in other parts of the UK don;t believe in enterprise (I include my own homeland Wales in this), is it any wonder they don't do as well as the South East of England?

Mrs T was good for the whole of Britain. Yes, Wales lost mining, but if mining didn't make any money why on earth should be people be forced to subsidise it?

Too many people in Britain bellyache with nostalgia for the good old days of the closed shop, the three-day week and the winter of discontent. What we need to do is appreciate that free-market economics is the way to make people, all people, richer and freer. If public spending did that, Wales would be paradise.

But then, no (wo)man is a prophet in their own land.

finchy

Dgh wrote:

Mrs T was good for the whole of Britain. Yes, Wales lost mining, but if mining didn't make any money why on earth should be people be forced to subsidise it?

Because many other countries were subsidising it at the time, so British miners should be allowed to compete on an level playing field? Long-term energy security over short-term profitability?

That's the problem with the Thatcher government - as long as something was making money in the short term, stuff the consequences.

Dgh wrote:

Too many people in Britain bellyache with nostalgia for the good old days of the closed shop, the three-day week and the winter of discontent. What we need to do is appreciate that free-market economics is the way to make people, all people, richer and freer. If public spending did that, Wales would be paradise.

False argument - you can have either Thatcherism or you can have the 1970s again. What about other countries, where the economies are competitive and productive yet workers have decent representation and protection?

rick_chasey

Dgh wrote:

If people in other parts of the UK don;t believe in enterprise (I include my own homeland Wales in this), is it any wonder they don't do as well as the South East of England?

I don't think that's anything to do with it. I think that the demograph of people living who were likely to live in the South East stood to benefit from Thatcher policies in a way which others elsewhere were not able to, due to socio-economic circumstances.

Dgh wrote:

Mrs T was good for the whole of Britain. Yes, Wales lost mining, but if mining didn't make any money why on earth should be people be forced to subsidise it?

Again this is patently not the case. Here is a snapshot illustrating why. Note the important "

The report acknowledges that a fundamental aim of people with widely differing political perspectives is to achieve 'equality of opportunity'. However, this will be difficult for any government to achieve if it does not know the causes of inequality.

Therein lies the issue.

Dgh wrote:

Too many people in Britain bellyache with nostalgia for the good old days of the closed shop, the three-day week and the winter of discontent. What we need to do is appreciate that free-market economics is the way to make people, all people, richer and freer. If public spending did that, Wales would be paradise..

No-one is suggesting that 3 day weeks was a good idea. They're only saying Thatcher did significant parts of the nation a lot of harm.

legendary27

Dgh wrote:

@Legendary 27 - she didn't destroy the NHS. It's alive, well, and merrily delivering worse healthcare than people in the Netherlands or Germany receive.

She didn't destroy manufacturing. Uncompetitiveness did. She just didn't believe in spending other people's money on things that they don't want. That is, after all, what subsidies do.

Increased the divide between England & her neighbours? Well, I am Welsh, and her opposition to devolution was a mistake. But massive public spending hasn't been too good for Wales, has it? Otherwise we'd be the richest part of the UK.

Went to war to win an election? No, went to war because a dictator invaded British territory. Don't you think people who invade Britain should be resisted?

Introduced greed? That's the sillest thing of all. Greed has been around for as long as humanity. It's greed that makes the baker sell us bread, or bike manufacturers give us good bikes to ride. Without greed we'd be waiting 5 years for the bike equivalent of a Trabant!

My conscience is perfectly calm at having suggested she was a great leader. I guess my moral compass must be off a bit, if I find the idea of building walls to keep people in the great socialist project horrific, and I sympathise with those who tried to get across the wall to the evil, selfish, greedy capitalist west.

The thing is, no-one ever built a concentration camp or a gulag in the name of individual freedom.

A couple of things I thought worth pointing out about your responses.

Re the NHS, I think that you may have agreed with my point ! Destruction does not necessarily equate to removal. I believe that it is still there in spite of Thatcher's efforts, rather than because of. Given her choice, I am fairly certain that we would all be paying for our own healthcare (another debate) rather than making use of what used to be arguably the greatest example ever of what public funding can do.

Re manufacturing, fair points. However support of an industry can mean more than subsidisation. I would have settled for investment.

I am Scottish, so I understand where you are coming from, but you surely cannot argue that relationships between our countries and England flourished under Thatcher, can you ?

We will have to disagree on the Falklands, I am afraid. Had there been any evidence whatsoever of a diplomatic response to the Argentinian invasion, then I would have been inclined to agree, but there was not. In her defence, I don't suppose the diplomatic response would have met with the election timescales !!

I did not suggest that Thatcher introduced greed, rather the culture of greed. Thatcher made it socially acceptable to, for want of a better expression, not give a phuck about anyone other than yourself. Whilst you choose to cherry-pick some of the more successful examples of what greed has given us, you could also have offered war, genocide and perhaps even weapons of mass destruction. Some would perhaps argue that these outweigh the good that bread and perhaps even bicycle manufacturers have given us !

I am not sure what your rant about socialist walls and escaping East Germany have to do with this, though you perhaps equate disliking Thatcher and some of her policies to socialism/communism. Your bad I am afraid. It is perfectly possible to dislike Thatcher whilst following centre-left (or even centre-right) political beliefs !

How you got onto concentration camps is entirely beyond me, I am afraid. Perhaps you could explain the link.

Regards,
Gordon

Dgh

Legendary27

I don't think I agreed re the NHS. People in the Netherlands or Germany get excellent healthcare, the poor included. In Britain we get, by the standards of advanced countries, poor healthcare. That's not a good thing, is it?

Mrs T had nothing against investment. She just thought that people should be free to choose what they invest in, and should then get the reward if the investment pays off. I guess you might call that greed. But then, forcing people to give their money to be spent on something they don;t want might equally be called theft.

True that our relationships with England didn't flourish, but I think our own people's tendency to prefer facile resentment to acceptance of economic reality has a lot to do with that.

I disagree about not giving a fuck about anyone. Mrs T's vision was for a country in while philanthropy prospered. She didn't believe in the state giving away other people's money (although it did do so), but just because the state doesn't take your money and spend it on others doesn't mean you can't. The British people are in a pretty bad way if we have to nationalise concern for our brothers and sisters.

Re the Falklands, no point in diplomacy if you can't back it up. The only acceptable solution was for Galtieri to leave them, and he wasn't gonna do that. We had to kick him out.

Greed, when combined with the rule of law, doesn't produce any of the things you say it does. Greed enables people to get the basic needs of life and the odd luxury too. It rewards those who provide us with those things. Greed offers us something in exchange for our money. The state gets our money through the threat of imprisonment if we don't pay up.

Re concentration camps, the point is, they, and most of the other truly bad things in life, come when people start claiming to act in the name of a supposed common good. Whether it's the nation, the social class, the race, whatever, the moment people start to act in the name of the group, they necessarily deny the right of individual members of the group to disagree with it. Those are the people who end up in the gulag. That's why no-one ever built a gulag in the name of individual freedom. And individual freedom was Mrs T's most fundamental belief.

Pross

The mines closing gives me mixed feelings. There is no doubting that in the past 25 years vast areas of the South Wales valleys have been able to return to something like their natural beauty and the lost jobs have generally been absorbed elsewhere. You can argue that maybe the new jobs are less well paid but I suspect they are better for long term health. However, we do need some better contrtol over our energy security and although it doesn't tie in with the current trend against global warming and C02 emissions I can see a time when new mines may be built as oil reserves run out / demand increases and prices become unsustainable (unless there is some massive boost in renewables or nuclear in the meantime).

legendary27

Dgh wrote:

Legendary27

I don't think I agreed re the NHS. People in the Netherlands or Germany get excellent healthcare, the poor included. In Britain we get, by the standards of advanced countries, poor healthcare. That's not a good thing, is it?

Mrs T had nothing against investment. She just thought that people should be free to choose what they invest in, and should then get the reward if the investment pays off. I guess you might call that greed. But then, forcing people to give their money to be spent on something they don;t want might equally be called theft.

True that our relationships with England didn't flourish, but I think our own people's tendency to prefer facile resentment to acceptance of economic reality has a lot to do with that.

I disagree about not giving a fark about anyone. Mrs T's vision was for a country in while philanthropy prospered. She didn't believe in the state giving away other people's money (although it did do so), but just because the state doesn't take your money and spend it on others doesn't mean you can't. The British people are in a pretty bad way if we have to nationalise concern for our brothers and sisters.

Re the Falklands, no point in diplomacy if you can't back it up. The only acceptable solution was for Galtieri to leave them, and he wasn't gonna do that. We had to kick him out.

Greed, when combined with the rule of law, doesn't produce any of the things you say it does. Greed enables people to get the basic needs of life and the odd luxury too. It rewards those who provide us with those things. Greed offers us something in exchange for our money. The state gets our money through the threat of imprisonment if we don't pay up.

Re concentration camps, the point is, they, and most of the other truly bad things in life, come when people start claiming to act in the name of a supposed common good. Whether it's the nation, the social class, the race, whatever, the moment people start to act in the name of the group, they necessarily deny the right of individual members of the group to disagree with it. Those are the people who end up in the gulag. That's why no-one ever built a gulag in the name of individual freedom. And individual freedom was Mrs T's most fundamental belief.

Dgh,

Healthcare - I misunderstood your point, sorry. I agree with what you are saying, but suggest that the decline of the NHS started when Thatcher introduced the entirely unnecessary and expensive management layer. A touch simplistic perhaps, but that to me was the start of the rot.

Industry - fair points, it depends largely on your viewpoint I suppose, though you could also argue that forcing people to spend money on things they don't want is taxation !

'Philanthropy' - I completely disagree. Thatcher was entirely concerned with making the rich richer. Short-term gain, rather than long-term investment. The resultant massive increase in charities caring for the less well off in society (and not just financially less well off) was akin to exactly the nationalised concern you mention.

Falklands - you have to try diplomacy before you can back it up. Again, Thatcher had no interest in this, as it would not generate the necessary nationalistic fervour.

Greed - greed does not enable people to get the basic needs of life and the odd luxury. Greed by definition requires people to take more than they need, or take things that they do not need. Greed does not drive people to make bread to trade with others, it drives people to sell bread for less that other bread sellers, so that the competition goes out of business. Greed does not offer us something in exchange for our money. Greed takes our money for as little as it can. The law makes us pay if we are to greedy to do so voluntarily. It is not good - hence the resultant dislike of Thatcher and her encouragement of it.

Concentration camps - fair description. Still no link to anything I said in my original post - unless you are so right-wing that you think anyone who dislikes Thatcher is trying to mobilise some sort of revolution ! Anyway, I would have thought that someone from Wales would have liked the concept of Red Front !!!

Regards,
Gordon