Margaret Thatcher is dead

[Warren Dew]

An interesting piece about Thatcher never really understood sport, and how any influence she exerted was usually negative:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22085707

Yet another thing to like about Thatcher, if she understood that spectator sports are basically pointless.

[Warren Dew]

The actions she took were probably necessary, but they could have been balanced by putting less money into tax cuts for the wealthy, her main allies, and more into infrastructure development and job retraining, targeted on precisely the communities most impacted. That didn't happen to any great extent, from what I gather.

Without the decreases in taxes, the investment needed to move the UK to a modern service based economy might never have happened. Essentially, the money did go to infrastructure development, just in a way directed by the market rather than by the government.

It is also true that the money was invested more in Tory areas than in Labour areas, but that was really only fair given the decades of subsidization of the Labour areas.

She didn't create it, but she did help foster and an environment that encouraged it - albeit at quite a remove. There were a great many players big and small responsible for the banking crisis, or which she was just one. It's just too easy and convenient to pin it on Thatcher, or any one person.

I'd argue that the banking crisis has been less severe in the UK than in the Eurozone, or even than in the U.S.

[JimC]

Warren Dew wrote:

Without the decreases in taxes, the investment needed to move the UK to a modern service based economy might never have happened. Essentially, the money did go to infrastructure development, just in a way directed by the market rather than by the government.

It is also true that the money was invested more in Tory areas than in Labour areas, but that was really only fair given the decades of subsidization of the Labour areas.

This ignores the true motivation for her actions, which was to improve the bottom line for her wealthy backers...

All the rhetoric in the world about market forces doesn't change the essential fact that those who make government policy under that rallying cry act to increase the disparity of wealth, and put the screws on the working man...

[Cormac]

She created today’s housing crisis. She created the banking crisis. And she created the benefits crisis. It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefit rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly full employment.

She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed, and the benefits bill, the legacy of that, we are struggling with today. In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact that she was fundamentally wrong.” - Ken Livingstone

She most certainly did not create the banking crisis. The banking crisis is rooted in its fundamental failure to take on board the truth about risk, and this has been evident throughout the centuries of booms, busts, and bubbles, and in the modern world this has been the actual heart of banking regulation since about 1973, with the overnight failure of a German Bank.

She didn't create it, but she did help foster and an environment that encouraged it - albeit at quite a remove. There were a great many players big and small responsible for the banking crisis, or which she was just one. It's just too easy and convenient to pin it on Thatcher, or any one person.

Correct.

For example, the last Labour government had a major hard-on for the banks, and whatever the banks wanted, they got. The false money then produced by vast extensions of debt built on false understanding of risk, poured into the Labour Governments coffers. They made the same mistake as Thatcher in the late 80s - (and indeed, as the Irish government during the worst excesses of the Celtic Tiger) - of mistaking a temporary glut of excess cash as a new solid and permanent tax revenue. As they thought this glut was permanent they raised current spending to match it. When the glut receded the state was left in substantial deficit.

But New Labour loved the banks - even more than Thatcher.

[Audley Strange]

I happened to be driving while the eulogy speeches were being reported on 5 Live (a rolling news/discussion station here)). Some of the speeches were excellent. David Miliband's was extreely well judged and Malcolm Riffkin (Foreign secretary under her and now in the Lords) was actually very funny.

There's so many people who feel like you Rum. Even I really, really miss her already.

I don't miss her. I couldn't stand the bitch. But the lazy, easy dismissal of one of the great bitches of political life here annoys me. Herd mentality at its worst.

Nah herd mentality at it's worst would have burst into 10 Downing Street gang-raped her repeatedly, slit her throat in front of her witless children and burned the place to the ground while installing The Lord Protector of United And White Britain to set up concentration camps to exterminate all those North of Luton.

She is easy to dismiss, a poisoned cunt, that you're soft liberal sensibilities don't recognise that is why the bitch got in 3 times.

[cronus]

I happened to be driving while the eulogy speeches were being reported on 5 Live (a rolling news/discussion station here)). Some of the speeches were excellent. David Miliband's was extreely well judged and Malcolm Riffkin (Foreign secretary under her and now in the Lords) was actually very funny.

There's so many people who feel like you Rum. Even I really, really miss her already.

I don't miss her. I couldn't stand the bitch. But the lazy, easy dismissal of one of the great bitches of political life here annoys me. Herd mentality at its worst.

Nah herd mentality at it's worst would have burst into 10 Downing Street gang-raped her repeatedly, slit her throat in front of her witless children and burned the place to the ground while installing The Lord Protector of United And White Britain to set up concentration camps to exterminate all those North of Luton.

She is easy to dismiss, a poisoned cunt, that you're soft liberal sensibilities don't recognise that is why the bitch got in 3 times.

...except very few people in the eighties would be thinking like that, other than burning the place to the ground that is....

[Rum]

I happened to be driving while the eulogy speeches were being reported on 5 Live (a rolling news/discussion station here)). Some of the speeches were excellent. David Miliband's was extreely well judged and Malcolm Riffkin (Foreign secretary under her and now in the Lords) was actually very funny.

There's so many people who feel like you Rum. Even I really, really miss her already.

I don't miss her. I couldn't stand the bitch. But the lazy, easy dismissal of one of the great bitches of political life here annoys me. Herd mentality at its worst.

Nah herd mentality at it's worst would have burst into 10 Downing Street gang-raped her repeatedly, slit her throat in front of her witless children and burned the place to the ground while installing The Lord Protector of United And White Britain to set up concentration camps to exterminate all those North of Luton.

She is easy to dismiss, a poisoned cunt, that you're soft liberal sensibilities don't recognise that is why the bitch got in 3 times.

Easy words. The come cheap.

[John_fi_Skye]

I've a lot of time for a fair bit of this. It's predictable that noises off greeted this speech from the opposing benches, but it's also interesting to see how few people on her side sat there and agreed with her.

[Audley Strange]

Easy words. The come cheap.

Don't they just?

[PsychoSerenity]

I've a lot of time for a fair bit of this. It's predictable that noises off greeted this speech from the opposing benches, but it's also interesting to see how few people on her side sat there and agreed with her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

Wow! I enjoyed that. Damn well said, Glenda Jackson. And well done Mr Speaker for slapping down the fat Tory at the end.

[Warren Dew]

Warren Dew wrote:

Without the decreases in taxes, the investment needed to move the UK to a modern service based economy might never have happened. Essentially, the money did go to infrastructure development, just in a way directed by the market rather than by the government.

It is also true that the money was invested more in Tory areas than in Labour areas, but that was really only fair given the decades of subsidization of the Labour areas.

This ignores the true motivation for her actions, which was to improve the bottom line for her wealthy backers...

All the rhetoric in the world about market forces doesn't change the essential fact that those who make government policy under that rallying cry act to increase the disparity of wealth, and put the screws on the working man...

Pretty impressive that she managed to make more than 40% of the UK wealthy by 1987, based on the popular vote.

[MrJonno]

Never a big fan of blaming politicians and governments in a democracy for being a vile, its the unpleasant people who elect them who are the real culprits

[Pappa]

There's a campaign to get the Judy Garland version of "Ding Dong the Witch is dead" to number 1 in the music charts here. Yesterday it was at no 10 in the midweek chart, and today it's at no 5.

You can buy it for 69p on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0023NDFFO/

or 79p on iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/ding- ... =276479862

[DaveD]

The BBC might play the song on The Official Chart Show on Sunday, which is upsetting a lot of Tories.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... -song.html

[klr]

The BBC has has previously decided not to broadcast songs on grounds of taste, including God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols and the Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Yup ... the first was in 1977, and the second in 1984. Different times ... very different times.