Margaret Thatcher is dead

[klr]

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

My own recollections of these and other events tallies closely with this article.

[JimC]

I think things were better if you were rich, and worse if you were poor.

Do you have any hard numbers to support the notion that the poor in the UK were worse off in the early 90s than in the late 70s?

But, if the poor were worse off, are they still just as bad off, or have things gotten better, and if so, how did they get better for the poor from the early 90s to now? When did they start becoming better, and what actions were taken to make it better?

Her policies ended up creating massive unemployment in very specific areas of the industrial north, landing hundreds of communities in poverty. 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.

So the "worse off" bit was very geographically delineated, and since those areas were almost always labour seats anyway, there was little electoral backlash for the tories...

[klr]

I think things were better if you were rich, and worse if you were poor.

Do you have any hard numbers to support the notion that the poor in the UK were worse off in the early 90s than in the late 70s?

But, if the poor were worse off, are they still just as bad off, or have things gotten better, and if so, how did they get better for the poor from the early 90s to now? When did they start becoming better, and what actions were taken to make it better?

Her policies ended up creating massive unemployment in very specific areas of the industrial north, landing hundreds of communities in poverty. 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.

So the "worse off" bit was very geographically delineated, and since those areas were almost always labour seats anyway, there was little electoral backlash for the tories...

Good point. Coal mines and shipyards have rarely (if ever) been Tory strongholds.

[Cormac]

Yes, and when he was elected in 2004, he had a pretty high approval rating and won fairly easily.

If living in the 80s under Thatcher was such an obvious misery, one would think she'd have lost one of her reelection bids....instead, like in 1983, she won by a landslide.

Having an unelectable Labour party crippled by in-fighting, increasingly obsessed with idealogical policies, their share of the vote split by the SDP and thoroughly out of touch with the population helped a little.

That does help, but usually if you're "Destroying the Country" it would be "anybody but her" wouldn't it? Folks must not have thought she was what was destroying the country.

I don't think I ever said she destroyed the country. Some of the country did very well out of her stewardship. And then there are the mining, steel-working, ship-building, manufacturing towns in the North. Whole communities reduced from proud, pillars of Britain's greatness, to dying ghost towns with the only thing growing the dole queues.

Millions suffered but she didn't care because she "knew" she was right and she was prepared to pay the price in other people's lives! Cunt.

Those industries were doomed once the Empire was lost, because there was no longer a guaranteed market for their products. Britain could not ompete internationally because the products were available cheaper from elsewhere.

Those indurries were dead already

[Cormac]

I heard it on the news as I was on my way to buy a bottle of brandy for the evening. They related FW de Klerk's comment: "She understood the complexities of apartheid". To which the the DJ hosting the show replied: "Yeah, she treated South Africa with kid gloves. That's what constructive engagement meant." I thought to myself: "Is that dinosaur really dead?"

Then onto Facebook, and lo and behold: White South Africans (of the unreligious and free-thinking type), paying homage to the witch. After my initial panic attacks at seeing that, at last came the comments from you lot (for those of you who are on FB), which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

She lent apartheid a helping hand when the rest of the world was ready to destroy it; and thus prolonged the suffering of so many South Africans. I won't be able to go over there for the funeral; but could someone just do me a favour and go spit on her grave for me?

And this is where I find her despicable. Her support for Apartheid, her attitude to Northern Ireland (which was the greatest recruitment vehicle for the IRA since Bloody Sunday), her support for the execrable Pinochet, and her support for vile regimes around the world - the hallmarks of jingoistic imperialism.


But she was dead right about the Falklands.

[Cormac]

I heard it on the news as I was on my way to buy a bottle of brandy for the evening. They related FW de Klerk's comment: "She understood the complexities of apartheid". To which the the DJ hosting the show replied: "Yeah, she treated South Africa with kid gloves. That's what constructive engagement meant." I thought to myself: "Is that dinosaur really dead?"

Then onto Facebook, and lo and behold: White South Africans (of the unreligious and free-thinking type), paying homage to the witch. After my initial panic attacks at seeing that, at last came the comments from you lot (for those of you who are on FB), which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

She lent apartheid a helping hand when the rest of the world was ready to destroy it; and thus prolonged the suffering of so many South Africans. I won't be able to go over there for the funeral; but could someone just do me a favour and go spit on her grave for me?

And this is where I find her despicable. Her support for Apartheid, her attitude to Northern Ireland (which was the greatest recruitment vehicle for the IRA since Bloody Sunday), her support for the execrable Pinochet, and her support for vile regimes around the world - the hallmarks of jingoistic imperialism.


But she was dead right about the Falklands.

[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.

[Cormac]

And don't even get me started on the Falklands! If it weren't for Argentina's invasion, she would have been out of office after one term! It was only the jingoistic sabre-rattling and Rule-Brittaniaing that saved her political neck! She seized that opportunity with both hands - 1000 dead and 2000 injured to save her career! Cunt.

Were the British residents of the Falkland Islands to be left to the Argentinians, then? You said it yourself, Argentina invaded. What was to be done about it? Nothing? A strongly worded letter?

They should have been transported to one of The Shetlands. Add sheep and they wouldn't know they'd been moved.

This is what is known in modern parlance as "ethnic cleansing" - or to use the correct term - genocide. (Even if they didn't have to kill anyone to achieve it).

See Lemkin's definition - the man who coined the word.

[Cormac]

And don't even get me started on the Falklands! If it weren't for Argentina's invasion, she would have been out of office after one term! It was only the jingoistic sabre-rattling and Rule-Brittaniaing that saved her political neck! She seized that opportunity with both hands - 1000 dead and 2000 injured to save her career! Cunt.

Were the British residents of the Falkland Islands to be left to the Argentinians, then? You said it yourself, Argentina invaded. What was to be done about it? Nothing? A strongly worded letter?

Far more of an attempt to find a diplomatic solution before sending in the troops for a start. The Argentinians were hardly nazis - the Falklanders were not in any danger.

And then we get the sinking of the Belgrano... Half of the Argentinians to die in the conflict were on that ship, torpedoed by a British submarine well outside of the British exclusion zone. A military fuck up that was defended to the hilt by the Thatcher cabinet.

Actually, the Argentinian regime WAS fascist, and it was at the time engaged in the wholesale slaughter and torture of its own people.

The captain of the Belgrano himself recognises that they were a legitimate target.

[klr]

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.

[DaveDodo007]

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.

Ho do fuck off, I lost a lot of friends who ended up killing them selves and many more who ended up in prison because they just wanted to survive. The pain goes deep and I make no apologises for hating the evil witch. Fuck her and all who supported her, she was a monster and I will celebrate her death how ever I feel like doing. I'm still going to piss on her grave and I will enjoy doing so. So fuck off you emotionless robot.

[DaveDodo007]

Wasn't your last post (rant) in support of her? (and hence my sarcastic "Great post!")...

So you didn't read the TL;DR bit then.

[pErvinalia]

I read the whole thing, it just wasn't clear at all that you were being sarcastic. But not to worry, we both agree she was a cuntess and neither of us will mourn her passing.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... l-protests

...A common British establishment view – and the implicit position of The Iron Lady – is that while Thatcher took harsh measures and "went too far", it was necessary medicine to restore the sick economy of the 1970s to healthy growth.

It did nothing of the sort. Average growth in the Thatcherite 80s, at 2.4%, was exactly the same as in the sick 70s – and considerably lower than during the corporatist 60s. Her government's savage deflation destroyed a fifth of Britain's industrial base in two years, hollowed out manufacturing, and delivered a "productivity miracle" that never was, and we're living with the consequences today.

What she did succeed in doing was to restore class privilege, boosting profitability while slashing employees' share of national income from 65% to 53% through her assault on unions. Britain faced a structural crisis in the 1970s, but there were multiple routes out of it. Thatcher imposed a neoliberal model now seen to have failed across the world...

[pErvinalia]

yep