Thatcher, Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher Dies

I totally agree Angry. My point was that they know about Hitler and can judge to a degree because it is taught but to judge Thatcher and know about her is not so there isn't a comparison for them to make in there. They only know what is ebing said elsewhere rather than from a history book of facts. They don't even know about school milk, why it was given at one time or why it was stopped for example.

I left school the year she came to power. I was never a fan and she didn't do a lot for me when it came to work or life in general. But one thing I know is I have suffered more under the labour governments of Blair and Brown than I ever did under any tory one.

I was one of the many who started a private pension under Mrs T for when I got old and it was destroyed by B & B when they came to power.
It is worth feck all now. So much for looking after the working classes.

An old boy who I worked with many years ago told me that whenever labour were in charge they feck up the economy and it takes the tories to get in to put it right. I didn't believe him. This was before Blair and his landslide. How wrong was I!

Labour fecked it up in the 70's.
They fecked it up again in the 90's and 00's.
It is once again down to the tories to put right labour's mismanagement of this country's economy.

So no, I for one, will not rejoyce at the news Of Mrs T's death .
She leaves behind a son, a daughter and grandchildren and my thoughts are with them.

RIP.

PS (I am not a true blue tory. I am looking out for my family and at the moment the lot we have in power are in my opinion, the best for this country, with a few adjustments to policy here and there, to get out of the shit! Minus the bunch of wankers that are clegg and his merry band of EU loving, opportunists scum.)

This ends the party political broadcast on behalf of the mouldyoldgoat party!

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

I totally agree Angry. My point was that they know about Hitler and can judge to a degree because it is taught but to judge Thatcher and know about her is not so there isn't a comparison for them to make in there. They only know what is ebing said elsewhere rather than from a history book of facts. They don't even know about school milk, why it was given at one time or why it was stopped for example.

i agree with the milk fiasco, kids tend to know listen to what they are told about maggie or what they see on the tele from the 80's you only have to watch the young ones to get a sense of what must have been like tv back then lol.

My view on her is Whilst she was a strong minded individual who stuck to her policies and did what she thought was right for this country her stubbornness hurt an awful lot of people in the same way the current tory government seems to be repeating with its cuts aplenty very little in terms of job growth. She helped those move up the ladder in the job markets and housing and those who where at the bottom struggled to even get on any ladder. I see history repeating itself. However im not a labour supporter both cameron and thatcher have had to make these cuts due to their over spending and no growth.

The one thing i did agree with her on was her stance on arthur Sargil as he was a terrible union leader that cost the miners more by pissing her off.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that young people can't make sound judgements on what came before their time- there's no point studying history in that case. Perhaps a certain fresh perspective comes through living through it but if you take the view that having a birthdate after the events in question invalidates your view then by that logic no-one should have any opinion on anything pre-1920 or so which is just wrong. Study what happened, study why it happened, associated circumstances etc and then come to a judgement.

Personally, I think she was a pretty evil woman. I feel for the family and I'm not personally celebrating but I don't begrudge those who are. And before anyone asks, I feel absolutely the same way about the despotic Tony Blair. The irony of his role as peace envoy absolutely should not be lost either. However, with regards to some of the debates earlier on this thread, I can't argue with intervention in the Falklands in the circumstances we were in. This is where I differ from many on the left but if your citizens are coming under attack by a fascist junta, that's not something that can just be swept under the carpet. Yes, she manipulated the situation for her own political purposes of course- but regardless of that, I believe intervention was for the greater good.

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

gasser9 wrote:

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

GreenSam wrote:

gasser9 wrote:

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

Where did you learn all that... Pasotipedia?

here we go.. state funeral sponsored by the TUC, adverts plastered down the sides of the coffin, maybe ARLA would like in on it too, we could even privatise her body, buy a bit of it in a shares dividend way

Fors and against for me.

The country lost it's moral way owing to Thatchers policies, they divided communities and placed man against man in a greedy and self serving society. She encouraged the growth of wealth divides and slashed education budgets. She has a very long list of "hits" on working class people.

But, prior to Thatcher I remember waking up as a child with icicles hanging off the inside of my bedroom window cil having shivered myself to sleep the night before with the only heat and light coming from a candle. There were fires in the street where rubbish was burning and the only fire engine to turn up was 40 years old and the firemen were soldiers, rats used the front door to enter the house and not the sewer, dead bodies were stored in freezer lorries and miners demanded 40% pay rises during one of their annual strikes to bring down whoever was in government at the time. We were at the bottom of Europe's league of wealth and reputed as being lazy and strike addicted.

Thatcher provided me with a mortgage and for the first time I had credit to buy new furniture instead of second hand and also a telly.

I'm really not sure how I view Thatcher, she wasn't the devil that many portray her as, but she did play a major part in the greed and self interest that the country is stricken with today.

Greenskin wrote:

........
But then Jock,the Thatcher era certainly wasn't the only one in which decisions were made which caused upheaval and distress.I come from a [Labour voting] family which has strong historical roots in working on the railways.The Beeching report caused many of them to take early retirement,make unwanted moves to other industries in faraway places or simply get made redundant.All around the country,communities which which were based on the presence of a railway [Halwill Junction,Woodford Halse,Melton Constable] were destroyed and have never recovered in some cases. Although initiated by a Tory government,most of the cuts made were actually made under Labour,who did stuff all to reverse the process in spite of promises made in the 1964 election.No doubt you could go through all of the various era's in which Labour was in power and find similar examples in different industries,Thatcher sure wasn't the first politician and won't be the last to make such far reaching and devastating decisions.

A minor point (OK a VERY minor point) but Woodford Halse never took off as a centre of the railway. It wasn't "destroyed" by Beeching. It was an earlier speculative railway development that never took off because the hoped for railway went elsewhere. (I think).

But that illustrates one of the issues - there are "facts", "myths" and "points of view". We all select whatever works to support our prejudices.

My prejudice is that she was a heartless, driven megalomaniac who took pleasure in the class war and bringing swathes of the population to its knees. It was the humiliation of groups of people. Being convinced is not necessarily a good trait. It was only party unity that kept her going for so long - and, tellingly, it was the breakdown of that wafer-thin veneer of unity that brought her down. Whilst in office we twice saw a human side of Tha***er. Once when the arms-trading, coup-fomenting son of hers lost his way in the desert (good for her). And, most tellingly, her tears when she was ousted from power.

In the end, it wasn't for the things she did or didn't do that was so wrong (though in my opinion there is a long list of that). It was the encouragement of greed and the all-for-myself culture that was abhorrent. Things may have needed sorting but you don't amputate a leg to cut toe nails.

GreenSam wrote:

gasser9 wrote:

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

I don't know how old you are Greensam........but from my mid seventies age most of that I agree with.....well said.

She was very subtle in her selling of houses to sitting tenants........she turned many labour supporters into property owners.......who then changed their allegiance at the polling stations......some might say that was more important to Thatcher then helping the working class become house owners.....did she care one jot.......yes if it meant you changed your vote.........Tory guile no scruples at all.

GreenSam wrote:

gasser9 wrote:

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

A good response although I disagree with most of what you write. For instance she was always a steadfast critic of apartheid but she was always against sanctions and economic disinvestment, which she recognised would hurt the poorest people, the most.
That is not evil that is just an alternative viewpoint on how to deal with the apartheid situation in South Africa.

ZYPH wrote:

GreenSam wrote:

gasser9 wrote:

I guess you're a young man Sam so what do you think she did that made her an evil woman?
Just interested in a young persons perspective.

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

I don't know how old you are Greensam........but from my mid seventies age most of that I agree with.....well said.

She was very subtle in her selling of houses to sitting tenants........she turned many labour supporters into property owners.......who then changed their allegiance at the polling stations......some might say that was more important to Thatcher then helping the working class become house owners.....did she care one jot.......yes if it meant you changed your vote.........Tory guile no scruples at all.

Oh the crime. Funny, I always thought that in a democracy one voted for the policies that benefited ones family, community and country etc.

I guess Blair must have turned most normal, rational thinking people with some sort of moral compass into deceitful, self-serving labour voters with a penchant for war-crimes.

Thatcher created the yuppie Britain where being wealthy and selfish was/is no longer a crime. When the masses find institutions like the NHS privatised and destroyed, there will be only one political party responsible.
The Tories fought against the creation of the NHS and are now doing their best to destroy it and create a two tier service, whereby your ability to pay will determine the speed and level of treatment you receive.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many working class Tories there are.

GreenSam wrote:

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

Yep, she did support Pinochet but that was useful to the country geopolitically at the time, she maintained that friendship due to a seriously misplaced sense of loyalty, the rest of this post exemplifies the superficial, subjective and generally totally wrong view of politics which pervades the voting public, clueless doesn't even come close.

Me, I'm apolitical, I joined my first political party a couple of weeks ago so that I could see what their members were saying online, there must be three or four generations of Green Sams out there just itching to do their bit to fork the country up.

This and plenty of other posts seem far more interested in ascribing motive than actually analysing the actions and their effect.

The big anti Thatcher mantra seems to be that "she" set man against man, woman against woman, cat against dog. For any of you who believe that go find out what post hoc ergo propter hoc means then read Schumpeter and do your best to understand some of it.

Tringreen wrote:

When the masses find institutions like the NHS privatised and destroyed, there will be only one political party responsible..

Come on Tring you're better than that Shirley?

Nobody wants to destroy the NHS, it's just that some actually try to make it work properly.

The NHS is the biggest waste of money in the history of this country, its management is wholly ineffective despite there being more coiffured useless women on 50k a year, with expense accounts to die for, trolling around this country and abroad to pointless meetings, than you could shake a bed pan at. Even with this massive bureaucracy they couldn't organise anything other than a pith up in a brewery. GPs making 3,4,500k a year for handing out paracetemol and refering anything beyond a dose of the flu to real doctors.

Billions every year spent on the "Health Industry" which should be going toward the treatment of sick people, we have only been able to afford it because of the economy created in the conditions made possible by many of the actions Maggie T took while in power, note the use of the term "in power" rather than in office like the current mob, that economy is now reaching its natural end, when we actually have to pay for the excesses of the last 20 years the NHS in its current form will quite simply be unaffordable.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

GreenSam wrote:

Her friendship and support of General Pinochet, her refusal to directly condemn the aparthied system in South Africa but all too readily branding Mandella as a terrorist, destroying communities and putting scores of thousands of people on the breadline with not even the slightest attempt at a re-generation of jobs and homes, collaboration with the Hillsborough cover up, selling off community assets and just generally introducing the 'greed is good' mentality that still pervades Britain today. If you can do alright for yourself, great. If you can't, you're on your own, in the gutter, snookered with no-one to give you a hand back up. She did her level best to completely decimate the concepts of community and looking out for those less fortunate than us. Thatcher only focused on 'I' and 'now'. She gave no thought to 'us' and 'always'. Whilst some people got on the housing ladder, there was no effort to build homes or help re-home the people evicted from council houses. Even if a few more people got to own their own houses rather than rent, it still did far more bad to the condition of the average working person than good. I personally feel it too morbid to celebrate her death but I don't begrudge people who had their homes, jobs and communities taken away in the name of greed and unfettered free-market economics from doing so. To put it bluntly, I think it was her basic lack of care and condemnation of so many people to misery in the name of the benefit of so few that made her and evil woman. And yes, she may well have had a lot of drive, energy and a firm commitment to what she believed in. I'm sure she did-but so did a lot of very nasty people.

Yep, she did support Pinochet but that was useful to the country geopolitically at the time, she maintained that friendship due to a seriously misplaced sense of loyalty, the rest of this post exemplifies the superficial, subjective and generally totally wrong view of politics which pervades the voting public, clueless doesn't even come close.

Me, I'm apolitical, I joined my first political party a couple of weeks ago so that I could see what their members were saying online, there must be three or four generations of Green Sams out there just itching to do their bit to fork the country up.

This and plenty of other posts seem far more interested in ascribing motive than actually analysing the actions and their effect.

The big anti Thatcher mantra seems to be that "she" set man against man, woman against woman, cat against dog. For any of you who believe that go find out what post hoc ergo propter hoc means then read Schumpeter and do your best to understand some of it.

One of my fav episodes of The West Wing ackchewlee

Tringreen wrote:

Thatcher created the yuppie Britain where being wealthy and selfish was/is no longer a crime. When the masses find institutions like the NHS privatised and destroyed, there will be only one political party responsible.
The Tories fought against the creation of the NHS and are now doing their best to destroy it and create a two tier service, whereby your ability to pay will determine the speed and level of treatment you receive.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many working class Tories there are.

she created tring in short

Angry of Manchester wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

Thatcher created the yuppie Britain where being wealthy and selfish was/is no longer a crime. When the masses find institutions like the NHS privatised and destroyed, there will be only one political party responsible.
The Tories fought against the creation of the NHS and are now doing their best to destroy it and create a two tier service, whereby your ability to pay will determine the speed and level of treatment you receive.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many working class Tories there are.

she created tring in short

In shorts, maybe

So Tis, I agree that there is so much wasted professional time in the NHS and that medical staff should be allowed to spend more time treating and caring for patients rather than all the PC, time consuming paperwork etc. but I really think it can be saved , if only governments would listen to the practitioners rather than the bureaucrats.
If you have the money you can choose to go private but for me, a quality state run healthcare system, free to all citizens is what we have enjoyed for 60 yrs and to lose it would be disastrous. It must be made efficient but it must survive.

There has always been a two tier system of medical care. If you can pay then you will be seen almost instantly. That was true before the NHS was introduced and is true whilst it is in existance. For people to be set against each other they have to want what is on offer to them and be prepared to say feck my neighbour. Nobody introduced this into society it has been there since cavemen walked upright. People have always voted with "me" in mind first and foremost and if there is any scope for anything else being addressed then that second. Anyone who takes any interest in politics will look at what is on offer and how it might affect them. If it's good they will vote for it and if not then will find something else that is better and change their voting habit. Lets be honest about this, we all want what is best for us and family. If push comes to shove they foresake the national interest and the interests of others. Apart from the Mother Teressa's of this world who are few and far between.

Now I'm no fan of the lady, but my Union flag is at half mast today in my little piece of "empire" down here in South Africa, out of repect for a person who was truly a Briton of international renown. Now my neighbours are all of Afrikaans descent and we still discuss the first and second revolutionary wars, they are hardly fans of the UK (although most have long ago forgotten any residual bitterness), but to a man they have all expressed their condolences (not that I give a shite really) as they recognise she was one of the most influential people of the 20th century.

I think it's only common humanity that we should mark pretty much everybody's passing with a degree of respect.

Thatcher's welcome demise is less traumatic than Cameron still being alive (Frankie Boyle tweet).

Says the man who is paid handsomely for spouting his crap. Says the man who gives away most of his income to the unfortunate. Like feck he does. Give me somebody who practices their ideology rather than just spouting it whilst trousering their wedge.

thatcher advocated the 'family first' motto.

all well and good, you may think, but what her policy REALLY was about was 'family only and feck everyone else, look out for your own and sue any fecker that you want to, rip off anybody - and that includes your reli's ( for an example, her boys involvement in some coups in africa,and south america 'it wasnt me'!), if you are a company, you'd better be a big one, coz theres no room in this country for sole traders , just soul traders'

people under 30 didnt really live at the time of her policy up-evils, but by eckaslike are they paying now.

she fecked over the entire country, including you, and if you think she didnt, you are james brent or the like. noone but bankers and cnuts profited from her reign

I can only comment accurately from bitter personal experience (which is all any of us can do I guess) but the biggest feckin-over this country has had in my lifetime was by the Unions in the 70s and the Banks in the noughties. Both under Labour's watch.

The irony of Argyle's current 'leadership' was almost lost on me for a moment there.