The Iron lady

LordSutch wrote: »

Mrs Thatch, a great leader of her time? she stood up to the Unions & won a massive battle against Scargill that changed (modernised) Britain in the 80s. She stood up to the IRA & the Argentine Junta and beat them both. The Iron Lady, controversial, strong, stubborn, pig headed, fervently patriotic, self possessed. Loved & loathed in equal amounts by the British & Irish people, looked up to abroad in many cases while at the same time being hated by many back home, a real contradiction at any one time!

Worst Enemies - The IRA/ Soviet Union (old guard), Gaddafi.
Best Friends - The USA/ Gorbechef (New Russia), Poland.

Highpoint - The Falklands victory.
Lowpoint - The dreaded Poll Tax.

You left out Pinochet from her best friends. And lots of former mining communities are fu@ked now.
I get people admiring some of her policies, but to make out she was a heroine is just nonsense when she marginalised a lot of people.

Unions - protecting workers! The bastards!

gigino wrote: »

Her countries treatment of minorities was way ahead of ours at the time...if you ask the tens of thousands of Blacks, Irish, Gays etc who moved to the UK when she was PM for 12 years there.

....and ours was ahead of Saudi. Yay!!!! Lets everyone get a medal for being better than somebody somewhere else......

cml387 wrote: »

Nobody seems to be making a movie about Gerry Adams or Charlie Haughey.

Just sayin'

In general, Movies tend to be made about interesting people.

gigino wrote: »

Its the labour governments which bankrupt the UK, as the chart below shows. http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3078296/the-true-extent-of-britains-debt.thtml

Conservative governments tend to be more prudent with money and run up less debt.

The best praise can come from your political opponents, and who better than by Tony Blair.

Tony Blair wrote in his 2010 autobiography A Journey that "Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period". He described Thatcher's efforts as "ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so" while also stating that "much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change."[url]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism#Thatcherite_economics[/url]

That chart has little to do with this issue and as it only shows a snapshot of Britain's debt to GDP ratio under Gordon Brown it can hardly be used as a measure of how Labour governments perform against Conservatives.

Regardless, the simple fact is that within 5 years of taking power, Thatcher and her economic policies had plunged Britain into a full scale recession with the highest unemployment rates ever experienced and the manufacturing & export industries severely hit.

Despite this - and cries for her to sway from her destructive path - she came out with the "this woman is not for turning" speech, which for some odd reason is seen by many as something to be admired.

Personally, I prefer that when someone fucks up royally, they admit it and do their best to make amends, but some people seem to think that blind arrogance & stupidity are admirable traits, for some very odd reason.


And as for the Blair quote... would you really take anything seriously that comes from the mouth of that war mongering meglomaniac? Honestly?

starbelgrade wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure - by the time she left office, she'd near bankrupt the country with her extremely naive belief that you could successfully manage the state finances by running them on her "corner shop" economic policies.

The Thatcherite years were also ones that saw the growth of the culture of greed & grab, which succeeded in creating temporary wealth, but at the same time led to an impoverishment of society and a destruction of many communities.

There is very little to be said for the achievements of Thatcher & a lot to be said for her legacy because it is a legacy of destruction & greed and remains a legacy that will take a long time to live down.

Read Sue Townsend's Margaret Hilda Roberts for a real biog.

starbelgrade wrote: »

That chart has little to do with this issue and as it only shows a snapshot of Britain's debt to GDP ratio under Gordon Brown it can hardly be used as a measure of how Labour governments perform against Conservatives.

Regardless, the simple fact is that within 5 years of taking power, Thatcher and her economic policies had plunged Britain into a full scale recession with the highest unemployment rates ever experienced and the manufacturing & export industries severely hit.

Despite this - and cries for her to sway from her destructive path - she came out with the "this woman is not for turning" speech, which for some odd reason is seen by many as something to be admired.

Personally, I prefer that when someone fucks up royally, they admit it and do their best to make amends, but some people seem to think that blind arrogance & stupidity are admirable traits, for some very odd reason.


And as for the Blair quote... would you really take anything seriously that comes from the mouth of that war mongering meglomaniac? Honestly?

The mostly public schooled Tory politicians loved her dominatrix stand. Educated in the fagging system, they got their jollies by fantasizing about being flagellated by a stern governess.