Maggie Thatcher death discussion thread - Mod rules in first post

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:22AM

youreadthat wrote: »

Some Tories thought about letting Liverpool rot, this is a fact.

Context is key though. This was a city where through Union strikes they wouldn't even bury their dead in 1979. Riots. Social unrest. Even before Maggie came along. It was deemed an ungovernable place by some in the Tory party but Thatcher rejected the opinion it should be left to its own devices.

Liverpool didn't do itself many favours in the late 1970s but certainly some pompous idiots in the Tories helped deepen the divide and social stigma already felt in the city.

Rascasse · 10-04-2013 02:22AM

Lingua Franca wrote: »

Are you aware that about a 3rd of ex-council houses are now in the hands of private landlords instead of ordinary homeowners? For example Charles Gow, the son of Thatcher's housing minister owns at least 40 of 120 ex council flats in one London estate.

I really don't see what the problem is with this. People got on to the housing ladder, were given the opportunity to move up in life rather than be life long council tenants forever living on miserable postwar estates. Many of those now rented by private landlords will be rented by people claiming housing benefit

Lingua Franca wrote: »

Are you aware that there is a chronic shortage of affordable housing as a direct result of her thoughtless policy?

This depends on where you are in the country, and what you'd call affordable. It is much more a case that planning laws, particularly in the south east and London, make it incredibly difficult and costly to get anything built.

Right to Buy was a great scheme. Sure councils were told to use the money to write down their huge debts and perhaps more money should have been provided to build more, but don't let overshadow the opportunity it gave those people in the 80's and early 90's.

K-9 · 10-04-2013 02:23AM

true wrote: »

Nobody wanted Liverpool starved. Where did you get such hatred for the Tory pary? It was in the interests of the Tory part that Liverpool would prosper and be part of a strong UK. The people of Sunderland and Derby got Nissan and Toyota and their spin off industries.

You should tell Sir Howe that.

And Liverpool, or close by, got a big manufacturer too. Again, it was the attitude.

Still, Germany is the driver of the European economy. I'm wondering how exactly Thatcher worked?

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:25AM

Nodin wrote: »

There is more than one reason to have little gra for the Tory party, tbh.

I know

By the way you kinda badgered the other guy for an answer re: German manufacturing v UK, i gave a very good one above which i'm sure you can acknowledge!!

true · 10-04-2013 02:28AM

K-9 wrote: »

Still, Germany is the driver of the European economy.

And the UK has been the seconded biggest contributer to EEC and latterly EC funds. This despite some people and some areas of the UK not pulling their weight.

K-9 · 10-04-2013 02:29AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

There is one MASSIVE reason that gave the Germans a huge advantage over the UK in terms of their manufacturing base in the last decade.

The Euro.

So simplistic, in fact Germany is in many ways a Thatcherite wet dream.

Low wage inflation, high productivity.

Germany is what Thatcher would have loved, everything she'd hoped. It's what her supporters envisaged with Thatcherism, shame Germany won, and Thatcher lost.

Nodin · 10-04-2013 02:29AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

I know

By the way you kinda badgered the other guy for an answer re: German manufacturing v UK, i gave a very good one above which i'm sure you can acknowledge!!

If the woman could push the culture she did through, there was no reason she couldn't have pushed a system closer to the german model through. She didn't, because thats not what she wanted. Nothing to do with the 'greater good' or "society" because she didn't really believe in it.

Nodin · 10-04-2013 02:30AM

true wrote: »

And the UK has been the seconded biggest contributer to EEC and latterly EC funds. This despite some people and some areas of the UK not pulling their weight.

What did you mean by "millions of immigrants" and linking them to social welfare? Why should k-9 look at london and bradford?

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:31AM

K-9 wrote: »

So simplistic, in fact Germany is in many ways a Thatcherite wet dream.

Low wage inflation, high productivity.

Germany is what Thatcher would have loved, everything she'd hoped. It's what her supporters envisaged with Thatcherism, shame Germany won, and Thatcher lost.

Ehhh no.

The UK was running a balance of payments deficit, if it entered the euro there would have been little movement in the value of it's currency relative to Germany.

In short, no. Germany was almost unique in the benefits the Euro brought to it in terms of exporting and thus the impact on its manufacturing base.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:33AM

Nodin wrote: »

If the woman could push the culture she did through, there was no reason she couldn't have pushed a system closer to the german model through. She didn't, because thats not what she wanted. Nothing to do with the 'greater good' or "society" because she didn't really believe in it.

If the German model was easily replicated we'd all be doing it. The USA, UK, Ireland, everyone.

Nodin · 10-04-2013 02:34AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

If the German model was easily replicated we'd all be doing it. The USA, UK, Ireland, everyone.

You seem to forget the role of ideology.

K-9 · 10-04-2013 02:35AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

K-9 has strong feelings over the Hillsborough disaster where the Liverpool fans (96) died and the subsequent handling of the affair by the Thatcher government of the day, the Metropolitan police, The Sun newspaper.

By proxy, he's unlikely to send any Tories, Sheffield coppers or Murdoch family any Christmas cards. Ever.

Nothing has been proven about her with Hillsborough. I think she actually was quite fair with Liverpool, Toxteth, Howe and all that, she did pump funds in to regenerate it. She was far too willing to swallow the police line on Hillsborough, she did that in Brixton, the Miners, the RUC, the police could do no wrong, loved Murdoch and the Sun.

Don't stereotype, it was her big failing, I'd prefer if you didn't stereotype me, much as it is easy and convenient.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:39AM

Nodin wrote: »

You seem to forget the role of ideology.

Ireland is pretty down the middle in terms of ideology. There is no far-right or far-left effectively. We're just straight down the middle and really we have no ideological barriers in attempting to copy the German model.

Can't see it happening mind you. School kids getting off at 12 in the day for family time, people working far less hours, low productivity etc. Germany has one of the lowest productivity, lowest amount of working hours and lowest amount of time children spend in school.

It'd be a tremendous upheaval to try implement all that. In fact, the sort of drastic upheaval Thatcher went for in the UK and as you can tell by this thread she isn't exactly loved for it.

If Enda Kenny in the morning passed legislation saying kids should be in school from 730am-midday and workers should work 10 hours less a week, there'd be war!

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:40AM

K-9 wrote: »

Nothing has been proven about her with Hillsborough. I think she actually was quite fair with Liverpool, Toxteth, Howe and all that, she did pump funds in to regenerate it. She was far too willing to swallow the police line on Hillsborough, she did that in Brixton, the Miners, the RUC, the police could do no wrong, loved Murdoch and the Sun.

Don't stereotype, it was her big failing, I'd prefer if you didn't stereotype me, much as it is easy and convenient.

Apologies.

It would be fair to say Murdoch and his Tory cronies of the 1980s aren't your favourite people but sorry if i expanded on that too far.

Spook_ie · 10-04-2013 02:41AM

K-9 wrote: »

Indeed, what a show, and it was loosely based on Thatcher.

Actually it was based on a fictional election of a new Conservative party leader Henry "Hal" Collingridge and the scheming of Francis Urquhart to replace him after being slighted in the cabinet non shuffle. The timeline was based after MT's tenure as PM so technically wasn't about her at all but of her successors

K-9 · 10-04-2013 02:50AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

Apologies.

It would be fair to say Murdoch and his Tory cronies of the 1980s aren't your favourite people but sorry if i expanded on that too far.

Well no, I find that a bit patronising, I giver her credit for going against policies suggested by people like Howe. She sided with people like Heseltine and Clarke, throwbacks to previous Tory party's.

She swallowed police propaganda hook, line and sinker. Whether that was the RUC and shoot to kill, or the West Midlands police and the Birmingham Six or Hillsborough, we all know where her sympathies lied.

Cheap point scoring will never erase her police bias.

Spook_ie · 10-04-2013 02:52AM

Somebody posted this in a thread, can't help feeling how misjudged some policies were when effectively there was and never would be a right decision

Politicians are usually faced with two choices, a bad choice and a worse choice, most pick the least worst option in their opinion.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 02:59AM

Spook_ie wrote: »

Somebody posted this in a thread, can't help feeling how misjudged some policies were when effectively there was and never would be a right decision

Read an interesting and balanced piece on the BBC site earlier, which i think reflects your point:

Yet what was that legacy? Even now, more than 20 years after her tearful exit from No 10, Britain cannot agree. It is often said that she was the most divisive leader of the last century, which is almost certainly true.

Yet her impact was much more complicated, even contradictory, than we often think. Margaret Thatcher called herself a conservative, but she led the most radical government in living memory.

She promised to restore law and order, yet she presided over the worst urban riots Britain had ever seen. She talked of bringing back Victorian values, yet her decade in office saw divorce, abortion, illegitimacy and drug-taking reach unprecedented heights.

She extolled thrift, hated profligacy and even paid for her own Downing Street ironing board, yet she presided over a gigantic credit boom and unleashed the power of casino capitalism. And although she talked of rolling back the frontiers of the state, the stark fact is that, in real terms, public spending rose in all but two of her years in office.

Over the course of the 1970s, two Prime Ministers, Edward Heath and James Callaghan, had been broken by the trade unions, while a third, Harold Wilson, descended into paranoia. Foreign papers talked of Britain as the Sick Man of Europe. Callaghan himself told his Labour colleagues: "If I were a young man, I would emigrate."

In truth, Britain in the 1980s was always facing an immensely painful transition, partly because so many difficult decisions had been postponed for so long, but also because the stark reality of globalisation meant that major industries - notably carmaking, shipbuilding and coal-mining - were doomed even before she took power.

As a strident and often abrasive woman, Thatcher became the convenient scapegoat. But though her shock therapy never produced the nationwide renaissance for which she had hoped, she did not deserve all the blame.

Even if she had never been prime minister, many of the changes she came to represent, from privatisation and deregulation to the death of heavy industry and the rise in unemployment, would almost certainly have happened anyway, only more slowly.

With her characteristic blend of high principle, tactical opportunism and populist rhetoric, Thatcher came to embody the trends that transformed British life. Yet the old working-class world of busy factories, crowded pubs and cobbled streets was already dying, while a new Britain, more ambitious, more materialistic and more individualistic, was already emerging.

If she had fallen under a bus in 1978, would Britain today be so different? Her champions and her critics would answer with a firm yes. But I doubt it.

Dick phelan · 10-04-2013 03:27AM

Awful person plain and simple worst PM just a horrible person with little or no feeling for other people her support for evil regimes and her harsh treatment of workers in her own country quite frankly i was happy to hear that she had finally gone and hope we never see the likes of her again

ardle1 · 10-04-2013 03:46AM

What do people think of the celebrations in Belfast and Derry (and across the UK)at the news that Margaret Thatcher has died.... Bearing in mind (because I see a lot of Republican bashing on this particular website/domain)that Martin Mc Guinness has called for an end to these celebrations!!!

Nodin · 10-04-2013 03:54AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

Ireland is pretty down the middle in terms of ideology. There is no far-right or far-left effectively. We're just straight down the middle and really we have no ideological barriers in attempting to copy the German model.
.........

God love your innocence is all I can say to that one.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 04:10AM

Nodin wrote: »

God love your innocence is all I can say to that one.

Seriously? You think our main political parties have a similar divide in ideology as witnessed in the UK with Maggies Tories and Kinnocks Labour?

Maybe i need to read up some more but you could throw a blanket over the difference in policies the main parties are offering and none of them are particularly left or right leaning.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 04:25AM

ardle1 wrote: »

What do people think of the celebrations in Belfast and Derry (and across the UK)at the news that Margaret Thatcher has died.... Bearing in mind (because I see a lot of Republican bashing on this particular website/domain)that Martin Mc Guinness has called for an end to these celebrations!!!

To my mind, people throwing parties celebrating ANY death are making more of a statement about their own character and content of their heart, than that of the person departed. It's a sad mentality that the end of a life can inspire a reason to get pissed.

In this particular case, i find it hugely ironic.

There's 3 main 'groups' celebrating her death - Republicans, ex-Miners and Working Class folk. But the irony of it is they are actually disgracing those who suffered under Thatcher by celebrating her passing.

I doubt the Hunger Strikers would want any of their breath wasted on a woman they despised, let alone a party thrown in her death to acknowledge her misdeeds.

The miners and general working class people who felt disenfranchised by Thatcher, who felt marginalised, who felt they couldn't get a job due to her policies, who couldn't feed their families or pay bills ....it's quite galling to think they went without and struggled yet want to spend money during a recession getting lashed out it! Espousing the very consumerism and yuppyism they despised.

If Maggie could look down on all this she'd be loving it. All this hatred, all this vitriol, all these celebrations showed how much she mattered to people and how important she was. If they wanted to show how much they hated her, consigning her to anonymity and a "meh she's dead" would be the way to go.

Weathering · 10-04-2013 04:45AM

Wow the overwhelming hatred for Margaret Thatcher is evident in the comments and like ratio in the comment section at the bottom of this story http://http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-morrissey-blasts-1818903

Chuck Stone · 10-04-2013 04:52AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

"meh she's dead" would be the way to go.

She was a polarizing figure and there was never going to be a 'meh' reaction to her death. I daresay that had there not been a conspicuous reaction to MT's passing the narrative of the mainstream media would have been a largely unchallenged 'canonization' of 'St Thatcher, saviour of the Britons' rather than an honest appraisal of her legacy.

wonderfullife · 10-04-2013 05:04AM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

She was a polarizing figure and there was never going to be a 'meh' reaction to her death. I daresay that had there not been a conspicuous reaction to MT's passing the narrative of the mainstream media would have been a largely unchallenged 'canonization' of 'St Thatcher, saviour of the Britons' rather than an honest appraisal of her legacy.

But you don't need to throw a party and get hammered to prove that point.

Anyway i'll never be throwing any parties to celebrate someones passing. I don't need someone to die for an excuse for a piss-up.

Norwesterner · 10-04-2013 05:10AM

wonderfullife wrote: »

To my mind, people throwing parties celebrating ANY death are making more of a statement about their own character and content of their heart, than that of the person departed. It's a sad mentality that the end of a life can inspire a reason to get pissed.

In this particular case, i find it hugely ironic.

There's 3 main 'groups' celebrating her death - Republicans, ex-Miners and Working Class folk. But the irony of it is they are actually disgracing those who suffered under Thatcher by celebrating her passing.

I doubt the Hunger Strikers would want any of their breath wasted on a woman they despised, let alone a party thrown in her death to acknowledge her misdeeds.

The miners and general working class people who felt disenfranchised by Thatcher, who felt marginalised, who felt they couldn't get a job due to her policies, who couldn't feed their families or pay bills ....it's quite galling to think they went without and struggled yet want to spend money during a recession getting lashed out it! Espousing the very consumerism and yuppyism they despised.

If Maggie could look down on all this she'd be loving it. All this hatred, all this vitriol, all these celebrations showed how much she mattered to people and how important she was. If they wanted to show how much they hated her, consigning her to anonymity and a "meh she's dead" would be the way to go.

You say there's 3 types celebrating, well, watching the British reports it seems to be mainly middle-class, student,lefty types who wern't even born.
You can see them with their smart phones and literally with bottles of champagne. Champagne Socialists.
One showed a party in working class Brixton, but there seemed to be about 2 or 3 local blacks and the rest were your usual Socialist Worker type.
It all looks a bit forced and probably motivated by Tweets and the herd mentality.

I know some who protested in Derry, and some of them are former Blanketmen who were friends with some Hunger Strikers, so it's personal for them, and I wouldn't knock them.
The rally in Derry was exclusively dissident supporters. Elderly mother of Patsy O Hara was there and a lot of 32CSM flags.
Mc Guiness's statement just drove a bigger wedge between what happens in the SF leadership and what feelings are on the ground in Republican heartlands.
Many SF people were celebrating on Facebook etc, now they have another WTF moment and wonder if they're in the right party.

I personally wouldn't celebrate or party, but wouldn't lecture former blanketmen or relatives who may want to find closure.
Deaths affect everyone differently.
Had she been killed in Brighton, I probably would've cheered, but the moment has passed, and she was an 87 year old woman.
I wonder if Jews feel any pleasure in seeing 90 year old Germans charged with war crimes.
I suppose some do, and others think..."Whats the point'"

Rascasse · 10-04-2013 05:12AM

Weathering wrote: »

Wow the overwhelming hatred for Margaret Thatcher is evident in the comments and like ratio in the comment section at the bottom of this story http://http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-morrissey-blasts-1818903

Lefty paper in anti Thatcher comments shocker.

The Guardian did a poll and the results must have been a disappointment for them. 50% thought she was good for the UK and 35% bad, so not "overwelming hatered".

Funnily enough when I read that article yesterday there was more data on the age breakdown showing, unsurprisingly, that the young (under 35's) were more against her than those who were of voting/working age while she was in office. Down the Guardian memory hole I assume.
Edit; Conspiracy over. The quote is

There are also marked divisions across different parts of the population. Older people are keener than the young, with 64% of pensioners rating Thatcher as good for Britain as against just 39% of 25- to 34-year-old voters, a demographic still in childhood when she stepped down in 1990.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

She was a polarising figure and there was never going to be a 'meh' reaction to her death. I daresay that had there not been a conspicuous reaction to MT's passing the narrative of the mainstream media would have been a largely unchallenged 'canonization' of 'St Thatcher, saviour of the Britons' rather than an honest appraisal of her legacy.

Considering the large liberal and left wing media in Britain there would have never been a 'canonisation'. The media coverage in Britain has nothing to do with the actions of a few hundred students outside the Ritzy or anyone else out celebrating the wholly unsurprising news that an old woman died.

Weathering · 10-04-2013 05:25AM

Rascasse wrote: »

Lefty paper in anti Thatcher comments shocker.

The Guardian did a poll and the results must have been a disappointment for them. 50% thought she was good for the UK and 35% bad, so not "overwelming hatered".

It's quite ironic that you dismiss the article I linked only to produce one of your own and expect it to be taken seriously. Look there are over 11pages of comments and anti Thatcher comments received widely over 100like and the rare one in support of here was a reverse,it was liked over 16,000 times on facebook and shared.

The mirror is a simple tabloid paper,the majority of people who buy it don't buy on the basis of whether its a right or left wing paper. People who care whether a paper is left wing or right wing are more inclined to buy a broadsheet.

The opinions of the British people who read that mirror article are obvious,you can't ignore it. That it is all

Rascasse · 10-04-2013 05:36AM

The article I linked to was also from a lefty paper. The point I was trying to show was that even a left leaning paper's poll doesn't show "overwhelming hatred".

While the Mirror may well be a simple tabloid it is also a well known for being a staunchly pro Labour paper. I'd be surprised if most of it readers (in Britain) didn't know that.

Maggie Thatcher death discussion thread - Mod rules in first post

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