Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[Prospero]

It is sad that the appalling Old Etonion overlords we are lumbered with may may well preside over the possible break-up of the UK.

[reinhardt.lane]

NPR did a very interesting story on her that morning when she died. The first female prime minister who arguably paved the way for other leaders like Angela Merkel and Australia's Julia Gillard so hated the feminist movement at the time that she distanced herself from it. Her 'success' (I'm not saying her time in office was a good one) was her's alone, not a collective success for a minority critically underrepresented at the time.

Strange days...

[Stavros]

lol. well being a plazzy scouser and not old enough to know more than what history and family life teaches you... i had to check how bad this amnesia is so spoke to what remains alive lol and would you believe it not one member of my family who lived in bootle/walton/kirkby/skem council areas at the time has a good word to say about thatcher. seems to be an epidemic :P Must be a reason right?!

Liverpool though not alone, suffered economic decline more than most other cities in the 1970s and 1980s, on top of which it elected Labour councillors who were an embarrassment to the rest of the Party and whose record in office was blighted by the Samson Bond affair as well as their absurd attitude to council spending. I had dealings with Militant in London where I lived at the time, and at one point it was suggested to me they were the 'Strasserite' tendency in the Labour Party; it wasn't far off the mark. Whatever, the simple truth is that in London, and also in another two cities where I lived in the late 80s and up to her resignation, she had almost maniacal support, and that was the divisive aspect -as someone said, it was impossible to be indifferent to her as a politician.

One of her blind spots was culture high and low, she never understood youth culture, and the terrible deaths that were inflicted on football in the 1980s led to the summit at Downing St from which (I think) Alex Ferguson emerged to suggest she didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Heysel, Bradford and of course Hillsborough passed her by and that is just another reason why she failed to endear anyone to her in Liverpool or Sheffield. For someone whose criticism of documents was razor sharp, the reports from the police were taken as read, which would not have happened with a situation in which she had an interest.

That the seating in grounds policy that followed has also led to steep price rises for tickets pricing many fans out of the ground is possibly a characteristic consequence of 'Thatcherism'.

[Stavros]

NPR did a very interesting story on her that morning when she died. The first female prime minister who arguably paved the way for other leaders like Angela Merkel and Australia's Julia Gillard so hated the feminist movement at the time that she distanced herself from it. Her 'success' (I'm not saying her time in office was a good one) was her's alone, not a collective success for a minority critically underrepresented at the time.

Strange days...

As I said in my last post, she had blind spots. It is well known that Maggie was her father's daughter, and that she preferred the company of men, and though, other than Denis, her closest friends were female, they were not political, so no challenge. Although she felt she was in tune with the ordinary voter, I don't think she ever truly understood poverty. From her perspective, poverty was a challenge to be overcome by hard work and thrift, which is why she was opposed to welfare as a substitute for work. In principle there is nothing wrong with that view, but the British economy was drained of the very kind of low or unskilled work that millions need because they have no educational advantages.

The one-parent family, which was not that uncommon in her youth because of the men who were killed in the wars, also passed her by. She also failed to reach out to immigrants from the Indian sub-continent, even though most of them were -and are- small business owners with 'values' she shared. Labour made a lot of political capital out of the immigration issue, on which Thatcher was vulnerable, telling an Australian politician that Sydney risked looking like Fiji if it allowed any more immigrants in.

For me the weakest part of all this noise going on, is that for all the criticisms of her legacy, there is little understanding of the mess we were in throughout the 1970s. Indeed there is a theory that capitalism in the UK went astray in the 19th century. Part of that mess was the poverty of ideas that the Labour movement presented to voters -when Maggie came along, she offered a real change, Labour offered more of the same, and continued to do so at a time when many people actually wanted something different from Thatcherism but found there were no answers. The paradox is that while we can see where the failures in this level of free market economics and deregulation have led to, we still do not have an alternative economic vision; we are still lumbered with the agenda that Margaret Thatcher established, one that has opened up the nightmare world of free market capitalism where even government and taxes are virtually abolished; or the alternative mix 'n match policies in which governments struggle to thrive on a declining tax revenue to fund increasingly expensive services. It is bitterly ironic that the Communist system eventually bankrupted itself and that this is the direction in which the capitalist system also seems to be moving towards.

We are now in a bigger mess in the 21st century than we were in the 1970s; I can't see where the volume of jobs is coming from that will restore something that used to be called 'full employment'; perhaps we will never know such a thing again in the UK.

[sexyasianescorts]

My nan hated her I am not sure I can even repeat here what she called her as i know you all have delicate ears.

For women she did a lot in politics even if you dont agree with her policies.

If you think thatcher was bad as PM can you imagine what would happen if Hariett Harman ever got in !!!

Chloe x

[Prospero]

Or Theresa May... or, worse still, Michael Gove....

Meanwhile a dilemma for the BBC....


'Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead' has risen to number one in the iTunes chart, and so far sits at number 10 in the Official Singles Chart due to a campaign to get the track to number one following the death of Margaret Thatcher.

The song, from the soundtrack to the 1939 film 'The Wizard of Oz', appeared in the chart just 12 hours after the death of the former prime minister, and has been rising ever since.

According to the Official Charts Company, the track, credited to the 'Wizard of Oz Film Cast', has sold more than 10,600 copies, leaving it around 5000 copies shy of a top three placing.

Other versions of the song, one credited to July Garland and another cover version sung by Ella Fitzgerald, are also appearing in the official chart, at number 54 and 146 respectively.

It is already one of the shortest songs ever to chart, coming in at 51 seconds long.

It's not clear yet whether the BBC will play the song on the Official Chart Show on Sunday. In a statement quoted by the Daily Mail, the BBC said: "The Official Chart Show on Sunday is a historical and factual account of what the British public has been buying and we will make a decision about playing it when the final chart positions are clear."

The campaign began on Wednesday on Facebook and has since been gathering pace, with the page boasting 7,383 members at the time of writing.

The chart closes at midnight on Saturday, after which the placings will be announced on Radio 1's Official Chart Update show on Sunday.

The news follows director Ken Loach suggesting that Thatcher's funeral be privatised, rather be paid for from the public purse, as it would be 'what she would have wanted'.

Thatcher died on Monday 8 April, following a stroke. She was 87.

[mrtrebus]

I hate her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sexyasianescorts]

Really Prospero

The Internet does really scare me sometimes !!

[Jericho]

I come to bury thatcher, not praises her!

[robertlouis]

My nan hated her I am not sure I can even repeat here what she called her as i know you all have delicate ears.

For women she did a lot in politics even if you dont agree with her policies.

If you think thatcher was bad as PM can you imagine what would happen if Hariett Harman ever got in !!!

Chloe x

She became Prime Minister. No mean achievement.

But in terms of advancing the cause of feminism, that's all. Her contribution to the advancement of sex equality was arguably negative, not positive. As an example, she sponsored Clause 28 which forbade schools to promote positive role models of gay men and women.