Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[Ben]

That should read "Rust in peace", Dino. She was iron, after all....

While I hated most of what she did and what she stood for in terms of her disastrous and corrosively divisive domestic policies , I can take no pleasure or vengeance in the death of an unwell and confused old woman. Rest in peace indeed.

Robert, I imagine you've watched Spitting Image.... Pretty comical stuff.

[robertlouis]

They wont love and especially the rich ones to not say the ones who dont have a flaming clue what recession done to this country...Make the twats to look in the past and maybe they will if they got the brain clean.lol

Thanks sweety. I'd go further and suggest that unless people actually lived through those times in the 80s and saw the rampant greed in the city and the south east weighed against the wanton destruction of jobs and lives everywhere else, they simply won't understand what a shitty, shameful decade it was. It forced me out of Scotland, for one thing. I suppose I've done all right since, but I've never forgotten or forgiven what she and her policies did to the industrial base of the country.

Someone has suggested that they should put her funeral out to private tender and award it to the cheapest bid because "it's what she would have wanted."

I love that!

[robertlouis]

Robert, I imagine you've watched Spitting Image.... Pretty comical stuff.

Oh yes indeed. Another irony is that people believe that by rising to the top of politics in a sophisticated western democracy, she was forging a path for other women. Maybe so in terms of the simple achievement.

But this was also the woman who described feminism as "poison" and did little to advance the cause of women generally; arguably she put many of the advances made in the late 60s and during the 70s into reverse.

And I've already said, but it bears repetition, that she championed the odious Clause 28 which forbade positive teaching on homosexuality in schools, which reintroduced the climate of fear and discrimination which was ever so slowly being eroded before her accession.

[fivekatz]

Her life certainly was not without controversy. If she had been in the US Grover Norquist would have insured that things all over the country were named for her and that her legacy would be adapted to whatever the needs were of the 21st Century conservative movement.

At any rate her life was quite extraordinary IMO and her ability to not only become the PM of the UK but hold that office as long as she did certainly is remarkable, though much of her faith in what unshackled capital would do to benefit her people was at best misguided and at worst comprehended by her and she just did not give a shit.

[envivision]

Greatest British Prime Minister in peace time. She along Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul 2nd single handedly defeated communism and freed billions of people. God needed her more than we did.

(sad to see Obama trying to resuscitate communism in this country)

[tsadriana]

Thanks sweety. I'd go further and suggest that unless people actually lived through those times in the 80s and saw the rampant greed in the city and the south east weighed against the wanton destruction of jobs and lives everywhere else, they simply won't understand what a shitty, shameful decade it was. It forced me out of Scotland, for one thing. I suppose I've done all right since, but I've never forgotten or forgiven what she and her policies did to the industrial base of the country.

Someone has suggested that they should put her funeral out to private tender and award it to the cheapest bid because "it's what she would have wanted."

I love that!

Because she knew what she was thats why...i know about UK history because i live here and i wanted to have some conection with the past to make my own idea with what its happening in the present,,,,Doesnt matter now Cameron or UKIP they all shit all talks and promises but one thing i will do vote for UKIP because they worth it i hope u understand my remarks Roberto ..One thing i woulkd say same shit diff names .

[fivekatz]

I think people are reluctant to admit that she was good at politics, you can't achieve what she did -just in the Tory Party- without understanding both the machinery of politics and its operators; she got through a staggering amount of paperwork in a day's work; she was, as far as I know, completely incorruptible and a saint compared to the venal slime who have used their privilege to be MP's to claim expenses for flat screen tvs, bookshelves, duck-ponds and so on -ok she married a millionaire and never needed money, but as a matter of principle she was unlikely to fiddle her expenses, if she even had any. I know that certain people desperately wanted to uncover something sleazy about her and Denis, but it never did emerge.

In your US system, a President cannot serve more than two terms, a means of limiting ambition we ought to have here. The political skills that built her career, notably her unwillingness to compromise, became her downfall particularly with regard to the Poll Tax. Had she left power in 1989 for example, her departure would not have been so ugly.

In a way it is not clear to me how responsible Mrs Thatcher was for the changes that have taken to capitalism in the UK and elsewhere since the 1970s; I think she may have led Britain into depression earlier than it might otherwise have experienced. The off-shoring and outsourcing of business and the radical changes in technology have transformed the way products are made, and devastated our economy.

There was a time in this country when people made ships, now they make coffee.

Your post is well thought out and I believe that Mrs Thatcher was a huge part of a Western world move to global capitalism and the reversing of what many saw as gains by working people that came as a reaction to the Great Depression and post war reconstruction.

For their part whether it was Thatcher or Reagan I think these people actually believed that capital returned to the elite would redistribute back to the masses rather than lead to the death of labor rights, off shoring and the eventual conversion of western economies to shadow banking.

Regardless of her politics (and this is easier to say as Yank I suppose) on has to admire a WOMAN, who not only broke the glass ceiling in the UK but held the office PM for so long.

For better or worse, she was after Churchill the most notable PM in the 20th Century.

May she rest in peace for today is a day we celebrate life and tomorrow will be time enough to debate her failings.

[robertlouis]

Greatest British Prime Minister in peace time. She along Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul 2nd single handedly defeated communism and freed billions of people. God needed her more than we did.

(sad to see Obama trying to resuscitate communism in this country)

You didn't see the havoc that she wrought in the UK, obviously.

And Obama resuscitating communism??? FFS. You simply have no idea, do you?

[robertlouis]

Because she knew what she was thats why...i know about UK history because i live here and i wanted to have some conection with the past to make my own idea with what its happening in the present,,,,Doesnt matter now Cameron or UKIP they all shit all talks and promises but one thing i will do vote for UKIP because they worth it i hope u understand my remarks Roberto ..One thing i woulkd say same shit diff names .

Have to disagree re UKIP, Adriana. The public face, which, being Nigel Farage, is pretty ugly, is not as ugly as the racism, homophobia and anti-women feelings that lie behind their strident anti-EU agenda. Don't be fooled.

That said, I have no idea what I'll vote next time round. If I was back in Scotland I'd vote SNP, not because I feel strongly one way or the other about independence, but because their social policies show care and compassion and a much better set of priorities than the major UK parties.

[tsadriana]

Have to disagree re UKIP, Adriana. The public face, which, being Nigel Farage, is pretty ugly, is not as ugly as the racism, homophobia and anti-women feelings that lie behind their strident anti-EU agenda. Don't be fooled.

That said, I have no idea what I'll vote next time round.

I have a strng idea well lets say not that strong ,wait and see but i still vote for them...i hope the whole country will.No matter u vote its abt their interests not urs but like we say ,wait and see.