Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[robertlouis]

A statistical analysis of pretty much everything during her rule.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/pol...hatcher-charts

[f-finger]

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)

Awesome how people never take into account the Soviet, Polish and Czech dissidents when it comes to such questions. Charta 77 anyone? Sacharov? Havel? Solidarnocs?

I guess, right wing media conglomerate brainwashing works in the end.

[Willie Escalade]

So this particular picture is meant to be pissed on on both sides of the Atlantic?
Ah...the eighties...

[Skylancer81]

Well then go back to before she turned things around. Sounds like you would prefer everything being worse then what she was able to fix. You may not have liked how she turned it around but she did turn it around.

And please feel free to insult someone who knows exactly what they are talking about and pretend you know better.

And no I do not think that the end results always justify the means. She had lots of good polices as well as lots of bad polices. We can both agree on that.

Did the good out weigh the bad? That is the question.

To you obviously not. To the rest of the intelligent world however it did.

[Prospero]

The sheer absurdity of envivision's post is staggering. Whatever your view of her politics.
Obama bringing back communism? It is staggering to understand anyone beleives this arrant nonsense. He is in the mainstream of American politics. Pretty right wing actually.

And Thatcher, reagan and the Pope single handedly brining down Communism. There was a man called Gorbachev who played rather a significant role in that - in helping finally unravel a system that was rotting at its core. That and as F-finger says the people within that "evil empire". Thatcher, Ronnie and the rest were cheerleaders at the carnage really.

[BigDF]

The sheer absurdity of envivision's post is staggering. Whatever your view of her politics.
Obama bringing back communism? It is staggering to understand anyone beleives this arrant nonsense. He is in the mainstream of American politics. Pretty right wing actually.

As usual, Prospero, you are right on the money about Obama. Unfortunately a lot of people over here don't really understand the difference between communism and socialism, which is the road America is traveling down now. Capitalism died in this country back in 2008, when the feds bailed out the banks and insurance companies.

And Thatcher, reagan and the Pope single handedly brining down Communism. There was a man called Gorbachev who played rather a significant role in that - in helping finally unravel a system that was rotting at its core. That and as F-finger says the people within that "evil empire". Thatcher, Ronnie and the rest were cheerleaders at the carnage really.

I would point out that it is impossible for three people to single handedly do anything. Also this so called victory over the USSR did much to put America into the shape it is today and we're still spending billions building weapons designed to fight the big war between them and us.

My condolences to the UK about Margaret Thatcher's passing. She was an impressive leader and like anyone who rises the top leadership position deserves everyone's respect for her talents and work.

[Prospero]

Oh c'mon BigDF... Obama is not a socialist either. He really isn't.

[Stavros]

I would point out that it is impossible for three people to single handedly do anything. Also this so called victory over the USSR did much to put America into the shape it is today and we're still spending billions building weapons designed to fight the big war between them and us.

My condolences to the UK about Margaret Thatcher's passing. She was an impressive leader and like anyone who rises the top leadership position deserves everyone's respect for her talents and work.

The USSR spent a lot of money building up its nuclear and conventional armed forces in the 1970s (rather like North Korea these days) at the expense of investing in other parts of the economy -and then became bogged down in a disastrous war in Afghanistan (sound familiar?). Because of the inherent incompetence of the centrally planned economy right across the Communist bloc, the 1980s was characterised by more intense forms of protest, and eventually disengagement than had taken place sporadically (and often violently, eg Hungary 1956) since the 1940s. Poland is a good example, not least because when Solidarnosc burst onto the scene in Gdansk in 1980, the Party had no response to its demands.

Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev understood each other because the Russian wanted the same kind of dynamic economy which by comparison the west had compared to the USSR; he knew the military could not dominate an economy for long without distorting production and causing damage, and he also wanted more free speech and individual decision making in the USSR. The ironies are that Vladimir Putin is closer to the old style USSR than Gorbachev, and that Yeltsin was more extreme than either Reagan or Thatcher in the dismantling of the state and allowing an economic free-for-all, whereas with Thatcher and Reagan the State did not give up/release to the free market even 50% of its economic interests, which is why some people can't work out if Margaret Thatcher was a liberal or a Conservative.

And yes, BigDF she was an impressive leader, the Labour Party today has changed its constitution and its policies as a result of her relentless victories; she moved the centre ground of British politics and that in one sense is her greatest victory. Finally, because of their impact on the role of government and the creation of alternatives to free market capitalism, and for re-thinking the relationship between the state and the economy, David Lloyd-George (also a wartime leader), Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher are the most important politicians of the 20th century. Churchill, an Anglo-American who changed parties to promote his own career in politics, was a wartime leader and ineffective as Prime Minister after his only election victory in 1951.

[trish]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...ritain-around/

[thx1138]

Show me your friends and I'll tell you what kind of person you are: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/conservatives-outraged-over-cnn-photo-thatch