Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

[Jericho]

The witch is dead!

Thatcher! (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/world/europe/uk-margaret-thatcher-dead/?hpt=hp_t1)

[Stavros]

Margaret Thatcher, who with Lloyd George and Attlee was one of the most influential Prime Ministers in British history, has died at the age of 87.

I acknowledge the profound impact that she had on British politics, even though I was actively engaged at the time in the prevention of everything that she represented. It is brutally simple: she won, and the Labour movement I was part of, lost.

She had an ability to reduce complex problems to simple ideas and convey them with 'conviction' even when, as was the case in the Falklands crisis, she was actually unsure of herself, and lacked backing amongst her closest colleagues. She was part of the intellectual trend that demolished the post-war consensus on the mixed economy, to the extent that few people now believe government should own industrial businesses. But the price was the loss of 25% of Britain's manufacturing base, and Mrs T was the most divisive PM of the last century, leaving behind a legacy of admiration and bitterness.

On a personal level, someone I once knew briefly knew someone who worked at No 10 Downing St, and confirmed that Mrs Thatcher was a sensitive person who knew everyone's name, remembered birthdays and was much loved by her staff. I have no problem with the woman, but I cannot endorse the political legacy, hugely important though it has been.

Are we better of in the UK because of all those changes? In parts, maybe, on the whole, no, but the legacy will now be a matter of intense scrutiny again.

[irvin66]

Rest in Peace Iron Lady.

[Jericho]

Bollocks, that's my day ruined...I just found out she's getting cremated!

[Saint_Frankenstein]

Now she can burn in hell alongside Ronnie Reagan.

[GroobySteven]

One evil cunt off the planet.
The world is a lighter place already.

[MagicAcorn]

Good post! An incredible divisive person, as you said.

It'll be interesting to see whether she gets granted a state-funeral.

[The Piper]

Only gone in body:shrug

[f-finger]

It'll be interesting to see whether she gets granted a state-funeral.

Since her rhetorics were always anti-state, it shouldn't.

[MagicAcorn]

Since her rhetorics were always anti-state, it shouldn't. BBC claims otherwise

[GroobySteven]

She's only been in Hell for a few hours and she's already closed down seven furnaces.

[Castor_Troy05]

Good riddance, just a shame it didn't happen 40 years ago

[Prospero]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

Mr Stavros and i disagree on many things. His summation of Mrs T's impact is pretty much on the money. Hugely divisive. I hated her. She damaged the country. But her one shining and exceptional achievement was to be the first woman to reach the zenith of British politics.



Margaret Thatcher, who with Lloyd George and Attlee was one of the most influential Prime Ministers in British history, has died at the age of 87.

I acknowledge the profound impact that she had on British politics, even though I was actively engaged at the time in the prevention of everything that she represented. It is brutally simple: she won, and the Labour movement I was part of, lost.

She had an ability to reduce complex problems to simple ideas and convey them with 'conviction' even when, as was the case in the Falklands crisis, she was actually unsure of herself, and lacked backing amongst her closest colleagues. She was part of the intellectual trend that demolished the post-war consensus on the mixed economy, to the extent that few people now believe government should own industrial businesses. But the price was the loss of 25% of Britain's manufacturing base, and Mrs T was the most divisive PM of the last century, leaving behind a legacy of admiration and bitterness.

On a personal level, someone I once knew briefly knew someone who worked at No 10 Downing St, and confirmed that Mrs Thatcher was a sensitive person who knew everyone's name, remembered birthdays and was much loved by her staff. I have no problem with the woman, but I cannot endorse the political legacy, hugely important though it has been.

Are we better of in the UK because of all those changes? In parts, maybe, on the whole, no, but the legacy will now be a matter of intense scrutiny again.

I walked into a pub at Soho at lunchtime today having just seen the news on twitter and pronounced this to my assembled friends... and I'm afraid could not resist the temptation to post this here.

The Wicked Witch Is Dead - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jn8K8EA7-Q)

[flabbybody]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

[GroobySteven]

But her one shining and exceptional achievement was to be the first woman to reach the zenith of British politics.




... and then put woman's rights back 20 yrs.

[GroobySteven]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

She was sucking Reagan's black jizz filled cock. It's little wonder she was admired in the US.

[Saint_Frankenstein]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

I can't speak for other Americans but I'm personally a socialist and she was a right-wing capitalist pig who shat on the poor and working class, just like her Alzheimers-ridden imperialist buddy in crime, Reagan.

[Merkurie]

I admire her accomplishment in rising to lead a major western nation as a female.

Whatever her politics, she certainly seemed to have woken Britain up, sometimes your worst enemy can be just what you need. She left a mark.

[GroobySteven]

I admire her accomplishment in rising to lead a major western nation as a female.

Whatever her politics, she certainly seemed to have woken Britain up, sometimes your worst enemy can be just what you need. She left a mark.

There is truth in that.

[Prospero]

Tramp the dirt down
By Elvis Costello

Elvis wrote this for Mrs T about 20 years ago.
Elvis Costello - Tramp The Dirt Down - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ)
I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child's
Face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
Coming down on that child's lips

Well I hope I don't die too soon
I pray the lord my soul to save
Oh I'll be a good boy, I'm trying so hard to behave
Because there's one thing I know, I'd like to live
Long enough to savor
That's when they finally put you in the ground
I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

When England was the whore of the world
Margaret was her madam
And the future looked as bright and as clear as
The black tarmacadam
Well I hope that she sleeps well at night, isn't
Haunted by every tiny detail
'Cos when she held that lovely face in her hands
All she thought of was betrayal

And now the cynical ones say that it all ends the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just squeezed the life from his only son
And how it's only voices in your head and dreams you never dreamt
Try telling him the subtle difference between justice and contempt
Try telling me she isn't angry with this pitiful discontent
When they flaunt it in your face as you line up for punishment
And then expect you to say thank you straighten up, look proud and pleased
Because you've only got the symptoms, you haven't got the whole disease
Just like a schoolboy, whose head's like a tin-can
Filled up with dreams then poured down the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being blown to bits or beaten and maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shame

Well I hope you live long now, I pray the lord your soul to keep
I think I'll be going before we fold our arms and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap
'Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They'll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down

[Saint_Frankenstein]

Lol, some Thatcher groupie is down-voting all the remarks critical of her.

[Gillian]

This isn't far off the mark ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHVDXBXCYAEA3ZO.jpg

[Dino Velvet]

Rest in Peace, Iron Lady.
http://gma.yahoo.com/margaret-thatcher--britain-s--iron-lady--prime-minister--dies-120034251.html

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/RHgwY5Y4p7G3Q6S9xIACtA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM2MDtxPTg1O3c9NjQw/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.abcnewsplus.com/3040e010c7e1899b8670d749c7fd4f3e

[Dino Velvet]

Rest in Peace Iron Lady.

From Norway and America too. Rest in peace.

[Stavros]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

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.

[supersharpshooter]

Excellent news. Fucking bitch.

[supersharpshooter]

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.


She was a cunt. Its excellent news she is dead.
I have no respect for her or her family. Bollocks to 'em the bunch of right wing, homophobic shits.

[Saint_Frankenstein]

Now when are Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Queen Lizzy the lizard bitch, Philip, Charles and the rest of the criminal psychopath lot going to punch their tickets to hell? The evil ones just seem to live forever.

[SammiValentine]

This isn't far off the mark ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHVDXBXCYAEA3ZO.jpg

i read the top local trend in libpool was #wearegonnahaveaparty

[SammiValentine]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

Well............... !!!

[horst1]

rest in hell

[tvkim]

R.I.P. Maggie. My thoughts are with Carol and Mark.

[supersharpshooter]

R.I.P. Maggie. My thoughts are with Carol and Mark.

You're joking yeah?

[GroobySteven]

You're joking yeah?

Yeah what a couple of legacies to leave behind. Win for Darwin!

[tvkim]

You're joking yeah?

Politics aside.... I was talking as a parent

[JenniferParisHusband]

Just this...


Liverpool fans chanting When Maggie Thatcher Dies v Sunderland - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37Cmzvt549Y)

[JenniferParisHusband]

Liverpool fans chanting When Maggie Thatcher Dies v Sunderland - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37Cmzvt549Y)

[tsadriana]

:Dnot my place ,but who died?oh yes her.R.I.P

[robertlouis]

Rest in Peace, Iron Lady.
http://gma.yahoo.com/margaret-thatcher--britain-s--iron-lady--prime-minister--dies-120034251.html



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.

[robertlouis]

Bollocks, that's my day ruined...I just found out she's getting cremated!

Did you want to do this, Jericho?

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ

[robertlouis]

She's quite admired in the states. I'm surprised at the negativity expressed

There are parts of the UK, and the further you go from the metropolitan media obsession with London the worse it gets, where her name is reviled in a visceral way that people who didn't experience those years will never understand. She laid the foundations of the independence debate in Scotland pretty much single-handedly in the sense that people shuddered after her demise and decided, never again. And in the destroyed communities in the north, Wales, Scotland, Kent and the midlands formerly dependent on coal and steel production the feelings remain much the same a generation on. The savagery of the attacks was one thing; the unfeeling refusal to do anything to repair the damage or offer hope was much worse.

And by knowingly destroying the UK's manufacturing base and leading the charge towards a post-industrial and service-based economy she sowed the seeds of our present precarious economic position.

Oh, and she actively championed the cause of politicised homophobia with the shameful Clause 28, wanted stronger ties with apartheid South Africa and called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, treated the appalling Pinochet of Chile as a friend, and introduced the poll tax which hit the poor infinitely harder than the rich, whatever its philosophical intent.

Up against that lot it's difficult to come up with much that remains as a tangible legacy, save in the memories of palsied cold warriors and Thatcherite diehards.

But as I've just said over on the politics board, I can't gloat in the death of a lonely, sad and confused old woman, although I hated almost everything she did.

[robertlouis]

When you said "Ding Dong", I thought you might be referring to this fella.

[Jericho]

Did you want to do this, Jericho?



I had something damper planned. :shrug
That's out the window now, don't want to risk putting her out!

[Ben]

English singer/songwriter Morrissey wrote, well, a controversial song... to say the least:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smzsIONNh0w

[robertlouis]

I had something damper planned. :shrug
That's out the window now, don't want to risk putting her out!

You wanted to dance on her grave then found out she was being buried at sea - is that it?

[Ben]

You're joking yeah?

Don't think Kim is....
Just a question: how popular was she anyway? Well, just taking a look. In 1987 she won 42 percent of the popular vote. About the same in '79 and '83. Well, this is how the parliamentary system consistently works: the so-called "winner" doesn't have the majority vote, as it were.
I mean, governance is pretty simple. It's administrative work. It's instituting policies that the majority want. Isn't that democracy?
The likes of Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Bush etc., etc. have a disdain for meaningful democracy. Which is understandable.
As Walter Lippmann pointed out: "The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd."

[Ben]

Don't think Kim is....
Just a question: how popular was she anyway? Well, just taking a look. In 1987 she won 42 percent of the popular vote. About the same in '79 and '83. Well, this is how the parliamentary system consistently works: the so-called "winner" doesn't have the majority vote, as it were.
I mean, governance is pretty simple. It's administrative work. It's instituting policies that the majority want. Isn't that democracy?
The likes of Thatcher, Reagan, Blair, Bush etc., etc. have a disdain for meaningful democracy. Which is understandable.
As Walter Lippmann pointed out: "The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd."



Margaret Thatcher on global warming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSrBO4_qPzo

[robertlouis]

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.

Funnily enough, I wrote a song exactly about that sad dichotomy.

I agree that until hubris and the assumption of the royal "we" overtook her, she was a brilliant politician both in front of an particularly behind the scenes, but her legacy is pretty flimsy in terms of anything positive.

What's especially ironic is that while there is some tasteless and entirely pointless rejoicing on the left, which I don't share, her successors in government are tearing ahead with the helter-skelter destruction of things that even she at her most rabid never attempted.

Put down the champagne and fight the bastards. The struggle is today, not twenty five years ago.

[robertlouis]

:Dnot my place ,but who died?oh yes her.R.I.P

I really wish that everyone, especially the media and the twitterati, would take your approach, Adriana.

[tsadriana]

I really wish that everyone, especially the media and the twitterati, would take your approach, Adriana.
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

[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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jY5fYjV-U

[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.:)

[robertlouis]

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.

If they do I'll move back home to Scotland!

[tsadriana]

If they do I'll move back home to Scotland!
Gladly to go home anytime Roberto ,like i said wait and see trust me then we can talk more open till then lets say we are wrong and they are right...:)Roberto its more then imigration to work on this country so leep ur breath u wont go home and many will not go home.

[robertlouis]

Gladly to go home anytime Roberto ,like i said wait and see trust me then we can talk more open till then lets say we are wrong and they are right...:)

No problem, Adriana. I'm certainly not going to pick a fight with you. But I do believe that anything which forces the UK out of the EU and into that hopeless Little Englander/Daily Mail crap about somehow standing on our own is simply deluded. It isn't how the world works these days.

If I went back to Scotland I would be hoping that by unshackling itself from the stupid xenophobia which seems to infect far too many of the English, Scotland would strive to remain part of a united Europe.

An independent Scotland would not be making a contribution to the ludicrous and utterly wasteful cost of Trident and would also be asking England to remove all of its nuclear weapons from Scottish soil.

The Scandinavian countries seem to cope quite well without nuclear defence. Scotland would too.

[tsadriana]

No problem, Adriana. I'm certainly not going to pick a fight with you. But I do believe that anything which forces the UK out of the EU and into that hopeless Little Englander/Daily Mail crap about somehow standing on our own is simply deluded. It isn't how the world works these days.

If I went back to Scotland I would be hoping that by unshackling itself from the stupid xenophobia which seems to infect far too many of the English, Scotland would strive to remain part of a united Europe.

An independent Scotland would not be making a contribution to the ludicrous and utterly wasteful cost of Trident and would also be asking England to remove all of its nuclear weapons from Scottish soil.

The Scandinavian countries seem to cope quite well without nuclear defence. Scotland would too.
We dont argue Roberto we have a pleasent chat with diff opinions.:)By the way fuck the EU i never understood this shit.

[robertlouis]

We dont argue Roberto we have a pleasent chat with diff opinions.:)By the way fuck the EU i never understood this shit.

We need to discuss this over a bottle of wine.... :dancing:

[tsadriana]

We need to discuss this over a bottle of wine.... :dancing:
Only if u sing after otherwise no drink:)

[robertlouis]

Only if u sing after otherwise no drink:)

Deal. Buona notte!

[Skylancer81]

Yea going from over 13% unemployment to 5.5% unemployment was a terrible thing for her to do.

[robertlouis]

Yea going from over 13% unemployment to 5.5% unemployment was a terrible thing for her to do.

I was - thankfully - briefly unemployed during her time in government and it was no fun. She engineered the 13% unemployment rates of the early 80s with her dogmatic monetarist policies. Unemployment rates varied wildly by region during her tenure as well. The south east hardly felt it, whereas in parts of the north and Scotland it rose to between 16 and 18%. I was one of those casualties.

She also pretty effectively closed the mining industry in the 80s throwing thousands out of work and destroying whole communities in the process.

Just sit there in the US with your handful of statistics and your rosy view of her because she was sucking that lazy and corrupt windbag Reagan's cock for the whole decade. You weren't here and you don't know what you're talking about.

[dderek123]

^ Also the cover-up to that football stadium disaster was pretty horrible.

[robertlouis]

A statistical analysis of pretty much everything during her rule.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-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. :geek:

[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. :geek:

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/2013/04/08/did-thatcher-turn-britain-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 (http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/conservatives-outraged-over-cnn-photo-thatch)

[thx1138]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/ (http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/) One can only speculate at the jubilation that will ensue at the death of Her Royal Highness and/or her consort..

[SammiValentine]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/ (http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/) One can only speculate at the jubilation that will ensue at the death of Her Royal Highness and/or her consort..

Not much speculation imo, many many people celebrated the queens jubilee and other such recent royal love-ins, there would be a a lot of support for the queen or royal family, easily as much if not more than "celebrations". Recent royal events shocked a lot of the UK as to how popular they still are, tbh. I am not a royalist btw very indifferent either way.

Thatcher popularity? Ha...

[Stavros]

Not much speculation imo, many many people celebrated the queens jubilee and other such recent royal love-ins, there would be a a lot of support for the queen or royal family, easily as much if not more than "celebrations". Recent royal events shocked a lot of the UK as to how popular they still are, tbh. I am not a royalist btw very indifferent either way.

Thatcher popularity? Ha...

A lot of people thought Maggie was doing the right thing, but she was never really loved, in the way that public figures attract that kind of following.

[SammiValentine]

A lot of people thought Maggie was doing the right thing, but she was never really loved, in the way that public figures attract that kind of following.

Round your way maybe...........re thatcher.

re royals yes exactly why there wont be the same reaction.

[trish]

Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
but she doesn't have a lot to say.
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
but she changes from day to day.
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot,
but I gotta get a belly full of wine.
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl,
someday I'm gonna make her mine.
Oh yeah, someday I'm gonna make her mine.
____The Beatles

[Jericho]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/ (http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297334/uk-public-jubilant-at-thatchers-death/) One can only speculate at the jubilation that will ensue at the death of Her Royal Highness and/or her consort..


Really don't think you can compare Betty & Starvos to the VPOS (even if she did think she was royalty)
(BTW, that's not our Stavros...Even if there are some similarities)!

[thx1138]

President Obama recently offered to make a token cut in pay (5%) as the economy is improving. Meanwhile the UK's economy continues to stagnate under the worse depression since the 1930's. Instead of sharing austerity with her beleaguered subjects She gets a 5 million pound a year salary increase. http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/queen-elizabeth-ii-gets-5-million-pounds-pay-hike_839509.html

[thx1138]

Re Stavros: yes, the Greek guy in Buckingham palace. He could be "our" Stavros. After all someone in the Vatican has been logging in to view TS porn flicks recently. It's not impossible His royal highness could be logging in here on HA using his own name. It's called hiding in plain sight.

[SammiValentine]

President Obama recently offered to make a token cut in pay (5%) as the economy is improving. Meanwhile the UK's economy continues to stagnate under the worse depression since the 1930's. Instead of sharing austerity with her beleaguered subjects She gets a 5 million pound a year salary increase. http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/queen-elizabeth-ii-gets-5-million-pounds-pay-hike_839509.html

Meanwhile DAvid cameron offered a token cut in peoples testicles, kindly letting the unemployed eat their own, as depression stagnates even further.

[JenniferParisHusband]

^ Also the cover-up to that football stadium disaster was pretty horrible.

Pretty horrible is an understatement. It was criminal.

[thx1138]

@SammiValentine: Royal favors would make Ghengis Khan proud.

[thx1138]

Thatcher accolades continue to roll in from Iran: Maggie as stated by others had a fondness for fucking miners:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297417/demise/ (http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297417/demise/)

[thx1138]

Maggie like to fuck Iranians too:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297390/how-thatcher-betrayed-iran-a-glimpse/ (http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/09/297390/how-thatcher-betrayed-iran-a-glimpse/)

[thx1138]

I like this comment: "
Mark
Apr 9, 2013 4:30 PM
Nice picture of Thatcher & Reagan dancing. They both suffered from dementia. This is not sarcasm. Both of them had medical problems with their brains that were clearly manifest while they were in office as leaders of the Western world." Apparently one doesn't have to be crazy to be head of state but it helps.

[SammiValentine]

@SammiValentine: Royal favors would make Ghengis Khan proud.

He would only need to push the "like" button as well !

[bluesoul]

i was talking to someone about maggie thatcher and they changed the conversation to paris brown :S

[SammiValentine]

"Ding Dong the witch is dead " is now number 4 in the UK download charts.

[tsadriana]

"Ding Dong the witch is dead " is now number 4 in the UK download charts.
Ding dong say no more
and who is dead?
oh yes
the witch is what?:):):)
Sammie can we have a shag on wenesday the 17th march?:)x

[SammiValentine]

Ding dong say no more
and who is dead?
oh yes
the witch is what?:):):)
Sammie can we have a shag on wenesday the 17th march?:)x

haha is that march 2014 ?:D

[Fancy fancy]

I'd like to shag Sammi and Adriana at the same time - interested girls, pm me x:salad

[tsadriana]

haha is that march 2014 ?:D
who dies then?:D

[tsadriana]

I'd like to shag Sammi and Adriana at the same time - interested girls, pm me x:salad
I dont know to pm ...can u teach me sir lol?:Dx

[surf4490]

Ok let me restate without upsetting the mods politically correct sensibilities .Thx seems to think Thatcher should have handed Salman Rushdie over to a bunch (not Iranian people)of sexist anti-Christian antisemite misogynist costume wearing dickheads ,so they could stone him for free speech .Press TV is a racist load of bollox.

[surf4490]

I love all the selective amnesia .I was a kid on a Liverpool council estate in the late seventies under a labour government .The city was a shit hole ,there were still ww2 bomb damaged buildings in 1978!! my grans council house like all her friends had an outside loo.There were no jobs ,to work on the docks you had to be Protestant ,communist and related .I remember doing homework by candlelight 2 or 3 nights a week ,because miners who earned more than teachers wanted more money and more and more .You had to wait 5 months to get a phone if you could afford it .Under Labour in the 70's ,Liverpool shared something with Detroit ,they were the only cities in the civilized world that decreased in population .Add 23% inflation and the UK being the first non 3rd world country to be bailed out by the IMF and that was Socialist UK before Thatcher !!

[Jericho]

I love all the selective amnesia .I was a kid on a Liverpool council estate in the late seventies under a labour government .The city was a shit hole ,there were still ww2 bomb damaged buildings in 1978!! my grans council house like all her friends had an outside loo.There were no jobs ,to work on the docks you had to be Protestant ,communist and related .I remember doing homework by candlelight 2 or 3 nights a week ,because miners who earned more than teachers wanted more money and more and more .You had to wait 5 months to get a phone if you could afford it .Under Labour in the 70's ,Liverpool shared something with Detroit ,they were the only cities in the civilized world that decreased in population .Add 23% inflation and the UK being the first non 3rd world country to be bailed out by the IMF and that was Socialist UK before Thatcher !!


And the chermins bombed ya chippy! :shrug

[surf4490]

wish they had bombed it ,it was terrible :)

[thombergeron]

She was unquestionably one of the great ghouls of the latter 20th century. Very little humanity in that cold dark heart.

Favorite reaction thus far comes, of course, from dear Frankie Boyle commenting on the price tag for Maggie's "ceremonial" funeral:

"For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person."

[Stavros]

The problem with substituting your personality for comedy is that when you are Frankie Boyle there is nothing to laugh at; Boyle isn't funny either. Pathetic.

[surf4490]

You could give them 20 million shovels ,but the English would have to show them what to do with them :)

[GroobySteven]

You could give them 20 million shovels ,but the English would have to show them what to do with them :)

Clearly, as there are only 6 million live there. :ignore:

[blakpadi]

See Elvis Costello-"Tramp the Dirt Down" on youtube...sums it up!

[robertlouis]

You could give them 20 million shovels ,but the English would have to show them what to do with them :)

Fuck me, a scouser trying to make jokes about workshy Scots.

I've heard it all now.

[robertlouis]

Fuck me, a scouser trying to make jokes about workshy Scots.

I've heard it all now.

And I'm pretty sure this will earn me incoming artillery from my favourite ever scouser*, our very own Sammi.





*Yes, even more than Stevie G, Alan Bleasdale and Lily Savage. :dancing:

[Stavros]

And, as Alex Salmond pointed out, the long term effect of the collapse of the Conservative vote in Scotland when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister has worked to the benefit of the Scottish nationalists...

[SammiValentine]

Fuck me, a scouser trying to make jokes about workshy Scots.

I've heard it all now.

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?!

[Prospero]

All this adulation of the dead former PM should just stop. She was the most divisive leader Britain has ever seen and is about to be given a near state funeral. Wrong. The Queen should not attend. She did not honour previous Prime Ministers such as Wilson, Callaghan, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Douglas-home in this way. And suggestions that there be a statue to her be raised in Trafalgar Square are absurd. It was the scene of one of the most virulent protests against her. On that basis why not also rename Orgreave after her. This battleground is where she used the police as political paramilitaries. She was Prime Minister. She was loved by some and hated by some. She divided the nation. She grew old and died. We live with her legacy. Enough said. The rest should be silence.

[LexusFire]

Im not one to get invovled in politics, but....

[SammiValentine]

Did you read the last couple of pages lol x

[LexusFire]

Shoulda stayed out of it, I knew it!
opps!
Cheers Sammi

[robertlouis]

And, as Alex Salmond pointed out, the long term effect of the collapse of the Conservative vote in Scotland when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister has worked to the benefit of the Scottish nationalists...

Quite. Never again, was the watchword. And the increasingly strident, chauvinistic, little englander and downright destructive actions of the current mob of tories will give voters cause for thought when the referendum comes around. Never underestimate the view within a country seeking independence that they would rather make their own mistakes than have someone else make them on their behalf. And Scots stand aghast as they watch the destruction being wrought right now. There's a communitarian stance north of the border which Thatcher never managed to destroy as she did in many parts of England.

[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!

[/URL][url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8"]Glenda Jackson launches tirade against Thatcher in tribute debate - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8&feature=youtu.be)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XDtClJYJBj8)

[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.

[Prospero]

This speaks for itself...

[Stavros]

A pity that you can't do more research, or for that matter rely on your own memory.

Why would there have been a state funeral for Clement Attlee? He had the private funeral he wanted, attended by 20 people, mostly family and was then cremated, following which there was a service in Westminster Abbey to inter his ashes not far from the Unknown Warrior, attended by 2,000 including members of the Royal Family and leading politicians of the day, as well as Churchill's surviving family members.

Social security in its earliest form was introduced in the first Liberal Government elected in 1906 and many of Attlee's policies were derived from the Beveridge Report -Beveridge was a Liberal.

The schools that were closed when Margaret Thatcher was PM were in areas where the mean age of schoolchildren was in decline; one of the perennial problems local education authorities have is the rise and fall of available schoolchildren -do you close a school or merge it? But there were certainly more private schools than ever before, which isn't mentioned in your cartoon.

It was in the Heath Government (1970-1974) not her own, when Margaret Thatcher put an end to the provision of school milk for children which had been introduced at a time when rickets and other preventable diseases in children were common. By the 1970s this was no longer needed as a health issue, and anyway I hated it and was glad to see it go, even if I had already left school by then.

The 'record levels of unemployment' usually comes with the rider 'excluding the great depression' as if that episode was for some reason exempt, so Margaret Thatcher's record is not as bad as that, except that I think there are always more people unemployed than are registered as such, and those registered as unemployed who actually work but fiddle the system.

Britain lost approximately 25% of its manufacturing capacity, not 50%.

When a warrant was issued for Pinochet's arrest in the UK, Labour was in power, and it was the cowardice of the Labour Government that enabled Pinochet to escape prosecution in Spain -he could have been tried in the UK but neither Blair nor Straw were up to it.

If Margaret Thatcher did describe Nelson Mandela as a 'grubby little terrorist' where is the evidence? She did publicly condemn Apartheid, but like many people opposed sanctions, the effectiveness of which is still a matter of debate.

'Biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in British history' -you wouldn't get away with that in a O level paper.

Cartoons often work, not this one.

[Prospero]

...........

[Prospero]

C'mon Stavros... never let the truth get in the way of a good political joke. After all our leaders never bother with the truth.

[reformedcharacter]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/59188_495576413832304_16286815_n.jpg

[reformedcharacter]

the reason why there's going to be 700 troops attending in the funeral is in case she's not dead and tries to climb out of her coffin

[TSBootyLondon]

While so many chant that famous song from munchkin land where the little people rejoice the death of the wicked old witch I must point out that the free milk handed to me as a child was probably my most vivid memory from my childhood...
It is also the grimmest... I can still smell that foul stench that broke free from the bottle as soon as the straw penetrated the foil top!

She's gone everybody..... the wicked old mother cannot hurt you anymore!

[Prospero]

Well since the BBC has funked it when it comes to paying Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead,I wonder if they'll play this one instead. For all the Tories out there.

The Honeybus - I Can't Let Maggie Go - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4zwp-0GeQ)

[robertlouis]

I've just heard that Mrs T has been passed fit for work by ATOS. She starts in Asda on the wet fish counter on Thursday morning.

[fred41]

A pity ....etc.

Thanks Stavros for sometimes cutting through the bullshit.

On this side of the planet we (meaning I)..don't always know the facts when it comes to your history. I actually glean a lot of info from these pages,which I then follow up with my own research.
You seem to favor a more balanced, less emotional approach. I appreciate that.

[fred41]

C'mon Stavros... never let the truth get in the way of a good political joke. After all our leaders never bother with the truth.

I'm sorry Prospero. I have a lot of respect for you...but that is not meant to be a political cartoon.If you agree with Stavros's assessment, then its just propaganda.
If you think he is wrong, then show where he is wrong.

[Prospero]

Me and Stavros have a long running nit picking thing. Don't let it concern you.

However i will concede that I can find nothing to verify Thatcher calling him "a grubby little terrorist."

Here are some notes pf things she did do and say...


"The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land' - Margaret Thatcher, 1987 She supported apartheid, and then later came to oppose it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-apartheid-mandela

As education secretary she presided over the axing of free milk in schools – earning herself the nick name “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”

She did increase VAT and introduced the poll tax – provoking some of the worst riots seen in central London for many decades

She also harboured Pinochet – though Stavros is right that Labour is also culpable in this. It was because of Chile’s support for the UK during the Falkland Island conflict.

She did deplete public housing stock. By allowing the sale of council houses and then refusing to allow local authorities to replace them. Provoking a shortage being felt today.

And he smashed the miner’s strike and used the police as political paramilitaries.

[Jericho]

I'm sorry Prospero. I have a lot of respect for you...but that is not meant to be a political cartoon.If you agree with Stavros's assessment, then its just propaganda.
If you think he is wrong, then show where he is wrong.

They're kinda like HA's version of....

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HQTd9IVUXY4/Td3ON5zn3xI/AAAAAAAAAh4/8ecDIL32zuY/s400/Statlerandwaldorf.JPG

[fred41]

They're kinda like HA's version of....

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HQTd9IVUXY4/Td3ON5zn3xI/AAAAAAAAAh4/8ecDIL32zuY/s400/Statlerandwaldorf.JPG

:D...okay.

[fred41]

Me and Stavros have a long running nit picking thing. Don't let it concern you.

However i will concede that I can find nothing to verify Thatcher calling him "a grubby little terrorist."

Here are some notes pf things she did do and say...


"The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land' - Margaret Thatcher, 1987 She supported apartheid, and then later came to oppose it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-apartheid-mandela

As education secretary she presided over the axing of free milk in schools – earning herself the nick name “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”

She did increase VAT and introduced the poll tax – provoking some of the worst riots seen in central London for many decades

She also harboured Pinochet – though Stavros is right that Labour is also culpable in this. It was because of Chile’s support for the UK during the Falkland Island conflict.

She did deplete public housing stock. By allowing the sale of council houses and then refusing to allow local authorities to replace them. Provoking a shortage being felt today.

And he smashed the miner’s strike and used the police as political paramilitaries.

Thanks ...that Guardian article was quite interesting.

[Prospero]

Oh and Fred --- do not rely on anything posted on here for reliable political info about the UK.

[fred41]

Oh and Fred --- do not rely on anything posted on here for reliable political info about the UK.
Believe me, I understand that ...but I hold some of you to a higher standard based on past performance...especially in the political thread.

Don't let me down...lol.

[Ben]

BBC & the Thatcher Hate song Ding Dong the Witch is Dead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYGPY6AeegE

[Stavros]

Me and Stavros have a long running nit picking thing. Don't let it concern you.

However i will concede that I can find nothing to verify Thatcher calling him "a grubby little terrorist."

Here are some notes pf things she did do and say...


"The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land' - Margaret Thatcher, 1987 She supported apartheid, and then later came to oppose it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-apartheid-mandela

As education secretary she presided over the axing of free milk in schools – earning herself the nick name “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”

She did increase VAT and introduced the poll tax – provoking some of the worst riots seen in central London for many decades

She also harboured Pinochet – though Stavros is right that Labour is also culpable in this. It was because of Chile’s support for the UK during the Falkland Island conflict.

She did deplete public housing stock. By allowing the sale of council houses and then refusing to allow local authorities to replace them. Provoking a shortage being felt today.

And he smashed the miner’s strike and used the police as political paramilitaries.

Prospero, if you read Richard Dowden's article again you will see that it contradicts your claim that She supported apartheid, and then later came to oppose it. She publicly condemned apartheid in the Finchley Times in 1977 and was pretty consistent throughout her tenure of the Tory Party.

Part of the problem with Dowden's article and the historic memory is that Thatcher on more than one occasion condemned apartheid, but owing to the political affiliation of the South African Communist Party and the ANC, and the perception that the ANC was as a consequence a 'Pro-Moscow' party, her opposition to Apartheid did not automatically mean support for the ANC which as Dowden and everyone else who can remember knows was and is not the only political organisation in South Africa. I had an 'energetic' discussion with an American supporter of Ronald Reagan at a famous English university in 1988 precisely on this issue.

In 1977 South Africa began to develop a Total Strategy Doctine in which the primary threat to South Africa was perceived to be Communism -this was a 'natural' evolution of the politics in the southern cone following the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in 1974 and the civil wars that broke out in Angola and Mozambique (resulting in the contested governments of 'Marxists' in those two countries), added to which the settlement in Zimbabwe was seen by some as a 'triumph' for the 'Marxist' Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. In South Africa, the either/or Total Strategy Doctrine was thus designed to thwart Moscow's ambitions to run the southern cone, but it meant that if you didn't support PW Botha and the Apartheid regime, it was because you were soft on Communism. The merger of the entire future of South Africa as an anti-communist redoubt with Apartheid as its ideology meant, as I tried to explain to my American friend, that Margaret Thatcher in the context of the Total Strategy Doctine was a Communist, or Communist sympathiser. You can read about the doctrine in chapter one of Martin Meredith's book South Africa: Time of Agony, Time of Destiny (Verso, 1987).

I am not trying to polish Mrs T's reputation, I fought against her long enough! But here is just one of her public comments, from the Lord Mayor of London's banquet in 1985:

My Lord Mayor, I detest apartheid. I couldn't stand being excluded or discriminated against because of the colour of my own skin. And if you can't stand a colour bar against yourself, you can't stand it against anyone else. Apartheid is wrong and it must go. Major changes are taking place in South Africa. We should welcome and encourage them.

In the broader context of her political career, it beggars belief that anyone can suggest ending the provision of school milk was some sort of blow against an inherited freedom. As one other poster has also said, we hated it and I for one was delighted when it was ended. It might have been ok in the winter, but having to drink that stuff in the spring and summer months was virtually a form of punishment. You think they bothered to put it in the school kitchen's fridge? Not even in bourgeois Beckenham! It just stayed outside in the sunlight to curdle and make schoolboys sick!

Again, falling back on the tired old pseudo-left platitudes: what leader of a trade union -the National Union of Mineworkers -whose membership was decimated in the 1960s under a Labour government owing to a steep fall in the demand for its product, decides, in the Spring, with an abundance of coal stocks at power stations, to call a national strike without a ballot of their members? And why would anyone who believes in the importance of climate change and advanced global warming waste a moment of their time supporting a product as dirty and responsible for greenhouse gas emissions as coal? Arthur Scargill was one of the key figures in the defeat of Labour in the 1980s, he learned nothing from the loss of power in 1979 and the failure to win in 1983. Yes, the manner in which the government reacted was extreme, but the Tories planned this before they even got into power; they made an aggressive attack on trade unions part of their weaponry because they knew from public surveys that a majority of the British public wanted the unions tamed. If you choose, look for an article that the late Nicolas Ridley in 1978 wrote for The Economist, called Appomotox or Civil War? It was a declaration, avant le lettre, that the Tories would not be caught out again by the Miners, and that they would rather the country descend into civil war than give into Scargill's demands. It was a catastrophe from the beginning, but underlying it all was a staggeringly simple statistic: 94% of Britain's energy in 1960 was derived from coal, by 1980 coal amounted to 4%; the rest being made up of oil and gas.

And yet again, how popular was the sale of council houses? Wasn't it one of the most popular policies that she introduced? Yes, it did impact on local government, because local councils can't afford to build homes for people to live in, but is the long term effect, the absence of affordable housing solely derived from Mrs T's policies? Labour was in power 11 years Prospero, what happened in that decade? Harold Macmillan's tenure as Prime Minister between 1958 and 1963 witnessed more affordable housing newbuilds than New Labour between 1997 and 2010.

A proper analysis of the legacy of Mrs Thatcher can only be glimpsed from some policy options; she inherited long-term problems that had been building up in the British economy since 1945; she contributed to changes in British society in spite of what she might have believed herself, because there were trends that remain beyond politics, an obvious one being human relations and attitudes to gender and sexuality.

For me what I always found so painful was the failure of the Labour movement I had been part of to mount a coherent challenge; the left fell apart in the 1980s, by the end of which standard forms of socialism were discredited, and even standard forms of social democracy as practised in Sweden and Denmark coming under challenge. From the very beginning, Keith Joseph, the intellectual architect of Thatcherism, had declared that the Conservative Party had to turn the ratchet of British politics to the Right, away from a centre established by Clement Attlee, retained by Hugh Gaitskell and maintained by the Tory Rab Butler. It was crucial to establish that free enterprise and private property mark the centre ground; and Tony Blair and New Labour agreed, and banged in the final nail in the coffin of the party created by Keir Hardie; even Ramsay MacDonald would have been ashamed of some of the things Mandelson said to justify the obliteration of the Labour Party's legacy, and all for votes. The Labour Party today was shaped by Margaret Thatcher; I don't know how many Labour MP's fiddled their expenses and went to prison or were publicly shamed because of it, but by the time these things were exposed, those people had long ago lost the right to represent anyone but themselves.

[fivekatz]

Of all of Thatcher's domestic policies the one that I as a foreigner see as the most regressive was her strong stand on poll tax and VAT. Much of the stuff with state owned industry and the unions was difficult to comprehend an ocean away in nation where the media has such a myopic world view. Poll tax in particular because of how it was used in America is on the surface repugnant.

[Ben]

Labour Leader Ed Miliband whitewashing the legacy of Thatcher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6piNDQhtUI

[robertlouis]

So, the funeral has taken place, with all the rites and obsequies, in London.

Probably the only city in the UK where they could have held it in the UK without risking a riot. Oh, and in St Paul's, a "house of God", that charges £16 - £16 quid!!! - entry fee.

The irony is perfect.

And good fucking riddance.

[hippifried]

Oh... So I guess you're not her #1 fan...

[Stavros]

Curious how I began this thread in General Discussion, but when it was moved here my balanced, introductory post was relegated to second place in favour of an abusive one from Jericho who is now credited with starting the thread. Whatever.

Should you want to find out if you are a Thatcherite, the Daily Telegraph has a 10-question quiz, I scored 20% which means I am not a believer...courage!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/10005579/How-Thatcherite-are-you-Take-the-test.html

[flabbybody]

The two threads were merged because the subject was identical but I'm unsure how the software determines posting order when that happens.
Jericho was definitely to the point but yours was thoughtful and provocative, as always Stavros

[jennylicious]

Margaret Thatcher, like Hugo Chavez, was a strong leader. There is quite a big difference between 'strong' leaders and 'great' leaders. Margaret was never a 'great' leader, and subsequently, she will always divide opinion between those who saw themselves gain and those who felt they lost.

I've heard so much rubbish from both sides in the last few weeks about her, if I never hear her name again it will be too soon. We have people telling us that she destroyed our industrial output who have never worked in the production industry in their lives. That she was racist, homophobic, and she was responsible for a decline in society. I've read that she fought the Cold war at every turn.

Ok, I worked in a unionised industry in the 90s. I spoke to senior shop stewards about the bad old days of the 70s. I heard real horror stories of how their union were doing a pretty good job of destroying the industrial output all on their own. I heard enough to ask myself if she did destroy industry, or if it was already D.O.A. Or was it the fact she turned the country around and the subsequent strength of the pound destroyed out exports? Or was it a whole collection of circumstances based on her policies, what she inherited, and the rest of the world? I don't know, but I at least have heard enough witness statements to laugh when I hear Britain depicted as some kind of industrial power house before she took it over.

Racist? Possibly. Homophobic? Almost certainly. Child of her time? Definitely. While it's important to acknowledge if she was these things, and I'm pretty sure she was, it's unfair to judge her differently that you would your own grandfather and grandmother. Her opinions were not in opposition to those of the general public at the time, and if everyone of her generation was without prejudice, then we wouldn't need any activism. History will reflect she was wrong. Even Winston Churchill had declared in a cabinet meeting that the Tory party were not going to accept responsibility for making the law more lenient towards gay men. When we discuss him and his legacy, does anyone find it important to bring this fact up? He presided over the Black and Tans, is this ever mentioned?

Finally, the break down of society is the biggest joke of them all. People have spoken about how Thatcher changed society to that of greed and looking out for themselves. It's the most insular look at politics that I can possibly imagine from a society that has never experienced so much globalisation in its life. Of course, the 80s didn't happen in other countries. It only happened on Thatcher's watch. She and her policies are responsible for all of it, and the rest of the world carried on in the 70s. The film Wall Street was actually set in the LSE, and had nothing to do with America. Honestly, how can respected journalists and politicians convey this utter tripe?

Thatcher sought to empower the people through money and abolish the class system, this is true. Consequently her policies did, indeed, support and even perpetuate a more greedy attitude which reflected a cultural attitude that was being seen around the world. She was absolutely a poster child for what was going on in the world, but to hold her completely responsible for it, or any continued effects in society today is giving her far too much credit. If some people are to be believed, she affected and shaped more attitudes globally in a short period of time than Jesus Christ, and had a more lasting effect. It defies logic... Any change of society reflected the global culture of the 80s and it is unfair to blame her for not saving us from ourselves.

I heard some teenager the other day talk about how my generation were all about greed, and that their generation was different. That somehow they weren't all about material possessions. I can't agree when I remember a time when a label on a shirt meant nothing to me, and everything to them. However, Mike and the Mechanics was right, every generation DOES blame the one before. The fact is, perceived or not, what happened under Margaret's watch epitomises the target of this natural response. This is why the majority of people who vilified her on her death the loudest were not of voting age when she was in power. So some of the comments made on her death were just an example of human nature that will witnessed until the human race becomes a little more self aware (I'm not holding my breath)

Basically, for the people who are speaking for her, and the people who are speaking against her, please appreciate 90% of politics is reactive, and not proactive. Many of things she is credited for, or denounced for, were not necessarily all down to the personality, or policies, of one person.

In terms of fighting the cold war. She helped changed the direction of the Cold War (...according to the CIA files. I reckon it's a pretty big deal when a U.S. security service credit a foreign leader in helping change their countries defence policy). I can honestly say I didn't have any respect for her until I read about her involvement in the Cold War. I always considered her a fringe player in the war, but actually with Gordievsky being one of our agents, an enormous responsibility fell on her shoulders and it was her relationship with Reagan that allowed her to convince him of the strength of our intelligence.

It's also important to remember that Margaret was undoubtedly human (some people argue otherwise) and it this combined with her strength that is also her major weakness. What she wanted done, she got done. Weaker leaders who have a mistaken idea often can't see them through to completion. When Margaret made a mistake, she made sure she made it. She would crush anyone and anything in her way to make it.

Her critics are always going to be able to focus on these mistakes, while remaining oblivious to the many minor and major things that were done for the good of the country that may never have happened under a weaker leader. A look at the state of the country in the 1970s suggests she must have got something right.

So yes, people got fucked over by Thatcher's policies. They have the right to genuinely feel annoyed at the specific reasons. I don't decry their right to do this. I just wish that others who don't share her politics would at least be dispassionate enough to put their political leanings aside and be objective. It's really nice to see some anti-Thatcher people on this forum actually giving her some credit.

For the people who are angry, then I refer them to the Christian concept of forgiveness. This may seem like some stupid self deprecating thing for the non-religious. I'm not a big fan of the idea of forgiveness myself, but it occurred to me that this isn't actually something handed down from a religious entity, but the knowledge of those that have gone before. It's not about helping the person who has wronged you, but going through the psychological process of letting go. In short, if the acts committed by a woman who is currently being eaten by maggots over 20 years ago still evoke so much emotion, then it's no longer her who is hurting you, it's you.

As far as I'm concerned, she was a public servant who was not a career politician. She put out a manifesto. The majority of the country voted for her. She did what she said she would do. Some more people got fucked over, and some did well. She put out another manifesto. The majority of the country voted for her. She did what she said she would. Some more people got fucked over, and some did well. She put out another manifesto, and the majority of the country voted for her again.

This is how democracy works. It's funny when people say how fucking great democracy is, but still get so down on the people who win through the democratic system. Yes, someone could get in once and abuse the political system, but nobody can get in three times in a row.

Just because the majority of the country doesn't support my own politics, doesn't mean I don't judge the government, or any ex-government, entirely objectively. Like all leaders, she was in the business of doing some good and some bad. She will always be controversial, because as a strong leader, she was exceptionally good at that business.

[Jericho]

Curious how I began this thread in General Discussion, but when it was moved here my balanced, introductory post was relegated to second place in favour of an abusive one from Jericho who is now credited with starting the thread. Whatever.


I was not being abusive, you cnut!

[Prospero]

Jennylicious. Thanks for a very powerful and thoughtful post. Really very interesting and balanced.

[Stavros]

Margaret Thatcher, like Hugo Chavez, was a strong leader. There is quite a big difference between 'strong' leaders and 'great' leaders. Margaret was never a 'great' leader, and subsequently, she will always divide opinion between those who saw themselves gain and those who felt they lost.

I've heard so much rubbish from both sides in the last few weeks about her, if I never hear her name again it will be too soon. We have people telling us that she destroyed our industrial output who have never worked in the production industry in their lives. That she was racist, homophobic, and she was responsible for a decline in society. I've read that she fought the Cold war at every turn.

Ok, I worked in a unionised industry in the 90s. I spoke to senior shop stewards about the bad old days of the 70s. I heard real horror stories of how their union were doing a pretty good job of destroying the industrial output all on their own. I heard enough to ask myself if she did destroy industry, or if it was already D.O.A. Or was it the fact she turned the country around and the subsequent strength of the pound destroyed out exports? Or was it a whole collection of circumstances based on her policies, what she inherited, and the rest of the world? I don't know, but I at least have heard enough witness statements to laugh when I hear Britain depicted as some kind of industrial power house before she took it over.

Racist? Possibly. Homophobic? Almost certainly. Child of her time? Definitely. While it's important to acknowledge if she was these things, and I'm pretty sure she was, it's unfair to judge her differently that you would your own grandfather and grandmother. Her opinions were not in opposition to those of the general public at the time, and if everyone of her generation was without prejudice, then we wouldn't need any activism. History will reflect she was wrong. Even Winston Churchill had declared in a cabinet meeting that the Tory party were not going to accept responsibility for making the law more lenient towards gay men. When we discuss him and his legacy, does anyone find it important to bring this fact up? He presided over the Black and Tans, is this ever mentioned?

Finally, the break down of society is the biggest joke of them all. People have spoken about how Thatcher changed society to that of greed and looking out for themselves. It's the most insular look at politics that I can possibly imagine from a society that has never experienced so much globalisation in its life. Of course, the 80s didn't happen in other countries. It only happened on Thatcher's watch. She and her policies are responsible for all of it, and the rest of the world carried on in the 70s. The film Wall Street was actually set in the LSE, and had nothing to do with America. Honestly, how can respected journalists and politicians convey this utter tripe?

Thatcher sought to empower the people through money and abolish the class system, this is true. Consequently her policies did, indeed, support and even perpetuate a more greedy attitude which reflected a cultural attitude that was being seen around the world. She was absolutely a poster child for what was going on in the world, but to hold her completely responsible for it, or any continued effects in society today is giving her far too much credit. If some people are to be believed, she affected and shaped more attitudes globally in a short period of time than Jesus Christ, and had a more lasting effect. It defies logic... Any change of society reflected the global culture of the 80s and it is unfair to blame her for not saving us from ourselves.

I heard some teenager the other day talk about how my generation were all about greed, and that their generation was different. That somehow they weren't all about material possessions. I can't agree when I remember a time when a label on a shirt meant nothing to me, and everything to them. However, Mike and the Mechanics was right, every generation DOES blame the one before. The fact is, perceived or not, what happened under Margaret's watch epitomises the target of this natural response. This is why the majority of people who vilified her on her death the loudest were not of voting age when she was in power. So some of the comments made on her death were just an example of human nature that will witnessed until the human race becomes a little more self aware (I'm not holding my breath)

Basically, for the people who are speaking for her, and the people who are speaking against her, please appreciate 90% of politics is reactive, and not proactive. Many of things she is credited for, or denounced for, were not necessarily all down to the personality, or policies, of one person.

In terms of fighting the cold war. She helped changed the direction of the Cold War (...according to the CIA files. I reckon it's a pretty big deal when a U.S. security service credit a foreign leader in helping change their countries defence policy). I can honestly say I didn't have any respect for her until I read about her involvement in the Cold War. I always considered her a fringe player in the war, but actually with Gordievsky being one of our agents, an enormous responsibility fell on her shoulders and it was her relationship with Reagan that allowed her to convince him of the strength of our intelligence.

It's also important to remember that Margaret was undoubtedly human (some people argue otherwise) and it this combined with her strength that is also her major weakness. What she wanted done, she got done. Weaker leaders who have a mistaken idea often can't see them through to completion. When Margaret made a mistake, she made sure she made it. She would crush anyone and anything in her way to make it.

Her critics are always going to be able to focus on these mistakes, while remaining oblivious to the many minor and major things that were done for the good of the country that may never have happened under a weaker leader. A look at the state of the country in the 1970s suggests she must have got something right.

So yes, people got fucked over by Thatcher's policies. They have the right to genuinely feel annoyed at the specific reasons. I don't decry their right to do this. I just wish that others who don't share her politics would at least be dispassionate enough to put their political leanings aside and be objective. It's really nice to see some anti-Thatcher people on this forum actually giving her some credit.

For the people who are angry, then I refer them to the Christian concept of forgiveness. This may seem like some stupid self deprecating thing for the non-religious. I'm not a big fan of the idea of forgiveness myself, but it occurred to me that this isn't actually something handed down from a religious entity, but the knowledge of those that have gone before. It's not about helping the person who has wronged you, but going through the psychological process of letting go. In short, if the acts committed by a woman who is currently being eaten by maggots over 20 years ago still evoke so much emotion, then it's no longer her who is hurting you, it's you.

As far as I'm concerned, she was a public servant who was not a career politician. She put out a manifesto. The majority of the country voted for her. She did what she said she would do. Some more people got fucked over, and some did well. She put out another manifesto. The majority of the country voted for her. She did what she said she would. Some more people got fucked over, and some did well. She put out another manifesto, and the majority of the country voted for her again.

This is how democracy works. It's funny when people say how fucking great democracy is, but still get so down on the people who win through the democratic system. Yes, someone could get in once and abuse the political system, but nobody can get in three times in a row.

Just because the majority of the country doesn't support my own politics, doesn't mean I don't judge the government, or any ex-government, entirely objectively. Like all leaders, she was in the business of doing some good and some bad. She will always be controversial, because as a strong leader, she was exceptionally good at that business.

Although I think you are right to try and find a balance in your assessment of Mrs Thatcher, I don't agree with all your arguments.

On the Unions -there is no doubt that the Unions alienated the country both before 1979 and after it, but it came out of an adversarial relationship that had developed between management and the workforce over the best part of a century. This created an 'us and them' attitude that is absent for example in Germany where workers sit on the boards of companies and solve problems together with management -it doesn't meant there aren't strikes in Germany, but it does mean the relationship is based on mutual respect, where in the UK it was mutual loathing -the nadir was reached in the Miner's strike with the absurd antics that took place between Arthur Scargill and Ian MacGregor. Ultimately, what has destroyed union power is a collapse in membership, the evaporation of jobs in heavy industry, and different ways of working in which management and workers feel they are trying to do the same thing, and that came more from Japanese industrialists in the motor industry which was once at the epicentre of conflict.

I also disagree with the influence you think she had on the Cold War. If you recall the 1980s you will recall how the first part was shot through with aggressive rhetoric on both sides, how the deployment of cruise missiles in the UK was believed to have raised tensions to unacceptable levels not felt by some people since the Cuban crisis -some of the CND demonstrations in the 1980s were colossal events and had to be moved to Hyde Park because Trafalgar Square wasn't big enough. In other words, Cold War tensions in this period were intensified, so where was the momentum that led, by 1989, to the end of the Cold War altogether? The answer lies in Moscow, not London or Washington. And it began when Gorbachev emerged as General Secretary in 1985 -yes, Thatcher was impressed with him when they met, and it was her influence on Ronald Reagan that softened up the US when most of Reagan's close advisers were sceptical and later watched on in horror as Reagan decided to negotiate away American missiles to a Communist - but if you look at the broader view, without Gorbachev the end of the Cold War would have been delayed -there were hardliners on the Politburo who were opposed to Gorbachev and had they blocked his promotion after 1985 it might have been different -as it was they delayed their fightback to 1991 by which time the game was over for Russian communism. It was doomed anyway, as the most astute observers knew for years.

[jennylicious]

Although I think you are right to try and find a balance in your assessment of Mrs Thatcher, I don't agree with all your arguments.

On the Unions -there is no doubt that the Unions alienated the country both before 1979 and after it, but it came out of an adversarial relationship that had developed between management and the workforce over the best part of a century. This created an 'us and them' attitude that is absent for example in Germany where workers sit on the boards of companies and solve problems together with management -it doesn't meant there aren't strikes in Germany, but it does mean the relationship is based on mutual respect, where in the UK it was mutual loathing -the nadir was reached in the Miner's strike with the absurd antics that took place between Arthur Scargill and Ian MacGregor. Ultimately, what has destroyed union power is a collapse in membership, the evaporation of jobs in heavy industry, and different ways of working in which management and workers feel they are trying to do the same thing, and that came more from Japanese industrialists in the motor industry which was once at the epicentre of conflict.

I also disagree with the influence you think she had on the Cold War. If you recall the 1980s you will recall how the first part was shot through with aggressive rhetoric on both sides, how the deployment of cruise missiles in the UK was believed to have raised tensions to unacceptable levels not felt by some people since the Cuban crisis -some of the CND demonstrations in the 1980s were colossal events and had to be moved to Hyde Park because Trafalgar Square wasn't big enough. In other words, Cold War tensions in this period were intensified, so where was the momentum that led, by 1989, to the end of the Cold War altogether? The answer lies in Moscow, not London or Washington. And it began when Gorbachev emerged as General Secretary in 1985 -yes, Thatcher was impressed with him when they met, and it was her influence on Ronald Reagan that softened up the US when most of Reagan's close advisers were sceptical and later watched on in horror as Reagan decided to negotiate away American missiles to a Communist - but if you look at the broader view, without Gorbachev the end of the Cold War would have been delayed -there were hardliners on the Politburo who were opposed to Gorbachev and had they blocked his promotion after 1985 it might have been different -as it was they delayed their fightback to 1991 by which time the game was over for Russian communism. It was doomed anyway, as the most astute observers knew for years.

I can't really comment on what changed the unions, but I was simply expressing that the belief that Thatcher crushed our unions, or that the belief that we were an industrial powerhouse before she took over is ridiculous. There a joke where I used to live about the local car plant that if there was a home game on a Wednesday afternoon, the factory would all be out by lunchtime. I don't know what happened, but sometime between the 70s and 90s, many unions grew up a bit. Those that chose to take on Thatcher by striking didn't appreciate that people refusing to work would have as much effect on changing her mind than putting a bomb in her bathroom. The fact is, the only language Thatcher spoke was diplomacy, and even then so rarely it's difficult for anyone to easily suggest an instance.

On the subject of the Cold War, her influence can be seen by a simple review of historical facts, starting with 1981 during the deployment of the Cruise missiles. It's important to note, that had the deployment to Britain happened or not, tensions would be no different, since missiles were also cited in the more provocative positions of West Germany and Italy.

1981 - PSYOP is launched. The U.S begins to flex it's muscles on Soviet borders in an attempt to bring further subterfuge.

1981 - Operation RYAN seeks to build up the key indicators of an attack of the West.

(Here we have two operations of the Cold war. One to build paranoia, and one to act on it. The U.S. still do this today, hence the plane coming down in Chinese airspace at the start of GWB Jnrs tenure).

1982 - The Walk in the Woods sees an arms agreement made by Nitze and Kvitsinsky, which is both declined by the Soviets, and Reagan declines at the advice of his Department of Defence.

1982 - Andropov takes over and starts suggesting initiatives to reduce arms. America reject it outright.

1983 - January, The U.S make the Walk in the Woods known and suggest that while it had been rejected, their door was not closed.

1983 - February, Operation RYAN Second phase. Ryan becomes priority and it is stated that there is a "sense of urgency". This being the operation to detect a U.S strike....

1983 - March, The US reiterate essentially the Nato dual track decision, which receives a similar rebuttal to the one it got in 1979.

1983 May, The US hold their biggest every military exercise in the Northwest pacific. 40 ships, including 3 battle air craft carriers pass from viewable distance of a key Soviet base: Petropavlovsk. They simulate submarine destruction in an exact area inhabited by Soviet submarines. Planes simulate a bombing run over a Soviet military base on the island of Zelenny. - Soviet air defence are put on alert until the end of the Summer.

1983 May, Andropov restates his desire to negotiate the missile positions.

1983 August, The U.S. and Nato reiterate that continued deployment would be the only way to achieve their goals. The Soviets indicate they would react with countermeasures if deployment continued.

1983 August, Andropov restates his desire to negotiate.

1983 September, KAL 007 is shot. The PSYOP operation had resulted in the Soviets shooting a passenger jet out of the sky. Questions over what airspace were never answered. The U.S. looked for the black box. The Soviets declared they were also looking, although it is now know that they had it.

1983 September, Thatcher enters the fray for the first time. She visits Washington and is met by Reagan who has notes which clearly state they were unprepared to discuss Cold War policy. She promotes a shift in policy at the annual dinner for the Churchill Foundation Award in Washington...Reagan and Thatcher discuss Cold War policy...

1983 November, Operation Able Archer. This fulfils the key indicators suggested by RYAN are identified by the Soviets. A double agent working for British intelligence informs the West that the Soviets believed an attack was imminent.

1983 November, Thatcher informs Reagan the arms talks, their strategic operations, their provocative actions across borders could have destroyed the world. The American intelligence and his senior political aides dismiss this information and do not believe that the Soviets actually believe the good old U.S. of A. would ever be seen as an aggressor.

(There are no further PSYOP operations after this date...)

End of 1983, Reagan recounts in his memoirs how he finally heard and understood that the Soviets see the U.S.A as a serious threat. An opinion not held by his advisors, or his intelligence, but one communicated to him through Margaret Thatcher based on the British Intelligence of Oleg Gordievsky.


1984 February - Andropov becomes ill and indicates Gorbachev as his successor. This is explicitly ignored and when Arkady Volsky questions this and suggests that he will phone Andropov if it is not mentioned, he is told it would be the last call he ever made.

Oleg Gordievsky informs the UK that the man the West can trust is either Gorbachev or Grigory Romanov.

1984 February - Thatcher attends Andropov's funeral, shuns Chernenko, meets Gorbachev and invites him to London.

1984 November - Cherenko invites Neil Kinnock to Moscow. (...and now we're playing political pass the parcel) Chernenko announces that the Labour parties unilateral policy will result in them reducing an equal amount of arms.

1984 December - Thatcher meets Gorbachev and despite arguing over everything, the conversation turns to the Cold war and she spends time convincing him that Reagan is man he can trust.

1984 December - Thatcher phones Reagan, and spends time convincing him that Gorbachev is a man he can trust.

1984 December - Thatcher informs the world media that she likes Mr Gorbachev and feels he is a man she can do business with, in what is a really strong message to the Soviet Union.

1984 December - Thatcher travels to Washington to spend more time convincing Reagan that Gorbachev is the man they can trust.

Let us review that. The start of 1980s saw many people wanting to come to a compromise, but with Reagan listening to his Department of Defence and ultimately creating a numbers war, he positioned the U.S in such a way to make the Soviet Union completely paranoid.

Despite Andropov wanting to come to a solution because he was already aware that the Soviet Union were in financial problems, there was trust and diplomacy issues. A combination of Soviet operations and U.S. PSYOPS operations, accidents and failing to agree politically led to British Intelligence reporting that the situation could lead to the mistake by on side that would be everyone's last one. Thatcher was responsible for listening to the intelligence, getting external opinion, and ignoring her own Foreign Office. She then convinced Reagan that yes, the Soviet Union did believe America wanted a war and they needed to change their body language. She helped change the atmosphere which made way for the future.

She then used her intelligence to actively sought someone in the Soviet Union to begin the talks, and publicly endorsed him as the man to do it while convincing the President that he was someone that they could trust.

People talk about how exceptional she was in seeing Gorbachev's potential despite arguing so much with him at their initial meeting, but taking into account she had already been debriefed by her double agent, it really was just an interview situation for her. She needed to meet him and sound him out before she went (straight) to Reagan to discuss what to do next.

It was almost luck the Gorbachev got in shortly afterwards. He had a really mediocre CV, but it did have one more endorsement from a foreign female Prime Minister on it than he had the last time his name was put forward.

She was very pro-Nuclear weapons, and believed them to be the ultimate deterrent, but she was very anti-"blowing people up over misunderstandings" Her movements in 1983 and 1984 essentially stopped the Cold War in its tracks and helped forged a climate where it could be ended. This is why Gorbachev, Reagan, The US Government, The CIA, The British government, and talks about her being significant in this.

If the you want to think otherwise, that's up to you.

[Stavros]

Jenny I don't know what the purpose of your chronology is, other than to talk up Thatcher's role in the end of the Cold War. That you have relied on the arguments of double agent Oleg Gordievsky is a pity as he was at times unable to make sensible political judgements while at other times he was a liar.

I cannot verify if Gordievsky alerted Mrs Thatcher to Gorbachev, we employed people in Moscow (when Gordievsky was in London) to follow the musical chairs in the Kremlin and they would have known about Gorbachev once he became Agriculture Secretary but as you suggest Mrs T was suspicious of the Foreign Office. But certainly Pierre Trudeau did so my choice of influential figure goes to the Charismatic Canadian -Gorbachev met him in 1983 when he was still Agriculture secretary but their talks lasted longer than planned and ranged far and wide on politics -by this time Gorbachev had seen enough foreign countries to understand how utterly inefficient the Russian economy was.

Incidentally it was on that Canadian trip that Gorbachev met up with Alexander Yakovlev who had been in effect sent into exile as Canadian Ambassador during the Brezhnev era because of his position on reform -at a time when hard-liners managed to edge aside reformers -two others being Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov -these reformers can be seen as the precursors of Gorbachev, they supported him when rehabilitated after Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, and are also part of the alternative dialogue on the future of the USSR from within that doesn't appear in the triumphalist histories, which suggest a reforming Gorbachev came out of nowhere whereas he had been part of the anti-Stalinist reforming bloc since the 1960s; this also included Andrei Sakharov, whom Gorbachev released from exile on his elevation to the party leadership. Gorbachev also had the advantage in the mid-1980s of being young when the leadership of the USSR was old, he had built up a reputation for precisely the kind of organisation efficiency the party wanted; he had the backing of Gromyko -who became Head of State in 1985- and in 1950 was one of a very few students from peasant backgrounds admitted to Moscow State University, which suggests anything other than a 'mediocre cv'.

The history of the Cold War is becoming a difficult one because 'the victors' have been emphasising the role of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and now Mrs Thatcher; and often it has more to to do with politics today than yesterday, Charles Moore in particular. In her early days as PM a priority was to defeat the arguments of the CND and commit Britain to this thing called an 'Independent Nuclear Deterrent'; if anything she had a greater preference for Nuclear Weapons than Reagan who didn't like them and saw SDI as an alternative to them -the Russians were more concerned at the military spin off's than the fantasy of the defensive shield.

We can argue about some of the finer details, for example the CIA has produced an account of the 1983 scare which doesn't offer a broader context for the impact of the KAL 700 disaster and whether or not it became a precedent for the successive passenger airlines shot down or blown up in the 1980s.

The USSR was dysfunctional, and had been for decades. Brezhnev had seen off the rebels in Prague in 1968, had begun the military build-up that concerned Washington in the 1970s and was believed to made some Americans feel they were falling behind (certainly a conservative critique of President Carter). The USSR had benefited from the staggering rise in the price of oil in the 1970s -but by the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982, the oil price was falling, Poland had become the latest challenger to Party dominance and had briefly succeeded in establishing an independent trade union, and the sense of decay was palpable, until Gorbachev came along. Neither Reagan nor Gorbachev wanted to see the break-up of the USSR; Gorbachev wanted to reform it, and failed. Reagan saw the end of the cold war, but not of communism, and the USSR did break up, with mixed results.

Thatcher recommended Gordievsky for an honour, which he duly received from the Queen. He wrote a book which cost Rupert Murdoch £100,000 in libel fees when serialised in the papers before its publication when Gordievsky claimed Michael Foot had been a 'KGB Agent of Influence' (called "Boot") and had regularly received payments from Moscow Centre when editor of Tribune magazine in the 1950s' -all rubbish. It was established that KGB officers who couldn't think of anything to say and justify their positions made up the phrase 'Agent of Influence' to make it sound good to their bosses. To compound this drivel Charles Moore, the latest biographer of Margaret Thatcher wrote a shitty little piece after Michael Foot's death knowing he wouldn't be sued in which he repeats the rubbish about "Agent Boot", and adds this bizarre comment: There was no protest by Foot to the KGB over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 -Michael Foot is on record as condemning the Russian invasion in 1956 and yet for Mr Moore, he was supposed to 'protest to the KGB' to prove his credentials? Weird. Gordievsky subsequently had the cheek to complain that the £20,000 a year he lived on, courtesy of the tax payer, was not enough, even though shop assistants were earning barely £10,000 at the time.

In sum -Thatcher was in the loop, but the key figure in the end of the Cold War was Gorbachev, and it was Trudeau who probably swung it for Maggie.

On Trudeau etc:
Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (Allen Lane, The Bodley Head, 2009, esp p470 for the Trudeau meeting).

On Michael Foot and Gordiesvsky:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-sorry-tale-of-agent-boot-1574439.html
(but does not credit Trudeau)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/7377111/Was-Foot-a-national-treasure-or-the-KGBs-useful-idiot.html
(Charles Moore re-writing history)

CIA article on 1983
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/a-cold-war-conundrum/source.htm

[Ben]

Thatcher’s Coup

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/25/thatchers-coup/

[Prospero]

Beat me to it Ben

[martin48]

Well, at least she hasn't been picked to be on the new £5 banknote - that's to be Churchill

[Jericho]

Well, at least she hasn't been picked to be on the new £5 banknote - that's to be Churchill


Thank Christ for that...Bogroll's expensive enough! :ignore:

[Ben]

Thatcher's full speech on global warming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg

[Ben]

Did Thatcher save Britain? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp8dbgsR4Fw)

[DirtyDon]

This thread was a most engaging read. Thatcher will always be mummy to me.

[Prospero]

Thankfully she is a Mummy to everyone now. Why did you need to dig up this old thread!

[martin48]

She will return

[robertlouis]

There's a campaign to have the August Bank Holiday renamed Margaret Thatcher day FFS.

As long as it gives us a chance to burn the bitch in effigy once a year I suppose it's ok, but really.... :pissed::pissed::pissed:

[Prospero]

Is that for real RL? The august holiday.... !!!!

[robertlouis]

Yep. There's a bill going through its second reading.

Although he was divisive in a different way and to a lesser extent, if there's a Prime Minister who deserves commemorating in this way, it would surely have to be Churchill.

This is frankly unbelievable.

[Prospero]

Good grief... perhaps if the day is re-named after the horrid woman we could commemorate each year with riots in trafalgar square.

Any incoming Labour government would surely undo any such a travesty.

[Stavros]

Yep. There's a bill going through its second reading.

Although he was divisive in a different way and to a lesser extent, if there's a Prime Minister who deserves commemorating in this way, it would surely have to be Churchill.

This is frankly unbelievable.


No Prime Minister, repeat, NO PRIME MINISTER is 'worthy' of such a holiday. There are reasons why we don't have an Oliver Cromwell Day just as we don't have an Henry the Eighth Day or an Elizabeth the First Day or an Attlee Day. I think it was a mistake of the US to create Martin Luther King Day and give people the right not to work. I don't think even the USSR gave its proletariat a day off on Stalin's birthday, and I think you still were expected to work in Iraq on Saddam's birthday...but North Koreans do get the day off on Kim il Sung's birthday, presumably because he is still the President, for eternity...

[martin48]

Don't worry there will not be a MT day. A Private Members Bill was proposed but such bills hardly ever make it to law unless the Government provides time for debate. The proposal was led by Peter Bone - grand old right-wing Tory who also proposed such bills as "Withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights".

[Prospero]

a boneheaded suggestion

But the US does have President's Day - celebrating all the "great" men (no women... yet) who've led the nation.

[Stavros]

The third Monday in February, except in Indiana when it is in December. Please don't ask why.

[DirtyDon]

Sorry Prospero but I have been lurking a long time and just recently had the balls to join the community. I really enjoyed this thread, even though I have a sofspot for the old dear having grown up through her time. She defined the 80s in many ways and was a maternal presence for me at least.

[robertlouis]

No Prime Minister, repeat, NO PRIME MINISTER is 'worthy' of such a holiday. There are reasons why we don't have an Oliver Cromwell Day just as we don't have an Henry the Eighth Day or an Elizabeth the First Day or an Attlee Day. I think it was a mistake of the US to create Martin Luther King Day and give people the right not to work. I don't think even the USSR gave its proletariat a day off on Stalin's birthday, and I think you still were expected to work in Iraq on Saddam's birthday...but North Koreans do get the day off on Kim il Sung's birthday, presumably because he is still the President, for eternity...

All very true, but as it's the "August" bank holiday, are we in fact celebrating the first emperor of Rome and the death of the Roman Republic?

[robertlouis]

Sorry Prospero but I have been lurking a long time and just recently had the balls to join the community. I really enjoyed this thread, even though I have a sofspot for the old dear having grown up through her time. She defined the 80s in many ways and was a maternal presence for me at least.

I have a soft spot for the evil old bitch as well: it's a very deep peat bog on Skye. Ask anyone in a derelict pit village if they saw her as a "maternal presence." Having said that, in terms of what they're currently enacting, the present lot are arguably even worse, tackling areas which Maggie even in her pomp shied away from.

Yes, she defined the 80s. The decade of "Me first, fuck you", roll back regulation and we're still living with the consequences.

And the music was universally shite as well. Skinny twats with daft haircuts noodling endlessly on electronic keyboards.

[Ben]

How Margaret Thatcher Made Britain a Soviet State:

https://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/how-margaret-thatcher-created-soviet-britain/?utm_content=buffer6f219&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Laphroaig]

The bitch took away my free milk at school!

Mock The Week's Frankie Boyle, on the cost of Margaret Thatchers funeral.

“For 3 million they could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan personally."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzk6cxNRRUc


Iron Maiden had the right idea in 1980...

http://images.rapgenius.com/f10092b11fc4ddb1c629ff2899427c94.1000x1000x1.jpg

[Jericho]

.....................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1NyWbhCxZE

[Stavros]

How Margaret Thatcher Made Britain a Soviet State:

https://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/how-margaret-thatcher-created-soviet-britain/?utm_content=buffer6f219&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

From his King's College web page:
Biography
Dr Alexandre Afonso is Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Political Economy. His main research interests are welfare state and labour market reforms, the political economy of labour migration and the role of organised interests in policymaking.
Before joining King's College in September 2012, he held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Society in Cologne, the European University Institute in Florence, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS, Washington DC) and the University of Amsterdam. Alexandre holds a PhD in political science from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. A Swiss-Portuguese national, he speaks French, English, Portuguese, German and Italian and has a reasonable level in Dutch and Spanish.

But he doesn't know how to open a bank account in the UK...how about- ask your employer for proof of address, contract of employment, an official letter, get yourself a passport...then maybe we can rack our brains as to what a 'Soviet state' looks like, and whether or not the UK is a one-party state run by workers committees...

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/politicaleconomy/people/academic/afonso.aspx