Maggie Thatcher Passes Away.

RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

Excuse my ignorance guys, i am but a young guy who was too young to know what was going on during her reign. I dont do much politics, i dont understand enough of it to make comments directly about thatcher. All i really know is what my folks have told me (slightly biased maybe) the only thing i know of any politician is to not trust any of them, anyone who wants to be in a position of power should not be trusted for that very fact. There are one or two exceptions. I was born in south africa, i spent the first few years of my life wondering why i wasnt allowed to play in the street with my maids son, or play on the beach with a pakistani, or trade toys with the chinese mans son. After moving to scotland with my parents i then spent the next few years wondering why people were being killed by having burning tyres placed round their necks or being chopped up by machettes, and then wondering why everyone at my new school hated me because i had a funny accent. Not trying to make light of any of the bad things she did or didnt do, but some of you need to get a wee bit of perspective. She didnt gas or poison her own brethren, she didnt carry out acts of genoside on a grand scale, she didnt order innocent men woman and children to be hacked up and dumped in mass graves because they had a different religion. There is only one political leader i would like to meet and have admiration for, nelson mandela. My dad still calls him a "fucking terrorist" we quite often argue about things like that! Anyway, dont look back at what happened two decades ago, look forward and to what is now. Shit happens and at least your familly aint burried in a shallow grave somewhere. This is of course only my opinion, but we have much worse things to worry about
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

http://bambuser.com/v/3499366

Street party in Brixton to celebrate
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

daz said:
Excuse my ignorance guys, i am but a young guy who was too young to know what was going on during her reign. I dont do much politics, i dont understand enough of it to make comments directly about thatcher. All i really know is what my folks have told me (slightly biased maybe) the only thing i know of any politician is to not trust any of them, anyone who wants to be in a position of power should not be trusted for that very fact. There are one or two exceptions. I was born in south africa, i spent the first few years of my life wondering why i wasnt allowed to play in the street with my maids son, or play on the beach with a pakistani, or trade toys with the chinese mans son. After moving to scotland with my parents i then spent the next few years wondering why people were being killed by having burning tyres placed round their necks or being chopped up by machettes, and then wondering why everyone at my new school hated me because i had a funny accent. Not trying to make light of any of the bad things she did or didnt do, but some of you need to get a wee bit of perspective. She didnt gas or poison her own brethren, she didnt carry out acts of genoside on a grand scale, she didnt order innocent men woman and children to be hacked up and dumped in mass graves because they had a different religion. There is only one political leader i would like to meet and have admiration for, nelson mandela. My dad still calls him a "fucking terrorist" we quite often argue about things like that! Anyway, dont look back at what happened two decades ago, look forward and to what is now. Shit happens and at least your familly aint burried in a shallow grave somewhere. This is of course only my opinion, but we have much worse things to worry about
Click to expand...

Well said daz!
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

The comments you see inspired by memories of her & her policies just underline my original thought Daz. That she was a "conviction" politician of a kind which I wonder has a place any longer in the Britain of 2013.
It is perhaps worth recalling that she was the 1st woman to lead a major political party in Britain, the 1st woman Prime Minister and was in fact elected to office by democratic vote three times. ie, more voters wanted her than didn't. In fact, I don't believe that she ever lost an election in which she stood, although I may be mistaken.
None of these facts by themselves made her a "good" or "bad" person. Just, perhaps, the last of her type; either a very good or very bad thing according to personal views.

JohnnyO.
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

God bless Frankie Boyle...(59 secs)

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmmomV-ax-s[/video]
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

Frankie Boyle is having a field day on twitter, this is mana for him.
 
Re: RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

JohnnyO said:
was in fact elected to office by democratic vote three times. ie, more voters wanted her than didn't.
Click to expand...

Pedantry perhaps, but this just isn't true. The tories have not had more than half the popular vote since the election of 1931, and given the shape of 1980s politics even her most ardent supporters would have to admit that there was never a time when more in the country were with her than against her - usually by a quarter the other way, roughly.
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

daz said:
There is only one political leader i would like to meet and have admiration for, nelson mandela. My dad still calls him a "fucking terrorist" we quite often argue about things like that!
Click to expand...

I seem to remember Thatcher calling him a terrorist as well Daz, if not him then the ANC.

Edit - found a source.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/from-terrorist-to-tea-with-the-queen-1327902.html
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

UKRob said:
I don't come from a mining, steel or shipbuilding background but let me tell you about a little village not too far away called Longbridge which employed 20,000 people in the 1970's. These people who worked there thought it was only right that they should earn more money than other industries because that's how things were and that's how they needed to stay. One day they realised that their crappy cars and outmoded ways of working were making their product too expensive and nobody was buying so that now there ain't nobody employed at Longbridge. Now I didn't hear too many voices saying that Longbridge must be saved by continuing to pour in vast amounts of taxpayer's money. Do I need to continue the analogy?
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Please continue, I can see how the analogy applies to shipbuilding but not so much to mining or steel. The miner's strike was a fight over politics and not economics but imo the NUM played right into her hands. No we can't use public money to support private industry, unless it's The City of course.

For the record my Dad was in Durham Police during the miner's strike but was recovering from a serious injury for most of 1984. I wasn't born when she became PM and the first election I could vote in was 2001. While I can see that some of what she did was needed, especially in her first term, most of what she did was ideologically driven and I believe wrong.
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

Although a very young and imo naive man yes i suppose he was a terrorist. But his time in prison changed his thought process and turned him to political warfare. He s one of the few that led because he wanted more for his people than himself, and who can blame him when less than 10% of the country owned more than 90% of the wealth
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

Dr Rick said:
JohnnyO said:
was in fact elected to office by democratic vote three times. ie, more voters wanted her than didn't.
Click to expand...

Pedantry perhaps, but this just isn't true. The tories have not had more than half the popular vote since the election of 1931, and given the shape of 1980s politics even her most ardent supporters would have to admit that there was never a time when more in the country were with her than against her - usually by a quarter the other way, roughly.
Click to expand...

What's the world coming to if an online friend can't have a wee bit pedantry here or there Dr. R. :blush:

Perhaps it should have been more accurate had I taken the space to suggest that in terms of our democratic process the party she represented won three consecutive elections and thereby held a political mandate in terms of the "first past the post" system we practise. She herself of course, as any Prime Minister, was elected in to that post by members of her own party. The general public having no say in the matter.

JohnnyO.
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

The Mackem Shaver said:
UKRob said:
I don't come from a mining, steel or shipbuilding background but let me tell you about a little village not too far away called Longbridge which employed 20,000 people in the 1970's. These people who worked there thought it was only right that they should earn more money than other industries because that's how things were and that's how they needed to stay. One day they realised that their crappy cars and outmoded ways of working were making their product too expensive and nobody was buying so that now there ain't nobody employed at Longbridge. Now I didn't hear too many voices saying that Longbridge must be saved by continuing to pour in vast amounts of taxpayer's money. Do I need to continue the analogy?
Click to expand...

Please continue, I can see how the analogy applies to shipbuilding but not so much to mining or steel. The miner's strike was a fight over politics and not economics but imo the NUM played right into her hands. No we can't use public money to support private industry, unless it's The City of course.

For the record my Dad was in Durham Police during the miner's strike but was recovering from a serious injury for most of 1984. I wasn't born when she became PM and the first election I could vote in was 2001. While I can see that some of what she did was needed, especially in her first term, most of what she did was ideologically driven and I believe wrong.
Click to expand...

The analogy with Longbridge is simply one of uncompetitiveness and state intervention/aid. The number of people who depended on Longbridge ran into many thousands more than the 22,000 people who were on site during the 70's so you could say that there was an economic and political reason to keep the plant going by state aid. This could have been supported by banning imports of foreign vehicles in the same way that, say, keeping uncompetitive mines open and banning import of cheaper coal. The problem was that all other industries that were struggling because they were uncompetitive would have demanded state intervention to keep them afloat as well.

The reasons behind this were varied but a major one was inflation which ran in excess of 20% for quite a few years and together with restrictive working practices made British Industry generally uncompetitive which lead to massive trade imbalances and the need to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bail out. The conditions they insisted on were strongly resisted by the then Labour government - does this ring any bells with Spain/Greece/Ireland/Cyprus?

In short, the Labour administration were unable to agree on how to handle the situation and by doing nothing, basically handed the 1979 election to the Tories. The point has already been made that whoever had been in power subsequently would have had to make the same decisions - it just happened to be her.

I'm no Margaret Thatcher apologist, but I lived through those times and was recently reminded of the huge influence that the 70's had by reading a book called Seasons in the Sun. I can say that it's genuinely not politically biased but as a reminder of the huge social, economic and political upheavels that ocurred in a relatively few years, it's well worth a read and may explain some of the fallout through the 80s.
 
RE: Lady Thatcher Passes Away.

Her legacy? She turned the Government against the people of this country and the mistrust just keeps growing. She turned the Police against the people of this country and the mistrust just keeps growing.

She told us there was no such thing as Society and she set about destroying ours to prove herself and her ideology right. I fear her ghost will haunt us for generations to come.
 
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