The Margaret Thatcher is Dead Thread

[SM BHAFC]

Best British PM in my life time this country was on it's way, no infact was totally f***ed before she came in to power she sorted it out and led us to an a time of oppurtunity and financial stability that we are still enjoying today it was hard at times but she got us there, a legend.

You knew where you stood like it or lump it, slightly different with the present lot!!!

 

[Gully]

Gullet, my comparison of Thatcher to Attila the Hun and Stalin was an exaggeration to demonstrate my dislike for her, I think my comments before quantified my opinion. I did also mention that she did a great deal of good at the beginning of her first term in office, when as SM BHAFC points out above the Country was in the mire good and proper, this did however turn sour as the power trip kicked in.

I could delve somewhat further back than the Falklands for the origines of my feelings, back to the time when she was the Minister for Education and presided over the end of free school milk, hence the nickname "Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher!". I was a milk monitor at school and lost my job at the age of 8 when the free breaktime tipple was ended, I don't have the memory of an elephant but childhood traumas tend to stick in the mind.

Also, and I don't wish to sound picky, the Maastricht treaty was signed by John Major, Thatcher had already been dumped by the party before the Conference that led to it. (I can be sure of this as the Conference took place in a building by the river Maas about a mile from where I was living and I didn't move to Maastricht until the late spring of 91, Thatcher had been replaced just before Chrismas in 90).

 

[Yorkie]

One other point is that the miners were not poor working class. Their wages for the coal face workers were practically double the average man's wage.
That was another reason why they were so reluctant to give up their lifestyle as opposed to the steelworkers.

LI, just another point, I haven't resorted to swearing at you or about you.

 

[Yorkie]

I could delve somewhat further back than the Falklands for the origines of my feelings, back to the time when she was the Minister for Education and presided over the end of free school milk, hence the nickname "Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher!". I was a milk monitor at school and lost my job at the age of 8 when the free breaktime tipple was ended, I don't have the memory of an elephant but childhood traumas tend to stick in the mind.

Milk was introduced for kids like me who had to have their diet supplemented to stop us getting rickets due to lack of vitamin D.

By the 70's food rationing was a very distant memory and most kids were well fed.
We didn't need to fork out taxpayers money for something that most kids hated to drink anyway. Luke warm milk - yuck

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

...she was the Minister for Education and presided over the end of free school milk, hence the nickname "Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher!". I was a milk monitor at school and lost my job at the age of 8 when the free breaktime tipple was ended, I don't have the memory of an elephant but childhood traumas tend to stick in the mind.

 

[alan partridge]

I could delve somewhat further back than the Falklands for the origines of my feelings, back to the time when she was the Minister for Education and presided over the end of free school milk, hence the nickname "Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher!". I was a milk monitor at school and lost my job at the age of 8 when the free breaktime tipple was ended, I don't have the memory of an elephant but childhood traumas tend to stick in the mind.

i know th has just done this but....

 

[London Irish]

LI & Tom

May I respectfully ask where you were living during the miner's strike?

Did you actually talk to any miners? Or did you get all your information from the press and tv?

I was living in north London and was part of one of the huge number of miners support groups that sprung up around the country. For most of the duration of the strike we collected outside supermarkets. The support we got from ordinary people was overwhelming, I can barely remember an opposing voice - everyone wanted to give something to the miners because people knew they were the David fighting back against Goliath. Every Miners Support Group would have a few miners billeted with them and some friends of mine put them up. Because of our geographical location, the miners we knew were from Kent. I believe it was Kent miners that also organised the solidarity effort in Brighton too.

This was a terrible time. The Tories had collapsed the economy in the early-1980s and thrown millions out of work. This was deliberate government policy, they did it to "discipline the labour market", ie. weaken the unions and put the fear of god into people so they would accept lower wages and poorer conditions at work.

Everyone knows how unemployment is linked to a whole range of social problems like family break-up, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and violence. Yet the Tories thought nothing of blighting so many people's lives just so their friends in the City and in board rooms could have an easier time of it.

The miners represented a symbol of hope and opposition to the callous, anti-social policies of governing through deliberate mass unenployment. The part of north London I grew up in went from having unemployment figures in the single figures to over 40 per cent. Many people I went to school with never had a job for years. Quite a few of them ended up doing stupid things because of that.

I can't forget all this and "move on" now that I have a comfortable life. It is not a question of bitterness, but a question of justice. The misery inflicted on millions of people by the Tories should never be forgotten. It will motivate me for the rest of my life to try and deny callous bastards like that any hope of getting back into power.

The people who I am most closely politically associated with are the ones who have guided Ken Livingstone's career for the last 20 years. Just as he led the way in my youth in opposing Thatcher, and she had to abolish an entire tier of local government to defeat him because the people never voted him out of power and were never going to, so again today he is leading the way in showing there is a progressive alternative to both the Tories and the milk-and-water Thacherism of Blair.

 

[London Irish]

One other point is that the miners were not poor working class. Their wages for the coal face workers were practically double the average man's wage.
That was another reason why they were so reluctant to give up their lifestyle as opposed to the steelworkers.

LI, just another point, I haven't resorted to swearing at you or about you.

I haven't swore at you either Yorkie. But your views on the miners are bollocks.

 

[El Presidente]

Thatcher was a lucky politician is that she presided over the country after a very poor Labour administration, and was fortunate that North Sea Oil revenues sprung up to pay for the huge unemployment that was created during her reign. She then embarked on a policy of dismantling state industries, but instead of investing the money generated from privatisation in education, health and infrastructure pissed it up the wall with tax cuts that benefitted those who needed it least and an unnecessary war against Argentina in order to win an election. She sold off school playing fields to cronies within the Tory ranks so they could make further millions, and sowed the seeds for the increasing health problems that reside within children today

If you look at economic growth, unemployment, inflation and interest rates under Thatch it will reveal that her admnistration and management of the UK was a disaster. Just because she was jingoist and awkward does not make her great

 

[broadbelly]

SHE WAS AND STILL IS A HEARTLESS BITCH

SHE HAD ONE POLICY :
LETS MAKE THE RICH RICHER
AND THE POOR POORER

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Comment on material received so far:-

This has been a fine thread, and I'm proud to have provided an opportunity for NSC catharsis while we can all still think straight! (Well, think how it would have been if she'd actually just pegged.)

We started with some surprisingly fulsome pro-Thatcher eulogies (although these were of course being penned after the pubs turned out last night). And then, this morning, came a groundswell of harsher judgements of what the Iron Lady had actually achieved. Or perpetrated. (Mostly done this morning I note, once all those feckless NSC pinkoes had risen from their futons, fuelled up on mango juice and paw-paw muesli, and read all seventeen of the Saturday Guardian supplements.)

May I suggest that, before this vault is sealed in readiness for the Great Day, we have something about Mrs T's legendary sense of humour, her encouragement of the modernising efforts of that nice Mr Murdoch at Wapping - and her poll tax heroics.

And where oh where is the much anticipated, lachrymose, defensive, yet still slightly prickly tribute from Mr Gareth Glover?

 

[Gwylan]

...(Mostly done this morning I note, once all those feckless NSC pinkoes had risen from their futons, fuelled up on mango juice and paw-paw muesli, and read all seventeen of the Saturday Guardian supplements.)

LOL. that's exactly how I've spent the morning...apart from the fact that I dumped the futon a few years ago. Oh, to have become such a stereotype.

 

[Gwylan]

Thatcher was a lucky politician is that she presided over the country after a very poor Labour administration, and was fortunate that North Sea Oil revenues sprung up to pay for the huge unemployment that was created during her reign. She then embarked on a policy of dismantling state industries, but instead of investing the money generated from privatisation in education, health and infrastructure pissed it up the wall with tax cuts that benefitted those who needed it least and an unnecessary war against Argentina in order to win an election. She sold off school playing fields to cronies within the Tory ranks so they could make further millions, and sowed the seeds for the increasing health problems that reside within children today

If you look at economic growth, unemployment, inflation and interest rates under Thatch it will reveal that her admnistration and management of the UK was a disaster. Just because she was jingoist and awkward does not make her great

Spot on Kieran. I had a visceral hatred of Thatcher at the time for what she was doing to the country but even then I thought we wouldn't see the real damage for 20 to 30 years.

And the effects of her "there is no such thing as society" are manifold. From the heroin problems in former mining communities in South Wales, Yorkshire and Notts, to the destruction of the public transport infrastructure. As one example, my cousin was invalided out of the army and went back to his old home in Dowlais, where his sole pleasure was a drink with his mates at the social club. That was until Thatcher privatised buses and the Merthyr bus company decided that the bus link from Dowlais to the town centre was uneconomic and cut it to a couple of trips a day, effectively cutting of an entire village and effectively depriving my cousin of his social life. That's a story that could be repeated in a thousand villages across the country as whole communities were fractured.

Mrs Gwylan, who works in an inner-city school, sees the effects of Thatcherism every day as she was to deal with children who are not being parented in any sense of the word; not one or two delinquents but dozens of kids in every age group. Their parents, and I use the term loosely, are of course the generation that was brought up under the Thatcherite ethos of greed and selfishness. Of course, these children are having children themselves and the whole sorry process continues.

And as El Pres points out, the revenues reaped by the Thatcher government were not poured back into the country but given to the rich, widening the wealth gap between the richest and poorest, and making the county more divided than ever before.

Bollocks to de mortuis nihil nisi bonum I can't wait for the evil bitch to die. I have some champagne I have been saving specially for the occasion and will savour every mouthful while mourning the thousands who have suffered and will continue to suffer.

 

[Gully]

Yorkie, I accept wholeheartedly your comment about warm milk, this is absolutely disgusting. What I would add is that when Gully was a milk monitor he worked out that if the milk bottles were placed in cold water in the classroom sink they would be far more drinkable by morning break, particularly during the summer.

London Irish, you deliver your point in a fine and eloquent manner, I find myself agreeing with the majority of it. This reminds me that Thatcher hated football, it was a way that vast numbers of people gathered together behind a certian cause, in their case following a particular team, this was totally against her views of society. I think she saw us all as low life and possibly a threat to her vision, just reading this thread shows that on NSC there are many people capable of rational thought and are more than able to convey their views in a coherent manner.

I think there is one thing that the older posters on NSC will have gained from the Thatcher years and that is the stomach for protest, this has certainly come to the fore in the last few years, we now have a certain kudos in the supporter world for our efforts in saving the Albion. Some bloody legacy.

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Margaret Thatcher made The Sun possible. How good was that?

During the Wapping dispute of 1986/87, Margaret Thatcher's government provided full police protection for the bussing-in of strike-breaking production workers and journalists. After sacking most of his Fleet Street-based staff, Rupert Murdoch now found it possible to produce his newspapers at the new plant far more cheaply than ever before.

Soon afterwards, all the country's newspapers came to be produced using new technology, making huge savings by jettisoning old union agreements and cutting out whole layers of the production process.

As a result, the virulently Thatcherite Sun grew in circulation and became even more profitable for its Australian/American owner. But that same upheaval also enabled other media, including the Independent, to start up and thrive at a fraction of the cost under the old system.

So, Thatcher - friend of the powerful, enemy of the people, enabler of the new media revolution.

Discuss?

 

[Biscuit]

WHAT...YOU PEOPLE LIKE THATCHER?


Bloody heck...

 

[Brightonfan1983]

We went to war with the Argentinians mere months before a genral election. Coincidence?

Those people who slag off 'Bomber' Harris for fire bombing Germany during WWII shouldn't forget Thatcher authorised attacking The Belgrano, heading, as it was, out of Falklands waters.

I bloody hate Thatcher and all she stood for.

Pals with Pinochet.

I rest my fu*king case.

 

[Biscuit]

We went to war with the Argentinians mere months before a genral election. Coincidence?

Those people who slag off 'Bomber' Harris for fire bombing Germany during WWII shouldn't forget Thatcher authorised attacking The Belgrano, heading, as it was, out of Falklands waters.

I bloody hate Thatcher and all she stood for.

Pals with Pinochet.

I rest my fu*king case.

Thats more like it matey.

Loosing in the polls...go to war...suddenly win a huge support from the old war veterans. A cheap trick by the WORST primeminister this county has ever seen.

Major was a nob to.

 

[Yoda]

Maggie Thatcher is the best PM I have had in my life time.

 

[larus]

Margaret Thatcher changed this country for the better. The unions were too powerful, and abused their power. They were being political, not doing their job of protecting workers rights.

As for the miners, it's the same today with unskilled manufacturing jobs. We couldn't compete with cheap imports of caol then, and we can't compete with cheap labour for manufacturing jobs now.

Scargil - absolute tosser.

As for economic activity under Thatcher, when she came to power, we were in a spiral of infaltion and low prouctivity & strikes. At the end of the Eighties, there was another global recession (of course, this was caused by Thatcher as well). No wonder that overall the level of economic activity was so bad, but the cuntry was in a real shit state caused by the loony left.

If all of the union laws were so bad, why haven't they been recinded by the Labour government?