Margaret Thatcher dies aged 87

[x9200]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... ed-87.html

Margaret Thatcher dies of stroke aged 87
Baroness Thatcher, Britain's greatest post-war prime minister, has died at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her family has announced.

From the outsider's perspective thinking of British PMs only two names come to mind Churchill and Thatcher.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Yep, I was too young for Churchill but I remember Iron Knicker's well. Say what you want about her, but she was a force to be reckoned with. RIP Maggie.

[offshoreoildude]

Even as a 14 yo I despised her. However Britain is right to be proud of her.

[JR8]

What sad news, she had more balls than all the PMs who have succeeded her put together. When she took the helm the UK was in a socialist economic death-spiral. She broke the coal-mining unions, who were taking the country hostage, (rather like 'breaking Detroit' but on a national scale). And went on to break 'The Argies' over the Falklands.

Of course many of those on the receiving end of her bitter but needed medicine detested her with a passion. But still today the UK benefits from the reforms that she drove through. She lasted over 11 years as PM which speaks for itself and for the majority of people, as such longevity from any UK PM is most unusual.

RIP Maggie

[offshoreoildude]

As an engineer I admire her more; she had a degree in chemical engineering and helped invent whipped ice cream apparently.

[curiousgeorge]

What sad news, she had more balls than all the PMs who have succeeded her put together. When she took the helm the UK was in a socialist economic death-spiral. She broke the coal-mining unions, who were taking the country hostage, (rather like 'breaking Detroit' but on a national scale). And went on to break 'The Argies' over the Falklands.

Of course many of those on the receiving end of her bitter but needed medicine detested her with a passion. But still today the UK benefits from the reforms that she drove through. She lasted over 11 years as PM which speaks for itself and for the majority of people, as such longevity from any UK PM is most unusual.

RIP Maggie

Yes she broke the unions - and with it sent large parts of the UK into their own death-spiral, with unemployment topping 20%. The unions were trying to keep people in jobs with a liveable wage, but Thatcher steam-rolled them with no regard to the human cost and the devastation she left.

Under her leadership, interest rates shot over 17%, and with that she killed most of the UK manufacturing too, adding even more to the unemployment pile.

The combination of high interest rates and uncontrolled inflation forced those on the bread-line into downright poverty - if they even had jobs any more.

The UKs biggest period of sustained growth and increased living standards was the three decades after WWII - a period of high taxes on the rich, strong trade unions and tight governmental control. Maggie can certainly be credit with doing away with all of that - along with the sustained growth. And what growth there has been is unequally distributed, usually into the pockets of private enterprise fat-cats rather than government or worker pockets.

Her legacy even now has pretty much destroyed prospects for the working man in the UK...housing is unaffordable (she sold off all the council houses), utilities and travel are ever-more expensive (to appease the shareholders).

And let's face it, its not like the UK is flourishing now...not a single government since Thatcher has managed to undo the financial deregulation she pioneered and the qet-rick-quick boom she launched still has negative ramifications today...

[Barnsley]

What sad news, she had more balls than all the PMs who have succeeded her put together. When she took the helm the UK was in a socialist economic death-spiral. She broke the coal-mining unions, who were taking the country hostage, (rather like 'breaking Detroit' but on a national scale). And went on to break 'The Argies' over the Falklands.

Of course many of those on the receiving end of her bitter but needed medicine detested her with a passion. But still today the UK benefits from the reforms that she drove through. She lasted over 11 years as PM which speaks for itself and for the majority of people, as such longevity from any UK PM is most unusual.

RIP Maggie

Yes she broke the unions - and with it sent large parts of the UK into their own death-spiral, with unemployment topping 20%. The unions were trying to keep people in jobs with a liveable wage, but Thatcher steam-rolled them with no regard to the human cost and the devastation she left.

Under her leadership, interest rates shot over 17%, and with that she killed most of the UK manufacturing too, adding even more to the unemployment pile.

The combination of high interest rates and uncontrolled inflation forced those on the bread-line into downright poverty - if they even had jobs any more.

The UKs biggest period of sustained growth and increased living standards was the three decades after WWII - a period of high taxes on the rich, strong trade unions and tight governmental control. Maggie can certainly be credit with doing away with all of that - along with the sustained growth. And what growth there has been is unequally distributed, usually into the pockets of private enterprise fat-cats rather than government or worker pockets.

Her legacy even now has pretty much destroyed prospects for the working man in the UK...housing is unaffordable (she sold off all the council houses), utilities and travel are ever-more expensive (to appease the shareholders).

And let's face it, its not like the UK is flourishing now...not a single government since Thatcher has managed to undo the financial deregulation she pioneered and the qet-rick-quick boom she launched still has negative ramifications today...

Opinion is certainly divided ....... There are not too many folk from around where I am from shedding any tears thats for sure.

[JR8]

She had a 'Get on your bike' philosophy. I.e. If you can't find a suitable job locally, go and travel to find one and/or better yourself in order to get one.

Many lefties despised this negation of 'entrenched entitlement' to local opportunity that didn't exist, or was fabricated (civil service etc).

I find it surprising that there are a few Brits here who have the wherewithal to emigrate to Singapore, and yet 'despise' her parallel philosophy. They're moving half way around the world, whilst despising a home government for suggesting that other people back home might benefit if they maybe move 50 miles, in order to find work.

But that's the left-wing: Hoover off other people's money and work like parasites. Don't let them become rich... take all their money for the sake of 'fairness'.

[Barnsley]

She had a 'Get on your bike' philosophy. I.e. If you can't find a suitable job locally, go and travel to find one and/or better yourself in order to get one.

Many lefties despised this negation of 'entrenched entitlement' to local opportunity that didn't exist, or was fabricated (civil service etc).

I find it surprising that there are a few Brits here who have the wherewithal to emigrate to Singapore, and yet 'despise' her parallel philosophy. They're moving half way around the world, whilst despising a home government for suggesting that other people back home might benefit if they maybe move 50 miles, in order to find work.

But that's the left-wing: Hoover off other people's money and work like parasites. Don't let them become rich... take all their money for the sake of 'fairness'.

Nothing wrong with people having alternative views is there?

[Hannieroo]

She was a highly educated, clever woman with a backbone. And then a frail old lady who will be mourned by friends and family.

But her decimation of our industries, privatisation and selling off of social housing that had been seen to be vital after the 1930 Housing Act combined with the throwing up of badly planned high rise estates has lead to wide unemployment, sink estates and a benefit underclass. Many young people have less chance of a university education now than they did 40 years ago. Sadly, we seem to have the not for the likes of us attitude that prevailed before WWII.

Plus, she took my milk.

[x9200]

The UKs biggest period of sustained growth and increased living standards was the three decades after WWII

This is probably not the best argument as it is always like this when the economies spring forward from a deep recession or stagnation periods. Rebuilding after the WWII was an excellent opportunity and I doubt there were many countries not showing a period of sustained growth.

[JR8]

Nothing wrong with people having alternative views is there?

Absolutely nothing at all. In fact when debating a point I'd expect to be up against an 'alternative' view. Please don't take my admittedly quite robust views on MT, as ... as any more than that

She was a highly educated, clever woman with a backbone. And then a frail old lady who will be mourned by friends and family.

But her decimation of our industries, privatisation and selling off of social housing that had been seen to be vital after the 1930 Housing Act combined with the throwing up of badly planned high rise estates has lead to wide unemployment, sink estates and a benefit underclass. Many young people have less chance of a university education now than they did 40 years ago. Sadly, we seem to have the not for the likes of us attitude that prevailed before WWII.

Plus, she took my milk.

'Decimation of our industries'? If you mean coal-mining, steel, and car-building...
- coal was cheaper from Europe
- steel was cheaper from Asia
- cars were cheaper and more reliable from just about anywhere else in the world.

Why do you think Dudley (of 'Dudley and Ting Tong') in the comedy 'Little Britain' drives an Austin Allegro, if not that it was the epitome of utterly crap cars back in the 70s.

None of those three industries were competitive, but that wasn't the point. They were collectively the British version of America's Detroit. They were highly unionised. Perhaps you remember in the 80s, when Arthur Scargill (head of the mineworkers union (NUM)) had all of Britain's miner's out on strike. That threatened the nations electricity supply... which threatened everything. The opposition/Labour government funded the unions, and when in power still do, in return for the union members votes. Talk about pork-barrel politics!

Or perhaps you remember the 1970s. I had wanted to buy my first air-rifle. But I had to wait 3 months, because whatever mechanism the shop had for supplies, were out on strike. And when we eventually went to London to buy it the streets of London were 5' high in black rubbish sacks. It was like that everywhere, for mile after mile, it was akin to driving through a type of tunnel, you could not even see the pedestrians walking on the pavements behind. Because the 'bin men' were out on strike. This was the same time that hospital morgues were overflowing, and hospitals had to hire refrigerated lorries to keep corpses in - because crematoria workers were on strike.

Food rationing, petrol rationing (yes there were ration books issued and used during both)...it goes on and on. This routine continuous chaos was 'business as usual' ... for me during my youth: Until she put a stop to it.

Don't even get me started on the issue of council housing and Right-To-Buy'*... And after all the long-term and still surviving good she did for the country you're still hung up on things as trivial as the stopping of 'free' (i.e. tax-payer funded) daily 1/3pt bottle of milk for some*1 school pupils, (the provision of milk having been a pre-war policy intended to stop children from getting rickets, which wasn't a risk any more in later times)?



p.s.
IMHO a lot of people at university in the UK today should not be there. It has become the expected path, and that makes no sense. Three of your most prime years spent loafing about ‘studying’ a field in which you are not interested, and have no intention to work.

*‘selling off social housing’? You mean Right-to-Buy (RTB)? You have to consider that you had areas and estates where the majority were out of work and on benefits. They had nil stake in their neighbourhood, and were in fact incentivised to not go and find a job. Poverty and all it’s associated problems being positively incentivised and paid for by the state. RTB gave people who’d been council tenants for a certain number of years a right to buy their home if they wished to at heavily subsidised prices. These people then had a stake in their street, and neighbourhood. I own a flat that I bought from an elderly Cypriot couple, they had been council tenants and they bought out under RTB. I paid 8* what they had bought it for (their original buy-out was incorporated within my lease). I should have imagined that helped their retirement back in Cyprus. The street formed a neighbourhood group. They had the local council replace ugly concrete lamp-posts that had been installed post-WW2, replaced with copies of the original cast-iron Victorian ones. They joined a scheme where the council install and maintain hanging baskets of lovely flowers from these same lamp-posts. That street is now very attractive, neighbourly, and very highly desirable. Purely for the sake of illustration; that flat is worth c4* what I paid for it, on an unimproved like-for-like basis, c15 years ago.


*1 from Wikipedia
'The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools[45] and imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven.[46] She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes.[46] Her decision provoked a storm of protest from the Labour party and the press,[47] leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".[46][48] Cabinet papers of the time reveal that Thatcher opposed the policy but was forced into it by the Treasury.[49] Thatcher wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."[47][50]

[Hannieroo]

The milk was a joke.

I see what you say and I do get it. The three day week and the rolling power cuts. Yes. But long term those policies have not worked. There's little industry left, no jobs for young people, university is now the option for people who would have gone into apprenticeships because it's that or nothing. So, yes, we are going to end up with a generation who require a degree for a job that's barely above minimum wage with no real career prospects.

RTB was a mistake. The money was not pumped back into housing, people do not have a right to a house at a bargain price by virtue of paying the rent on time. House ownership by anyone more than the quite wealthy is a relatively new concept and social housing was intended to clear the slums, remove slum landlords, guarantee a home for as you needed it that was well maintained with a fair rent with fair and reasonable increases. It was not intended to be somebody's nest egg. So, now we have little housing left, private landlords whilst regulated can charge what they like, refuse to extend contracts, refuse the tenant the right to decorate their own home (fair enough) and be shoddy with their maintenance. Plus many private LL's insurance refuse to allow the LL to have DSS as tenants.

So, what do we have now? A government that decides the best way to tackle this is to bring in bedroom tax. Make a single mother with 2 children of different sexes and 1 on the way live in a two bedroom flat or pay the extra knowing she'll have to uproot her children again when they can no longer share. Or an elderly couple being forced to move from their two or three bed house they have lived in for their entire marriage because they can't afford the tax on their meagre pension because they believed that they would be looked after and when it became obvious that was crap it was to late for them.

[gonzales]

Putting aside the praise & the critcism of Thatcher for a moment.

It looks like London is gearing up for potential civil unrest over the coming weekend as Anti Thatcher groups plan parties to celebrate her demise.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22080238

Watch this space over the weekend...

[Hannieroo]

That's disgusting. I'm sure they feel celebrating the demise of another human is politics but it just makes them look like knobs.