Thread: Thirty years ago today .......

..... a certain lady took up residence at No 10 Downing Street.

Do you love her?

Do you loathe her?

Do you think she should have a state funeral after she dies (or before she dies)?

Is she to blame for Arthur Scargill's hair loss?

Is she to blame for the banking crisis?

Did she save us from joining the Warsaw Pact?

Does anybody think we'd have ben better off if she'd lost the 1979 election?

Top bird - Took back the balance of power from the Unions and when faced with a challenge to UK soverignty said Stuff world opinion we own the Falklands and we are taking them back!

Top bird - Took back the balance of power from the Unions and when faced with a challenge to UK soverignty said Stuff world opinion we own the Falklands and we are taking them back!

Originally Posted by Pling

Top bird - Took back the balance of power from the Unions and when faced with a challenge to UK soverignty said Stuff world opinion we own the Falklands and we are taking them back!

I'm sure I read somewhere that she advised the Argies that we wouldn't oppose them taking the Islands back, anyone know anything about this?

i cant see brown being able to say this in 30 yrs time

linky

she wasnt purfect but would at least she would get a job done!

Originally Posted by jarrod248

Originally Posted by Pling

Top bird - Took back the balance of power from the Unions and when faced with a challenge to UK soverignty said Stuff world opinion we own the Falklands and we are taking them back!

I'm sure I read somewhere that she advised the Argies that we wouldn't oppose them taking the Islands back,

Not quite. The Argies inferred this due to John Nott's plans to run down the Royal Navy and withdraw our only permanent naval presence in the South Atlantic.

Originally Posted by Ancient_Mariner

..... a certain lady took up residence at No 10 Downing Street.

Do you love her?

Do you loathe her?

Do you think she should have a state funeral after she dies (or before she dies)?

Is she to blame for Arthur Scargill's hair loss?

Is she to blame for the banking crisis?

Did she save us from joining the Warsaw Pact?

Does anybody think we'd have ben better off if she'd lost the 1979 election?

She didnt make many friends north of the border. This is quite an interesting analysis of her time in charge and how it affected the Scots.

Scum as PIRA are, we'd have been better off if she'd died in the Brighton Bombing, if you want to be brutally honest. By then the worst of the anti-free market stuff had gone, the anti-union legislation was passed, the miners strike was faiding, and Labour was past Foot. If we'd have stopped their we'd have gained all the benefits but none of the cost - no flogging of every single national asset at a knock-down price to private companies, no radical deregulation of the city, coal mines could have been closed according to their long-term value to the nation as strategic assets and not because gas or imports were cheaper for a brief point in history.

She was the right person at the right time. We could do with someone like her again to get us out of the mess Labour has dropped us in.

Whether you liked her or not she had drive, determination and moral courage.She picked her course and stuck to it. Unlike the present bunch of mealy mouthed idiots. And she dragged Great Britain into the 20th Century. We will need someone like her to get the country out of the mess it is now in and I don't see anyone with her stature in any of our political parties.

I am frequently surprised at the venom that is directed at Thatcher, going by what her detractors say it would appear that they were actually preying for the crowd of lunatics we have today all through her tenure.

The arguments against her, especially in my generation (Thatchers children etc) always seem as questionable as those used to describe the troubles in Northern Ireland or the rights and wrongs of America. The arguments are almost always simplistic, overly-subjective, poorly researched and nearly fundamentalist in their approach.

It seem however that Google News thinks Scotland should like her a bit more though. These are 2 articles that came up after only 2 clicks of the mouse:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...f-Britain.html

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/94097-an...aret-thatcher/

Originally Posted by metimmee

She didnt make many friends north of the border. This is quite an interesting analysis of her time in charge and how it affected the Scots.

She made more than you might think.

I grew up in a council flat in Scotland. Dad spent most of his working life on the dole after giving up a life on the ocean wave. I had the pleasure of standing in a separate queue for the kids who got free school dinners. Mum worked in factories until she retired.

You'd think we'd all be natural born socialists. The power cuts, strikes, chaos and, where I lived, food shortages of the 1970s turned us all into life long Tories.

I know another working class bloke who turned because his family had friends behind the Iron Curtain. When his family started receiving food parcels from an impoverished, communist dictatorship he had a 'WTF' moment and turned his back on Labour for ever.

Of course, bringing the Poll Tax in a year early in Scotland was unforgivable and lost Maggie much of the support she had in Scotland. The 'Tory Toffs' stereotype doesn't go down well in council estates either so it's unlikely that the Tories will regain the popularity they enjoyed in Scotland in the 1950s.

It's reported that Dave will stop subsidising Scotland if and when he is PM. The Barnett formula will be abandoned and Scotland will only get as much from the UK as it contributes. That should make the Poll Tax debacle look like an argument at the Womens Institute about who bakes the best cakes.

Originally Posted by Unknown_Quantity

I am frequently surprised at the venom that is directed at Thatcher, going by what her detractors say it would appear that they were actually preying for the crowd of lunatics we have today all through her tenure.

In the 70s, quite a few people still thought that communism in one form or another was the way ahead. Many, such as the Cambridge spies, formed their opinions during WWII when the Soviet Union fought against the Nazis. Others, like our own dear Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP were indoctrinated listening to left wing intellectuals at university during the 1960s.

Opinions varied from Stalinism, as espoused by President for Life Arthur Scargill, through to an alliance with the USSR with Soviet troops based in the UK as favoured by Tony Benn to the relatively mild but chaotic brand of socialism practised by Jim Callaghan.

Maggie is a hate figure for some because she crushed the hard left in Britain. Their dreams of a socialist utopia, presided over by an unelected, ruling elite, were dashed for ever.

As the Tories weren't on the trade union payroll, they had no incentive to tolerate abuses like closed shops, flying pickets and strikes being called on a whim by union barons. The rug was pulled from under the feet of the TUC.

Scargill went from being 'the enemy within' to being a laughing stock by declaring 'moral victory' as his members were leaving the NUM and his strikers were marching back to work.

Derek Hatton, aspiring Gauleiter for life of Liverpool, would have to wait a while for his first Jaguar when his worker's revolution failed to materialise, reputedly thanks to Maggie sending in MI5 and Special Branch.

Ken Livingstone failed to establish the Peoples Democratic Republic of London when Maggie abolished the GLC but it would be many years before Boris delivered the coup de grace.

Lesbian diversity consultant, Lewisham council leader and demander of reparations for slavery, Linda Bellos would no longer be able to ban Met Police officers from council property.

1979 - The dream died for rabid, communist nutters everywhere and they still curse Maggie for locking the gates to their playground for the loony left.

From one Ancient Mariner to another........ think you've just about covered the reality of those years. A good post.

Originally Posted by Ancient_Mariner

Originally Posted by Unknown_Quantity

I am frequently surprised at the venom that is directed at Thatcher, going by what her detractors say it would appear that they were actually preying for the crowd of lunatics we have today all through her tenure.

In the 70s, quite a few people still thought that communism in one form or another was the way ahead. Many, such as the Cambridge spies, formed their opinions during WWII when the Soviet Union fought against the Nazis. Others, like our own dear Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP were indoctrinated listening to left wing intellectuals at university during the 1960s.

Opinions varied from Stalinism, as espoused by President for Life Arthur Scargill, through to an alliance with the USSR with Soviet troops based in the UK as favoured by Tony Benn to the relatively mild but chaotic brand of socialism practised by Jim Callaghan.

Maggie is a hate figure for some because she crushed the hard left in Britain. Their dreams of a socialist utopia, presided over by an unelected, ruling elite, were dashed for ever.

As the Tories weren't on the trade union payroll, they had no incentive to tolerate abuses like closed shops, flying pickets and strikes being called on a whim by union barons. The rug was pulled from under the feet of the TUC.

Scargill went from being 'the enemy within' to being a laughing stock by declaring 'moral victory' as his members were leaving the NUM and his strikers were marching back to work.

Derek Hatton, aspiring Gauleiter for life of Liverpool, would have to wait a while for his first Jaguar when his worker's revolution failed to materialise, reputedly thanks to Maggie sending in MI5 and Special Branch.

Ken Livingstone failed to establish the Peoples Democratic Republic of London when Maggie abolished the GLC but it would be many years before Boris delivered the coup de grace.

Lesbian diversity consultant, Lewisham council leader and demander of reparations for slavery, Linda Bellos would no longer be able to ban Met Police officers from council property.

1979 - The dream died for rabid, communist nutters everywhere and they still curse Maggie for locking the gates to their playground for the loony left.

And could all these specimens of the loony left have done one per cent of the damage to Britain that the rabid right have been responsible for?

If, as you claim, the lefties dreamed of unelected control of the UK, the reality is that the western world is now controlled by unelected multi-national companies. Companies, it now turns out, run by idiots who make Scargill and Livingstone look like geniuses.

You sound like a survivor of the Titanic claiming that it was the stokers' fault the Captain put the ship on a collision course with an iceberg. Yes, Thatcher was strong willed and didn't care what damage she caused in trying to prove she was always right. Field Marshal Haig had exactly the same attitude and killed or wounded almost a million British soldiers because of them. I have nothing but contempt for him and nothing but contempt for Thatcher. As will generations of Britons as yet unborn. She turned my country into a plantation divided between the rich and the slaves, which is why I left. It wasn't my idea of a civilised society.

Now it's turned out to be a Reagan/Thatcher style free enterprise paradise where the trickle down effect is the CEO's and financiers pissing on the average citizen before taking their private planes loaded with gold bars to Switzerland and Israel. Leaving the dickheads who let them get away with it to starve on the dole.

One day I hope to have the pleasure of pi==ing on Thatcher's grave. In the meantime I suggest you look out of your window. Welcome to the Iron Lady's legacy. Enjoy it to the depths of your Tory soul before the IMF bailiffs arrive with the final notice.