Margaret Thatcher

[amancalledbuck]

I'd agree with that.

 

After decades of oil money passing through Aberdeen, what exactly has local government done to ensure the transition to another major industry when the black stuff dries up?

 

I see they've got plans for a bypass...

 

Dundee is a great example of a city building for the future.

 

Aberdeen is a great example of .... Er .... wait a minute.... I'm sure I know this one....

[Broughty Ferry Arab]

Dundee is a great example of a city building for the future.

 

Aberdeen is a great example of .... Er .... wait a minute.... I'm sure I know this one....

It has taken decades for this to happen but you're correct. The future's is looking pretty bright here in Dundee.

[Ke1t]

I can see Aberdeen becoming like Detroit, in that the city is so closely linked on every level with the oil industry, when the oil dries up you're going to see the population plummet, unemployment rise drastically, and a general decline in the entire infrastructure of the area.

 

Happened here with the Auto Industry.

 

People stopped wanting shitty, overpriced American cars and the state practically imploded from the knock on effect of the Auto Industry's collapse.

 

Good luck with all that,

[Henry]

T-shirts celebrating the eventual death of Margaret Thatcher - on sale at the TUC conference - have been condemned.

The T-shirts were proving "very popular" with trade unionists at the TUC conference, according to stall holder Colin Hampton.

 

Conservative MPs said the garments were "sickening" and "beyond the pale".

 

Baroness Thatcher, who is 86, has been in declining health for several years and has withdrawn from public life on medical advice.

 

Mr Hampton defended the T-shirts as representing "many" people's view of the former PM.

 

Lady Thatcher is unpopular with many trade unionists, who blame her for the "erosion" of workers' rights during the 1980s and the decline of industries including mining and heavy manufacturing.

 

Lady Thatcher's supporters argue that she revitalised the economy and improved the UK's standing in the world by bringing in free market reforms and reducing the influence of powerful trade unions.

 

'Open immediately'

In the Brighton Centre, where the TUC is holding its annual get-together, Mr Hampton, who works advising unemployed people in Derbyshire, said he was doing good business.

 

One T-shirt bears a picture of a gravestone, and states: "Thatcher: A generation of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher's grave."

 

Another shows a caricature puppet of Lady Thatcher and states: "Hey Ho The Witch is Dead."

 

The accompanying plastic packaging says: "In the event of the death of Thatcher, open bag and wear tee-shirt immediately."

 

"It shows an ugly side to the hard left who cannot move on from their utter defeat at the hands of this remarkable, but now frail, lady.Conservative MP Conor Burns told the Daily Telegraph the sentiment behind the T-shirts was "sickening".

 

"Not for the first time Lady T shows why she amounts to so much more than her opponents."

 

Aiden Burley, Conservative MP for Cannock Chase, told the newspaper: "This sick merchandise tells you all you need to know about some in the union movement - baseless, cowardly and utterly devoid of morality.

 

"Those anticipating and celebrating the death of an elderly lady and mainstream Western leader are simply beyond the pale."

 

But Mr Hampton said: "Over the years we've sold hundreds of T-shirts."

 

'Entrepreneurial flair'

He added: "She is going to die some day. The fact of the matter is when she dies there will be people who come out and say what a good person she was.

 

"But you ask many people in the regions of the country what they think and they are going to be appalled by the coverage."

 

Mr Hampton, whose stall also includes a giant snakes and ladders board based on people's "inability" to escape poverty, said: "People will be saying that she was a good woman and ignore most of the things she did...

 

"It isn't to everybody's taste and I appreciate that. But it's not about wishing anybody dead. It's not saying that. It's saying there will be a reaction when she dies.

 

"Some people say she was wonderful and they should be giving her a state funeral, but vast swathes will say there should not be."

 

He added: "In the spirit of Margaret Thatcher, I'm showing some entrepreneurial flair."

 

Dan Hodges, a former union official who writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph, said the T-shirts were "cowardly" and "utterly devoid of any morality" and should be withdrawn from sale.

 

[Bluto10]

I can see Aberdeen becoming like Detroit, in that the city is so closely linked on every level with the oil industry, when the oil dries up you're going to see the population plummet, unemployment rise drastically, and a general decline in the entire infrastructure of the area.

 

Happened here with the Auto Industry.

 

People stopped wanting shitty, overpriced American cars and the state practically imploded from the knock on effect of the Auto Industry's collapse.

 

Good luck with all that,

 

as bad as union street gets on a saturday night i canna see any need for ed 209 or robocop.

[Dom Sullivan]

The oil ain't going anywhere. There's more than enough to see out our children's generation but given the state of the shite running our cooncil, the infrastructure is already falling apart.

 

On topic, I don't get the hatred for Thatcher. I would love to read an articulate presentation of the facts that informs us why we should hate her but my own memory of her time in office included some positives, including taking a firm stance against corrupt trade unions and inefficient industries, a strong stance on foreign policy including against the IRA terrorists, making home ownership more widely affordable, opening up markets and good income opportunities for the majority and making an ethical and intelligent change in tax collection when the old rates system was replaced.

 

She may well have been unfavourable to Scotland, a country that had never voted for neither her nor her party. We were the guinea pigs for the poll tax which, as it so happened, this many years later with the community charge, proved to be a correct new tax introduction. I don't blame her. Would you go rushing to help the entrenched labour-voting weegies and fifers before constituencies that had given her party the mandate? Of course not.

 

But until someone presents me with the reasons why we should hate her, I suspect that it's a shitload of non-thinkers who think it's cool to hate her and who collectively run their sick hands together at the forthcoming death of the first and only female prime minister, without even having the brains to articulate why they hate her in the first place.

 

The only possible crimes that she ever made against the state were trying too hard, and introducing initiatives that were simply bad policy. Of the questions that she did her job with her heart in the right place, with integrity, with a desire to better Britain, I have no doubt and if we were to balance out the good policies against the bad, I think her record stacks up well unlike that cunt Blair and Brown who stole our gold, who entered us into illegal wars, who opened up our borders and draining the welfare state by failing to address illegal immigration and who by deregulating the Bank of England, set the ground alight for the biggest raping of the people's money in world history.

 

 

EDIT: I have never voted Tory and never will, just as I would never and have never voted Labour.

Me neither.

 

Some do indeed seem to think its cool to hate Maggie.

 

Your summation is pretty much in line with my thoughts there, Rocket - Blair and Brown did far worse than Maggie, imo - have a +1

[bonzodaddy73]

The oil ain't going anywhere. There's more than enough to see out our children's generation but given the state of the shite running our cooncil, the infrastructure is already falling apart.

 

On topic, I don't get the hatred for Thatcher. I would love to read an articulate presentation of the facts that informs us why we should hate her but my own memory of her time in office included some positives, including taking a firm stance against corrupt trade unions and inefficient industries, a strong stance on foreign policy including against the IRA terrorists, making home ownership more widely affordable, opening up markets and good income opportunities for the majority and making an ethical and intelligent change in tax collection when the old rates system was replaced.

 

She may well have been unfavourable to Scotland, a country that had never voted for neither her nor her party. We were the guinea pigs for the poll tax which, as it so happened, this many years later with the community charge, proved to be a correct new tax introduction. I don't blame her. Would you go rushing to help the entrenched labour-voting weegies and fifers before constituencies that had given her party the mandate? Of course not.

 

But until someone presents me with the reasons why we should hate her, I suspect that it's a shitload of non-thinkers who think it's cool to hate her and who collectively run their sick hands together at the forthcoming death of the first and only female prime minister, without even having the brains to articulate why they hate her in the first place.

 

The only possible crimes that she ever made against the state were trying too hard, and introducing initiatives that were simply bad policy. Of the questions that she did her job with her heart in the right place, with integrity, with a desire to better Britain, I have no doubt and if we were to balance out the good policies against the bad, I think her record stacks up well unlike that cunt Blair and Brown who stole our gold, who entered us into illegal wars, who opened up our borders and drained the welfare state by failing to address illegal immigration and who by deregulating the Bank of England, set the ground alight for the biggest raping of the people's money in world history.

 

 

EDIT: I have never voted Tory and never will, just as I would never and have never voted Labour.

Very good post Rocket.

I used to get free milk in school. Not enough to hate is it?

[bonzodaddy73]

Instant saving right there by abolishing it. In Thatcher's Britain, kids weren't so impoverished as to need free milk at schools. It was an old law, an old practise that was hooring expensive and wrong. Put the onus on family and the parents to nurture their kids.

 

I see your point with regards cost but i think a lot of kids from poorer backgrounds lost out with this. It must have had a knock on effect to dairy farmers as well i imagine. Also was she and her government not involed in the sale of arms to Iraq? I could be wrong and thinking of a Fredrick Forsyth book here.

[bonzodaddy73]

Before obesity became pandemic, I can assure you that the vast majority did not require free milk at school. Most of us, like 99%+ had parents who fed us properly. The schools were always on hand to alert social services in problem cases but we don't spend millions every single week giving a glass of milk to a few dozen or a couple of hundred who were being neglected by their own shit families.

 

If there were arms being sold to Iraq or any other country back then, so what? Isn't this what industry does, sell its products?

 

My link

 

Some very dodgy selling going on there i think.

[RUL]

I think it's a regional thing, the hatred of Thatcher.

 

Aberdeen enjoyed a boom in the 80's, its therefore unsurprising that many people will wonder what the fuss was about. If you go to regions where Thatchers policies hit the hardest, then clearly they are going to have a lot of hatred for her as people always want someone to blame, i've no idea if folk are right to blame her or not but there's no doubting that a lot of folk were left without an industry they had grown up working in and there was nothing done to offer alternatives. You also had the poll tax being tested in some regions, which were already struggling.

[bonzodaddy73]

Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc. were all west-friendly once upon a time, and more-than-questionable though the supporting of certain regimes were, I can hardly think that in a Thatcher thread, she's getting the blame for this. Due to the "special relationship" with the US, we were following their lead in much of this but when Reagan took the presidency, Thatcher was particularly good at manipulating him for our own ends.

 

It was noticeable post Reagan and post Paul Craig Roberts - who served in his office - that the shit started to build, the same shit that LBJ had going in Vietnam, the same shit that Bush Senior got tore into and the denouement being perpetrated by his loyal thick stupid alcoholic son. In the Thatcher Reagan years, there was only the Malvinas (if memory serves) that represented foreign conflict and she dealt with that with great effect.

 

Wasn't the UK very tight with Iran though, then a few years later we are illegally selling arms to its neighbor to wage war against it. The Malvinas/Falklands was her only recognized conflict, how many others did she fund like the 1bn quid she leant Saddam. Suppose we will never know.

[spamspamspam]

The oil ain't going anywhere. There's more than enough to see out our children's generation but given the state of the shite running our cooncil, the infrastructure is already falling apart.

 

On topic, I don't get the hatred for Thatcher. I would love to read an articulate presentation of the facts that informs us why we should hate her but my own memory of her time in office included some positives, including taking a firm stance against corrupt trade unions and inefficient industries, a strong stance on foreign policy including against the IRA terrorists, making home ownership more widely affordable, opening up markets and good income opportunities for the majority and making an ethical and intelligent change in tax collection when the old rates system was replaced.

 

She may well have been unfavourable to Scotland, a country that had never voted for neither her nor her party. We were the guinea pigs for the poll tax which, as it so happened, this many years later with the community charge, proved to be a correct new tax introduction. I don't blame her. Would you go rushing to help the entrenched labour-voting weegies and fifers before constituencies that had given her party the mandate? Of course not.

 

But until someone presents me with the reasons why we should hate her, I suspect that it's a shitload of non-thinkers who think it's cool to hate her and who collectively run their sick hands together at the forthcoming death of the first and only female prime minister, without even having the brains to articulate why they hate her in the first place.

 

The only possible crimes that she ever made against the state were trying too hard, and introducing initiatives that were simply bad policy. Of the questions that she did her job with her heart in the right place, with integrity, with a desire to better Britain, I have no doubt and if we were to balance out the good policies against the bad, I think her record stacks up well unlike that cunt Blair and Brown who stole our gold, who entered us into illegal wars, who opened up our borders and drained the welfare state by failing to address illegal immigration and who by deregulating the Bank of England, set the ground alight for the biggest raping of the people's money in world history.

 

 

EDIT: I have never voted Tory and never will, just as I would never and have never voted Labour.

 

OK, rocket, lets look at the industries Thatcher help destroy;

 

Coal

Steel

Ship building

Fishing

Oil

UK Manufacturing

 

Granted she wasnt the only reason behind the downfall of most of these industries, the unions were just as much to blame with their ridiculous work to rule, 3 day week, communist tendencies and Arthur fucking Scargill mentality but Thatcher's ego meant that she would rather kill them all than work towards a way of getting the unions under control without raising interest rates to the point that the average man on the street that had bought into her policy of every person has the right to own their own home then lost that home to the bank again.

 

The knock on effect of these industries being decimated though is being seen now in the UK. There is a massive lack of apprenticeships meaning there is now a massive lack of coal face style engineers for the North Sea meaning a large amount of the money being earned there is now heading abroad or being kept in foreign communities based in the UK. The ghettoisation of parts of this city can also go down to a Thatcher policy of immigration. It was felt by the Tory's that it was best to keep all the incomers in one part of town... All you need to do these days is walk through Torry to see that its now Torski, Polish supermarkets, Polish hairdressers, Polish newsagents... Not exactly contributing to a booming NE economy and the same can be seen all round the UK. However, I digress, back to apprenticeships... The original North Sea tigers came from ship building, manufacturing houses, engineering houses, some from the fishing industry, the steel industry and even the coal mines. Their experience and apprenticeships meant that people could easily transfer their skills and experience into the sectors that make billions and could've made billions more if Thatcher didnt need to get the black stuff out asap to get herself and the country out of the shite it was in. The oil industry in the UK could've made the UK an absolute fortune, if set up correctly it would've outstripped banking, manufacturing and everything else rolled up together. Instead however companies bid for rights and the government get a much smaller percentage of the oil money coming out of the hole under the seabed than countries like Brazil and Norway.

 

She put the emphasis on the banking and service sectors, her policies are responsible for the shitty degrees people leave uni with now. Fucking Business Administration with French FFS! What the fuck is the point in spending 4 years at uni for that pish?? She also pushed through a half cocked idea in the Education Reform Act which meant Universities soon had to turn into businesses and with that the focus of further education being for those who could seriously achieve turned to a focus on those who were willing to apply for loans and grants. Once again this has screwed the country now... People now feel its a god given right to go to uni but they'll only go and do pish easy course in fuck all and uni's encourage this to make sure they turn over a nice profit year in year out.

 

So thats apprenticeships fucked, trades fucked, education fucked and there's more...

 

THE FUCKING POLL TAX

 

An illegal tax where the Scots were used and abused as lab rats.

 

Then there's the privatisation of public transport meaning now we have the infrastructure of a 3rd World Country. When you look at countries like Holland and Germany and the way their buses, trains and trams run and compare it to the 1 slow train an hour, if its on time, to the central belt from Aberdeen and a bus service that costs more than it does to run an old banger...

 

So, I really cant understand any self respecting Scotsman saying he cant see what was wrong with Thatcher. She fucked our industries, fishing, ship building, steel, oil. She fucked our education and to add insult to injury she then taxed us to fuck for the privilege of being part of a union she wanted no fucking part of.

 

Thatchers aftershocks from her decisions and policies are still being felt now and like any tremor they are leaving a trail of destruction behind them that will take decades to fix.

 

Whats just as bad though is 'New Labour' or Thatchers Tory's in disguise, cant really see much of a difference myself, carried on in the same fashion and actually made things worse. If people think this country is struggling now, wait another 25-30 years to see the fall out from Blair's policies. People forget that a lot of decisions governments make now dont really bear fruit for 15-20 years because the decisions they make are designed to engineer the next generation.

[spamspamspam]

All I asked for was an articulate presentation of the reasons for why she should be vilified.

 

You failed.

 

I could ask you to try again and have another go but that would be to waste your time in writing it and ours in reading more of your nonsense.

 

Normally, a debate works when one presents a point of view and another takes exception to a point or more and presents a counter view.

 

Your post however, was so full of misrepresentations, of half truths and of myths of such deluded proportions that true debate is impossible.

 

I refuse to believe that even you believe what you're saying. Your head has been filled by your daddy and like him, you haven't got a fucking clue.

 

Like what exactly?

 

Or, as I suspect, just so short of a proper answer to my post and points that this is the best you can come up with?

[spamspamspam]

Listen mate, I have no wish to embarrass you. You've not been educated to any great degree. You know what or who you are. You hate Thatcher. Ok, we get it. But the next time you present yourself as a political expert, do your homework and find out how basic economics work first. Also, your blaming of Thatcher for many of the present ills, including ones that you yourself highlighted, completely ignores the ruinous policies of Blair & Co.

 

Haha, you embarrass me? I doubt you're even fooling yourself with that one.

 

I did not present myself as a political expert, I presented my opinion on why Thatcher was a cunt of a leader and why she deserves to be hated. If you have no real answer to the opinion I have posted bar "You've not been educated to any great degree. You know what or who you are." then I would suggest you take that chipped shoulder and use it for something useful, scratching your inner ear perhaps.

 

If, however, you feel that you have something to add that may actually be about my post instead of rambling on about your idea of my understanding of how Thatcher policies are effecting the world today or my level of education feel free. Personally though I'd suggest you stick to the IPhone drawing, you won't look half as juvenile.

[Ke1t]

as bad as union street gets on a saturday night i canna see any need for ed 209 or robocop.

 

 

Heh.. it's still a rich city with a massive oil industry.

 

I will revise my original comment and say that the potential is there for the impact to be worse in Aberdeen than it has been for Detroit.

 

On the up side, hooses will be cheap.

[AndrewW]

I was born just short of a year after Thatcher left office so my opinion isn't very qualified. But RS was saying how she got rid of inefficent, subsidised British industries for the good of the economy. However with the added cost of people on benefits, less tax with fewer people working and the general social unrest was it worth it? Or was it inevitable? Is there not an argument to keep this British industries running on a deficit in the same vein as keynesianism economics argues to get out of a recession you need to pay a man to dig a hole and another to fill it in? The expected value of getting rid of these industries also has to take into account the ruining of societies and whole towns - which Thatcher, with her individualist ways, I'm sure would not bother her.

[fatshaft]

I can see Aberdeen becoming like Detroit, in that the city is so closely linked on every level with the oil industry, when the oil dries up you're going to see the population plummet, unemployment rise drastically, and a general decline in the entire infrastructure of the area.

 

Happened here with the Auto Industry.

 

People stopped wanting shitty, overpriced American cars and the state practically imploded from the knock on effect of the Auto Industry's collapse.

 

Good luck with all that,

Been saying this for a long time Kelt.

[SheepieBaaBaa]

I didn't actually say that. That is a gross misrepresentation. I also dispute your gross assumption that Thatcher didn't care about "ruining towns".

 

However, unlike that previous post by another which was full of prejudice and ignorance, you make a very good addition to the debate. Keynes was a good thinker and he is one of three economists who Stephanie Flanders discusses in her forthcoming BBC documentary, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx being the other two.

 

Personally, whilst I understand the value of Keynesianism arguments and one filling the other's digging, I'm in the opposite camp with Thatcher and Hayek, whom she greatly admired. History will prove which school of economic philosophy is correct although to me, that argument has already been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. The only sane US politician this century - in my opinion - is a big supporter of Hayek economics.

 

Most if not all when looking at Thatcher's policies in hindsight agree that she got it wrong.

 

A fairly transparent policy of buying votes in the South East and ignoring regions who don't vote for her anyway was a great way of staying on office but a terrible way of running a country. Anyone who looks back with an education in economics that doesn't come from wikipedia can see this. Even her own party have been known to admit the mistakes.

 

The dismantling of not only the "inneficient" public companies (in fairness they were innefficient), but the dismantling of the basic manufacturing industries was a disaster in the long term, and we could use them now. Subsequent justifications were made around basing the economy around building the tertiary/banking sectors and using that wealth around the country as a fair exchange for sacrificing the "traditional" industries.

 

Not seeing much of that sharing when the South East complain about the "subsidies" going north.

 

To summarise, she was a power hungry, short termist evil witch. There will always be those who did well from her time in office who wil support and defend her, much in the same way that there will always be people pleased about getting a cheap telly as a result of a burglary.

 

I'm bored now, but really can't stand not to put the boot into that bitch.

[Bluto10]

 

On the up side, hooses will be cheap.

 

and less of those god awful urban 4x4 like x5s, discoverys, q7s etc

[SheepieBaaBaa]

Your hatred of Thatcher may or may not have derived from economic policy rather from hearsay and pre-judgements and "being cool".

 

I would rather you added some degree of credibility to your position by explaining which specific policies were admitted to have been wrong?

 

You can also add your opinion on how her governance compared with what Blair and Brown did to the UK?

 

I realise you will claim this is due to being unable, but I wont, because I genuinely can't be bothered. I am deeply uncool, but she got things very wrong.

 

Define Hearsay, you mean other than personal, first hand experience?..I assume that your opinions are derived from personal experience of being a member of her cabinet at the time? I'm sorry I didn't realise that you were an ex cabinet minister.

 

This discussion isn't about the policies of Blair, Brown, or indeed Major (who had the unfortunate job of dealing with the mess she ultimitely left). Given the attempt at deflection though, you may well indeed be an ex cabinet minister.

 

Specific policies off the top of my head would be ( I could find more if I did some searching, but can't be bothered)

 

The poll tax, which was not only a regressive tax, but also put a fine point on the alienation of Scotland

Blind allegiance to US foreign policy, support of Pol Pot and Pinochet

Belief in a complete non interventionist economic and social system which has to a great extent led to the two tier society we see today.

Use of menetarist policy which gave rise to huge inflation and a superheated economy, the bust part of the boom/bust had to be dealt with by Major.

Vote buying invesment in selective areas leading to a disjointed 2 tier Britain, and over dependence on the finance sector, which left us particularly exposed when the sector eventually collapsed.

Reform of the banking system allowing banks to lend money to those less able to afford it, unrestricted credir and deregulation allowing insane borrowing, inflating property prices, and banks dabbling in things like "sub prime"

She also was a bit cosy with Armand Hammer in interviews and the whole "Don't worry about that safety nonsense Mr Hammer; as long as we get plenty of cash and support from you"...that was not just restricted to his company though.

 

These are so universally accepted as being incredibly bad for the country that specific criticisms from specific conservative party ministers are hard to recall, but I believe Major, and Cameron have both quoted many of these as mistakes of the past and Geoffrey Howe, her longest serving cabinet minister eventually even turned on her.

 

Also, please don't make the assumption that I am a Brown, Blair, or indeed Labour supporter. I simply have an appropriate level of understanding to see that she did more harm than good in the long term!

[SheepieBaaBaa]

You can also add your opinion on how her governance compared with what Blair and Brown did to the UK?

 

This is almost impossible by the way, as she applied non interventionist, free market and monetarist policy. This by its' nature has almost no control exerted by the government other than over supply of money through the state bank; so her governance was generally non existent.

 

In terms of my opinion on her "stewardship" of the economy. If you look at the overal effect of her policies....still utterly awful.

[SheepieBaaBaa]

Wow. That's an amazing amount of effort you put in... to conclude what?

 

There are so many ridiculous assertions that I think it would be best if we dealt with just one at a time.

 

"Reform of the banking system" you said, whilst refusing to compare with the successive governments after her, which you described as "deflection".

 

What was the biggest cost to the UK taxpayer ever? What was the single government policy that allowed this to happen?

 

Yet you think Thatcher "reformed" the banks?

 

You are speaking sheer shite.

 

Wasn't very much effort at all.

 

Can you name specific policies? The policy of bank deregulation was initiated by Thatcher. This was a mistake by Thatcher. The mistake may have been continued and exacerbated by others, but they are not being discussed, the discussion is Thatcher. What did Thatcher do wrong?

 

This is one of the things she did wrong. The fact that subsequent governments continued to make mistakes is not relevant to the specific question of whether SHE made mistakes. The exact policy statement, I can't name. Doesn't mean she didn't initiate policies. Is she solely to blame....no....is she largely to blame, yes.

 

You appear to use the argument that because subsequent governments made mistakes, that this somehow invalidates any argument that she was not perfect.

 

Oh, ok then....how silly of me, she was faultless. I'm sure you will be able to quote reputable modern economic commentators who will look at the policies she pursued and agre that they were a great plan.

[SheepieBaaBaa]

Oh for fucks sake, your not a graduate in "economics" are you? What sort of wanker chooses to study this at uni other than career politicians?

 

You obviously didn't make very good highers at school then.

 

The rest of us "got" economics through the school of life but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Keynes v. Hayek?

 

So your argument is now that anyone who may have an education meaning they would know more about it than you is a wanker?

 

School of life... I've met a lot of people who claim to have graduated from that establishment, and they always seem to know nothing about the things they studied there.

The tramp outside Gilcomston church went to the school of life. Should I get his opinion? He probably used to be a steel worker though, so he might not be a big fan of her unfortunately.

[SheepieBaaBaa]

Do any of you fucking moronic non-thinking cool-to-hate-Thatcher cunts actually realise that she's been out of office for over 20 years?

 

Have you seen the title of this thread? Who do you think should be discussed in a Thatcher thread. If you want to discuss policies of subsequent governments then you should start a "mistakes made by Prime Ministers post Thatcher" thread.

[Jocky Balboa]

Looking at the opposing 2 arguments of RS and SpamX3, I find myself somewhere in between. Here is my take, anyway:

 

She was heavily inspired by Ayn Rand, by her own admission. While that in itself is not an entirely bad thing (I myself like some of her novels) the adherence to Rand's self-styled Objectivism that Thatcher displayed showed how flawed that ideology is. Her insistence on hyper-individualism has manifested itself in so many ugly ways and the ramifications continue to be felt to this day. Who remembers the 1980's, when the "greed is good" mantra saw so many Britons live beyond their means, chasing aspirations way beyond their remit (whether financially, morally, intellectually, or a combination thereof) and even neglecting their families in the process?

 

A good point was made earlier when it was pointed out that the consequences of a government (particularly one as radical as Thatcher's) often do not fully bear fruit for 20 years and so it is in the last few years that the chronic skill shortage of our youth, the massive national debt and morally bankrupt society, have really come home to roost. That we have gone from being an intellectual and industrial powerhouse, to an also ran that is one of the most poorly skilled and poorly educated in Western Europe, is telling and in large part due to her policy of handing greater and greater autonomy to the finance/services/banking sectors and dismantling industry.

 

The next generation are going to have one hell of a tough time cleaning up this mess, of that there is no doubt.

 

Which brings me to the wider picture...

 

RS is quite right to point out that Bliar (sic) and Cyclops McBungle were far more damaging and I will only counter that by making a few observations, which are that mass immigration, while worse than ever since 1997, was still at unacceptably high levels under Thatcher (and arguably under every government since the 1960's) and that when one weighs up the socio-political landscape in Britain, all we are seemingly left with is being asked to choose the less(er) of the evils. It is akin to asking one if they would rather die of Cholera, or Pestilence. Not unlike the farce that exists in the USA, much as many of us would like to deny the similarity.

 

The sheeple continually voted the same corrupt, criminal organisations into power and now have the country they deserve.

[Jonty]

Think many people on here are letting the public perception of Thatcher get in the way of the reality. She actually increased public spending in 8 out of 10 years of her premiership.

 

Rather than look to the real causes of the collapse of certain types of UK manufacturing and heavy industry, which was due to globalisation and the rise of the Chinese, it seems to be easier to blame Thatcher. Not that UK manufacturing has ever really collapsed as such, given as we are the sixth biggest manufacturing nation on earth - its just we dont dig for coal or make cheap plastic toys anymore, we make Cars, Pharmaceaticals or Aircraft, ie things that actually make the UK money.

 

How about her refusal to give into the IRA, or to be kow towed by Europe?

 

Did Spamx3 even actually blame Thatcher for all the Poles moving to Torry earlier in the thread? Jesus.

[tommo1903]

I hate her because she wore blue all of the time.

 

Rangers used to play in blue.

[SheepieBaaBaa]

It might actually help debate if you answered the question instead of avoiding it. I guess you're not an economics graduate after all, and well done to you for not being so shit at school that you got into tertiary education at the bottom rung.

 

Again, what is your position re Keynes v the Austrian? Or is it you who consults wikipedia?

 

There are Nobel prizes awarded for economics (your mate Hayek won one in the 70s) and is a well established profession and qualification since it was given form and substance by Adam Smith, but pre-dates this quite obviously. You're either being deliberitely ignorant, or just plain ignorant.

 

Your main argument seems to be that because I am not willing to give you a free dissertation on Keynsian Fiscal control versus the Austrian school Monetarism (the father being Carl Menger by the way, so you'd need to be a bit more specific on which Austrian, or didn't they teach you about him in the University of life)

 

However, it is a brick wall trying to reason with someone who can't discuss the mistakes of Thatcher in the context of Thatcher. What happened post Thatcher may have been a disaster or ot may not, but the point is that she initiated policies which started what, in my opinion, is a downward spiral, not to mention other specific issues with her term such as inplementation of the regressive poll tax, and support of General Pinochet for example.

 

A debate could be had about the reasoning behind her policies and whether they were for her short term vanity, or the greater good (albeit mistakenly), but you have chosen to go down the "yeah, but what about Blair and Brown" route. Which is ridiculous since I have never claimed to support their policies, and lets not forget, the resorting to trying to insult in order to bully. I'd always thought you seemed a fairly smart guy, but clearly you're a fud!

 

It's a particular type of retard that resorts to throwing insults when they run out of any coherent arguments. You start with the insults pretty early don't you?

 

There's a rather circular pointlessness to your Hayek argument, (Hayek is a fantastic economist and therefor the Thatcher Reagan poicies based on his work are great, but all economists are bottom tier tertiary education graduates who are stupid, apart from this one who's work supports my argument, therefor isn't stupid and pointless, but everyone else who studies the subject is).

 

Get a grip!!!

[Bluto10]

i really enjoy reading the posts that are 11 paragraphs long.

maggie was just like every other pm. she had some tough calls, made some big decisions.

some good for some people some bad for others.

thats politics, thats life.

the end.

[BrianFaePerth]

Under Thatcher, in 1987, she took Ford Motor Company to Dundee. The biggest assembly plant in Europe was to be built there and the government had put the money in place. Ford took it to mainland Europe because of the insistence of Scottish trade unions to have a multi-union deal. This was a perfect example of the labour entrenched Scottish union mentality that had crippled industry not just in Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, but who killed the once great Clydeside shipbuilding.