Iron Lady has died

[voodoopenguin]

Obviously there will be people here who are more knowledgeable about the events than myself but to answer Will Collier's "Ludicrous" I will say a few things.

At the end of of her premiership the people of the UK were actually paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than at the beginning and this was after 12 years so you couldn't blame the previous government.

During those years there were two recessions caused by the Tory government's deliberate policies.

We had the return to mass unemployment not seen since the 1930s.

Their financial deregulation laid the basis for the credit bubble of 2000s and subsequent credit crisis.

To help the balance of payments most of the publicly owned industries were sold off in the belief that in private hands they would be run more efficiently. That didn't work and our transport system is still poor and fares, especially on the trains, is ludicrously high. (As an aside that was actually good for me back then as for a while I was a Private Hire Driver and it was very much cheaper for businesses to get me in London to go and pick up a couple of managers from their homes and drive them to the doors of their businesses they were visiting in Newcastle or Manchester two to three hundred miles away than for them to use the train).

One of her election victories was from public support after the Argentinians invaded the Falklands. What wasn't so obvious at the time was that the Argentinians felt they could do that because the Tory government under Thatcher had tried to save money and vastly reduced our military presence on the islands despite the islanders pleading with them not to because they feared that would allow the Argentinians in...and it did.

Our steel industry was annihilated as was our coal industry. I'm not saying it was by any means perfect before but a huge percentage of our manufacturing base was destroyed, hundreds of towns and even cities had the heart ripped out of them all in the name of free markets.

One of the first decisions taken was to reduce the top rate of income tax so the top earners immediately had the equivalent of a huge pay rise whereas by the end there were many more people in poverty but that's all right, the top earners were OK.

Yes, if you think of the UK as a business, she might have been instrumental in helping its economics but it was done in the way asset strippers did with companies, big profits for those who already have the most at a huge human cost.

I will stop for now.

Paul

[Lemon Drop]

While I'm no fan of her economic policies (which have been followed by all of her successors and of course we know where she found her inspiration, in part...) she was instrumental in her encouragement to Pres. Reagan that he reach out to Gorbachev before and during the fall of the Soviet Union and she was convinced that east and west could work together as partners and end the Cold War - she was right about that.

[Spock]

voodoopenguin wrote:
There is an expression that you shouldn't speak ill of the dead ...

Paul

She's dead. Good.

[graylocks]

Speedy wrote:
I hadn't heard about her Alzheimer's Disease.

you must not have seen the "The Iron Lady." the poignant depiction of Thatcher's slow decline into Alzheimer's was very moving. almost made the film unwatchable for me as both my parents were similarly afflicted.yeah, it was a movie but i assume they didn't fabricate the Alzheimers.

[Lemon Drop]

graylocks wrote:
[quote=Speedy]
I hadn't heard about her Alzheimer's Disease.

you must not have seen the "The Iron Lady." the poignant depiction of Thatcher's slow decline into Alzheimer's was very moving. almost made the film unwatchable for me as both my parents were similarly afflicted.yeah, it was a movie but i assume they didn't fabricate the Alzheimers.
No, it wasn't fabricated. I agree that movie was really well done, it was indeed a very poignant portrayal of that painful, slow decline.

Her staff's thumping of Sarah Palin was a classic...


One Thatcher ally told the Guardian: "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."

The former prime minister's friends say she will show the level she punches at when she marks the centenary of the birth of Ronald Reagan by attending the unveiling of a statue of the late president outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square on independence day, 4 July. The Thatcher ally added: "Margaret is focusing on Ronald Reagan and will attend the unveiling of the statue. That is her level."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun...in-meeting

[decay]

What's The Story, Mourning Tories?

[max]

voodoopenguin wrote:
... she might have been instrumental in helping its economics but it was done in the way asset strippers did with companies

Somebody needed to have a strong nose to cut off the rotting, gangrenous parts, so the body would live.

Of course, the maggots living off the rot would have some objections...

[Mac1337]

The only ones not mourning Maggie's death are the labor unions.

[decay]

"Don't give Thatcher a state funeral... she would want it privatized."

[davester]

Will Collier wrote:
Ludicrous. The dismal state of the UK economy in 1979 is not remotely comparable to that in 1990 when she left office.

She did a wonderful job if you consider a strong economy one in which the rich get richer. However, her actions decimated britain's primary industries, put millions out of work, and impoverished a number of thriving communities. It's absurd to think of her economic policies as being beneficial to the british citizenry (except for a few upper class twits who were rich already).