Margaret Thatcher dies

[shootemindehead]

Result = British ecomony in turmoil, unions running/destroying the country and most likely the Falklands given away. But let's not stop facts getting in the way of needless poor-taste spite. It's interesting that people who criticise her generally do so with personal insults rather than bringing an informed opinion to the table. Nice spin, Neil, but unfortunately it ignores the incredibly destructive effects she had on your country. She destroyed your industrial bases and propped up a financial sector to disproportionate degrees, the terrible results of which Britain is living in now. The North of England suffered awful hardships under her rule and her policies left millions of people out of work, some of whom have never recovered. Liverpool, for instance was a dismal mire of unemployment and utter hopelessness. It's also a complete fallacy to say that the Falklands would have been sold down river, if she wasn't in power. Sorry, that doesn't wash in the slightest. There are very solid reasons where a lot of working class Britain will not mourn the passing of Thatcher. Not for a single second. She simply didn't care for them and they in turn don't care for her. I will say though, that the celebrations by a number of people during the week have been silly, especially in the light of the fact that some of the people celebrating were too young to even remember her rule. However, I don't believe in wiping the cards because someone is brown bread and if people genuinely feel happy that she's gone, so be it, but I suspect that the celebratory activities probably had more to do than the death of a former PM.

[Neil]

Nice spin, Neil, but unfortunately it ignores the incredibly destructive effects she had on your country. Then I assume - - you deem the abolition of picket lines and strikes as destructive? Remember these unions were seeking ever-greater pay raises with the full approval of the Labor Party before Thatcher! That was beneficial? - you deem the reduction of inflation from double digit to single digit as destructive? She destroyed your industrial bases and propped up a financial sector to disproportionate degrees, the terrible results of which Britain is living in now. - You'd prefer Rolls-Royce, British Airways, BP, the phone system, the railways and the gas company to still be run by government bureaucracies? - She kick started many industries in the UK, especially modern hi-tech ones (eg: pharmaceuticals & aerospace) - Government economic spending dropped when she left! Unfortunately some areas suffered, but some industrustries were simply out of date or just dead (eg: coal) but just didn't know it yet! If we'd carried on in the 1980s without Thatchers 'tough love' British industry would have continued to suffer (it was out of date and wasteful). She was what the country needed at the time! There are very solid reasons where a lot of working class Britain will not mourn the passing of Thatcher. Not for a single second. She simply didn't care for them and they in turn don't care for her. This shows the falicy many people project about Thatcher, to support an argument that simply isn't true! For the working class Thatcher put a lot of changes in motion that would for ever improve their lives. Infact, show me any article that suggests/shows this wasn't the case for the majority of working-class Britains! In many ways she was more 'left' than the Labour party she took over from!

[shootemindehead]

I have to fly out now, but yes I believe in workers rights to withhold their labour in order to seek better conditions, of course I do, it's teh ONLY bargaining chip they have. I honestly have never understood some people's opposition to this. I also believe that the privatisation of certain essential concerns to absolutely terrible, yes. The privatisation of British Rail was an unmitigated disaster and one that directly led to the likes of Potters Bar. Government can be held to account for their failures in running state bodies, that's why they hate the responsibility. Private companies don't give a fu*k. They are ONLY concerned with the profit they accrue. In my own Country, refuse collection has been privatised, after it had been state run for years and it's been a bloody terrible failure. It's always the same. Privatisation guarantees two things, if not immediately, then in the long run. poorer service and higher prices. While both Heath and Wilson's tenures were nothing to write home about and inflation soared, Callaghan's government had got inflation down to 10% when Thatcher took office in 1979. It actually went up in her first year in office, even if it did go down later, while unemployment rose to ridiculous levels. As for her "class", she was a grocers daughter, but so what? People with bad memories of her reign have reason to feel so negative about her. I clearly remember her time in office leading to some of the worst rioting and protest Britain has ever seen. From the riots in 1980 to the Poll Tax riots, an awful tax that was thankfully the final nail in her coffin.

[Andy]

Myth: She killed UK Manufacturing Facts: British factories increased output by 7.5% during her premiership. Output grew a further 4.9% by 1997. Curiously, it was under Labour that the decline hit. By the end of Brown’s tenure at Number 10, manufacturing output was lower than the day Thatcher left office. The manufacturing share of GDP fell almost continuously – as it did in pretty much every Western nation. Myth: She "murdered" those on the Belgrano Facts: Even the Argentine military don’t buy this myth. The misunderstanding comes from the nature of the 200-mile area Exclusion Zone. But the zone was a warning to neutral vessels, not an attempt to confine the conflict exclusively to the zone. Rear Admiral Allara, in charge of the Malvinas task force which included the Belgrano, said: “the entire South Atlantic was an operational theatre for both sides. We, as professionals, said it was just too bad that we lost the Belgrano”. The Belgrano’s captain Hector Bonzo confirmed: “‘It was an act of war, lamentably legal.” Myth: Thatcher started the end of coal industry Facts: Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson who served from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976 closed 93 pits to Thatcher’s 22. In 1967 alone there were 12,900 forced redundancies. Myth: Margaret Thatcher was a Milk Snatcher Facts: The biggest “milk snatchers” were Labour. In 1968 they took free school milk away from all 11 to 18 year olds. The Conservatives did not dub Harold Wilson a milk thief, but accepted this economy as part of the package to cut the excessive borrowing of that Labour government. No subsequent government, including the Labour governments of 1997 to 2010 thought free school milk worth reintroducing. Most people cannot remember that Edward Short was Education Secretary for most of 1968 (I looked it up) the year when the free milk was withdrawn, because no-one ran a campaign claiming he left us short of free milk. Neil ive stayed very silent on this topic on here and facebook, mainly becuase while im not a thatcherite, my political leaning is very right wing and i personally beleive she was a great leader but ive come to learn that you can wave all the facts you want in the faces of socialists and never change their opinion. Its like trying to teach a record to say something thats not recorded. Sorry guys, my opinion. /shrugs.

[krakenslayer]

Neil ive stayed very silent on this topic on here and facebook, mainly becuase while im not a thatcherite, my political leaning is very right wing and i personally beleive she was a great leader but ive come to learn that you can wave all the facts you want in the faces of socialists and never change their opinion. Its like trying to teach a record to say something thats not recorded. I'm sorry, mate, but that works both ways. People at both ends of the political spectrum will always cherry-pick whatever "facts" happen to support their case whilst playing down ones that don't, and make fatuous comments that are aimed more at inciting knee-jerk emotion than reason. Hence, people called Thatcher a "milk snatcher" - a biased, cheap shot, certainly, designed to inflame those who already hated her, and based (as you rightly state) on a policy that wasn't even exclusively Tory. But then again: Thatcher herself referred to Nelson Mandela's ANC as a "terrorist organisation" because he was against her cronies in the fascist South African apartheid regime. :/ There is also cherry-picking and a bit of the old "straw man" going on in those facts quoted above. "British factories increased output by 7.5% during her premiership" sounds surprising, until you read a bit closer: increased output, and not a word about jobs anywhere that paragraph. When most people I know lament the decline of industry under Thatcher, they are not concerning themselves with output (which might be of interest to the shareholders and stock markets), they are talking about the actual jobs they lost and their communities that were destroyed. It would be naive and lazy of me to lay all of that at Thatcher's door, there were all kinds of factors involved - of which she was one - but whoever compiled that "fact" seems to have deliberately picked the one measure by which manufacturing appears to have thrived under Thatcher, because by any other measure (including employment in industry), it totally bombed. See, Thatcher's rule coincided with a technological shift toward greater automation in manufacturing and a move toward a light industry, technology-based economy, which meant factories were turning out higher value items, at lower cost, involving fewer staff. Of course, this is something that is also ignored by Thatcher's greatest critics, who would love to blame the decline in employment rates entirely on her policies, but here we have a right wing person (whoever wrote that) using the same methods of twisting statistics and facts to fit their argument. Like I said, works both ways. Another fact about Thatcher's reign that most people don't know, but is not mentioned above, is that - taken as an average - employment really didn't fall by all that much over the course of her time in office. It did fall somewhat, and yes, there were a few record-breaking peaks and troughs, but overall, when you look at the graphs, things more or less balance out. So most of those skilled labourers put out of work over the 70s and 80s DID get new jobs - in the ballooning SERVICE industry: waiting tables, cleaning toilets, working in shops and earning a fuckload less than they were before. So whilst jobs per se didn't fall as much as the propagandists would have you believe, it was still the greatest rise in inequality this country has ever seen. Unemployment: Gap between rich and poor: On top of that, and in spite of her libertarian rhetoric, she was a proscriptive moralist and a staunch social conservative - believing in the nanny state insofar as it could be used to preserve Victorian values. So yeah, fuck her.

[shootemindehead]

Unemployment may not have fluxed much during her time in power, but that sentence above doesn't tell the whole story Krackers. During the 70's, from Heath - Wilson - Callaghan, the % figure hovered around 5% for the decade. Callaghan's government had actually stabilised the GDP situation as well, bring it back up. Britain's GDP had fluctuated wildly during the 70's, under both Conservative and Labour governments, with it dropping into minus figures under Heath, one of the reasons why Wilson was elected again in 74. When Thatcher got into power in 79, GDP again plummeted into minus figures in 1980 and rose again back up to roughly 5% by 1988, while unemployment soared to over 12% and roughly stayed there for the decade. So, while the employment rates didn't fall over the course of her time, unemployment shot up...and stayed up. Attachment 1233 I agree, it's always wrong to cherry pick facts that suit and discard facts that don't. That's the propagandists approach. I also believe that it's stupid to vote along party lines, or commit to a particular "wing".

[Andy]

You both have some good points which is why im not really arguing, thatcher wasnt perfect and she did make some mistakes but i still firmly beleive she was exactly what britain needed in the 80's and i often say to people who overlook the destruction caused by labour in the 60's and 70's.. do you really think we would better off if they had been allowed to continue? you think if james callaghan had won in 1979 that britains industry wouldnt have collapsed and unemployment wouldnt have soared? Honestly i think thatcher was a victim of circumstance. The country was trashed by her predecessors and she managed the fallout very well, of course there where victims but there always are and i beleive if we hadnt had thatcher we would now be in a similar position to greece or cyprus. I agree, it's always wrong to cherry pick facts that suit and discard facts that don't. That's the propagandists approach. I also believe that it's stupid to vote along party lines, or commit to a particular "wing". The only point i want to argue is that while i agree it is very propagandist to pick and choose which facts you want to remember and while it is stupid to vote along party lines, i beleive the very nature of politics is divided into left and right wing and you either one or the other whether you admit it or not, your political views are either left or right, your either libertarian or socialist.. nobody can be both nor either.

[krakenslayer]

You both have some good points which is why im not really arguing, thatcher wasnt perfect and she did make some mistakes but i still firmly beleive she was exactly what britain needed in the 80's and i often say to people who overlook the destruction caused by labour in the 60's and 70's.. do you really think we would better off if they had been allowed to continue? you think if james callaghan had won in 1979 that britains industry wouldnt have collapsed and unemployment wouldnt have soared? Honestly i think thatcher was a victim of circumstance. The country was trashed by her predecessors and she managed the fallout very well, of course there where victims but there always are and i beleive if we hadnt had thatcher we would now be in a similar position to greece or cyprus. Well, we can't go back in time and change the past to find out what would have happened had she not become Prime Minister. I am no fan of Labour, either. I think in the 60s and 70s they were far too willing to submit to radicalised union power (which were trying too hard to maintain a particular industrial status quo in the face of changing technological and economic conditions, without the foresight to see that they were only postponing and exacerbating the inevitable period of change and upheaval) and in their guise as New Labour in the 90s and 2000s they swung too far in the other direction and became virtually indistinguishable from the Tories, with each party and their followers kicking up shit over what the other has done whilst in power, despite the fact that they would probably have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot. That said, if I had to choose the lesser of two evils from a) a borderline-incompetent, union-subjugated government which at least wants to help both the economy and the ordinary working man (like late 70s Labour), or b) an efficiently malevolent, rich-biased government, which will get the overall economy back on track almost purely by further increasing wealth at the top end to bring up the average, and screw the ordinary man (like Thatcher's Tories), then I think I'd pick option "a", even though I'd be screwed either way. Right-wing Libertarians always say things like: "Oh but everyone has the same chance: the successful man gets rich by his own talent and hard work, and the poor only have themselves to blame for not working hard enough and therefore do not deserve our help". There is some degree truth in that - I believe in meritocracy, that the people who contribute the most to society should be rewarded for their contribution - but there is a huge hole in this reasoning toward which its proponents seem to be willfully blind (a lot of socialists also ignore this issue...): it is a basic fact of economics that not everyone within a society can be rich. In fact, not even most, or many, of the population can be. If everyone in Britiain was a millionaire, then a loaf of bread would cost hundreds of pounds, houses would cost billions, and we'd be precisely no better off. And that's before we get into the fact that the rich, successful folks at the heads of big business require ordinary people to work for them, wash their socks and deliver the services they require. To chastise the people at the bottom for not being successful enough is pretty much pointless and circular: where there are rich, there will be poor, and someone always has to be bottom of the pyramid, regardless of how strong the work ethic is. That's inescapable. So, given that the free market isn't going to make the poor go away, given that they are an integral part of any society with a currency, do we treat them with dignity, or do we treat them like shit cos "I'm alright Jack"? Cos that was Thatcher's way. The only point i want to argue is that while i agree it is very propagandist to pick and choose which facts you want to remember and while it is stupid to vote along party lines, i beleive the very nature of politics is divided into left and right wing and you either one or the other whether you admit it or not, your political views are either left or right, your either libertarian or socialist.. nobody can be both nor either. I'm not sure about that. There are more axes to the political spectrum than simply libertarianism (which does not necessarily correspond to "right wing", left libertariansim, for example, is a perfectly valid political stance) versus socialism (which does not necessarily correspond to the "left wing", National Socialism being a case in point).

[shootemindehead]

The only point i want to argue is that while i agree it is very propagandist to pick and choose which facts you want to remember and while it is stupid to vote along party lines, i beleive the very nature of politics is divided into left and right wing and you either one or the other whether you admit it or not, your political views are either left or right, your either libertarian or socialist.. nobody can be both nor either. I'm not sure that I'd agree fully Andy. For instance, some would consider me rather Liberal Lefty in my political outlook, yet I know that I would have some views that would be considered traditionally Right wing. I consider myself to be neither Left, nor Right exclusively, as I tend to agree with policy that I agree with regardless of which political "wing" it's stemmed from. Frankly though, old style Left and Right is dissolving and dissolving into a mess of bullshit TBH. Neither political persuasion seems to have much definition these days. ...and i often say to people who overlook the destruction caused by labour in the 60's and 70's.. do you really think we would better off if they had been allowed to continue? you think if james callaghan had won in 1979 that britains industry wouldnt have collapsed and unemployment wouldnt have soared? Let's not forget the Conservative destruction under Heath either. They may such a balls up that Wilson got in again. As for Callaghan's stint, I believe that that particular Labour government made great strides and did an awful lot to combat the mess that both the Cons and Labs did in the late 60's/early 70's. Would unemployment have rocketed up like it did under Thatcher, god knows, and we can only speculate. However, there are cold hard facts to view about Thatcher's time in power and often, they tell a terrible story.

[Andy]

Maybe i did word myself badly, i meant you can only be left or right just like you can only be libertarian or socialist.. So kraken your right you can be a leftie libertarian or a right-winged socialist but you cant be left AND right, you cant be socialist AND libertarian. And shootemindehead, I can see we have very different views on this, I disagree with you on callaghan and i think if thatcher had not been voted in in 79, the country would have still gone to ruin given that the british industry was already on its ass when she came to power, exports where already decreasing as british goods where very expensive and not even that well made, then you had the unions who where doing whatever they wanted and systematically destroying trade with their ridiculous demands which previous labour governments where pandering to. We would have gone to ruin and been in a very similar situation to that of cyprus or greece now and whoever came to power be it thatcher or callaghan would have been demonized for the inevitable demise of britain that occurred in the 80's. That is my opinion, thatcher was exactly what britain needed at the time and managed the fallout very well, far better than labour would have. We have alot to thank her for.

[Neil]

I was speaking to my mother this evening. As she was around in the 70s and 80s (as an adult) she has a first hand opinion on Thatcher. She had quite an insightful comment really; Thatcher was exactly what the country needed at the time - Someone who was willing to do exactly what was needed for the people, no matter how unpopular it might make her with the people. ie: She wasn't out to win a popularity contest, just do exactly what needed to be done for the greater good. From what I know about Thatcher, I concur and agree with my mother's view(s).

[Neil]

Trafalgar Square protest sees 16 held - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22144797 We see the true colours of some of these people! Members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and UK Uncut were among those who took part. The Met said people aged between 18 and 44 were arrested for offences including affray, drunk and disorderly and assault on police. - - - Updated - - - I do hope tomorrow's funeral goes by smoothly and respectfully. But I do fear with the caliber of some of the idiots involved who disliked Thatcher there will be unnecessary, unsightly trouble.

[Cykotic]

We see the true colours of some of these people! I have to respectfully disagree with you there sir. I was at that event, doing some photo and video work and I never saw any trouble. A small minority were being total dicks, but the vast majority basically treated it as a huge piss up.

[Neil]

^^ I think we are actually agreeing? My point was intended to be that most people were there in good spirit, but a minority were being cynical idiots.

[Cykotic]

I'm not good at the whole debate thing....