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The Late Margaret Thatcher


Kingsmills

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I am apolitical .... I believe politicians of all stripes will screw you no matter what, and I have little time for any of them.

 

For me, Thatcher was a study in contrasts, and a woman who dealt in black/white not shades of grey ... She gave me the right - as a low paid grunt - to buy my council house, a measure that still had (positive) ripples just a few years ago when I used the equity I had built up to buy property over here, so for that opportunity, I am grateful. Yet she also forced the poll tax on me because I lived in Scotland rather than England and for that I could never forgive her .... she screwed around with my student grant, but when working she lowered my (direct) taxation .... yet more contrasts.

 

As for unions ... I do believe they needed to be reigned in. Certain unions could bring the country to a standstill if a boss looked at someone the wrong way ... but again, another contrast, I believe she went way too far in removing what should be basic rights of employees to strike over legitimate issues.    

 

From the point of view of watching the coverage of her death on the news over here, it is quite clear that she was a true world leader. One of the (tory) politicians that commented noted how she ruled what was then the G7 with an iron fist ... the likes of Mitterand, Reagan, and Canadian PM Mulrooney (all essentially tories too) were in awe of her, yet here to is a contrast where she embraced leaders who we now know to be dictators or heads of oppresive regimes such as Saddam Hussein, yet called future leaders (like Nelson Mandela) terrorists.

 

I will not be getting all sentimental and mourning her passing, but I will certainly not be dancing on her grave either .... or worse still, making comments like one extreme left winger did on Twitter in noting he was "sorry she died, but even sorrier she was born in the first place"

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Next time Argentina invades the Falklands, even if the UK still exists, it would not have the logistical military capacity to do a damn thing about it other than through diplomatic channels.

 

We do now have the capability on the islands to deter such an attack.

 

I watched this on youtube at the weekend and found it very interesting. Did you know that one bombing run using a cold war nuclear bomber which was destined for the scrap heap and that it had to be refuelled several times on it's way, paved the way for the task force to expel the Argentinians?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTDYcuoOKkM

 

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She moved [...] in favour of free markets and individual responsibility.

You mean greed and self gain/profit at the expense of those around you.  "Greed is good" I believe was the quote.

 

Ding dong the witch is dead.  And I fully intend to sit back when I have the chance and raise a glass to the demise of a person who abused her power due to what I regard as being inherently evil.  Think of me what you will for that.  I do not care.

 

"Greed is good" is a quote from Wall Street, a Hollywood film.  Do you take all your opinions from Hollywood films?  Does your view on, say, the sustainability of wind farms come from that scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo is stuck in a tree?

 

Her government made many mistakes and had some terrible policies but she was a necessary Prime Minister.  As a country subsidising loss making industries couldn't continue, the outdated practices of trade unions couldn't go on, the state-owned monoliths that accounted for a large percentage of the economy weren't sustainable, or right.

 

The self-pity and childish egotism shown by those celebrating or self-conciously 'not mourning' is mainly because, in the end, Thatcher won.  She moved the post-War social democratic, statist, corporatist consensus to one in favour of free markets and individual responsibility.  She didn't address many aspects of this - the welfare state, to take a topical example, or healthcare.  However, it's worth noting that every single major political party in the UK (including the SNP for any patriots reading) back her programme.

Oh FFS, we've unearthed the Scottish Tory.

 

During the Thatcher years the Tories regularly polled 25% of the vote in Scotland, figures they'd kill for now. 

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Yes that's rather curious. Its often reported that the Scots hated Thatcher but in her era they always got between 24% and 30% of the vote here in general elections, which was way ahead of both the SNP and Liberals/LibDems/SDP every single time, and better than the Tories fared before or after her.  And this is despite things like the miners strike, the poll tax, and her being a posh English woman.

 

There wasn't any real post-Thatcher backlash either, because in 1992 they somehow increased their number of seats here. It was from only 1997 onwards that they disappeared into oblivion.

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Not a massive fan of George Galloway, but he pretty much nails it here:

“Tramp the Dirt Down”

This entry was posted on April 8, 2013, in Britain and tagged Blair, Ireland, Liberal Democrats, London, Manufacture Industry, Miners, New Labour, Poll Tax, Privatisation, Thatcher, Tory. Bookmark the permalink.

The old saw that one shouldn’t speak ill of the recently dead cannot possibly apply to controversial figures in public life. It certainly didn’t apply to President Hugo Chavez who predeceased Margaret Thatcher amidst a blizzard of abuse.

The main reason it must not preclude entering the lists amidst a wave of hagiographic sycophantic tosh of the kind that has engulfed Britain these last hours is that otherwise the hagiographers will have the field to themselves.

Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did will be placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light, and provide a first draft of history that will be, simply, wrong.

As is now well-known, I refused to do that today on the demise of a wicked woman who tore apart what remained good about my country, and set an agenda which has been followed, more or less, by all of her successors. I certainly wasn’t prepared to leave the obituaries to those who profited from her rule or those who have aped her ever since.

So here is my own memory of Thatcher and what she did in her time on this earth.

On one of my first political demonstrations – against the Conservative government of Edward Heath (1970-74) the slogan of the day was “Margaret Thatcher- Milk snatcher”. It was the first but not the last time I spat out her name in distaste.

Before Thatcher, every primary school pupil received 1/3 of a pint of milk every morning. For some it was the difference between breakfast and no breakfast. I was sometimes one of those. I grew up in a brief period of social democracy in Britain, being dosed by the state with free cod-liver oil, orange juice and malt to build up my strength. Having been born in a slum tenement into a one-room attic in an Irish immigrant area, I needed all of that and more. And like millions I got it, until Thatcher took it away.

She became the Conservative leader after Heath’s two electoral defeats in 1974 and his subsequent resignation.

She was a new type of Tory leader, entirely lacking in anything resembling “noblesse oblige”. She was nasty, brutish and short of the class previously thought obligatory in Britain amongst leaders of the ruling elite. She was vulgar, money-worshipping, and blasphemous. She believed the important part of the Biblical story of the “Good Samaritan” was not that he refused to pass by the suffering on the other side of the road but that he had “loadsamoney”.

In the infamous sermon on the Mound in Edinburgh addressing the Church of Scotland she opined that there was “no such thing as society”…”only individuals”

As the Labour leader Neil Kinnock, in one of his better efforts, retorted: “No such thing as society? Only individuals? No such thing as honouring other people’s parents? No such thing as cherishing other people’s children? No such thing as us and always? Just ME and NOW? ME and NOW?”

She was the living embodiment of Marx’s prediction that under capitalism “all that is solid will melt into air… all that is sacred will be profaned”

Upon her election as prime minister (with just 40% of the vote, her position ensured by the treacherous defection from the Labour cause of the rats now squirming on the Liberal-Democrat ship) she set about “transforming” Britain allright. She privatised Britain’s key industries, enriching her friends, and robbing the public of their birthright. When she took over “Financial Services” represented 3% of the British economy; when she left office it was 40%.

She destroyed the coal industry, the steel, car, bus and motor-cycle manufacturing, truck and bus-making, ship-building and print-industry, the railway workshops… she destroyed more than a third of Britain’s manufacturing capacity, significantly more than Hitler’s Luftwaffe ever achieved.

She did this not just because she prefered the spivs and gamblers in the city -they were her kind of people. But because above all, she hated trades unionism, and was determined to destroy it.

I was a leading member of the Scottish Labour Party at the time she came into office, and a full-time Labour organiser. Scotland was to become an industrial wasteland in the first years of her rule.

I was also, from 1973, a member of the then Transport and General Workers Union, one of her key targets – especially our Docks section.

Importantly, for me, I was an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers too.

In all of these capacities I was a front-line short-sword fighter in the rearguard action against Thatcherism.

I fought her at Bathgate, at Linwood, when she was sacking the automotive industry. I fought her at Wapping – every Saturday night when she destroyed the Print workers on behalf of her friend, the organised crime firm owner, Rupert Murdoch. I fought every day of the Miners strike when she destroyed the Miners Union and the communities they represented. I fought her at Timex in Dundee at Massey Ferguson in Kilmarnock, and at the aluminium smelter in Invergordon.

I fought against her poll tax – imposed first in Scotland – as a refusenik of the most iniquitous tax in Britain since mediaeval times, the tax which ended in flames – literally – whilst I was on the platform at Trafalgar Square. And which finally produced her political demise.

And I toured – as a political activist – the desolation in Britain’s post-industrial distressed areas which she left behind. The City of London – deregulated by her – boomed whilst the coalfields and steel areas sank into penury. I saw the rusted factories the flooded mines the idle shipyards and the devilish results of millions of newly and enforced idle hands.

I faced her in parliament from 1987 as well, on these and other issues.

You see it wasn’t just Britain that Thatcher made bleed.

Her withdrawal of political status from Irish republican prisoners and her brutal, securocratic, militarisation of the situation in the north led to much additional suffering in Ireland.

State collusion in the murder of Catholics became endemic during her rule. And ten young men were starved to death for the restoration of political status, before our eyes in her dungeons. She finally died on the anniversary of their leader, Bobby Sands, being elected to parliament as he lay on his death-bed.

During the Falklands War, she sent hundreds of young Argentinian conscripts to a watery grave when she shot the Argentine warship the Belgrano in the back – as it was speeding away from the conflict. She mercilessly exploited the sacrifice of them, and our own soldiers sailors and airmen, to save her own political skin. A lot of brave men had to leave their guts on Goose Green to keep Thatcher in power.

She pushed her alter ego – the semi-imbecilic US president Ronald Reagan – into Cold War fanaticism and burgeoning expenditure on more and more terrifying weapons – many of them stationed on our soil.

She pushed his successor George Bush Sen into the first Iraq War.

I was there, I saw her lips move, when she described Nelson Mandela as a “common terrorist”.

She continued to recognise the genocidal and deposed Pol Pot regime in Cambodia – insisting that Pol Pot was the real and recognised leader of the Cambodians, even as they counted his victims in millions.

And she was the author of the policy of military, political, diplomatic and media support of the Afghan obscurantists who became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. She even produced them on the platform of the Tory Party conference, hailing them as “freedom-fighters”.

I was one of the last men standing in parliament opposing this immoral policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.

On the eve of the triumph of these “freedom Fighters” I told Thatcher to her face; “You have opened the gates for the barbarians….and a long dark night will now descend upon the people of Afghanistan”. I never said a truer word.

I hated Margaret Thatcher for what seems like all my life. I hated her more than I hated anyone – until the mass murderer Tony Blair came along.

It would have been utter hypocrisy for me to have remained silent about her crimes today whilst the political class – including New Labour – poured honeyed words, lies actually, over her blood-spattered record.

I could not do it. I believe I spoke for millions. The wicked witch is dead. Tramp the dirt down.

George Galloway MP

House of Commons

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Yes that's rather curious. Its often reported that the Scots hated Thatcher but in her era they always got between 24% and 30% of the vote here in general elections, which was way ahead of both the SNP and Liberals/LibDems/SDP every single time, and better than the Tories fared before or after her.  And this is despite things like the miners strike, the poll tax, and her being a posh English woman.

 

There wasn't any real post-Thatcher backlash either, because in 1992 they somehow increased their number of seats here. It was from only 1997 onwards that they disappeared into oblivion.

 

It was the poll tax that impacted her popularity in Scotland. She may have had a positive effect on the economy in the long run but ultimately her policies have killed off support for the Conservative and Unionist Party. In an independent Scotland I believe there would be a resurgence of support for a right of centre party, many of those who support SNP would indeed be of that ilk.

 

 

 

Not a massive fan of George Galloway, but he pretty much nails it here:

“Tramp the Dirt Down”

This entry was posted on April 8, 2013, in Britain and tagged Blair, Ireland, Liberal Democrats, London, Manufacture Industry, Miners, New Labour, Poll Tax, Privatisation, Thatcher, Tory. Bookmark the permalink.

The old saw that one shouldn’t speak ill of the recently dead cannot possibly

apply to controversial figures in public life. It certainly didn’t apply to

President Hugo Chavez who predeceased Margaret Thatcher amidst a blizzard of

abuse.

The main reason it must not preclude entering the lists amidst a

wave of hagiographic sycophantic tosh of the kind that has engulfed Britain

these last hours is that otherwise the hagiographers will have the field to

themselves.

Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did

will be placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light, and provide a

first draft of history that will be, simply, wrong.

As is now well-known,

I refused to do that today on the demise of a wicked woman who tore apart what

remained good about my country, and set an agenda which has been followed, more

or less, by all of her successors. I certainly wasn’t prepared to leave the

obituaries to those who profited from her rule or those who have aped her ever

since.

So here is my own memory of Thatcher and what she did in her time

on this earth.

On one of my first political demonstrations – against the

Conservative government of Edward Heath (1970-74) the slogan of the day was

“Margaret Thatcher- Milk snatcher”. It was the first but not the last time I

spat out her name in distaste.

Before Thatcher, every primary school

pupil received 1/3 of a pint of milk every morning. For some it was the

difference between breakfast and no breakfast. I was sometimes one of those. I

grew up in a brief period of social democracy in Britain, being dosed by the

state with free cod-liver oil, orange juice and malt to build up my strength.

Having been born in a slum tenement into a one-room attic in an Irish immigrant

area, I needed all of that and more. And like millions I got it, until Thatcher

took it away.

She became the Conservative leader after Heath’s two

electoral defeats in 1974 and his subsequent resignation.

She was a new

type of Tory leader, entirely lacking in anything resembling “noblesse oblige”.

She was nasty, brutish and short of the class previously thought obligatory in

Britain amongst leaders of the ruling elite. She was vulgar, money-worshipping,

and blasphemous. She believed the important part of the Biblical story of the

“Good Samaritan” was not that he refused to pass by the suffering on the other

side of the road but that he had “loadsamoney”.

In the infamous sermon on

the Mound in Edinburgh addressing the Church of Scotland she opined that there

was “no such thing as society”…”only individuals”

As the Labour leader

Neil Kinnock, in one of his better efforts, retorted: “No such thing as society?

Only individuals? No such thing as honouring other people’s parents? No such

thing as cherishing other people’s children? No such thing as us and always?

Just ME and NOW? ME and NOW?”

She was the living embodiment of Marx’s

prediction that under capitalism “all that is solid will melt into air… all that

is sacred will be profaned”

Upon her election as prime minister (with

just 40% of the vote, her position ensured by the treacherous defection from the

Labour cause of the rats now squirming on the Liberal-Democrat ship) she set

about “transforming” Britain allright. She privatised Britain’s key industries,

enriching her friends, and robbing the public of their birthright. When she took

over “Financial Services” represented 3% of the British economy; when she left

office it was 40%.

She destroyed the coal industry, the steel, car, bus

and motor-cycle manufacturing, truck and bus-making, ship-building and

print-industry, the railway workshops… she destroyed more than a third of

Britain’s manufacturing capacity, significantly more than Hitler’s Luftwaffe

ever achieved.

She did this not just because she prefered the spivs and

gamblers in the city -they were her kind of people. But because above all, she

hated trades unionism, and was determined to destroy it.

I was a leading

member of the Scottish Labour Party at the time she came into office, and a

full-time Labour organiser. Scotland was to become an industrial wasteland in

the first years of her rule.

I was also, from 1973, a member of the then

Transport and General Workers Union, one of her key targets – especially our

Docks section.

Importantly, for me, I was an honorary member of the

National Union of Mineworkers too.

In all of these capacities I was a

front-line short-sword fighter in the rearguard action against

Thatcherism.

I fought her at Bathgate, at Linwood, when she was sacking

the automotive industry. I fought her at Wapping – every Saturday night when she

destroyed the Print workers on behalf of her friend, the organised crime firm

owner, Rupert Murdoch. I fought every day of the Miners strike when she

destroyed the Miners Union and the communities they represented. I fought her at

Timex in Dundee at Massey Ferguson in Kilmarnock, and at the aluminium smelter

in Invergordon.

I fought against her poll tax – imposed first in Scotland

– as a refusenik of the most iniquitous tax in Britain since mediaeval times,

the tax which ended in flames – literally – whilst I was on the platform at

Trafalgar Square. And which finally produced her political demise.

And I

toured – as a political activist – the desolation in Britain’s post-industrial

distressed areas which she left behind. The City of London – deregulated by her

– boomed whilst the coalfields and steel areas sank into penury. I saw the

rusted factories the flooded mines the idle shipyards and the devilish results

of millions of newly and enforced idle hands.

I faced her in parliament

from 1987 as well, on these and other issues.

You see it wasn’t just

Britain that Thatcher made bleed.

Her withdrawal of political status from

Irish republican prisoners and her brutal, securocratic, militarisation of the

situation in the north led to much additional suffering in Ireland.

State

collusion in the murder of Catholics became endemic during her rule. And ten

young men were starved to death for the restoration of political status, before

our eyes in her dungeons. She finally died on the anniversary of their leader,

Bobby Sands, being elected to parliament as he lay on his

death-bed.

During the Falklands War, she sent hundreds of young

Argentinian conscripts to a watery grave when she shot the Argentine warship the

Belgrano in the back – as it was speeding away from the conflict. She

mercilessly exploited the sacrifice of them, and our own soldiers sailors and

airmen, to save her own political skin. A lot of brave men had to leave their

guts on Goose Green to keep Thatcher in power.

She pushed her alter ego –

the semi-imbecilic US president Ronald Reagan – into Cold War fanaticism and

burgeoning expenditure on more and more terrifying weapons – many of them

stationed on our soil.

She pushed his successor George Bush Sen into the

first Iraq War.

I was there, I saw her lips move, when she described

Nelson Mandela as a “common terrorist”.

She continued to recognise the

genocidal and deposed Pol Pot regime in Cambodia – insisting that Pol Pot was

the real and recognised leader of the Cambodians, even as they counted his

victims in millions.

And she was the author of the policy of military,

political, diplomatic and media support of the Afghan obscurantists who became

the Taliban and Al Qaeda. She even produced them on the platform of the Tory

Party conference, hailing them as “freedom-fighters”.

I was one of the

last men standing in parliament opposing this immoral policy of “my enemy’s

enemy is my friend”.

On the eve of the triumph of these “freedom

Fighters” I told Thatcher to her face; “You have opened the gates for the

barbarians….and a long dark night will now descend upon the people of

Afghanistan”. I never said a truer word.

I hated Margaret Thatcher for

what seems like all my life. I hated her more than I hated anyone – until the

mass murderer Tony Blair came along.

It would have been utter hypocrisy

for me to have remained silent about her crimes today whilst the political class

– including New Labour – poured honeyed words, lies actually, over her

blood-spattered record.

I could not do it. I believe I spoke for

millions. The wicked witch is dead. Tramp the dirt down.

George Galloway

MP

House of Commons

 

There's a button to the left of the font dropdown menu, if you highlight your text then click that you can create a spolier. :wink:

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People that say George Galloway is a great orator or writer should read that horribly written statement, and watch him bully Arabs fighting dictatorship on his bizarre 'Lebanese' chat-shows.  He's an absolute roaster of a man, all the 'memorable' turns of phrase he comes out with are chivvied from Labour politicians from the 1950s.  To paraphrase what was once said about Stephen Fry, he is a stupid person's idea of a serious politician.  You could probably go through that statement line-by-line and pick out inaccuracies in every sentence.

Edited by ictchris
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 yet here to is a contrast where she embraced leaders who we now know to be dictators or heads of oppressive regimes such as Saddam Hussein, yet called future leaders (like Nelson Mandela) terrorists.

 

I think this is the key to understanding Thatcher.  She wasn't concerned with right or wrong, she was only concerned with power.  She embraced Saddam and other dictators because they had power over their people.  She branded Mandela a terrorist because he opposed the powerful ruling white elite in South Africa. The Falklands was not about the rights of the people of those Islands it was about the opportunity to play at being Churchill.  She needed a war to unite the country behind her and the Argentinian Junta kindly obliged. 

 

But most telling of all for this country was the industrial politics of the time.  Again this was not really about ideology, it was about power.  The unions were powerful and were threatening the interests of the moneyed classes and therefore had to be shown just where the real power lay.  Again it was war.  Fortunately for her, the majority of the country could see that the Unions were too powerful and were ruining this country by restrictive practises and opposition to the technological change essential to keep our industries competitive in a global market.  She took on the Scargills and the Red Robbos of the unions and the grateful middle classes turned a blind eye to her blinkered foreign policy and her mean spirited social policy.

 

In the end she ran out of people to fight and the only people left were the very people who put her in power in the first place - the Tory party.  She was finally bludgeoned into submission by Geoffrey Howe's broken cricket bat.  She'd had her innings but had finally lost her appeal.

 

The one comment about her that has always stuck in my memory was when the famous stage actress Dame Edith Evans was being interviewed by Michael Parkinson in the early days of her premiership.  Parkinson had suggested that Dame Edith must be delighted to have a woman as Prime Minister even if she did behave rather like a man.  Dame Edith replied that she didn't really mind her behaving like a man but she just wished she could behave like a nice man!

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People that say George Galloway is a great orator or writer should read that horribly written statement, and watch him bully Arabs fighting dictatorship on his bizarre 'Lebanese' chat-shows.  He's an absolute roaster of a man, all the 'memorable' turns of phrase he comes out with are chivvied from Labour politicians from the 1950s.  To paraphrase what was once said about Stephen Fry, he is a stupid person's idea of a serious politician.  You could probably go through that statement line-by-line and pick out inaccuracies in every sentence.

 

I could easily say the same about your post but that doesn't make me right, does it?

 

Why not go through the article and highlight the inaccuracies with linked evidence to back yourself up or are you just a troll?

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People that say George Galloway is a great orator or writer should read that horribly written statement, and watch him bully Arabs fighting dictatorship on his bizarre 'Lebanese' chat-shows.  He's an absolute roaster of a man, all the 'memorable' turns of phrase he comes out with are chivvied from Labour politicians from the 1950s.  To paraphrase what was once said about Stephen Fry, he is a stupid person's idea of a serious politician.  You could probably go through that statement line-by-line and pick out inaccuracies in every sentence.

 

I could easily say the same about your post but that doesn't make me right, does it?

 

Why not go through the article and highlight the inaccuracies with linked evidence to back yourself up or are you just a troll?

 

It doesn't make you right because you can't do it.

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People that say George Galloway is a great orator or writer should read that horribly written statement, and watch him bully Arabs fighting dictatorship on his bizarre 'Lebanese' chat-shows.  He's an absolute roaster of a man, all the 'memorable' turns of phrase he comes out with are chivvied from Labour politicians from the 1950s.  To paraphrase what was once said about Stephen Fry, he is a stupid person's idea of a serious politician.  You could probably go through that statement line-by-line and pick out inaccuracies in every sentence.

 

I could easily say the same about your post but that doesn't make me right, does it?

 

Why not go through the article and highlight the inaccuracies with linked evidence to back yourself up or are you just a troll?

 

It doesn't make you right because you can't do it.

 

Thank you for agreeing. Why can't you do it though?

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yet called future leaders (like Nelson Mandela) terrorists.

 

As far as I am aware that one's a bit of a myth, or at least heavily twisted and out of context. The nearest thing to it was at a Commonwealth Summit press conference in Vancouver in 1987 when she was asked to comment on ANC statements that they were going to carry out deadly attacks on British companies. She replied "When the ANC says that they will target British companies, this shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is." 

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There were virtually no homeless people before her, no one begging on the streets, people had homes and jobs (yes, even in the big, bad 70s) and families could live, modestly, on one salary.

 

The selling off of council homes may have been a good deal for those who benefited, but in most cases those homes were sold at prices well below their value, so the public assets were more or less given away, as they would be in the privatisations of the 80s, again public assets grossly undersold, and for the ultimate benefit of the corporations.

 

Funds used from selling the people's assets were then used to pay for the tax cuts, which bought them their election victories, and this pile of sh*te is hailed as an economic miracle. 

 

The "welfare crisis" is but a result of the long-term unemployment that her government instigated and having generations of families who have never had a proper job. The people worked before her, and would do so again if there were proper opportunities. 

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His nauseating sycophancy to Saddam and the fact that his 'charity' never published proper accounts tells me everything I need to know about Galloway.

 

The Captain of the Belgrano subsequently confirmed that the ship had orders to attack the British fleet and was manoeuvring for that and not heading back to port.  The Argentians had been told a week before that anything perceived as a threat would be atatcked whether or not inside the exclusion zone.  Prior to the invasion Britain had been negotiating to transfer sovereignty which is one reason we were unprepared.

 

The idea that the 1970's was some golden era is a laugh.  Britain was bankrupt.  Healy had to be bailed out by the IMF rather like Greece and Cyprus now.  The dead were unburied.  The British economy (the sick man of Europe it was called) was a basket case in 1979 and strong in 1997.

 

Manufacturing output grew by 11% under Thatcher, 9.5% under Major and fell by 6.5% under Blair/Brown.  (Source ONS series K222.)

 

Unlike Blair (did whatever he thought the voters wanted) and Brown (did whatever he thought would buy votes), Thatcher did what she believed was best for the country.

 

Britain's greatest non-war Prime Minister of the 20th century.

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I watched this on youtube at the weekend and found it very interesting. Did you know that one bombing run using a cold war nuclear bomber which was destined for the scrap heap and that it had to be refuelled several times on it's way, paved the way for the task force to expel the Argentinians?

 

 

I'm afraid you have been taken in by some crab propaganda. The Vulcan assault was a minor irritation to the Argentinians and was quickly dealt with. It had little actual bearing on the conduct or outcome of the war.

The RAF is well aware that this conflict was won by the combined efforts of the Navy and Army and now that 25 years have passed they are using this one very expensive and ultimately inconsequential action as a sad attempt to make themselves look relevant. They were (and should remain) embarrassed that the most memorable conflict since WWII involving ONLY UK forces against a belligerent enemy attacking British soil was beyond their effective capability.

Edited by FoolPhysio
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People that say George Galloway is a great orator or writer should read that horribly written statement, and watch him bully Arabs fighting dictatorship on his bizarre 'Lebanese' chat-shows.  He's an absolute roaster of a man, all the 'memorable' turns of phrase he comes out with are chivvied from Labour politicians from the 1950s.  To paraphrase what was once said about Stephen Fry, he is a stupid person's idea of a serious politician.  You could probably go through that statement line-by-line and pick out inaccuracies in every sentence.

 

I could easily say the same about your post but that doesn't make me right, does it?

 

Why not go through the article and highlight the inaccuracies with linked evidence to back yourself up or are you just a troll?

 

It doesn't make you right because you can't do it.

 

Thank you for agreeing. Why can't you do it though?

 

 

I don't have the time or inclination to argue with George Galloway by proxy on the internet.

 

Seeing as you are on the verge of tears about it though, here are a few highlights of inaccuracies in the post:

 

- Thatcher said "there is no such thing as society" in an interview with Women's Own, not in her speech to the Church of Scotland.

- It's a pretty loose definition of 'blasphemy' to talk about her intrepretation of the Good Samaritan tale, although no galloway rant is complete these days without some bizarre religious dog-whistling.

- His talk of her "destroying" industry is a willfull distortion - the industries that Galloway is wistfully talking about were hugely subsidised by the state, a situation where productive industries were drained of theri profits (98% taxation on investment income, 83% on salary income for top earners) to pour into money pits.  If these industries had been able to compete they'd have survived - they could not.

- His glossing over of union power is ridiculous.  Speak to anyone involved in the press during the 1970s and 80s and you'll find out what the truth was about the print unions - they held the entire industry to ransom and what happened at Wapping was due to technology, thankfully, making them obselete.

- Regarding Northern Ireland, political/special category status was withdrawn before Thatcher came to power (by Roy Mason, IIRC).  In the event, what did Galloway expect her to do?  Give in?  TheIRA at that time were dedicated to murdering their way to power in Ireland. 

- State collusion between Loyalist terrorists and the security forces happened throughout the conflict, a cursory reading of history tells you that.  The UVF in Mid-Ulster operated hand in glove with British intelligence throughout the 1970s, the UDR and B Specials had a consistent core of Loyalist sympathisers in it's ranks, in the 70s some estimates put it at 15-20% of total manpower had contact with loyalist paramilitaries.  Also, recent court cases have shown that several atrocities in the early 90s, after Thatcher left power, occurred either with the involvement or knowledge of British intelligence (Loughinisland). it's a fallacy to say that it became endemic during Thatchers rule and it's also a mistake to attribute it to her. If GG actually thinks that these things were signed off around the Cabinet table then he's delusional.

- The "Cold War fanaticism" that GG talks about is hilarious - Thatcher helped bring about the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet domination of Eastern and Central Europe.  Have a read of the obituries and tributes to her from Europe to see what people think of her there.

- Again, a hilarious misreading of history to say that "she pushed... George Bush Sen into the first Iraq War".  Saddam was removed from Kuwait by the largest military coalition in history, comprising Arab states, Europe, the Americas.  The idea that she somehow forced Bush to act against his will is a fantasy from Galloway.

- GG repeats a lie about the Afghan mujahadeen - there isn't a simple continum between the people who the West aided (a process started by Jimmy Carter) and those who became the Taliban.  There is zero evidence that any WEstern aid ever reached Al Queda.  In fact, the evidence is the opposite, Bin Laden didn't want their aid.  It's interesting to note that GG supported the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union.

- It's interesting that GG says "I was one of the last men standing in parliament opposing this immoral policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” when he is the single biggest example of this policy in British politics.  He says he opposed Saddam and may well have done (although the evidence of his involvement in any opposition to him is pretty scant).  However, as soon as Saddam became an enemy of the WEst GG prostrated himself in from of Saddam, acting a propaganda agent for the Ba'athists, eulogising Saddam.  He is doing the same thing now with Assad in Syria.

 

The Belgrano and Mandela questions are covered above.

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I disagree with the statement made by Mantis above in its entirety. Although the "sports" , pages of the Sun have an aspect a lot of building workers like to pin on their walls, I feel the Evening Standard , to be about as useful as the Glasgow Herald, a nail behind the WC door comes to mind.

Laurence. Read this through again. I told you that both papers are misinforming their readers. You appear to be agreeing, not disagreeing.

Not quite sure what the Herald (it's not been the Glasgow Herald for over 20 years) has to do with anything.

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I suspect those lining up to laud her did not live or were quite young during her rule. It was a truly grim time in every way. Anyway, here is a piece by Ian Bell from The Herald.

 

--------

MARGARET Thatcher did not believe in consensus.

She made no bones about that. Criticism, antagonism, even contempt, seemed to invigorate those fixed, sparking eyes. She was the last authentic class warrior in Westminster politics, and she gloried in the combat.

Mrs Thatcher treated dissent as affirmation. Accusations of divisiveness were taken as proof: she was right; they – a multitude – were wrong. There was her Britain – conterminous, despite all denials, with a mythologised England – and there was the rest. One way or another, she turned a great many people into “the enemy within”. By the end, there were a lot of us about.

Never enough, however. Mrs Thatcher won her elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987 fair and square. If the ability to succeed at the polls is the definition of political stature, she stood as high as any Westminster figure in the 20th century. If the ability to generate abhorrence counts as an achievement, meanwhile, she was an over-achiever. But she was, undeniably, a winner.

For all that, the map of Britain traced by her popularity was an odd, distended affair, the true blue leeching away with each minute of latitude, south to north. On May 4, 1979, she stood on the steps of Downing Street and paraphrased the so-called Prayer of St Francis (“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony … Where there is despair, may we bring hope”). For most of Britain north of Watford her policies meant the opposite, in every particular.

This was nowhere more true than in Scotland. Few of the eulogies below the Border will mention the fact she single-handedly destroyed a Conservative tradition once embedded in Scottish life. The myth persists she was rejected because of her Englishness – her predecessors encountered no such prejudice – but in truth she was inimical, by conviction. She was detested for her actions, not her accent.

Mrs Thatcher was a lucky prime minister. She had the luck to see the Social Democratic Party born in the spring of 1981, stripping support from Labour when her approval ratings were dire. She had the luck – and it was often touch and go – to win the Falklands war, despite 1000 deaths and the gratuitous sinking of the Belgrano, as a prelude to the 1983 election. She had the luck that bequeathed a 90% North Sea output tax when her “productivity miracle” required four million unemployed, and when dole money was due.

She had more vastly luck than her predecessor, Ted Heath, with the press. Mrs Thatcher gave extraordinary, still-unexplained, latitude to the ambitions of Rupert Murdoch, and helped him at every turn, generally by bending then-existing media ownership rules. Favours were returned. We have lived with the lurid consequences, the capsizing of democratic pretence, ever since.


 

Despite her elocution class manner, this millionaire’s wife was the first tabloid prime minister. Jingoism; judicious racism (“The British character has done so much for democracy, for law, that if there is any fear it might be swamped, people are going to react …”); a visceral dislike of unions; a contempt for the public sector; a veneration of wealth and a hatred of tax; a suspicion of culture and “permissiveness”; latterly the use of “Europe” as a cipher for xenophobia … redtop culture fitted “Maggie” – never to her face – like a glove puppet.

Long before her death, Mrs Thatcher’s admirers were insisting on her greatness. They said she had saved Britain, indeed the western world, with her stubbornness and self-belief. Her enemies, meanwhile, called her a blind ideologue, and heartless with it. Both descriptions were wide of the mark.

Ideologues must think: Margaret Thatcher never bothered. Her tendency to translate the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek and the monetarist “Chicago school” into the language of the Grantham grocer’s shop did no service to either. Despite the ravages of her “economic experiment” – manufacturing output cut by one-third, botched privatisations, mass unemployment – she never did balance the books. Contrary to legend, government spending increased in real terms during the 1980s. Income tax cuts, of special benefit to the better off, were not free.

Nor did Mrs Thatcher do much – for how could she? – to bring down the Soviet “evil empire”. The bankruptcy of the USSR was self-inflicted, hastened by a futile arms race with the United States. In welcoming Cruise missiles to Greenham Common, and in purchasing the Trident missile system at extraordinary cost, Mrs Thatcher sealed Britain’s subservience to America. Whether her peculiarly intense relationship with Ronald Reagan counted as self-reliant patriotism – the bizarre invasion of Grenada aside – is a matter of partisan opinion.

Nevertheless, her ideology, like her geo-political activities, never approached consistency. Mrs Thatcher’s politics was a visceral thing, formed of a belief in a natural order, in the assumption Britain needed restoration, and in a nostalgia for some never-defined golden age. She was, in the purest sense, a reactionary politician. Hence her failure, for long decades, to take apartheid seriously, and her willingness to dismiss Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. Hence her revulsion at the very idea of trade unionism. Hence her embrace of the casino economy.

She had the streak of vanity usual in prime ministers, one enlarged by three election victories. Her statements, in power and after, suggest Mrs Thatcher believed herself indispensable. She enjoyed the unlikely idea of the Iron Lady, a suburban Britannia, the politician who was “not for turning”. She felt entitled to invoke Churchill, as though “Winston” had been a blood relation. In truth, her sense of destiny was near-Gaullist. And she had no sense of humour: laboriously, her speechwriters had to explain the Python dead parrot joke.


 

You can judge her, as is customary, by her legacy. The Thatcher years altered Britain for good, if not for better. Part of her bequest was an unthinking complicity, as an article of foreign policy, in America’s adventures. Tony Blair could have followed the example of Labour’s Harold Wilson during the Vietnam years, and spared Britain the Iraq debacle. Instead, Blair, like John Major, did as “Maggie” would have done, and went to war under American command.

Mrs Thatcher’s heirs had neither the wish nor the desire, meanwhile, to unpick her privatisation programme, that mass transfer of wealth from the public realm to the private. In the case of the utilities, state assets were exchanged, often at absurd prices, for monopoly capitalism. The myth of choice and a “share-owning democracy” did not outlast her premiership. But the idea the private sector will always perform more efficiently than the public became tenacious thanks to Mrs Thatcher.

Modern Britain is in large part her creation. Banking gone bust? Those excesses can be traced to the deregulation of the financial sector, the “Big Bang”, of 1986 and after. The tabloid press run amok? The privileges allowed to Murdoch count as exhibit A. All hope of an independent foreign policy gone? Maggie thought she had a duty, no less, to Ronnie, leader of a foreign country.

Housing bubbles and housing crises? Mrs Thatcher believed council schemes bred socialist councils. She sold the houses cheap – but raised £20 billion in the process – and turned property into a British obsession, and generated a froth of asset bubbles. Her economic reforms were parasitic, at every turn, upon the public’s state-secured estate. She put nothing in its place.

Her allies and patrons said she “put Britain back on its feet”. The evidence is thin. Those of Mrs Thatcher’s class prospered greatly from her tax cuts in the 1980s. Those in and around the City of London luxuriated in easy money. But wealth, however “created”, did not often trickle down, as theory demanded. The poor paid.

Inequalities, narrowing before her arrival, became a fact of British life in the Thatcher years. There were riots, a glut of heroin, and hopelessness. Her insistence on “management’s right to manage” served only to demonstrate, meanwhile, British management left something to be desired. To her slim credit is the fact she opposed rail privatisation. A despiser of trains, she sensed a debacle in the making.

 

 

History takes a shorthand note. It says: miners, then a poll tax, then (for a northern minority) a prime minister who reneged on the promise of devolution. So official memory and folk memory diverge. Two dozen profitable pits were shut simply to make a point, and kill a trade union. The British state was put at risk just to ease Scottish Tory complaints over ratings valuations, and establish all must “pay their way”. And Scotland was lost, in irredeemable constitutional terms. Mrs Thatcher did not apologise.

Commentary upon her funeral will lose that detail. Mrs Thatcher broke Britain. Thanks to her madcap deregulation, the banks went bust in 2008. Thanks to her taste for confrontation – with her own people, to labour the point – trust in the British state was dissevered. Thanks to her indulgence towards redtop papers, media corruption flowed. Her poll tax was class war in bold caps. After Mrs Thatcher, no prime minister enjoyed trust for long. And gross domestic product did not improve.

Hindsight will call her comical figure. She destroyed every enemy, and made herself ridiculous. At the end, her ego vast, she called her overthrow “betrayal”. But the truth was mundane: she was less popular than her party; Labour would certainly have won a general election; her rhetoric had become risible. In the last days of 1990, the bombast of 1979 had become unseemly, even among the erstwhile Tory acolytes. The moment had passed.

By the end, there were a lot of us about. The unreconciled, the persecuted, the insulted, the poor, or those who simply took it for granted – strange to remember – the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was mad. That’s a legacy. The fact that eccentricity became institutionalised was telling, too. The idea that impersonating Mrs Thatcher was a sane and inevitable course, as an electoral ploy, Labour or Tory, is another of history’s shorthand notes.

She picked a fight. Those she conscripted will speak well of her, no doubt. Those who stood on the other side, on painted lines at pitheads, in the reeking Wapping mist, when the City casino echoed like a fair, when the Greenham women were being carted off, when pensioners were intimidated to bolster community charge propaganda, provide other memories. Truth persists.

Mrs Thatcher’s every victory was a defeat, as it happens. She altered Britain merely to end Britain. In demanding respect, she never dared hope for love. Her economic miracles left us where we are now: a second-rate power, with Third World debts, and a banking class stripping £14bn in self-awarded bonuses from the commonweal.

Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, no-one even thinks that a crime. In a grubby, disturbed, discontented country, her spirit prevails.

The dirt needs no tramping.
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She moved [...] in favour of free markets and individual responsibility.

You mean greed and self gain/profit at the expense of those around you.  "Greed is good" I believe was the quote.

 

Ding dong the witch is dead.  And I fully intend to sit back when I have the chance and raise a glass to the demise of a person who abused her power due to what I regard as being inherently evil.  Think of me what you will for that.  I do not care.

 

"Greed is good" is a quote from Wall Street, a Hollywood film.  Do you take all your opinions from Hollywood films?  Does your view on, say, the sustainability of wind farms come from that scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo is stuck in a tree?

 

 

Yes.  Yes I do get all of my opinions from films.  Hence "Ding dong the witch is dead."

Some of my very staunchest beliefs are that:

- I'm a better shot than a stormtrooper.

- All policemen in Beverly Hills are incompetent.

- Bin Laden had a hollowed out volcano in which he lived.  He also had a white cat.  It wore a diamond studded collar.

- The reason you do not see any Delorean's driving about is that they are all stuck in 1955 and cannot get back.

- If you run into a pillar at a train station with a luggage trolley as fast as you can you will find a hidden secret platform.

- We are going to need a bigger boat.

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I suspect those lining up to laud her did not live or were quite young during her rule. It was a truly grim time in every way.  

You would be wrong in your suspicion. As wrong as it would be to look at the TV and print media images and assume that most of those who are decrying her are all nippers who had no concept of what it was like in the 1970's or '80s and therefore cannot have a valid opinion of their own based on an understanding of history they did not themselves live.

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I suspect those lining up to laud her did not live or were quite young during her rule. It was a truly grim time in every way. Anyway, here is a piece by Ian Bell from The Herald.

 

 

100% wrong.  Some of us remember what went before as our postings make clear, and don't feel the need to cut and paste the usual simplistic anti-Maggie leftie bullsh*t bingo from 'useful_idiots.com' or whatever. 

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It was a truly grim time in every way.

 

 

Come off it, that's a better description of the 70's than the 80's. If you crave for a pre-Thatcher way of life, go and trip your fuse box.

 

Britain in the 70's was just rubbish. Except the music. That deteriorated massively under Thatcher.

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