Any Hi-jinx taking place across Brittania??
Harry Redknapp made a late bid to keep her up, but to no avail.
4,000 cops on duty and no arrests so far.
[quote=“Fitzy, post: 760716, member: 236”]I would imagine the vast majority of Falklands veterans are only too happy to see Thatcher buried.
Was watching it earlier, what on orgy of nothingness.[/quote]
Its getting a bit tiresome at this stage responding to the juvenile barbs of an ill educated oaf. An orgy of nothingness? We’re talking about the passing and burial of one the 20th century’s greatest leaders.
In the shthole you call home, the idea of a statesman and great leader is Bob Hawke who told everyone to get pssed and pull a sickie for work when Australia won the Americas Cup.
And for the record, it was veterans from the liberation of the Falklands who acted as pall bearers for a lot of today’s proceedings.
[quote=“Manuel Zelaya, post: 760781, member: 377”]Its getting a bit tiresome at this stage responding to the juvenile barbs of an ill educated oaf. An orgy of nothingness? We’re talking about the passing and burial of one the 20th century’s greatest leaders.
In the shthole you call home, the idea of a statesman and great leader is Bob Hawke who told everyone to get pssed and pull a sickie for work when Australia won the Americas Cup.
And for the record, it was veterans from the liberation of the Falklands who acted as pall bearers for a lot of today’s proceedings.[/quote]
Oooh, temper temper. Just the other night you were saying how happy she’d have been to see an Australian winner of the Masters. You’re straying from your own narrative.
I said if the great lady was following golfing matters from above, she would look on in it as the lesser of two evils that the Argentine did not win it.
Sid do you remember the great 1980s anti thatcher protest song ‘here’s maggie thatcher, throw her up and catch her, squish squash squish squash, here’s maggie thatcher’ ? Usually performed with a stick woman drawn on the palm of either hand and appropriate actions.
No but I will Google* it.
"Apologies, I should have typed “internet search”, Google is a brand name.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 760820, member: 183”]No but I will Google* it.
"Apologies, I should have typed “internet search”, Google is a brand name.[/quote]
Different version but same idea
[quote=“Manuel Zelaya, post: 760781, member: 377”]Its getting a bit tiresome at this stage responding to the juvenile barbs of an ill educated oaf. An orgy of nothingness? We’re talking about the passing and burial of one the 20th century’s greatest leaders.
[/quote]
Try war criminal, supporter of apartheid, murderer, defender of Pinochet and you’d have a more accurate description.
How dare you question tuition standards at WRTC.
[quote=“mickee321, post: 759744, member: 367”]can someone please surmise for me briefly what Thatcher did so wrong make her such a hate figure?
[/quote]
An English chap who is a Tory supporter who I went to college called me “a disgrace” and defriended me after I wrote this on his page - fuck you, pal - your columns in the Yorkshire Post are a pile of shite, anyway.
I don’t know why it won’t divide into paragraphs by the way.
[FONT=Arial]Three words that sum up Thatcher’s reign more than any other are “divide and rule”.[/FONT]
Long before the Euro was even thought of Germany’s economy was doing well and Britain’s wasn’t. The way of managing the economy and industry was fundamentally different. Germany and the Scandinavian countries, adopted a policy of working with industrial unions rather than against them, but there was a genuine spirit of partnership and give and take.
[FONT=Arial]The difference between the European social democratic model and Thatcher’s slash and burn, class warfare policies was stark. The result was a hollowed out economy where manufacturing declined by two-thirds, and a culture of deregulation, de-unionisation, privatisation, McJobs etc reigned. Britain now imports €100 billion worth of goods a year more than it exports. The City has become a law unto itself, the financial wild west of Europe and the consequences have been disastrous.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Child poverty increased from 1 in 7 to 1 in 3 on Thatcher’s watch. Inequality rocketed. Thatcher’s policies did so much to damage the meritocracy and social mobility she claimed to stand for. We now have the most elitist government in Britain since before World War II. And it’s pretty clear whose interests they represent. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Under Thatcher and since then the abdication of government from developing new public housing and the transferring of the existing stock into private hands has resulted in a new class of landlords which means people in lower socio-economic classes pay extorionate rents and can never hope to own a house given the ridiculous (still) bubble prices they would have to pay. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]The class warfare has been carried on by successive governments and driven by the right-wing media. The demonisation of people on benefits continues apace. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Have a look at the Daily Mail’s vile front page splash from last week blaming Mick Philpott setting fire to his house and kids on the welfare state. That is the type of demonisation of people in lower socio-economic classes that is squarely a product of Thatcherism. This was the type of divide and rule media coverage she encouraged. Those offended by other people celebrating Thatcher’s death weren’t so offended by the Daily Mail and Gideon Osborne trying to smear everybody on benefits in the UK by association with Mick Philpott. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]I think the difference is that while both Osborne’s pathetic smearing of people on benefits/ the Daily Mail headline and the street parties celebrating Thatcher’s death were in poor taste, the Osborne/Daily Mail stuff is far worse because it’s a callous and oppurtunistic attack on the weak by the powerful - they’re deliberately demonising society’s weakest people, many of whom already work (and probably harder than a lot of the so called “elite”) but have to be topped up with benefits because they don’t get a living wage. These unpaid or low paid workers are the real wealth creators in society, they just don’t see any of it. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Celebrating Thatcher’s death is merely a tiny revenge for the years and years of misery she heaped upon people in Britain, waging a vicious class warfare not seen before in the country. It’s a token revenge by the powerless against the ultimate symbol of greed and power. And if it’s in bad taste, well, it’s a product of the divided Britain she deliberately created.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Thatcher “made Britain great again”. Although I’m still none the wiser as to what that means, and it does have not-so-vaguely imperialistic tones about it. [/FONT][FONT=Verdana]
Ah, yes, that’s it. The Falklands War made the Empire-lovers feel, if only briefly, that Britannia ruled the waves again.
It really does expose the type of mindset that you’re dealing with.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]And here’s some posts I stole from elsewhere:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Far from saving Britain, Thatcher’s government delivered rampant inequality, social breakdown, disastrous financial deregulation, pulverising deindustrialisation and mass unemployment. A North Sea oil bonanza was frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthy and a swollen benefits bill as public services were run down, child poverty escalated and social mobility ground to a halt.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]But for all that, her apologists insist, Thatcher did what was necessary to turn Britain’s economy round. But she didn’t. Growth during the 1980s, at 2.4%, was exactly the same as during the turbulent 1970s and lower again in the post-Thatcher 1990s, at 2.2% — while in the corporatist 1960s it averaged over 3%.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]And despite claims of a Thatcher “productivity miracle”, productivity growth was also higher in the 60s (and it’s gone into reverse under Cameron). What her government did do was redistribute growth from the poor to the rich, driving up profits and slashing employees’ share of national income through her assault on trade unions. That’s why it felt like a boom in better-off Britain, as the top rate of tax was more than halved, while[/FONT] [FONT=Arial][FONT=Times New Roman]real incomes fell by 40% for the poorest[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=Arial]in her first decade in power.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]---------- [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]rolling back the welfare state, the massive state bureaucracy and punitive taxes?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Which bit of this did thatcher do?
- the welfare budget was greater when she left office than when she began.
- state beaurocracy was increased in the nhs by the preposterous ‘internal market’. like this govt, big talk of quango abolition was followed by rapid creation of all their own quangos.
- thatcher only managed to afford tax cuts for the wealthiest, and by wastng our, or legally, scotland’s, north sea oil money.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]the thatcher ‘economic miracle’ was like all miracles; smoke and mirrors.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]-------- [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]I went to school in Britain in the 70’s. I lived in a council house in Wandsworth, a well built, modern, little house with a garden front and back. Part of a well resourced estate of similar properties, full of working class families with good jobs. The houses were built in the 70’s and the first families moved in by 1977. There were similar developments all over London. [/FONT][FONT=Verdana]
They were the last council houses ever built in Wandsworth, nowadays working people on average salaries in London have to move way out of the city, or take their chances with insecure, expensive private rentals. just one example of how society, you know what that is, has deteriorated since the 70’s.
My mum still lives in the same house, along with one or two other families on the estate, but most of the houses have been sold off, for prices way beyond the scope of average salary families. When my mum sadly passes on, many years from now, the house will be taken by the council and, no doubt, sold on quickly. My sisters have moved away, no housing, so have all the children of those families. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]--------- [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]Thatcher didn’t save Britain, she destroyed it. Back in the 70’s, despite the myths of right wing revisionists,Britain was a promising, progressive country. The whole of Europe experienced industrial and societal unrest, the oil crisis, the inflationary pressures of rapidly expanding economies. It is a myth that Germany and France, or any other European country were not suffering similar problems. Those countries decided to deal with the changes by organising their societies together. They took unions and workers into the boardroom, they gave workers power and responsibility in the decision making process. France and Germany did this by maintaining their strong industrial base, by providing state support at every level. Maggie closed down the industrial base, threw in her lot with finance and banking and used a precious gift, the unique, massive subsidy of North Sea Oil, (discovered and extracted by the brilliant engineers and planners fully supported by state owned British National Oil Corporation). She blew the lot on an shabby, inumerate economic ideology,unemployment and division, that is her true legacy, how sad. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]---------- [/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia]“She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations…and refused to recognise the rights of citizens to vote for parties of their choice.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia][/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia]-----[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia][/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia]“She didn’t ever seem to be able to realise that when a government starts to act like a paramilitary organisation then the paramilitary organisation essentially wins,” Seamus Mallon, a moderate Irish nationalist who served as Northern Ireland’s deputy leader from 1998 to 2001, told Irish state broadcaster RTE.[/FONT]
[FONT=Georgia]------ [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]The British Coal Industry was the most modern and efficient in the world. We were world leaders in the then new and rapidly expanding clean coal technology. They even closed the Selby Complex, the state of the art in terms of deep mine extraction. The Government preferred to import coal from those dictatorships it supposedly despised, and South American coal mined by children.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]No problem on the balance sheet of the amoral.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Don’t forget now, be nice to Mr Putin or he’ll turn off the gas. We had two days supply left during the recent cold spell, and thanks to that great patriot Mrs Thatcher, we’re now reliant on Russia, and so if we don’t grovel enough we’ll freeze to death sat on an island of coal.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Funny how she succeeded where Scargill failed to make us reliant on Russia, isn’t it?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Does anyone seriously believe that, should Labour win the next election, they will implement any more than cosmetic changes to current policy?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]In 1945 Attlee came to power, and changed everything.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]34 years on, in 1979, Thatcher came to power, and changed everything.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]34 years on, in 2013… well, let’s just say there’s not much sign of a revolution coming.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]-------------[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial] [/FONT][FONT=Arial]Margaret Thatcher destroyed so many lives and communities, and her progeny have built a welfare system where the terminally ill are either begging or doing indefinite Workfare up until days before their death, where the taxpayer pays for free workers to be sent to the richest family in the world’s chain of British supermarkets, where they earn the princely sum of between £50 and £70, where millions of unemployed people compete for part time temporary work at supermarkets or get sent on Workfare, where zero hours contracts again proliferate and agencies recruit in Poland in order to depress the wages of the low paid here, the sons and daughters of the miners and dockers who lined up at the pit head and dockside at dawn to be chosen or sent home now line up outside factories or in the Fens for some pot belied tub of Norfolk lard to decide whether they can work that day or not.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]And, but for a few exceptions, the Labour Party has nothing to say but what a great leader she was.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]------- [/FONT]
‘‘Thatcher came to power in one recession and left it in another. She enjoyed but squandered two uncommon advantages: the yield of North Sea oil, which reached its peak in the 1980s, and the proceeds of her programme of privatisation which…brought the government large sums which were credited to current account and enabled it to present illusorily balanced budgets. She curbed inflation but simultaneously nurtured an explosion of credit and a consumer boom. The pound was kept at a high value with concomitant high interest rates which stifled industry, extinguished viable as well deservedly moribund undertakings, reduced manufacturing output by a third and so diminished the tax base, rendered Britain incapable of financing its public education and social services and raised unemployment to levels unforeseen by the government itself. During the Thatcher years a nation of savers became a nation of gamblers. Private domestic debt trebled, mortgage debt quadrupled and personal savings - an important and distinctive element in the British economy - sank from 16 per cent of national income to close to zero. There was a return to widespread poverty, which although much less personally distressing than that of the Great Depression between the wars, was painfully felt and evident and was reflected in a variety of telling statistics such as prosecutions for begging or loitering , which rose to 4,000 a week. By cutting credit controls and taxes Thatcher fuelled speculation, encouraged the nation to live beyond its means and created demand on the economy which could be met only by imports which crippled the balance of payments. Vast amounts of money were lent to speculators and lost.’’
Peter Calvocoressi
[FONT=Times New Roman]I’d argue what she did was to create the opportunity for people to own their own home, based on a genuine belief that the people should strive to achieve and those who did should be rewarded - as opposed to the purely lax, corrupt regulation, planning and stroke politics that fueled it here.[/FONT]
And what did her policy achieve? The concentration of former public housing into the hands of property magnates who are now making an absolute fortune. Including key Conservative Party members who have profited directly from that policy. Far from help the ordinary person gain housing it has pushed home ownership far beyond the reach of young people, especially in London where it is estimated that the deposit needed for a house in the next few years may exceed £100,000. She facilitated the transfer of public housing into the hands of the landlords, many of whom are now being paid by the state in the form of rent allowance while 5 million are on the waiting list.
The Right to Buy
This is constantly held up as a positive aspect of her legacy but a cursory look at the housing situation in Britain will tell you it was a disaster for working class people today. Up to a third of the houses which were sold are now being rented out, far from creating a situation of home-ownership all it did was create a new class of landlords. The son of the housing minister at the time, Ian Gow, himself owns ninety former council properties in London alone which are rented out for premium rents. Many of these council properties are owned by rental firms who are registered in places like the Caymans etc and as such pay little or no tax. Meanwhile there are five million people on the housing waiting list and rents are through the roof.
Thatcher’s housing scheme transfered a valuable public asset in the form of housing into private hands which has now been concentrated in the hands of the rich. The fact that key Tories have benefited financially is even more nauseating.
- She supported the retention of capital punishment
- She destroyed the country’s manufacturing industry
- She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws
- She abolished free milk for schoolchildren (“Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”)
- She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)
- She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration
- She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)
- She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million
- She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands
- The poll tax
- She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad
- She compared her “fight” against the miners to the Falklands War
- She privatised state monopolies and created the corporate greed culture that we’ve been railing against for the last 5 years
- She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS
- She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits
- She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA
- She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control
- Section 28
- She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as “that grubby little terrorist”
- She support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and sent the SAS to train their soldiers
- She allowed the US to bomb Libya in 1986, against the wishes of more than 2/3 of the population
- She opposed the reunification of Germany
- She invented Quangos
- She increased VAT from 8% to 17.5%
- She had the lowest approval rating of any post-war Prime Minister
- Her post-PM job? Consultant to Philip Morris tobacco at $250,000 a year, plus $50,000 per speech
- The Al Yamamah contract
- She opposed the indictment of Chile’s General Pinochet
- Social unrest under her leadership was higher than at any time since the General Strike
- She presided over interest rates increasing to 15%
- BSE
- She presided over 2 million manufacturing job losses in the 79-81 recession
- She opposed the inclusion of the Republic of Ireland in the Northern Ireland peace process
- She supported sanctions-busting arms deals with South Africa
- Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitkin
- Crime rates doubled under Thatcher
- Black Wednesday – Britain withdraws from the ERM and the pound is devalued. Cost to Britain - £3.5 billion; profit for George Soros - £1 billion
- Poverty doubled while she opposed a minimum wage
- She privatised public services, claiming at the time it would increase public ownership. Most are now owned either by foreign governments (EDF) or major investment houses. The profits don’t now accrue to the taxpayer, but to foreign or institutional shareholders.
- She cut 75% of funding to museums, galleries and other sources of education
- In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions
- 21.9% inflation
Bullet points?
Used to sing that in school. It’s been in my head all week after remembering it at the weekend.
