Maggie Thatcher

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Deiseblue

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I cannot believe that a thread has not been started previously !

Let me start - She's only in hell less than a day & she's already tried to shut three furnaces !
 
Not a friend of Ireland (Norn Iron) or the North of England. Probably not easy places to like or help at the time though - one gripped by terror, the other with a terminal decline in a core industry (coal).

However, AFAIK, empathy was not on her agenda, human consequences a footnote. I heard one guy last night say she was "blind to danger" - maybe she wasnt but she just didnt care.

While she'd appeal to my right wing economic views and there's probably a lot to be said for her on that front, it does grate with the socially liberal side of me, and I think she might be a cautionary tale to those who say - "Put Michael O'Leary in charge of the country - he'll sort it all out!" No doubt he would and we'd save a lot of money, I just wonder would he be any more successful in knowing when step back from the brink (p.s. full credit to him re his recent donation to the jockey).

So a mixed bag (oops, unfortunate choice of words) re Margaret, but R.I.P. anyway.
 
Deiseblue said:
I cannot believe that a thread has not been started previously !

Let me start - She's only in hell less than a day & she's already tried to shut three furnaces !
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Really sick and distasteful to sneer at the death of an elderly statesman like that.

This country really could do with a visionary like her to free the island from the shackles of the public sector unions, as she did so well in the UK in the 80's.

Hope no-one sneers at you or your family when they pass on.

You should be ashamed
 
I remember seeing her on the telly when I was young and it's fair to say that she wasn't particularly liked in our house.

On the economic front she was IMO always looking at the bigger picture (the macro level) rather than the smaller issues (the micro level). She shut down the mines which adversely affected individuals but she brought about change that bettered England as a whole. I read someone saying yesterday that with all of Tony Blair's years in power it was interesting that Labour didn't move to reverse her changes regarding the mines, so she was obviously right, however unpopular.

I wonder how we would fear if we had someone with her gumption run the country - would we too have voted her in three times?

I saw the Iron Lady too before Xmas and it was a disgrace IMO as it focused too much on her illness in later life whilst glossing over everything she had done (good & bad).

RIP
 

I dunno, I'd say it was more sick to sneer at the 323 young sea cadets on the Belgrano that she ordered sank as it was retreating and then publically proclaimed people should rejoice in its sinking. A little black humour about her death doesn't quite seem so sick or distasteful.

And why does she get special treatment on her death? I've known many a public figure and even close friends and family die and in every case there's always been some black humour at their passing.

Her vision was to free the UK from its public industries and the grip of the unions. Her conviction was that the free market would replace the industries she closed down. It didn't and in most of those areas where the industries were the only source of employment, they're still affected by her vision.

Want to know how she'd do here? Look around, because Ireland is living the Thatcher economic dream. Her vision created the model for boom and bust reckless, win at all costs property market and centralised wealth to a capital and its suburbs.

Those with memories of how their town was essentially plunged into despair by her vision are justifiably less than compassionate about her passing.

I personally hope, the families of victims of the Belgrano, every striking miner beaten by her police army, victims of the Pinochet regime she supported and maybe even Nelson Mandlella sleep just that bit more peacefully now.

And heck, I hope they had a good sneer last night too.
 
Betsy Og said:
Not a friend of Ireland (Norn Iron) or the North of England...
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Really? In the case of Northern Ireland, she bravely withstood a tsunami of political and personal pressure to negotiate and defend the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, which ultimately paved the way for the peace process and the almost complete ending of paramilitary violence.

That on its own is a massive achievement.
 

I presume that the reason it didn't is that it was obviously not economic to do so. As per my earlier post, why didn't Tony Blair re-open the mines?

Latrade said:
Want to know how she'd do here? Look around, because Ireland is living the Thatcher economic dream. Her vision created the model for boom and bust reckless, win at all costs property market
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I'm not sure about that to be honest. Thatcher if anything curbed the public sector which is in stark contrast to what happened here with the expansion we witnessed, both in the usual departments but also in all out quangos. On top of this benchmarking was introduced as well as increases in social welfare and the old age pension. Not very Thatcherite to me. All of this cash flooding into the economy with interest rates so low saw the money being ploughed into assests, with housing being the obvious choice for us property-loving Irish. on the way down, in the crash, the banks were bailed out (ie depositors & bond holders), which would also go totally against Thatcherims and Capitalism. Still, it's good for the people to have someone we can blame.


Latrade said:
...and centralised wealth to a capital and its suburbs.
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I think to be fair that this has happened in most countries
 
Latrade said:
Her conviction was that the free market would replace the industries she closed down. It didn't and in most of those areas where the industries were the only source of employment, they're still affected by her vision.
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By the 1980s, British coal mining was a dirty, unhealthy, polluting, uneconomic and anachronistic industry, whose workers routinely suffered chronic ill-health and widespread premature deaths. Blaming Mrs Thatcher for closing the mines would be like blaming an Irish Taoiseach for shutting the industrial schools.

It wasn't Mrs Thatcher's fault that entire areas of the UK economy had such a heavy reliance on this disastrous industry in the decades before she came to power.

Latrade said:
Want to know how she'd do here? Look around, because Ireland is living the Thatcher economic dream. Her vision created the model for boom and bust reckless, win at all costs property market and centralised wealth to a capital and its suburbs.
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Mrs Thatcher's core economic philosophy was to use interest rates to curb inflation. Our boom was built on the polar opposite, ie a policy of low interest rates, contrived to bribe Europeans into embracing the single currency, which fuelled property market and wages inflation. Our bust is the inevitable consequence of this folly. Mrs Thatcher's dire warnings in the early 1990s about the single currency have since been proven correct.

Latrade said:
And heck, I hope they had a good sneer last night too.
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Classy.
 

That was the latter end and, I agree, was a huge positive. However, earlier in her tenure was she not key to the 'criminalisation' strategy which further alienated the nationalist community, handed republicanism its hunger striker martyrs (not blaming her for their deaths but her lack of pragmatism on this one fuelled self-righteousness and support for 'the long war'). I'd have to get out the auld history books to give any more specifics but pre Anglo Irish Agreement I dont think she was helping much.

(The fact they tried to blow her up in Brighton didnt help ...., but was that a reaction to what had gone before? - not saying it justified it or anything but does it illustrate in what esteem she was held by republicanism and, perhaps, wider nationalism...?).
 
The fact that the INLA had killed her close friend Airey Neave (blowing his legs off before he later died in hospital) as early as 1979 didn't help either. That said, she did learn from her errors in dealing with the hunger strikers, and advanced the cause a negotiated settlement several years ahead of the likes of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
 

So I think we can agree on the ...errr... mixed bag analysis.
 
Firefly said:
I presume that the reason it didn't is that it was obviously not economic to do so. As per my earlier post, why didn't Tony Blair re-open the mines?
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That would be a point if people were claiming Blair's policies were in anyway a model, but not many do.

However, the point isn't so much the economic viability of the mines or british industry...well it is..sort of. Nobody can deny, except the most blinkered how much of a hold on progress the unions had in those industries and the power they exherted. In fact, the resistence of the unions to collective bargaining, ultimately led to their demise.

The point is that post war Britain nationalised many industries and supplies as that was economically for the best at the time. T McGibney's statement that you can't blame Thatcher for that is true, but at the same time you can't blame a region or town for that either. That's how it was set up, that was where you worked, where your dad worked.

These weren't well paid employees earning 80K with overtime, they were still poor and that workplace was it.

Successive governments were happy with that as it meant at least they were earning, so the regions had little other development and were left to themselves.

So your life was get through the school you had to and get a job at the plant/pit. If you were lucky, you might have had a choice of a couple of factories, many weren't that lucky.

And then that's gone. No assistance, no help with anything. You got a grant to "retrain" but there was no other work or employer to retrain for. No bedding in period, nothing. And when it quickly went from 1 in 9 children living in poverty to 1 in 3 and when areas hit the largest levels of poverty and lack of resources seen, nothing else happened. The reason people harbour a lot of resentment is more from that side, that they were cast away, ignored and left to rot while everything moved to services and the financial services and more specifically the South East of England.

Then she sold their houses of the unemployed.

Inward investment never happened. The tax breaks to the rich didn't spark the spirit of invesment, it sparked the spirit of decadance. Ramping up North Sea Oil production helped paper over a lot of cracks, slow downs in Germany and France brought the UK closer to them in output rather than the Uk rising to meet them.

It is the sheer callousness of her vision that still holds in many people's memories. The rug was pulled from under them and they were left to rot.

So yes, the idea may have had an element of logic behind it, but to implement it immediately and without any consideration for the community it would impact? To then see that impact and still do nothing? Hmmmm. It divided Britain and that divide remains.

As to my classy comment T McGibney, I don't claim to be classy, so it stays. I think in balance, her record of compassion and humanity, or rather utter lack of, shows a much greater lack of class and I'm not adverse to stooping and showing disrespect where no respect is deserved.
 
Hi Latrade,

I disagree with some of your points, but I must say, that's an excellent post.

Firefly.
 
she was a truly evil person and no friend to this country, probably roasting with her 'best pal' pinochet now! good riddance i say..
 
Funnily enough the Anglo Irish Agreement was 'her biggest regret' according to her friend Peter the Punt.

Describing her as some sort of peace process visionary is laughable. She couldn't care less whether Northern Ireland was at peace or not. She prolonged the conflict. She let ten brave young men die, the first being a member of her own parliament (who incidentally garnered more votes than she did in her own constituency.) Whether you supported them or not, they WERE political prisoners, a fact later recognised by the early release scheme under the good friday agreement.
 
Some really nasty vitriolic posts on here today, and the woman isn't even in her grave.

Shame on you.
 
celebtastic said:
Some really nasty vitriolic posts on here today, and the woman isn't even in her grave.

Shame on you.
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I think you need to lighten up a bit - there are plenty posters here who could get up on their high horses and say shame on you for most of your posts.
 
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