Baroness Margaret Thatcher Has Died

[Dreidel Dreidelsohn]

That horrible woman and that lousy actor across the Atlantic were both responsible for the current economic mess.

[ScotsAlan]

I was a school leaver in Scotland when Maggie was in her first term. Everyone felt hopeless. There was no real jobs, only YTS schemes that were tailored to suit the employer.

 

I think that feeling still affects me to this day. because almost nobody in Scotland voted for her. My first 3 votes were in effect wasted votes because no matter what we wanted, we were out numbered by the idiot "new miiddle class" she was trying to create in the home counties.

 

The poll tax caused me real hardship ( remember it was introduced in Scotland first). I was getting paid £350 a month and then all of a sudden we had to pay an extra £48 a month tax( for me and the wife who did not work). I just could not pay it.We had the ballifs round wanting to take stuff. And if I remember correctly, I was still paying off the bank loan I took out to pay them long after the poll tax was abolished.

 

I know what it was like to live under Maggie.

 

 

To me Maggie was a monster. But she was an elected monster. So I don't blame her, I blame the people who voted for her.

 

And you know who you are peeps

[Thomas Jefferson]

Ah but who compiled the "large volumes of information"? History is normally written by the "winners" , the "great and the good" and not those at the "coal face".

 

But I am not actually putting forward an argument or claim about anything, nor have I posted any information or facts to back up an argument or claim. I was only questioning Gladys' arbitrary dismissal of anyone's input just because they were not personally alive during Thatcher's rule. Being alive at the time might give some extra insight on a psychological level, but it doesn't give them greater insight into the economics or the political issues affecting the nation as a whole.

[ballaughbiker]

Thanks for quickly removing the unnecessary profanity TJ.

 

Tell you what is surprising Alan. When her fellow Tories managed to get rid of her they *still* got in at the next election.

[ScotsAlan]

Aye, Mr Grey got in.

 

Because all the home county wannabe middle class were scared their shares in the plundered national assets would go down.

 

And alas, John Smith died at the wrong time.

 

Kinnock was/is a twat. There was no effective opposition befoe John Smith. He was the man we needed.

 

I still reckon Kinnock was bought with his EU job. His wife got a good number too. But hey, she was elected so fair play.

 

Kinnock was not elected tho. I wonder when that deal was done.....

 

Lord Kinnock my arse.

[hboy]

Well you see, LDV, there are those that experienced, first hand Thatcherite policies, knew and experienced excatly how they impacted on every day life. They also saw the real strife and division caused by Maggie's policies and the removal of soul and emotion.

 

That will never be captured in any official record, but popular culture did (hence my reference to the proliferation of alternative comedy above).

 

You really do have to have lived through that period to even get a flavour of the social division. I lived in Leicester from 1979 to 1982 as a student; that area was relatively untouched in terms of division, but still not a gleaming example of the success of Thatcherite policies. I returned to studentdom in Sheffield for one year in 1985/86 and, my god, what I saw was dereliction on a massive scale. Sheffield, you know, the place they make knives and forks, everyone needs knives and forks, the place where they carefully engineer steel, set within seven hills like Rome. You know? The reality was appalling; during the day, there were mainly men taking small children around, presumably because they were unemployed and the wives were cleaning or doing whatever bitty job to support the family. Plenty of vagrants, sleeping where and when they could. There was a strong prostitution industry - perhaps that explained the men's day time role.

 

It was sad, very sad and I would hate to see that ever again as a direct result of a policy to starve out a particular sector or sectors. And that is truly what she set out to do and did.

 

Much of what Thatcher did to break the working class still grates on them and their children 30 years later, as it was brutal and it destroyed whole communities. One of the greatest reminders this week has been the music as you only have to listen to something like Ghost town by the Specials to be reminded of how bloody grim most of Britain was in the early 1980s.

 

You left school and there was fuck all, you wanted to work and there was fuck all, and the general sense of dispair and alienation was incredible. Its still not that bad today when times are supposed to be tough - you might be working in MacDonalds or some other shit place but you do have a job when you wouldn't even have a chance at a job then.

 

The dilemma on the Thatcher issue is though that much of it was needed as British Leyland, British Telecom, British Steel, British Rail, the coalmines, had become nothing but lazy unprofitable ways of keeping people employed doing very little and producing little of value. They were almost state labour camps that kept the working class 'in its place' and sucked out peoples aspirations and ambitions to perpetuate the class system. There was little or no social progression - just 'them and us'

 

You might hate her tactics but the Isle of Man needs a Thatcher character to break us off the unproductive socialist paradise we have become too. There is no personal ambition and no economic progression possible when the state controls almost every aspect of 'commercial' activity in any economy as it just constrains and controls the working class more than it supports and assists them. It makes people the 'instruments of state' in order for them to be able to survive. Yes Thatcher's tactics were brutal and unnecessary but I'd hate to think of what Britain would look like now if things had continued as they were - it would be like Greece or France. As you can see on telly this week too - most of Thatcher's most vocal critics got rich in the post Thatcher era so their protests about how terrible she was 30 years later do tend to look a bit stupid when they are being interviewed in their £3m Notting Hill town houses.

[ScotsAlan]

I feel the same as you Hboy.

 

It was bad times. But were her policies more good than bad?

 

We will never know. I feel sad that she has passed. I feel disgusted that people are celebrating her passing.

 

She affected my life, of that I have no doubt. I never really got over that feeling of worthlessness when I was leaving school. But I also just remember the shop steward "getting the union in"

 

The unions had to be broken. But she was confrontational. She thought God was white and had a home counties post code. She was a meglomaniac. She was lucky, and because she was lucky, millions of people had real hard shit to deal with.

 

Lol, anyone got any spitting image clips to share :-)

[Max Power]

Agreed hboy, that is the one question which everyone should ask themselves...

 

'What would Britain be like today if Margaret Thatcher had never become Prime Minister?'

 

I am sure that there are those who would say that it would be a much better place, but what can they possibly base that assumption on? Britain was a complete mess, run down and ineffective, an international joke and byword for laziness and inefficiency.

[hboy]

Scots Alan, the problem is that forcing through change is never easy and when people aggressively resist change then you have to enforce it even harder in order to succeed. I hated her at the time, but in the cold light of day was it better to have had a chance to better your lot, or spend 20 years or whatever in some state bankrolled battery farm making widgets for things that nobody needed just to pay the bills? In those days in the UK the state controlled you, you were its instrument, you only got on in life if it allowed you too. If you didnt have a job, then you didn't know somebody in the state infrastructure who could give you a job. Its not dissimilar to that here now to be honest, so its interesting watching the old TV footage at this time. Free markets allow individualism to flourish, state controlled industries and markets simply allow the state to perpetuate itself and to maintain the status quo. We need a Manx Maggie more than anything else at the moment before the imploding public sector bankrupts itself trying to maintain the status quo.

[Thomas Jefferson]

Lol, anyone got any spitting image clips to share :-)

 

Yes

 

[ScotsAlan]

I would rather have a Manx John Smith than a Manx Maggie.

 

I am undecided if Maggie was good or bad. Yup, the UK was rotten to the core when she took power. And she was a strong antibiotic. But she was over prescribed.

 

But alas, there was no effective opposition to her. Yes we needed a double dose of medicine to kick start the system, but Kinnock let the workers down. He would not compromise. So Maggie had no choice in many things she done

 

And let's not forget Mr Foot.

 

And the Satchie brothers. They done well out of it

[Lost Login]

Aye, Mr Grey got in.

 

Because all the home county wannabe middle class were scared their shares in the plundered national assets would go down.

 

And alas, John Smith died at the wrong time.

 

Kinnock was/is a twat. There was no effective opposition befoe John Smith. He was the man we needed.

 

I still reckon Kinnock was bought with his EU job. His wife got a good number too. But hey, she was elected so fair play.

 

Kinnock was not elected tho. I wonder when that deal was done.....

 

Lord Kinnock my arse.

 

I agree with you about John Smith but not about Kinnock who was much maligned by the right wing press at the time and consequently never lightly to be elected but I think he almost saved the Labour Party from itself. He was elected leader a couple of years after the SDP was formed and there was a real fight within the labour as the hard left was very strong in the party. He stood up to that, I remember the reaction of the likes of Scargil and Heffer at party conferences as he took them on, and moved the labour party back to the centre. If he had not done then chances are the hard ledft and militant tendency would have run the labour party and I doubt it would have ever recovered. I do not think Kinnock gets the credit he deserves for starting the process of modernising the labour party.

[ScotsAlan]

Was it Kinnock who stopped the mass vote of Unions in the Labour party?

[Lost Login]

I feel the same as you Hboy.

 

It was bad times. But were her policies more good than bad?

 

We will never know. I feel sad that she has passed. I feel disgusted that people are celebrating her passing.

 

She affected my life, of that I have no doubt. I never really got over that feeling of worthlessness when I was leaving school. But I also just remember the shop steward "getting the union in"

 

The unions had to be broken. But she was confrontational. She thought God was white and had a home counties post code. She was a meglomaniac. She was lucky, and because she was lucky, millions of people had real hard shit to deal with.

 

Lol, anyone got any spitting image clips to share :-)

I look at what she did and sort of compare it with pub fight. If she had stopped once she had won and therefore got the changes through that were required then fine.

 

But having won the fight with her enemy basically defenceless against the ropes and exactly where she wanted them she could not stand back rather she had to carry on pummelling them to destroy and humiliate them even though there was no need.

[Lonan3]

Was it Kinnock who stopped the mass vote of Unions in the Labour party?

 

He certainly made speeches that were good enough for the present vice-president of the USA to plagiarise!