Thatcher dead?

[Doobs]

Vermin...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9980814/Police-injured-and-arrests-made-as-hundreds-celebrated-death-of-Margaret-Thatcher.html

Police just doing their job mate.

[AndrewT]

I am declaring myself out of this argument as nothing on this thread has convinced me that I should chnage my views. I thought I was narrow minded but there are a few in this thread who take the biscuit.

Some of us don't have biscuits because Thatcher the Biscuit Snatcher took them away from us when we were at school.

[Woodsey]

Vermin...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9980814/Police-injured-and-arrests-made-as-hundreds-celebrated-death-of-Margaret-Thatcher.html

Police just doing their job mate.

I have full respect for the police.

[bobAlike]

I am declaring myself out of this argument as nothing on this thread has convinced me that I should chnage my views. I thought I was narrow minded but there are a few in this thread who take the biscuit.

Some of us don't have biscuits because Thatcher the Biscuit Snatcher took them away from us when we were at school.

Do you want some of mine, I've got too many?

[MANTIS01]

Just seen some miners on the TV standing outside a ramshackle pit shaking their heads and saying they're glad Thatcher is dead. It's like somebody still moaning about a bad beat 30 years after it happened. There's a whole big world out there fellas, prob time to crack on and look for a different career now.

Exactly the sort of myopic garbage I'd expect to read from someone with no experience of those events.

Not worth wasting more keystrokes on it though, as that's presumably what the troll attempt was intended to achieve.

In the 70’s my dad was laid off from his factory job and found it real hard to find work due to the state of the country, it didn’t help he had a longstanding back injury. My mum worked at 3 menial jobs from early morning till late at night 6 days a week to scratch out a meagre living for 3 kids and her mum who was crippled with MS. On her one day off she knitted school jumpers for us, darned socks, bought second hand shoes. My dad looked for work everyday to no avail and grew his own veg in the tiny back garden to try and put food on our plates. I remember my parents sobbing at the kitchen table some nights because they didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. Is that the kind of hardship you’re talking about?

This went on for some time but things started to change in the 80s. My mum got a job with a new double glazing company that a young entrepreneur set up. She knew nothing about this industry but was willing to try anything and she had an insane work ethic and drive to succeed. She got out there and bashed it up mate. She became one of the most successful in the industry. This meant we didn’t worry about food anymore and could afford to move to a nice house. At the same time my dad got a job with Tetley as a drayman and despite his bad back he threw barrels of beer around until he was 65.

What they didn’t do was stand outside my dad’s old factory shaking their head blaming somebody else and lamenting their situation. Not really sure how that approach solves any problems or gets you moving in the right direction. Hence my comment which you breezily brand as trolling. Not sure why people think miners have a monopoly on hardship.

@doubleup - disagree. What stops somebody marching into my house and taking everything I have is the fact I would bat them in the head if they tried. I like many others am fine about taking control of my own life. Incidentally, happy to accept the level 1 thinker tag. 

More history now

Battle of Towton 1461 the envious north march on the south to take everything they had but the common people of the south took to the field stood firm and bashed them up. These days they would prob just go to the airport and fck off to Bermuda but I'm not rich so wouldn't have that kind of mobility.

[AndrewT]

I am declaring myself out of this argument as nothing on this thread has convinced me that I should chnage my views. I thought I was narrow minded but there are a few in this thread who take the biscuit.

Some of us don't have biscuits because Thatcher the Biscuit Snatcher took them away from us when we were at school.

Do you want some of mine, I've got too many?

This is indicative of the huge biscuit inequality which has resulted from years of Thatcherism - poor, starving boys like me relying on the largesse of the biscuit-hoarding elite.

I look forward to the glorious day when there will be a bourbon for every boy, a garibaldi for every girl and no one shall suffer for the want of a custard cream.

[Simon Galloway]

Lowering inflation isn't an overnight process.  The reforms (probably the most "liberal" Conservative ever) hit hard ~ undoubtedly harder than any other leader-in-waiting was prepared to do.  The benefits didn't happen overnight.  As Maggie herself said on leaving number 10: "We are leaving after 11.5 years and we are leaving things in much better condition than we arrived."

If not Maggie, whoever else would have become PM in 79 would have taken over the reins in a very bad spot.  It is conjecture to say who might or might not have made a better fist of it.  On balance, I find it very unlikely that anyone else would have been brave enough to drive through the reforms as quickly as she did.  Clearly not vote-winning reforms for many. Whoever else may have been PM couldnt have waved a magic wand and made it all better.  There were going to have to be tough decisions made, she certainly wasn't scared to make them.

[bobby1]

I am declaring myself out of this argument as nothing on this thread has convinced me that I should chnage my views. I thought I was narrow minded but there are a few in this thread who take the biscuit.

Some of us don't have biscuits because Thatcher the Biscuit Snatcher took them away from us when we were at school.

Do you want some of mine, I've got too many?

This is indicative of the huge biscuit inequality which has resulted from years of Thatcherism - poor, starving boys like me relying on the largesse of the biscuit-hoarding elite.

I look forward to the glorious day when there will be a bourbon for every boy, a garibaldi for every girl and no one shall suffer for the want of a custard cream.

too good.

but Andrew, when there are always biscuits in the cupboard, where's the fun in biscuits?

[bobAlike]

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's biscuits. It's quite a characteristic of them.

[doubleup]

@doubleup - disagree. What stops somebody marching into my house and taking everything I have is the fact I would bat them in the head if they tried. I like many others am fine about taking control of my own life. Incidentally, happy to accept the level 1 thinker tag. 

Well done completely missing the point.

and the rich are quite welcome to fck of to wherever, but if they make money out of this countries markets they can pay their share of tax to keep the show going, just like the fat cats who run tesco and sainsburys from the overpriced south east while making their profits from the whole country.

[MANTIS01]

I find if you buy a Teatime selection box people look at you with envy in their eyes. They think why should that bastard have such a wide selection of biscuits when I only have a small packet of plain digestives?

[AlrightJack]

It was a Free Biscuit Economy, but she only threw the crumbs to the nation.

[AndrewT]

The City fatcats licked the jam out of our jammie dodgers before we even knew the packet had been opened.

[redarmi]

Some interesting arguments in this thread.  I cant agree with a lot of the things that she did.  Privatisation took away huge amounts of assets and sold them at a huge discount to those that could afford them.  If privatisation had been carried out at true market prices then I wouldn't have really had a problem with it but it wasn't because it wasnt politically expedient to do so.  That took money out of 90% of the populations pockets and handed it to those that could afford to buy shares.  Similarly with the sale of council housing, it was done at a massive discount and handed the profit into then hands of the few rather than the many.

For sure some people did well but literally millions didn't.    I am very happy for those that did well out of Thatcher but surely they can see that it wasnt possible for everyone to "get on their bike".  I will give you a personal example.  I was born in Middlesbrough and my Dad was a steelworker.  As a direct response to policies from Thatchers government he lost his job with British Steel in, I think, 1983 when I was eight.  I distinctly remember him, somewhat ironically, getting on his bike every single day and going out and looking for work locally.  Occasionally he would get work for a couple of weeks but at that point because of the decimation of the manufacturing base there wasn't much/any work.  It is hard to describe the effect not being able to work and provide for you family can have on a man.  The best example I have ever seen was Boys from the Blackstuff but it was tough.  I remember my Mother crying on a regular basis and I remember not being able to go on school trips and other stuff like that because we simply didn't have the money.  Eventually in 1988 my Dad got a job in another part of the country and a year later we moved but those five or so years will always live in my memory and they were a direct result of Thatchers policies.  In later years I heard Norman Lamont say he thought unemployment was a fair price to pay for lower inflation and it struck me that could only be said by a man that had never felt the real indignity associated with unemployment. 

I don't buy into the theories that everything was bad and I am broadly in support of market economies and think her approach to the Falklands was principled and largely in line with what the population (of the Falklands) wanted in the face of huge provocation but I cannot help but think she effectively damaged a large part of our country beyond repair.  I know it was bad in 1979 but go to Middlesbrough or Sunderland or Barnsley or anyone of a huge amount of towns in the North and some in the Midlands and you will question where the huge improvement people talk about is.....

[nirvana]

It's interesting to me that anyone still thinks they might be a living, breathing socialist. Everyone in the UK today is just a certain shade of capitalist, shurely ?