Baroness Thatcher has died.

I don't understand the fuss either way, She had a great life & did well for herself & her family, Why should the populous be involved in her funeral/grief etc ???

Housey said:

Ah yes, the religious approach to debate. As someone who has run companies and employed people and as someone who mixes with many people who do the same I say you are talking simplistic left wing twaddle.

None of the 3 major political parties support your stance that the unions should have been given more power either. All of the opposition leaders of the time have commented that they had become too powerful and needed controlling.

People at the time voted the torries in for the very reasons that they were tired of business as normal, that being held to the mercy of a few socialist nutters trying to create turmoil for their own ends and using their, often enforced members, as chess pieces in the big game.

I can't imagine you were of the age that remembers the 70's, remembers having no light, no heat, no money due to strikes?

Click to expand...

While certain elements can go too far, it's ignorant to ignore the fact the same entity is the one who gave us regular working hours, a reasonable wage & workers rights.

Looking at the data at the ever growing income gap indications the power is clearly slanted the other way around now & has been for some time.

But don't worry, I'm sure your "righty cloud of ignorance" (to use the same kind of rhetoric you do) will come crashing down as soon as the problem of diminished demand through wage stagnation becomes unsustainable.

good riddence she has blood on her hands.

I predict future celebrations for the death of Cameron and IDS.

elmarko said:

While certain elements can go too far, it's ignorant to ignore the fact the same entity is the one who gave us regular working hours, a reasonable wage & workers rights.

Click to expand...

I agree that it’s important to remember the achievements of the Unions, but they evolved heavily with time and were not the same beast they originally were. Their original goal was to convert the extractive economic institutions into inclusive ones, were the workers also benefited from their labour. This they largely achieved. But by the 70’s they themselves had become “extractive” through the imposition of closed shops, restricted working practices etc. This was hampering British economic growth and had to be curtailed. It can be argued that it swung too far in the opposite direction and I believe that is a fair argument. But it does not change the fact that the Union power needed to be curtailed.

elmarko said:

Looking at the data at the ever growing income gap indications the power is clearly slanted the other way around now & has been for some time.

Click to expand...

This is true and needs to be corrected, but it’s unfair to imply that this is dominantly a result of the loss of Union power (if this is what you are saying?). The ability to demand better wages is a factor, but the lack of incentives to work will also play a role for many people. I suspect both factors are critical. It would be interesting to see the some stats on income disparity between:

1) Working and non working households
2) Low income households (working) and those with no working member

With this information it might be possible to get a better feel for the route cause.

guys help me out here,

sometimes we need to see what is missing and not, what is there.


now for the life of me I have seen every politician, I can think of paying respect to Mrs T, some I have not seen for years.

but where is Blair? I know he done a radio phone in interview, where he sounded awful, has anyone seen him?

he is maybe 'the' politician that should be paying respects to her

Once again the issue of free school milk raises it's head. She was not prime minister, she voted against it's abolition in cabinet, due to the fact that she was education secretary and had cabinet responsibility, she saw it through.

Unions can regain strength again. All they have to do is be attractive enough to regain membership, truly represent their members wishes and interests in the workplace, be fully democratic.

SPG said:

good riddence she has blood on her hands.

Click to expand...

Oh yes, she also transformed higher education, giving us a world respected university system. Attendance is optional of course.

fadetoblack said:

RUBBISH

that massive majority or landslide never consisted of more than 44% of the vote. That means that for every 44 people who voted for her, 56 did not. Some majority!

Click to expand...

Irrespective, it's still only 3% less than Tony Blair's (landslide) win. The only difference is, Maggie did it 3 times on the trot

SPG said:

good riddence she has blood on her hands.

Click to expand...

Seriously....WTF.

MPs have been told they can claim up to £3,750 each on travelling to Westminster to pay tribute to Thatcher.

SPG said:

good riddence she has blood on her hands.

Click to expand...

Who's?

Amazed to read that she voted against the abolishing of free milk, if you listen to the lefties you'd think she personally went around taking cartons from the hands of toddlers.

elmarko said:

While certain elements can go too far, it's ignorant to ignore the fact the same entity is the one who gave us regular working hours, a reasonable wage & workers rights.

Looking at the data at the ever growing income gap indications the power is clearly slanted the other way around now & has been for some time.

But don't worry, I'm sure your "righty cloud of ignorance" (to use the same kind of rhetoric you do) will come crashing down as soon as the problem of diminished demand through wage stagnation becomes unsustainable.

Click to expand...

We needed a starting point, the country was very very broken, significantly more so than it is today. You can't judge decisions made back then against todays backdrop. We are all sitting here with the power of hindsight, back then she didn't have that and needed to bludgeon to make the change. Forgetting that is forgetting/not knowing what it was like back then.

When you make fundamental changes many people will hate it, but many of the changes were needed and though some of them were wrong it's easy to uphold the wrong ones and forget the good ones, as the British as a nation thrive on negativity, thankfully not to the same extent we did in 1979

atpbx said:

Yeah see, that's to do with another person, who used the word eggs, instead of flocks, and was actually time victim of a cover up and proved right in the fact that there had been a salmonella epidemic and I quote "of considerable proportions".

So another person guilty of only trying to do the right thing.

Click to expand...

Yeah maybe. I'm just relaying my personal experience of what I see as the direct impact of a few poorly chosen careless words translating into livelihood destruction. Different person, same government, but you're right a bit of a tangent. Very powerful though - everything is political, there's no getting away from it. I regret bringing milk up again rather than Edwina though, wish people would STFU.

What's Cameron going do now that his master brown bread?

Parliament reopens on Monday. I'm at a loss as to why Parliament couldn't wait until then to pay their respects which woukd save the taxpayer quite a wedge.

Margaret Thatcher was a political colossus in British politics and in my humble opinion there were good and terrible aspects to her tenure as PM. Britain's economy needed dragging out of the mire of the 1970s and you could argue is that her policies helped the UK become the major world economy it is today but what is indisputable of her time in office is the astronomical social damage done.

Her response to the Falklands invasion was pretty much flawless and she does get my respect for that but I live and work in the north east of England which had heavy industry decimated under herand I saw many good men thrown on the heap as a kid when shipyards and pits closed and it remains an area where the Conservatives give not a toss for. Many a pit village that once had full employment fell into decay and the social blight that kicked in is still seen today with crime and drugs being a problem.

The then set up of British Coal and the NUM had to have it's wings clipped and I do accept that times move on but where pits closed, there were many people left to rot with very little investment seen to cushion the blow.

Not a huge fan but it's not in me to speak ill of the dead.

I am sure when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dies all the pro-capitalists anti-war will be in the street with devil masks and burning newspapers.... nope

I think it speaks volumes to the extent of the anger that these people have towards capitalism. a lot of them in the streets were not even old enough to live through her tenure but their parents hated her so they went along with it. The last two generations that have been put through government school have all been taught to hate thatcher because all the teachers are pro unions and hate thatcher themselves. This is why most of the young people in the uk at the moment are anti-capitalists and pro-big government. Not to mention the fact that they have all been manipulated by the BBC for all their lives.

After a few days reflection I am disappointed she gets a state funeral at all and feel the do not speak ill of the dead thing is being abused to a point where her fans are idolising her and rewriting history to a point where we have to speak ill of her just for perspective.

Her foreign policy was quite frankly opportunist, self involved and for the most part woefully inconsistent which no modern PM could ever get away with. Her domestic policy favoured so few it was embarrassing and her policies towards Northern Ireland cost thousands of lives by trying to drag the places back 50-100 years. Though the defence of the Falklands (apart from the Belgrano sinking) is a landmark in the application of the principles of sovereignty which should be taken as a precedent.

As a plus she broke the strangle hold unions held over their respective professions to a point where they generally are required to actually consider their members interests not the leaders political ideologies.

On the worst side of it all her attitudes towards all matters to do with sports have fundamentally broken Britain's sporting ambitions for a few generations by taking away the role schools held in developing competition and sport in favours of making a little cash. Her attitudes towards football and hooliganism were nearly as counter productive as her attitude towards Ireland and her use of the Olympics in 1980 as a political tool is just deceitful.

I don't feel it is fair that we cannot speak ill of the dead when all we get to hear about is how "she saved Britain" and yet laid the foundations for the current mess that is society.

Didn't she send an SAS team in to break a riot at Peterhead prison with pick axe handles instead of MP5s ?

Wonder if Mark Thatcher will be able to find his way to the funeral ?

To soon ?