What did maggie do?

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SSY said:
If I had my way, maggie would be back in number 10, ruling with iron Fist, best thing that ever happened to this country.

In answer to your question, I dont know, I just love the iron lady.
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Couldn't agree more mate.
 
Maggie never took any crap from anybody. I would much rather she were here now than that spineless little slug Blair and his party of appeasers and apologists.
 
3,000,000 people unemployed was just a start...

The main thing is that, under Maggie, the rich were very rich but the poor were very poor. That's probably why you'll get the two extremes of opinion, the people who loved her and those who hated her, and not many shades of grey in between.

She also went too far in the privatisation of our national assets which successive governments have had to spend time attempting to put right.
 
NeedleGunner said:
Hundreds Killed, Belgrano sank, all for an island that most youngsters don't even know is part of the English Empire along side the fact the only resisdents are penguins :confused:
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Ah yes but it won her the election didn't it? Nation at war don't you know... :rolleyes:
 
She wanted to scrap the right for workers to go on strike, and shaft as many people out of money through various taxes as possible. She represented rich people and the aristorcracy and looked down upon ordinary Britons. She wanted a virtual police state where any criticism of her government could be supressed. There are places in the midlands where the Metropolitan police killed people during the miners strikes, riding into crowds on horseback and beating the **** out of them.

I wasn't around at the time but thats my impression and why I'd never vote conservative.

Watch the 'Boys from the black stuff' and you may gain an impression of how bleak things were under Thatcher.

Edit: My dad said the same. The under Thatcher the rich became richer and the poor got poorer.
 
I still cannot believe how the nations assets were privatised and sold off to the very people who already owned them. But then again the whole thing was based on people's greed. Sell them a few shares which most people will sell the very next day and make a couple of hundred quid.

Why would anyone want her back ?
 
Bri said:
She shafted hard working people by building up coal stocks, left them out to dry. Yeah, what a hero :rolleyes:
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She built up coal stocks (and only just enough, by the way) because the last time anyone tried to tackle the unions, they brought to country to it's knees by crippling industry. The unions (or at least, several of the more radical ones) thought they ran the country. Like it or not, the unions weren't elected. Maggie and the Tories were. So when Scargill and his crown tried it again, Maggie was ready for them ... if barely.

And even then, if it wasn't for the miners that didn't agree with the extreme Socialist policies of Scargill, et al, and for the fact that solidarity for dockers and steel workers was markedly less than enthusiastic, Scargill could well have won. Coal stocls, if I remember correctly, were down to a couple of days when the dockers were out on stirke, but the Government managed to get them back to work and averted the disaster of not being able to get enough coal to power stations to keep them running.

Yes, the unemployment figures were high. But the reason is that the underlying economy needed a huge restructuring, and labour relations most definitely did. Union practices had made this country an economic disaster, a model of atrocious efficiency and a job preservation society for the boys. It had to change.

And Maggie changed it. She curtailed union power quite heavily, but also started the process of getting management and unions to work together, to the benefoit of both, rather than in an adversarial situation, as had been the case for decades. And the result was both temporary unemployment and a restructuring of the economy.

That restructuring could not be done without pain. One aspect of that pain was uneployment, and another was interest rates. The latter was partly due to the dire state of the economy, and aprtly due to external factors, not least the disastrous venbure into the exchange rate mechanism. But unpalatable though it is, that restructuring was essentiual and THAT is what set the foundations for the economic strength we've experienced for the last 15 years or so. It is also Thatcher's policies that set in place the economic regime that Gordon Brown has been riding high on for eight years. Small wonder the first thing he did on getting his butt into Number 11 was announce that he was sticking to Tory spending plans.

Oh, and let's not forget encouraging the house-owning boom. That, in large part, is what has kept the UK economy afloat in the last two years or so, and kept us out of the slump much of the rest of the world has been feeling, because it allows people to build up to the massive levels of consumer debt we've seen, because they still feel rich due to the equity value on their homes. And when people feel rich, they havethe confidence to borrow and, more relevantly, spend. And that consumer spending keeps the high street stores doing well, provides jobs, keeps money going throught he economy and especially with the benefit of the multipler, generatesthe tax revenue that GB and TB have been spending so enthusiatically.



And as for the "stole my milk" thing, yeah, Maggie was the one that got to announce the decision but it wasn't her decision. Go check the ministerial papers. She arrived in the Ministry and in a beautiful bit of political buck-shifting, got shafted by being the one to announce a decision that had already been taken.

Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, there was pain, and if you were one of the unemployed, being told it was for the long term good of the country might have been true but wasn't much help or comfort. But the fact remains, the medicine had to be swallowed and it was bitter. For a while.

Yes, the poll tax was a political disaster. But the underlying principle, which was basically that the gathering of revenue to provide local services was based on usage (wage earners) rather than property value, was sound, PROVIDED the very poor were protected. And let's face it, the Council Tax is hardly a beacon of enlightenment in the world of local government fiscal policy, now is it? And that applies largely because of the way Brown has been curtailing central government subsidies to town halls, whilst at the same time increasing the work they have to do. The result is that local and country councils have had to hugely increase revenue from their only other major source - Council Tax. Brown manages to reduce spending on grants while shifting the blame to local government. And for a Labour government, of all people, to use a highly regressive measure like council tax to do it is astonishing.


Finally, I'm one of those that is old enough to remember life under Maggie. I'm also old enough to remember many, many evenings huddled round candles and an oil lamp because power cuts caused by union action meant it was the only available light. That attitude was a major part of the reason I left the UK. I'm also old enough to remember union practices in places like British Leyland, and it's ancestor companies. So before we blame Maggie for closing mines (which to a point is true, but only to a point), lets also blame the Socialist union practices for not only destroying the indigenous car industry in this country, but for absolutely wrecking other industries, like ship-building, which had a long and proud history in this country, and damn near seeing off the steel industry too.
 
She abolished the GLC for all your local councils and now it's back with the same guy who was in charge of it before!

Also the studio that The Terry and Gaby Show is in was my mums office. Only reason I know all this is because my mum used to work for the GLC before she abolished it.
 
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