Originally Posted by spilko

...The country was in an appalling state for workers, 3-day weeks, strikes, high tax etc. ... The economy had to be taken apart and reformed. .... The left will always peddle the myth that the rich got rich and the poor got poorer - what nonsense. The working class couldn't get any poorer than they were under the Callaghan government.

Originally Posted by spilko

For Thatchers lasting legacy you only have to look at the map of Europe. The fall of communism would not have happened as it did, without Thatcher's iron will. Millions of people in Eastern Europe have reason to be thankful for that reason.

Originally Posted by NedKelly

Dunno, isn't this the same as what Obama was doing with the Mexican cartels.

Originally Posted by GarryP

I think you are missing the point of what you yourself said here.

The economy was not good (though not as bad as often painted) and the workers were suffering through the policies imposed on them - often by a clueless management.

How do you deal with that? Do you build, fix, make better? Not if you are thatcher and you are on an ideological crusade. You instead attack those workers even more. You grind their noses into the dust, kill off their jobs, kill off their communities, send in the police to stamp on what's left. You destroy.

You then allow your mates in the city to get richer off the back of lax regulation and get rich quick schemes - giving up manufacturing and industry for fraud. You undoubtedly make the country more unequal (as shown by the Gini index graph) - screwing those workers for your mates in the city.

For those that had a job, and as a direct result of thatcher, didn't even have a community - you sure as hell made the poor poorer.

As I said before, it takes no skill, no knowledge, no intelligence, to destroy - and that is exactly what thatcher did.


Why do the right try and claim that their central figures are responsible for 'the fall of communism'. It was the changes implemented by Gorbachev, pure and simple. The right wing figures didn't help in the slightest, quite the opposite.

Originally Posted by pintaguiness-pickledegg

Oh dear, if only it was all about some milk, but it ain't! Have you actually bothered reading any of this thread? The crux of the matter is that there are few ambivalent people about the demise of Maggie-most have either a positive recollection (sorry, refuse to use the word "good") or utter deep rooted hatred for what she did to people's lives, livelihoods, communities and whole areas of the UK. I think we have to respect that both opinions are often based on experience /exposure to the consequences of her policies and those that do not acknowledge the past pain caused to our fellow countrymen are doing noone any favours, least of all themselves.

Originally Posted by NedKelly

It's funny how the sponging low-life lefty scum have crawled out of their hovels to celebrate and kick Margaret Thatcher now that she has passed away. They obviously don't have a job like most responsible people who are working to pay their entitlements. Just look at all the bile coming out of the usual lefty armchair socialists here.

Margaret Thatcher was a beacon of integrity who stood for freedom and the ability for individuals to better themselves. Basically, everything the Left hates. She showed up the socialists for what they really are - backward looking, anti-wealth, layabout retards who would rather see the poor get poorer, just so the rich could be a little less rich.

She took on the Unions agitators like that idiot Scargill who called a miners strike in the spring when coal stocks were at their highest. By the end of the second Thatcher term in 1987 the British economy had been transformed through all her anti-socialist policies from the sick man of Europe and from a country on it's uppers going cap in hand to the IMF to a country with a buoyant economy that was the envy of Europe.

The real tragedy is the rest of the stupid Torys got rid of her allowing the socialists to get back in (Tony Blair & speech impaired Brown) and to pretty much bankrupt the country again after she had saved it from oblivion, as well as opening the immigration floodgates to all the third-world riff-raff that Labour could find to rub in the noses of the British people because they kept voting Margaret in for 11 years.

A true stateswoman. May she Rest in Peace.

Originally Posted by spilko

I would argue that the policies of the Unions and the previous Labour government were already ruining families across the nation.

Anyone who remembers the late 70s should remember what an appalling state the country was in. This myth that Thatcher ruined the lives of ordinary workers is nonsense. The country was in an appalling state for workers, 3-day weeks, strikes, high tax etc.

The worldwide opinion was that the UK was finished and could never recover. It was cap in hand to the IMF, think Greece and Spain today. The economy had to be taken apart and reformed.

Fast forward 15 years to a country that had the 3rd largest economy in the world. The National debt being paid off, unemployment finally coming down, interest rates starting to fall. The left will always peddle the myth that the rich got rich and the poor got poorer - what nonsense. The working class couldn't get any poorer than they were under the Callaghan government.

Unfortunately too many people forgot what a Labour government could do to a country and believed the lies of Blair and Brown. Once again, a Labour government tried to bankrupt the nation. But make no mistake, without Thatcher's reforms, Britain could not have survived 10 years of Brown and the following GFC and we would be suffering the way that Spain, Italy etc are. For that reason alone people in the UK should be thankful for the life of this remarkable woman.

For Thatchers lasting legacy you only have to look at the map of Europe. The fall of communism would not have happened as it did, without Thatcher's iron will. Millions of people in Eastern Europe have reason to be thankful for that reason.

Originally Posted by lesleys

Well said.

I would be most interested to know just how many of the "anti" posters were actually working and paying taxes in the 1970s, pre-Thatcher?

I'm certainly not saying I was a Thatcher fan but I think the demonising based on so much hearsay and banner headlines. Would anyone care to offer a similar appraisal of Jim Callaghan's time as PM?

Originally Posted by lesleys

Well said.

I would be most interested to know just how many of the "anti" posters were actually working and paying taxes in the 1970s, pre-Thatcher?

I'm certainly not saying I was a Thatcher fan but I think the demonising based on so much hearsay and banner headlines. Would anyone care to offer a similar appraisal of Jim Callaghan's time as PM?

Originally Posted by lesleys

......Would anyone care to offer a similar appraisal of Jim Callaghan's time as PM?

Originally Posted by Amazulu

Yep. 3 elections won in one of the world's great democracies and only removed from power due to internal party squabbles

That counts for something to me

Originally Posted by Margaret3

I think this sums up Scotland's feelings on the matter

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...-death-1819505

Originally Posted by steve`o

where you actually in work in the 70`s ?

Originally Posted by Ruth16

Just one look at them , liberals written all over them .