On both sides

Well I expected you to turn up and as usual post absolutely nothing that contributes to the thread. Does your mum know you using her computer this time of night?

I take my queue from the likes of Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa who were full of praise for Thatcher for her support ensuring that the pressure was kept on Russia and for supporting Gorbachev. Or maybe you have better knowledge than those statesmen.

And if you think that any of the end of the cold war was pure and simple - well ????!!!!!

Agreed. The sum total was probably about 1300.

I don't have an issue with what Maggie did. There were also lots of people who bought their council houses and ended up enjoying as much prosperity as anyone. I remember a 'Loads of Money' working class Dad from school who was a right old little Tory on the back of Thatcher. Sure industry was changing.

The irony is, Thatcher put in place the very sorts of prosperity and service economy which made people feel they had better things to think about than industry after all- like the cost and range of Advocados...!

In its existing state, the economy was finished, everyone knew that (except maybe Callaghan). The majority of the country could not go on subsidising, to the tunes of billions of pounds, union dominated, state owned, loss making industries. Workers in these industries were happy to let the unions ask for higher and higher wages while the companies they worked for were losing more and more money. Years of attempts to " build, fix, make better" had failed and the unions were preventing any chance of real reform. These businesses could never be fixed without union support, and there was no chance of that in the 70s/80s. (Lets face it Scargill's main aim was to bring down Thatcher, not to help the miners).

The hypocrisy of many who complain about Thatcher is unbelievable. You may whinge about jobs for mates, and yet that is exactly what the unions and their strikes were about in the 70s/80s. They didn't give a toss about the majority of tax payers in the country, or the state of the country, as long as they all kept their subsidised jobs.

And has manufacturing been killed off by Thatcher? Until 2008 worked for a very large manufacturing company that was struggling before the 80s privatisation, but made a billion euros last year even during the GFC. Manufacturing dead? The car industry also shows what the British worker can do without union domination and state management.

As for community. I was brought up on a council estate in the north of England. I can tell you for a fact people couldn't wait to get out. What community. You were more likely to get robbed or worse than talk to your neighbours. The houses were falling down due to years of neglect by a typical labour local government. Later in the 90s I lived in a 1930s estate on the edge of Derby. I can tell you there was far more community there than any place I lived in the 70s. Yes some single industry communities were devastated but the idea that from 1979 there were no longer communities anywhere in the country is frankly laughable.

The simple fact is that Thatcher never lost an election and the Tories won the next election after her resignation. It is clear therefore she was supported by most of the voting population and her policies were mostly accepted, if not welcomed.

You can be damn sure that the poor you are so passionate about would not have survived 5 more years of Callaghan, and certainly would not have survived the current GFC if the economy had not been reformed, especially after the crazy spending of Blair/Brown.

I agree about the Tony Blair comment. Thatcher once responded with "Tony Blair", when asked what her greatest legacy was. She knew she had killed socialism in UK politics.

However, Thatcher had more integrity than any politician I have ever watched. Especially compared to Blair (who had none). Love or hate her, agree or disagree with her policies, but she always thought she was doing right by the people of the country, and for the countries future, not to increase her popularity or to get re-elected. That is real integrity.

Cometh the hour, cometh the (wo)man

Breaking socialism and the union movement was her greatest achievment. In the process she saved her country from becoming a Western European version of Greece

A great patriot

I think you have much of that wrong. There were no serious attempts to fix things because there was no serious collaborative efforts undertaken - it was us'n'them. Compare and contrast the approach to industrial relations with Germany, where workers councils were mandated.

If you set up a battlefield, you can hardly be surprised when people turn up and fight.

Taking away the battlefield, without the 'take no prisoners' massacre that ensued, was perfectly possible - maybe not via a union dominated Labour party, but it was a policy option for others.

That you have almost exactly 180 degrees wrong. It was thatcher that game ready to bring down the unions - picking the fight when and where she wanted, and after building up her armouries. Scargill was naive enough to walk into it.

Ahh yes the poll tax. A tax that taxed the individuals in a household not the household. So an 80 yr old lady still living in her own home paid 400 quid a year & 4 adults in the house next door paid 1200 quid. How such a fair tax was so unpopular is a mystery.

Oh no, I remember, greedy Labour councils saw it as an instant cash grab. Instead of lowering the rate for a single person they set the rate for a single person at the same as the old rates a home previously paid effectively doubling their funds & making the tax as unpopular as it was.

Are you saying it was unfair that your dear sweet old granny paid the same for her house as the four young adults living next door? After all the rates pay for services provided to the community.

As someone who grew up on a council estate in Middlesbrough I have a few issues to take up here, but at work right now so will have to wait for later, you will keep.......

I think were it caused offence was by the droves of Socialist Worker types who remove themselves from the electoral role in order to avoid paying. The thought process eventually worked out they couldn't vote any more.

For the sake of technical accuracy, I should point out that the current Conservative-led government is spending far more than New Labour ever did. The average New Labour spending per annum as a percentage of GDP was 39.8%, and the average Coalition spending per annum is 45.1%. So if Blair and Brown were crazy, Cameron and Osborne are even crazier.

I think she had to battle the trade unions. It's been pointed out on BE that the UK does have some industry, thankyou very much, and it works fine without trade unions. I'm sympathetic to the miners, and I can't say that running the NHS like a business is a good thing.

There are plenty of haters of all persuasions who are against battler and lazy culture, and Thatcher was all for the individual.

There will always be areas of the UK with lower socio-economic prospects, regardless of what Thatcher did.

It's been said before.

I think it's interesting how people seem to blame Thatcher for a whole swag of issues. Her legacy is so ingrained that for Thatcher's children, they can barely comprehend what life was like before.

maybe because cameron inherited a low gdp in the first place and will need to at least maintain vital spending?