THE BRITISH THREAD II

@vonny,

vonny wrote:

Quote:
Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments

Partial truths, twisted facts, distorted reasoning - yes, of course you can make an argument to support your argument. To go through your post, point by point, rebutting each one, would be tedious ... and pointless! Your mind is quite obviously made up. So be it!

But I note you didn't mention the little things she did like take school milk away from children - remember 'Margaret Thatcher the milk snatcher'? Or selling off playing fields - another of her ideas? Or countless little miseries she inflicted upon this country. Too many to rehearse.

I am not a political animal - just someone who remembers, all too well, the years of her 'reign'. This country was a happier place in the 60's and early 70's. I rest my case!

A very wobble case of - as your say was full of Partial truths, twisted facts, distorted reasoning - yes, so you can make argument's to support your argument.
I was born in London in 1933.. my father, badly wounded in 14-18 war, and was a dock worker before the war and a road labourer after. I left school at 14 and became a painter and decorator. Tryagain was far closer to the truth than you were.

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@vonny,

vonny wrote:

But I note you didn't mention the little things she did like take school milk away from children ...

And what about all the little kittens she ate?

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

She used the once-in-a-millennium opportunity of benefits from North Sea oil revenues to fund redundancies in the workforce thrown out of work.
No infrastructure improvements, such as in France
No investment in agriculture, as in Holland
No social wealth fund, as in Norway.
Only profits for investors as public assets were sold off cheaply.

(btw "brown coal" is not mined in Britain, even before the pit closures, as far as I am aware)

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

Life involves challenge and change. Leaders who pretend to "protect" people from the inevitable, aren't leaders at all.

Okay, but in Germany, uneconomic coal mines were kept going for years when there was no other employment in the area available at that time, by subsidy. This was done for social reasons.

Margaret Thatcher had a visceral hatred of the working class, and their trade unions. Her policies did untold harm. They hate her right back, even beyond the grave.

America pays substantial subsidies to agriculture and the steel industry, and operates trade barriers.

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@Ticomaya,

Quote:

And what about all the little kittens she ate?

I guess it does sound a bit like that now - getting to the 'dummies thrown out of pram' stage. Not much point in arguing when opinion is so divided. Not going to change anything. My final words on the Thatcher years are that I just wish they hadn't happened!

1 Reply

@vonny,

vonny wrote:

Partial truths, twisted facts, distorted reasoning - yes, of course you can make an argument to support your argument. To go through your post, point by point, rebutting each one, would be tedious ... and pointless! Your mind is quite obviously made up. So be it!

Exactly. Americans like her because she had American values, but those aren't our values. She nearly destroyed the NHS, and if David Cameron has his way he'll finish the job. They've already started bringing in American type 'reforms' which could finish it off and introduce a system just like America, where the poor die from preventable diseases.

It's the selfishness and the contempt for the working class that was the worst thing about that evil woman. Communities and families were ripped apart, some family members in mining communities still don't talk to each other.

The sense of despair also pushed up the suicide rate, as was noted in a BBC report some time back.

Quote:

Overall, they say, the figures suggest that 35,000 people would not have died had the Conservatives not been in power, equivalent to one suicide for every day of the 20th century or two for every day that the Conservatives ruled

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2263690.stm

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

I'll be surprised if the funeral goes off without incident

I hope that it does go off without incident. I am totally against her having the sort of funeral that's being planned, but I fear that the hooligan element in this country - the people who participated in the mindless riots of last summer - will once again run amok, causing the media of the world to have a field day!

1 Reply

@vonny,

vonny wrote:

Quote:
I'll be surprised if the funeral goes off without incident

I hope that it does go off without incident.

So do I, but a large amount of peaceful protesters would drive the message home. Rioters are not to be applauded, but I think there will still be riots like there were the summer before last.

Remember before Thatcher came along we had Spangles and Amazin Raisin bars.

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@izzythepush,

Have the IRA got any mortars? I wouldn't put it past them to try...although killing a few foreign heads of state would not be good.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Not the provisionals, but continuity and real might give it a go.

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@izzythepush,

There is no way of knowing whether her policies were beneficial or not. What she did is being compared to something that didn't happen because she did something else.

For me she was simply an embarrassment. To see Reagan, Mitterand and Kohl treating her as if she was a silly old dear who had to be indulged was pathetic. She used the nation and its history as a stage prop to glorify her self image and she must have felt her vulgarity acutely in contact with the upper classes who know how to do vulgarity properly.

Her son and daughter living abroad during her last years tells me plenty about what she was really like. Shunted into the Ritz with professional carers.

Where did Mark Thatcher's money come from. It was deemed "not in the national interest" to investigate such a thing.

It was one long cringe for me.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

Where did Mark Thatcher's money come from?

Where indeed? He is still wanted by several African states to answer criminal charges too.
She broke the rules about awarding baronetcies to ennoble her husband, and ensure her son could be titled Sir Mark Thatcher. What shoddy sleight-of-hand, worthy of Sir Robert Maxwell, the Bouncing Czech.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Americans like her because she had American values, but those aren't our values.

Please - make that some Americans like her because she had the values of some Americans, but those aren't our (well, some of our) values.

I am just as much an American as some Americans who have admiration for her activities in her years in office.

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@ossobuco,

Sorry Chuck, point taken. It's just that all Thatcher's supporters on the British thread haven't been.

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@ossobuco,

When a leader has single-handedly fucked the middle class as she (and some of ours starting with Reagan through the present) . Its a bitch to reset the clock and achieve fairness.

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@McTag,

Excellent article in today's Grauniad on babythatch.

Quote:

Even Mark's twin sister Carol, who had always sought to earn her own living as a journalist, subsequently described Mark's behavior as "appalling". She told the Lady magazine in 1996

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/11/mark-thatcher

Thatcher's assault on Amazin Raisin bars ensured there were enough troops to fight in the Falklands. After Amazin Raisin bars were abandoned the army bought up all remaining stocks ensuring people joined up to get their hands on the chocky goodness.

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@izzythepush,

Just a reminder of what Thatch stole from us, or repacked, or renamed, or both.

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@izzythepush,

Yes indeed. I read that. He is a very shady character, and even his criminal associates don't like him.
A turd of the first water.

I think he should be strategically rendered, is that the correct expression, to Burkina Faso. They're anxious to talk to him there.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

still be riots like there were the summer before last.

Were they really so long ago? I guess not having a proper summer last year has addled my brain!

Seriously though, I am 100% behind peaceful protests. The CND and Committee of 100 marches in the 60's and 70's proved that they could be done. But more recent events have brought a nasty element to the fore - looters and vandals who will jump on any bandwagon going in order to satisfy their evil intent. I would hate to see that again - so many decent and innocent people affected and their homes and businesses ruined!

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@vonny,

I agree on both points. The most peaceful of protests, buying ding dong the witch is dead on itunes, is the best. It's really got the fascists who write for the Daily Mail frothing at the mouth. Last I heard it was number 3, and that's since Tuesday.

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