Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Iron Lady, Dead at 87

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Buddha12, Apr 9, 2013.

  1. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    I guess if the media doesn't want to post his message there's little he can do. It just shows me how much CONTROL the media has over what Americans can and cannot see.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Since when is the country "totally turned around"? Seriously - Thatcher's Britain is your idea of a country set on the road to greater prosperity thirty years ago?
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I'm talking about what she did 30 years ago, not what the current situation is. Regulators and institutions have had 30 years to get used to running the financial industry in the form it took after Big Bang. That they have somewhere in that time messed it up is not Thatcher's fault, any more than the Paddington rail crash can be laid at the door of Brunel.

    When I started work at the end of the 1970s, it was dismal. The unions obstructed any initiative, in the hope they could screw more money for agreeing to it. They constantly threatened to strike, and get their fellow "workers" in other industries to strike in "sympathy". No ballot was needed, so "wildcat" strikes were commonplace. As were corrupt "Spanish practices", where people were paid for things they didn't do. It was unproductive chaos. Management had mostly given up and retreated to a class-ridden, cosy world of long boozy lunches and benefits in kind. Not surprising, when higher rates of tax were so high as well. Profit was a dirty word. When I worked for Shell UK, the CEO had to virtually apologise for doing better than breaking even! The country had had to go to the IMF for a bail-out in 1976, the year I left university. We were, in other words, like Greece or Cyprus today. There were even right-wing groups talking about the need for a military government. Imagine! Most of us university leavers were thinking of emigrating. (Times may be hard today, but there is nothing like the sense of entrenched, hopeless gloom and despondency of the late "70s.).

    And then we had the winter of discontent to cap it all off. So in 1979 I gritted my teeth, swallowed my principles and voted conservative for the first time in my life. As did millions like me. By 1987, it had all changed. People worked harder, the boozy lunches had gone, and so had the ineffectual managers. Union people were talking to the employers to see how to improve profits, not to screw the business up. And the country was taken seriously in the world, thanks to the success of the Falklands campaign. The economy grew and lots of people did well. They bought their council houses, started little businesses and realised things could, actually, improve.

    So, what I meant by turning the country round was the transformation from economic decline and international irrelevance or even ridicule (e.g. the Sick Man of Europe) to recovering and becoming a force in the world once more. I acknowledge this was bought at a very high price in the North and Wales, but neither that nor the spendthrift policies of more recent governments alter the basic truth of what was achieved at that time.
     
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  7. w1z4rd Valued Senior Member

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    Thatcher made some terrible economic choices that are still hurting Britain today.

    Its no surprise that "The witch is dead" is in the top 10 songs on itunes in the UK. Its because of her that Scandinavian countries have pulled ahead in many many areas. (Health, education, quality of life, etc etc)

    She scuttled the UK more than helped it.

    The UK did have some issues that needed sorting when she took control... but instead of pulling out the bad weeds, she went full retard and napalmed everything.

    Not a leader I admire in the least.
     
  8. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    All I can say is you do not sound like someone who has adult memories of the 1970s in Britain.
     
  9. w1z4rd Valued Senior Member

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    She supported my country during Apartheid. I have clear enough memories thanks. No one is denying UK needed a little sorting out. She went full retard.

    She killed UK manufacturing, she destroyed the power of the unions, she sold of public assets to subsidize her bad economic policies (which are now owned by the rich). Overall, even with her selling most public assets to private wealthy owners.... she had almost no real impact on the economy. If you compare her policies to Blair's policies (and the impact their policies had on GDP) its very easy to see who had the better policies.

    When we look at the evidence and the impact of her austerity measures long term we see that her choices hurt more than helped: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-social-welfare-state

    Its better (better educated, higher quality of life, more free markets, healthier, etc etc) to live in Scandinavian countries than in the UK. Wasnt like that before Thatcher.
     
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up, eh?
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think there WAS anything to see. The White House publishes statements all the time, but if there is no video, there is nothing for the news shows to put on the air. Personally, I heard it all over the radio, so maybe it's you who are ill informed.
     
  12. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    I remember when Chavez died Obama was put on TV immediately and expressed his condolences. So why didn't the TV media give him the opportunity to do it with her? Is it they who control him or he control them?
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    As far as I can tell from what everyone is saying, she is the major architect of the current situation in Britain - as with Reagan in the US, her changes have stuck and been incorporated into Britain's governance. Nobody else is mentioned or pointed to as having made any substantial structural changes in it since.

    And the consequences of her alterations, as with those of Reagan (similar), are visible.

    Uh, dude - ah, never mind.

    See Reagan, subtopic Grenada.
     
  14. Gorlitz Iron Man Registered Senior Member

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    She has only been in hell for a for a few days and has already managed to shut down two furnaces.
     
  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Only in as much as others didn't pull down what she built and build their own structures.
    She is not the major architect of the current situation at all... we've had 13 years of Labour between the end of the previous Conservative government and now.
    Labour are the architects of the current situation - either through their action or inaction. Do you blame the architect of a decrepit building when it falls down, or do you blame the owners who have watched it crumble for the last number of years without doing anything, and if anything making the situation worse.
    No, people like to heap every woe that the UK is going through at her feet, and while she certainly helped ruin many communities, she also brought the country into the light in many regards. She rescued the country from a situation that Labour had the country in, with tax-rates at 80+%, and where communities were on life-support and unable to admit that the industries on which they were based had already died - or in their last throes.
    Was everything she did a success? Heck, no.
    But she was what the country needed at the time, even if not what all the people wanted.
    Did she go on too long, and make too many changes? Probably, yes - the country quickly moved to a more tolerable centre after her - away from the far Left we had before her terms, and away from the far Right she occupied. We've had centre-politics ever since, on the whole, but the previous Labour government (the Blair years) are the ones who should take responsibility, in a large part, for the mess the UK is in - although we'd always have had some problems simply due to the globalisation and interconnectedness of economies.
    So you blame the builder and not the ones who don't pull the building down when it is an eyesore? That's just passing the buck.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    As you make clear, the guilt of those who followed Thatcher is limited to not tearing down her structure, revoking her policies, and preventing the disaster she set in motion.

    In this we see once again the parallels with Reagan in the US - we have here an entire political and media operation dedicated to blaming the effects of Reagans policies and political initiatives on the people who failed to stop him, failed in their effforts to fix his mess and revoke his policies and reverse everything he set in motion.

    They are not blaming Reagan, and they are not blaming the people who fought for his policies and prevented their revocation and discard. They are blaming the consequences of bad policies and disastrous misgovernment on the people who fought against it.

    Thsi would be unbelievable if it weren't happening in front of our eyes.

    I would blame any builder for putting up an eyesore that falls apart immediately and leaves us homeless in the wreckage, especially when he did so by defeating our efforts to prevent him. Why wouldn't I?
     
  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    No I think Sarkus is right. One really has to recall the intolerable situation the UK was in at the end of 70s. Trying to dump whatever is wrong today, 30 years later, on Thatcher is just not credible. At that time it was bitter medicine but it worked, whereas previous, more consensual attempts , e.g. In Place of Strife, had failed miserably.

    And it is a salient political fact that NO serious political party since has contemplated undoing any of the major reforms on union law or on state ownership of businesses. By the way I was interested to read this morning in the Financial Times that by the end of the period of Conservative government (i.e. the Thatcher/Major era), the contribution of Manufacturing to GDP had fallen from 28% to 22%, whereas during the 13 year long Labour period (Blair/Brown) that followed, it fell from 22% to 10.5%. All Thatcher's fault? Really?

    Now, you may say that it would be better to reinstate state ownership of enterprise and allow secondary picketing and sympathy and wildcat strikes once more, but you are in a small minority of opinion, as political prospectuses and election results have showed. Myself, I think there's no doubt she went too far in some ways - and I have never believed the sole way to motivate people in organisations by money. Perhaps if the UK had had trade union leaders like those in Germany or Scandinavia, we could have had a more consensual and gradual approach to industrial reform. But we didn't, so we couldn't.
     
  18. Gorlitz Iron Man Registered Senior Member

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    People do not hate Margaret Thatcher for what she did to the country, people hate her for the lives of the people she destroyed within the country. During her time as a minister before she became PM, she became known Maggy Thatcher Milk Snatcher. This was because she took away free school milk from poor children in British schools, resulting in some of the first recurrences of rickets, a disease born of malnutrition that had not previously been seen in decades. When she did become PM the UK was at a crossroads, things were changing but what she did was to destroy the lives of the poor and vulnerable. The north of England, Scotland and Wales were decimated in terms of Jobs, unemployment went through the roof and wages went down and down. All the time she was promoting a greed is good attitude, rewarding city workers bankers, whilst children went hungry and parents could even afford their children's school uniforms in the north. She gaves speeches telling the nation "there is no such thing as society", creating a culture of selfishness where people only ever look after no.1. She cut the taxes of the rich and the services on which the poor depended, sold off the nations social housing stock. Her big idea was "the right to buy", which in practise meant that poor people living in social housing were allowed to buy the property they were living in and renting. Many couldn't afford to buy but were funded by companies that then bought the houses off them and rented them back to them for much more than there previous social housing cost rents. Also she refused to allow local councils to either build or buy anymore social housing, meaning generations of young and poor people could then be waiting 20+ plus years for somewhere of their own to live. This was Thatchers legacy and Thatchers Britain, she destroyed the lives of millions, when she died there were street parties across Britain, she will be in death hated as she was in life.
     
  19. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    2,862
    Treatment to prevent rickets involves increasing dietary intake of calcium, phosphates and vitamin D. Exposure to ultraviolet B light (sunshine when the sun is highest in the sky), cod liver oil, halibut-liver oil, and viosterol are all sources of vitamin D.

    A sufficient amount of ultraviolet B light in sunlight each day and adequate supplies of calcium and phosphorus in the diet can prevent rickets. Darker-skinned people need to be exposed longer to the ultraviolet rays. The replacement of vitamin D has been proven to correct rickets using these methods of ultraviolet light therapy and medicine.[15]

    Recommendations are for 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D a day for infants and children. Children who do not get adequate amounts of vitamin D are at increased risk of rickets. Vitamin D is essential for allowing the body to uptake calcium for use in proper bone calcification and maintenance.

    Sufficient vitamin D levels can also be achieved through dietary supplementation and/or exposure to sunlight.

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...8oH4Dw&usg=AFQjCNE24-GqjQ0bLcqvt__Z6Uz4L1hSig

    So this information shows that sunlight and a vitamin supplement, which doesn't cost much, can prevent rickets as well. I do hope that the children's parents are educated enough to know this and allow their children time outside to play in the sunlight to prevent this from happening.

    Milk itself won't prevent rickets, it is a disease that needs more than milk to prevent it so please don't say that Thatcher made those children sick because she took the milk away, the PARENTS made their children sick by not allowing them outdoors and not giving them a vitamin supplement daily too.

    We here in America did not see anything like that on our TV news stations, I wonder why not because the media is very biased against the right wing that anything like that would be televised immediately.
     
  20. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Your media are not misleading you. There were NOT street parties across Britain - not least because it's too perishing cold and wet at the moment! There were only 3 incidents of street "celebrations" reported over here, and these were of the type where the police end up being called.

    The milk thing is also nonsense. Wilson had taken it away from secondary school children (11+) in 1968 and Thatcher took it away from those over 7 three years later. Wilson, of course, earned no opprobrium at all for this - but then he was on the Left, so not a hate object in the same way at Thatcher. The whole thing was a hangover from wartime rationing and the depression era anyway. By 1971 national diet had improved and the Clean Air Act of 1959 had got rid of the smog and murk that had obscured the light in our big cities. So any outbreaks of rickets were on a microscopic scale and just talked up by the onion-peeling left for political reasons.

    There is just so much ill-informed cant around Thatcher it is amazing.
     
  21. Gorlitz Iron Man Registered Senior Member

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    Ok so your admitting Thatcher took free school milk away from poor children in 1971, so how was what I said wrong? Well it wasn't, she took milk away from children and just because you may not think outbreaks of rickets and malnutrition in poor northern children are not important just shows the same kind of contempt that Thatcher herself felt towards the poor and vunerable. She was known as the "Milk Snatcher", I grew up under the Thatcher government I remember the devastation and destruction that befell people back then, and as for the street parties certain parts of the media have tried to play them down but they happened alright, see link below.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/police-arrests-thatcher-death-parties

    Just google "Thatcher death street parties" if anyone is in doubt about them actually happening.

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    Last edited: Apr 13, 2013
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You're going to have to make up your mind: either all these effective and influential Thatcherite major reforms are still in place and therefore I can blame her for the consequences, or somebody changed them dramatically a few years ago and thus that person is to blame.

    People credited Reagan with curing the Carter malaise, too, in very similar language, and I know that's bs - they exaggerate the misery and blame Carter for all kinds of silly stuff, and all the bad consequences of Reagan's tenure they blame on other people (aside from Thatcher being a good way left of Reagan, they seem to have been remarkably alike in their political roles).
    The penny just never drops with these guys. Thirty years and a thousand examples of hardcore favorable rightwing bias in the US media (how else would anyone have come to take something like the Tea Party seriously?) and the righties think every one of them is some kind of oddity so strange it's hard to credit their existence - hard to believe they even happened.

    Amnesiacs, the lot. The more accurately and completely one remembers events, the worse Reagan looks - I'm thinking something like that is operating with Thatcher.
     
  23. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    And as has been explained to you - the removal of milk from those aged 7-11 did not give alone give rise to rickets. Malnutrition is not resolved through milk alone.
    Yes - a soundbite that stuck, partly to remove the legacy of Wilson doing such a few years previously.
    But only blinkered and biased people would try to blame any malnutrition on her through this move... rather than their families' own activity. All just a case of passing the blame and not taking responsibility for one's self. But then that's the general difference between the Conservatives and Labour - one tries to make people responsible for themselves, the other tries to make the state responsible for everyone, and allows people to abdicate their responsibility to the government, expecting the state to provide for them.
    I got free milk, then I didn't... and never developed rickets. So let's blame Thatcher for everyone that did.

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    As did I - and while there was some turmoil as there always is when things go through such significant change - we came out a better and stronger country as a result.
    Were there some people who suffered as a result? Undoubtedly, but then change is never painless.
    Did she get everything right? No. Few (if any) people do.
    Plus it is not as though she was a Dictator... she was elected through the democratic system that we have in this country - and polled 42-44% of the popular vote in each of her terms, which not even Blair achieved. Yes, this resulted in Conservatives having a majority each time due to the system we use, but it shows that she was actually rather popular, that a good proportion of the population of the time actually liked what she did and didn't want an alternative.

    But let's just blame her. Let's not blame the people that voted for her, the ones that wanted the changes she put through.
     

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