Margaret Thatcher dies aged 87

  • Thread starter PeterJB
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A British journalist (Martin Belam) made this chart a few months ago.

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Ah, I dunno. On a day like this I still think 67% of Twitter will be made up of people moaning about how slow the service in Starbucks is.
 
The conversation with Churchill is the best I remember about Thatcher.
No denying she did a lot, whatever people think of it.
 
TheCracker
👍 Did exactly this last night with the side of my family whose own community (Grimethorpe, like many other communities in South Yorks, North Notts and South Wales) was annihilated by her actions.
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Can understand that entirely, even if I still think it's a bit dickish.

Isn't Grimethorpe the one they loosely based Brassed Off, on?

Famine
Could there be a more Thatcherite way of celebrating?
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Doing so in the back of an old Rover P5?
 
I think Margaret Thatcher would in fact enjoy seeing how important she still is, 20+ years after she left office.

Looking from a (considerable) distance, but from a place that:

- In the seventies was THE western european country almost turned into a Cold War battlefield, or a Warsaw Pact country.

- Today needs a Thatcher to cut fat and dying limbs from our unsustainable economy instead of the succession of spineless and clueless incompetent politicians living on loans that the future generations will pay ...


I really do think young Thatcher haters have no clue.Their fathers may have suffered harsh times when what needed to be made WAS made (as I am sure will happen to me and maybe my son and daughters, unless all the politicians here remain cowards and somehow the EU keeps sending money to pay what we can't afford anyway). But their own young butts (and lives) are better today than they would be if Thatcher didn't happen.
 
I was at first informed of the notice by catching a glance on the obituary on television and when I saw the news I got struck dumb with astonishment to know that one of the noted statesmans of a country slipped away again...

R.I.P to Margaret Thatcher. :(
 
I was born in 1997 so I'm in absoloutely no position to make any judgements on the woman about the way she ran the country, the only knowledge I have of her are the words of my dad (born '66) and my mum (born '71) and they were both raised in Lancashire, so that's all I need to say about their views on her.

She did ruin Britain's steel, textile, coal etc industries and many people will never forgive her for that. She ruined the livelihoods of the miners and what not, and some people even blame her for the deaths of soldiers during the Falklands War.

However, she did do some good too, and she broke down many barriers for women in politics and had far bigger nuts than any of the blokes in politics now. She did a good job leading Britain through the Falklands too, and dealt with numerous attacks from Ireland.

Still, I'm on the fence about her because I just simply didn't live through her years in power. If she was anything like David Cameron, then...
 
Katiegan
She did ruin Britain's steel, textile, coal etc industries and many people will never forgive her for that. She ruined the livelihoods of the miners and what not,
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Think of it like this, you are in charge of a company, that makes a 50% loss on what it does. Your staff strike because you won't give them a pay rise, so you fire large numbers of them in order to minimise your costs. They are bound to see you as the bad guy (or gal)... even if the actions were necessary.
 
Not really sure what I think of her. I didn't live through her premiership, but one side of my family praises her for putting Britain back on the map, and the other half hates her for putting so many people out of a job. What I do like about her is that she did what she though was right, no bull:censored: like modern politicians who constantly change their mind to try and please everyone and never end up solving anything. As for those celebrating her death, she hasn't been in power for over 20 years, how does her death change anything?
 
It's not the fact the Thatcher government closed the mines, that was inevitable for many. It was the way they went about it. Whole communities were dependant on the mines, there was no alternative employment that didn't in some-way involve the mines or the income of the workers.

That's why South Wales had the highest strike rates, and that's why very few will mourn her death.

MatskiMonk
Think of it like this, you are in charge of a company, that makes a 50% loss on what it does. Your staff strike because you won't give them a pay rise, so you fire large numbers of them in order to minimise your costs. They are bound to see you as the bad guy (or gal)... even if the actions were necessary.
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Terrible analogy. The mines were state owned, the shareholders being the miners. By closing the mines entire communities of workers, shareholders, and their families were wiped out.
 
I don't really know much about her other than her name (name rings a bell), but it's sad she died. RIP.
 
I'll be honest - I don't like her due to her policy on Northern Ireland. I understand why she was so entrenched in her opposition to the IRA and Sinn Féin (especially when the former tried to kill her back in '84 IIRC), and TBH I don't know the full story of her NI policy - unfortunately, although I did history for the Leaving Cert (the Irish A-levels) we didn't do the module on the "Troubles".

Add that to the deregulation of banking in the City in 1986, which could have been a factor in the credit crunch of 2007. Again, I don't know the full story of how she deregulated the banks.

However, she did have backbone. Although as I have shown above that I disagree with her policies, at least she had conviction.
 
ExigeEvan
It's not the fact the Thatcher government closed the mines, that was inevitable for many. It was the way they went about it. Whole communities were dependant on the mines, there was no alternative employment that didn't in some-way involve the mines or the income of the workers.

That's why South Wales had the highest strike rates, and that's why very few will mourn her death.

Terrible analogy. The mines were state owned, the shareholders being the miners. By closing the mines entire communities of workers, shareholders, and their families were wiped out.
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The principle is the same, people won't like you if you lay them off, even if it's required because you're hemorrhaging money, and the end result for the individuals might have been undesirable, but were the inevitable outcome of inevitable action.
 
MatskiMonk
The principle is the same, people won't like you if you lay them off, even if it's required because you're hemorrhaging money, and the end result for the individuals might have been undesirable, but were the inevitable outcome of inevitable action.
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Being made redundant doesn't hurt so much when there's alternative employment.

Would you rather fund a mining industry that employs and supports communities, or entire towns and villages of unemployment benefit?

I don't disagree the mines were due to close, but to do so without an alternative plan in place and abandon the populace was disgusting, and unforgivable for generations.
 
dhandeh
Technically, he was though (That's for elsewhere though).
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Outrageous! How dare you compare Nelson Mandela to Osama Binladen ( :dopey: )... and he's not even dead yet, you monster!!! I hope that when he does you'll have all those people who weren't even born when before he was released demand you apologise!

oooh, satire! ;)
 
PeterJB
As for those celebrating her death, she hasn't been in power for over 20 years, how does her death change anything?
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Petty pseudo-revenge from people who seem to think she had this coming.
 
Danny
Petty pseudo-revenge from people who seem to think she had this coming.
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She sort of did have it coming. An old lady eventually dying is about as surprising as the sunrise, frankly.

Saw a good article on it the other day actually. Editor of Metro's opinion piece saying he found all the celebrating of someone's death a little undignified from people who tried hard to maintain their dignity when the stuff Thatcher did tore their livelihoods apart.

Have to wonder whether anyone is actually getting actual closure from it, or just a few brief moments of empty satisfaction.

Also have to wonder whether it's really been worth the wait for the inevitable death of an old person just to dance on her grave a bit. It's not like she was hit by a bus while dragging people from picket lines in some sort of karma moment. She just died, like anyone else. Doesn't really equate to victory for anyone's lives she affected...
 

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