| Author |
 Topic  |
|
lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
|
|
DaveyTee
Fourth Love
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
 Posted - 08/04/2013 : 17:23:40
|
No condolences needed here, thank you LK! Margaret Thatcher was a divisive leader whom you either loved or loathed and I'm afraid that I, together with most of my fellow Scots, fell squarely into the latter camp.
DT
But I Can't Understand
Why We Let Someone Else
Rule Our Land
Cap in Hand. |
 |
|
|
DaveyTee
Fourth Love
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2013 : 18:32:46
|
I'm afraid that I feel no poorer at all, John - if anything, I feel a sense of liberation.
DT
But I Can't Understand
Why We Let Someone Else
Rule Our Land
Cap in Hand. |
|
|
|
lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2013 : 20:53:07
|
Not having followed her closely across the water, I was more focused on the Reagan craziness of the 80's. Although every leader has had at least one or two positive influences (hard not to, at some point), Reagan was not a leader I liked...at all. He was as much of an embarrassment as Bush Jr... SO I understand, dt.
Thatchers legend maybe outshines her actual tenure, but her passing seemed to resonate--& seemed newsworthy.
But in any event, I associate Thatcher with Reagan - like conjoined twins; and the negative effect he had on honest union labor was not something I was proud of as an American.
I also remember Churchill's passing. A legend indeed, whose passing was felt strongly even here--I actually have some newspapers from 1945 my mum saved about the end of the War - Peace summits, & Churchill always was a prominent front page story even in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
-lk
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
|
|
|
DaveyTee
Fourth Love
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2013 : 09:44:38
|
I thought that Felipe Sahagun, writing in Spain's El Mundo, got it about right: "For her admirers, she put the 'Great' back into Great Britain. For her critics, she was an ideologue who legitimised inequality, made education and health worse, caused terrible damage to public services, prostituted the prestigious BBC and destroyed the British people's deep-rooted sense of solidarity and civic pride." Add to that her destruction of Britain's industrial heartbase and the communities that went with it, and you'll see why so many people hated her. And sadly, we've never recovered from the damage she did.
DT
But I Can't Understand
Why We Let Someone Else
Rule Our Land
Cap in Hand. |
|
|
|
rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2013 : 16:37:27
|
Thatcher will remembered and debated over long after most of today's leaders have passed into oblvion.
For sure and I've been reading a bunch of articles about her today. From the looks of it, she follows in the tradition of all great personages who have stamped their mark on an age. Those who are catalysts and change things in their society are immensely revered as game-changers but also get the extreme condemnation from others for what those changes caused. I do think she will go down as Britain's greatest peace-time prime minister. But what i think will always hover over her is her 'economics'. I wasn't there during that 'Winter of Discontent' but I know her policies polarized many in the country. It must have been a brutal there. We had 13% interest with inflation gone crazy here at the time. I can only imagine what happened there with the British working classes. |
|
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
Posted - 09/04/2013 : 20:51:50
|
A vile vicious corrupt bitch and war criminal who declared war on the poor and those least able to defend themselves, destroyed our democracy, our manufacturing industries and the communities built around them, gave away our national assets - gas, electricity, water, rail, public housing, coal, steel - to international capitalists for peanuts, created the greed culture......
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead---now-1818150
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-morrissey-blasts-1818903
Ding Dong the witch is dead - if only she's never been born
For
The Miners
The Shipbuilders
The Steelworkers
The Old that Froze to Death
The Old that Couldn't Afford Food
For the Thousands Made Homeless
For
The North
The Disenfranchised Black Youth
The Lost Generation of Young
The Hillsborough families
The men dead in a conflict designed to win her an election
The men traumatised from the Falklands War
For Northern Ireland
For
The women of Greenham Common who were beaten and had their kids forcibly taken into care for no reason
For the men and women assaulted in the Battle of the Beanfield
For the men and women consigned to the scrapheap
For the services that used to belong to all of us and now are badly run in the hands of the rich
For the country that used to stand for social justice and created the National Health Service
The mentally ill thrown out on the streets
The children abused in care homes and ignored or worse abused by some in her government
I celebrate the death of a woman who caused so much pain
|
Edited by - stewart on 09/04/2013 21:07:18 |
|
|
|
harvey
Fourth Love
United Kingdom
155 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2013 : 02:56:03
|
I would like to share a part of my life which will show that Thatcher was a heartless person who used who ever she could to achieve her wishes and then when she had got what she wanted she threw you on the scrapheap. She did it with members of her cabinet but in the end it backfired on her. From 1966 to 1984 I worked in the Government as a printer in an Overseas Development Department. Our job was to make maps of all the Commonwealth Countries in the World. In 1983 we suspected something was up as we had a sudden demand for maps of the Falkland Islands from people and government departments in Argentina, the only ones available at the time were tourist maps really as there was little demand from that area. This must have alerted someone in a ministry somewhere but I do not think they twigged what was going on.When the invasion took place and it had been decided to send forces and 'get them back' they realised that tourist maps were A) in very short supply and B) were not nearly detailed enough for use by the Army etc. So we were told we would have to cobble something together from survey information taken over previous years to provide detailed maps for the forces to know where they were. This task would normally have taken a couple of years and we had a couple of weeks. So everybody in the building, over 300 staff, worked 24 hours 7 days a week to produce something which would be of use. As the main printer in the small printing department with only a large but very slow hand fed printing machine I had to work very hard to do the final printing before the copies of the maps were whisked off to catch up with the task force which was sailing towards the Falklands. We managed to do the job and after the war was over everybody that came back said well done and we were thanked for our efforts etc etc. So in gratitude Thatcher and one of her government advisers closed the whole place down about a year and a half later throwing all 300 staff out of work and she knew exactly who we were and what we had done. It took me over a year to find another job and the only one was poorly paid, terrible working conditions, no pension, no regard for health and safety or working conditions, broken and lashed up machinery and unpaid overtime was expected if work was not finished. Weekend work was expected at normal pay rates and the management attitude was if you do not like it f...off. It meant I had to cut back on my music biz work in the evenings and at weekends. There just were no other jobs at the time and I had to spend some time in this hell hole.
So I cannot think of anything good that this terrible woman did, she started the idea that Bankers could take other peoples money and gamble with it and she removed a lot of the regulations which prevented the sort of attitude that took hold in the 80's with Yuppies and Porsches and the Loadsa Money culture. This country has never recovered from that as she took away all the manufacturing industry in the country and turned it into a country that relied on Financial dealings and tourism.
So my personal view is that the Iron Lady can Rust in Pieces and I cannot understand why they are giving her such a huge expensive funeral with every important person attending as they never did that for any Prime Minister since Churchill and she was not a patch on him and probably did more damage to this country than the people Churchill was fighting against.
None of the above information is treasonable as it is 30 years since the Falklands War so Official Secrets Laws have expired. |
|
|
|
lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9876 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2013 : 03:43:44
|
Sounds exactly like what happened here with Reagan and the Air Traffic Controllers...the air industry still has not recovered from breaking that union. Now it is a high stress underpaid job without any recourse.
Reagan and Thatcher have been lionized beyond recognition.
The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep gettin'...the shaft.
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
|
|
|
rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2013 : 13:55:32
|
And I am convinced that Reagan and Thatcher were right to take a tough negotiating position with the Soviet Union over nuclear weapons..although admittedly it was a high stakes policy to follow. I was a frequent visitor behind the Iron Curtain during the 1980s and when I now see democracy and freedom in countries like the Czech Republic and Poland..well I'm left with a feeling of profound optimism.
I definitely agree with you there. All that gave Tom Stoppard impetus to write a play 'Rock'n'Roll' noting how music alsom played a part in dumping communism. On the other hand, I do think Thatcherism unfortunately made the chasm larger between the 'rich and poor' classes in Britain as lk has alluded. And it is manifested today in her country as well as here in the US. Studies continually have shown that if you're in the bottom quintile of income it will be extremely difficult to vault yourself to a higher class. My views on this have undergone great revision through the years. Right now we have 'capitalism' but let's call it 'Crony' Capitalism, run by the few for a few. I know many suffered through the change and still do but it is unconsciousable that both Britain and the US cannot get their financial houses in order. All in all, Thatcherism surely gave but it also did 'taketh away' much. The effects linger. |
|
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2013 : 16:26:43
|
“Tramp the Dirt Down”
By George Galloway MP
April 09, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - The old saw that one shouldn’t speak ill of the recently dead cannot possibly apply to controversial figures in public life. It certainly didn’t apply to President Hugo Chavez who predeceased Margaret Thatcher amidst a blizzard of abuse.
The main reason it must not preclude entering the lists amidst a wave of hagiographic sycophantic tosh of the kind that has engulfed Britain these last hours is that otherwise the hagiographers will have the field to themselves.
Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did will be placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light, and provide a first draft of history that will be, simply, wrong.
As is now well-known, I refused to do that today on the demise of a wicked woman who tore apart what remained good about my country, and set an agenda which has been followed, more or less, by all of her successors. I certainly wasn’t prepared to leave the obituaries to those who profited from her rule or those who have aped her ever since.
So here is my own memory of Thatcher and what she did in her time on this earth.
On one of my first political demonstrations – against the Conservative government of Edward Heath (1970-74) the slogan of the day was “Margaret Thatcher- Milk snatcher”. It was the first but not the last time I spat out her name in distaste.
Before Thatcher, every primary school pupil received 1/3 of a pint of milk every morning. For some it was the difference between breakfast and no breakfast. I was sometimes one of those. I grew up in a brief period of social democracy in Britain, being dosed by the state with free cod-liver oil, orange juice and malt to build up my strength. Having been born in a slum tenement into a one-room attic in an Irish immigrant area, I needed all of that and more. And like millions I got it, until Thatcher took it away.
She became the Conservative leader after Heath’s two electoral defeats in 1974 and his subsequent resignation.
She was a new type of Tory leader, entirely lacking in anything resembling “noblesse oblige”. She was nasty, brutish and short of the class previously thought obligatory in Britain amongst leaders of the ruling elite. She was vulgar, money-worshipping, and blasphemous. She believed the important part of the Biblical story of the “Good Samaritan” was not that he refused to pass by the suffering on the other side of the road but that he had “loadsamoney”.
In the infamous sermon on the Mound in Edinburgh addressing the Church of Scotland she opined that there was “no such thing as society”…”only individuals”
As the Labour leader Neil Kinnock, in one of his better efforts, retorted: “No such thing as society? Only individuals? No such thing as honouring other people’s parents? No such thing as cherishing other people’s children? No such thing as us and always? Just ME and NOW? ME and NOW?”
She was the living embodiment of Marx’s prediction that under capitalism “all that is solid will melt into air… all that is sacred will be profaned”
Upon her election as prime minister (with just 40% of the vote, her position ensured by the treacherous defection from the Labour cause of the rats now squirming on the Liberal-Democrat ship) she set about “transforming” Britain allright. She privatised Britain’s key industries, enriching her friends, and robbing the public of their birthright. When she took over “Financial Services” represented 3% of the British economy; when she left office it was 40%.
She destroyed the coal industry, the steel, car, bus and motor-cycle manufacturing, truck and bus-making, ship-building and print-industry, the railway workshops… she destroyed more than a third of Britain’s manufacturing capacity, significantly more than Hitler’s Luftwaffe ever achieved.
She did this not just because she prefered the spivs and gamblers in the city -they were her kind of people. But because above all, she hated trades unionism, and was determined to destroy it.
I was a leading member of the Scottish Labour Party at the time she came into office, and a full-time Labour organiser. Scotland was to become an industrial wasteland in the first years of her rule.
I was also, from 1973, a member of the then Transport and General Workers Union, one of her key targets – especially our Docks section.
Importantly, for me, I was an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers too.
In all of these capacities I was a front-line short-sword fighter in the rearguard action against Thatcherism.
I fought her at Bathgate, at Linwood, when she was sacking the automotive industry. I fought her at Wapping – every Saturday night when she destroyed the Print workers on behalf of her friend, the organised crime firm owner, Rupert Murdoch. I fought every day of the Miners strike when she destroyed the Miners Union and the communities they represented. I fought her at Timex in Dundee at Massey Ferguson in Kilmarnock, and at the aluminium smelter in Invergordon.
I fought against her poll tax – imposed first in Scotland – as a refusenik of the most iniquitous tax in Britain since mediaeval times, the tax which ended in flames – literally – whilst I was on the platform at Trafalgar Square. And which finally produced her political demise.
And I toured – as a political activist – the desolation in Britain’s post-industrial distressed areas which she left behind. The City of London – deregulated by her – boomed whilst the coalfields and steel areas sank into penury. I saw the rusted factories the flooded mines the idle shipyards and the devilish results of millions of newly and enforced idle hands.
I faced her in parliament from 1987 as well, on these and other issues.
You see it wasn’t just Britain that Thatcher made bleed.
Her withdrawal of political status from Irish republican prisoners and her brutal, securocratic, militarisation of the situation in the north led to much additional suffering in Ireland.
State collusion in the murder of Catholics became endemic during her rule. And ten young men were starved to death for the restoration of political status, before our eyes in her dungeons. She finally died on the anniversary of their leader, Bobby Sands, being elected to parliament as he lay on his death-bed.
During the Falklands War, she sent hundreds of young Argentinian conscripts to a watery grave when she shot the Argentine warship the Belgrano in the back – as it was speeding away from the conflict. She mercilessly exploited the sacrifice of them, and our own soldiers sailors and airmen, to save her own political skin. A lot of brave men had to leave their guts on Goose Green to keep Thatcher in power.
She pushed her alter ego – the semi-imbecilic US president Ronald Reagan – into Cold War fanaticism and burgeoning expenditure on more and more terrifying weapons – many of them stationed on our soil.
She pushed his successor George Bush Sen into the first Iraq War.
I was there, I saw her lips move, when she described Nelson Mandela as a “common terrorist”.
She continued to recognise the genocidal and deposed Pol Pot regime in Cambodia – insisting that Pol Pot was the real and recognised leader of the Cambodians, even as they counted his victims in millions.
And she was the author of the policy of military, political, diplomatic and media support of the Afghan obscurantists who became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. She even produced them on the platform of the Tory Party conference, hailing them as “freedom-fighters”.
I was one of the last men standing in parliament opposing this immoral policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.
On the eve of the triumph of these “freedom Fighters” I told Thatcher to her face; “You have opened the gates for the barbarians….and a long dark night will now descend upon the people of Afghanistan”. I never said a truer word.
I hated Margaret Thatcher for what seems like all my life. I hated her more than I hated anyone – until the mass murderer Tony Blair came along.
It would have been utter hypocrisy for me to have remained silent about her crimes today whilst the political class – including New Labour – poured honeyed words, lies actually, over her blood-spattered record.
I could not do it. I believe I spoke for millions. The wicked witch is dead. Tramp the dirt down.
George Galloway MP
House of Commons
London
|
|
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
|
|
rocker
Old Love
USA
3606 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2013 : 17:06:40
|
| Messrs Brand, Galloway and Collymore no doubt will be hearing Chumbawamba's musical obituary to Margaret Thatcher. It's titled 'In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher. No love lost there with Chumbawamba as well as the Scots who get a line in there as well. |
|
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
|
|
stewart
Old Love
United Kingdom
568 Posts |
|
|
Topic |
|
|
|
Condolences to UK - Thatcher dies at 87
