Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Thatcher died
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Good point. IIRC older workers did get hit rather hard.
-------------------- My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
All this "celebrating" is surely justice bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
No matter how you dress it up as joy, it's really just frustration because she won, you lost.
It's a badge of victory.
-------------------- "The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
quote: Posted by Pre-cambrian I wonder how many veterans were cast onto the scrapheap never to work again as a result of Thatcher's mass unemployment policies. Churchill would have been turning in his grave about the way his country and party repaid them.
Actually I think Churchill would have responded with a wry smile - don't forget that the man who stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day in May 1945 was out of office by VJ Day in the August.
-------------------- Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
For "horse" read "old nag". But at least you seem to recognise she had injustice on her side. I suppose that is progress.
[In response to deano.] [ 10. April 2013, 15:38: Message edited by: Pre-cambrian ]
-------------------- "We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: All this "celebrating" is surely justice bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
It's shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. If you must use cliches, please get them right.
-------------------- "He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Sioni Sais: quote: Originally posted by deano: All this "celebrating" is surely justice bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
It's shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. If you must use cliches, please get them right.
It's what I call the "Biff Syndrome", after the least intelligent character in "Back to the Future" - "Make like a tree and get out of here."
-------------------- Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical: quote: Originally posted by ken If all right-wingers were as ignorant of politics as you we'd have nothing to fear from them.
Funny how even Neil Kinnock blames Scargill for the demise of the coal industry.
But, hey, if you really think the 1970's was a great time for Britain, then please do pour scorn on me as much as you like.
You obviously are shouting back at the voices in your head because nothing you wrote there has anything to do with what I wrote.
Calm down and take the pills like a good little diddy-poos-possum and jsut remember Nanny Knows Best and never never play with those nasty dirty children on the other side of town. [ 10. April 2013, 16:28: Message edited by: ken ]
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
Hear, hear.
Let's show as much respect to Margaret Thatcher dead as Margaret Thatcher showed to the living.
-------------------- Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that. Moon: Including what? Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie. Moon: That's not true!
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
One can definitely criticize Thatcherism even if one refrains from judging Thatcher the person.
My understanding of Christian judgment is that we are never to presume the state of anyone's soul at death. Even the most heinous of people may be forgiven by our loving and gracious God and therefore saved.
However this refraining of judgment at another's eternal state, does not mean we can't critique one's deeds and actions during one's life. It certainly does not mean we try to justify or sugar-coat one's actions. My first thought when I heard of Thatcher's death was:
Perhaps she'll learn in purgatory that there is a society after all.
-------------------- It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by George Spigot: @Deano Six pages in and you STILL don't get it? This doesn't come from joy it comes from anger.
No, it comes from frustration. Three election victories, winning the cold war, destroying the hard left and not dying until she was 87. Of course you're frustrated.
You're going to be just as frustrated when Bush and Blair die peacefully in their sleep in their nineties never having been charged with the war crimes that some of you lot whinge on about. You'll be frustrated then too.
Of course my typo above was a mistake. It should have said it's JUST bolting the stable door etc. And thanks to all those of you who pointed it out. It was so kind of you, but really, you shouldn't have bothered. JUST like I'm not.
The autocorrect on Nokia's is shite.
Someone mentioned I didn't get it after six pages. I'm sorry but I don't get socialists and socialism after forty six years. So six pages of the usual ship's portside whining is hardly going to do anything.
-------------------- "The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: Someone mentioned I didn't get it after six pages. I'm sorry but I don't get socialists and socialism after forty six years. So six pages of the usual ship's portside whining is hardly going to do anything.
Like every right-wing fuckwit in this country or yours, you wouldn't know socialism if it bit off your head.
Oh, and as an armchair psychologist, you're a worm. [ 10. April 2013, 20:20: Message edited by: mousethief ]
-------------------- This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Not frustrated, deano. Disgusted, angry, furious to think of what this country could have been and of what has been done to our people. But you wouldn't understand that kind of feeling. That's one of the differences between the right and the left, you see: the left, with exceptions, sees a big picture and cares about what happens beyond its field of vision: the right- the Thatcherite, neo-liberal right, anyway- doesn't give a fuck. The whole creed was built on not giving a fuck. When she spoke about 'our people' she meant 'us- and not you'.
-------------------- My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by QLib: Glenda really went for it!
GO GLENDA (and good on John Bercow, too)!
-------------------- Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that. Moon: Including what? Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie. Moon: That's not true!
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George Spigot
Outcast
# 253
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Posted
@Deano No really. Not frustrated. Angry. We don't see politics as some kind of football match where if our team loses we feel hard done by or as if "we was robbed". We see the effects of politics on real people and are angry if it hurts them.
-------------------- C.S. Lewis's Head is just a tool for the Devil. (And you can quote me on that.) ~ Philip Purser Hallard http://www.thoughtplay.com/infinitarian/gbsfatb.html
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Porridge: quote: Originally posted by QLib: Glenda really went for it!
GO GLENDA (and good on John Bercow, too)!
There are quite a few Thatcher insults / criticisms flying around at the moment, but 'Margaret Thatcher wasn't a woman' is a new one on me.
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: There are quite a few Thatcher insults / criticisms flying around at the moment, but 'Margaret Thatcher wasn't a woman' is a new one on me.
It's been around in some left-wing feminist circles for years - maybe even back when she was still PM.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: winning the cold war
For the second time on this thread (the first was directed elsehwere): Eh?
-------------------- Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: There are quite a few Thatcher insults / criticisms flying around at the moment, but 'Margaret Thatcher wasn't a woman' is a new one on me.
Have a look at footage of cabinet meetings etc.
Thatcher was a queen bee.
The willing drones gathered round her, dancing to her tune - the unwilling ones were shafted. Just like our manufacturing base really.
She did nothing for women.
I was disappointed by many things she did and didn't do, this especially. She put the cause of women leaders back by decades. Who would want a Thatcher repeat? (shudder).
-------------------- Garden. Room. Walk
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
The version I remember from the time was 'A woman but not a Sister'.
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano:
Of course my typo above was a mistake. It should have said it's JUST bolting the stable door etc. And thanks to all those of you who pointed it out.
[ 11. April 2013, 08:09: Message edited by: Spike ]
-------------------- "May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Boogie: quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: There are quite a few Thatcher insults / criticisms flying around at the moment, but 'Margaret Thatcher wasn't a woman' is a new one on me.
Have a look at footage of cabinet meetings etc.
Thatcher was a queen bee.
This is a bad thing? And if so, how / why? I don't understand the argument that it's good to be a woman leader so long as one isn't too assertive. Or at least that appears to be argument.
quote: She did nothing for women.
Is a woman under a duty to help other women? And is she less of a woman if she doesn't? And what sort of assistance should this take? I'm at a loss to think what she should've done.
This is putting aside the fact that some women were inspired by having a woman in charge.
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Thurible
Shipmate
# 3206
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: This is putting aside the fact that some women were inspired by having a woman in charge.
I remember talking to my Maths teacher at secondary school about this, in those far-off, adolescent days when I was somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun.
Mrs O'Connor had come of age at the beginnig of the Thatcher era and I suggested to her that Mrs T must have been an inspiration, showing what could be done by women.
"Far from it!" was the response "Thatcher showed that the way for a woman to succeed was to become a man. How is that meant to inspire women?"
Thurible
-------------------- "I've been baptised not lobotomised."
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
But she didn't become a man in that sense: she was far above (for good and ill) the men surrounding her, "a tigress surrounded by hamsters".
-------------------- "Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Albertus: Not frustrated, deano. Disgusted, angry, furious to think of what this country could have been and of what has been done to our people. But you wouldn't understand that kind of feeling. That's one of the differences between the right and the left, you see: the left, with exceptions, sees a big picture and cares about what happens beyond its field of vision: the right- the Thatcherite, neo-liberal right, anyway- doesn't give a fuck. The whole creed was built on not giving a fuck. When she spoke about 'our people' she meant 'us- and not you'.
You say potato.
I shudder to think what state the country would be in if Labour had won in 1979.
Happily we were spared that nightmare.
-------------------- "The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
Yep
-------------------- "Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: All this "celebrating" is surely justice bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
No matter how you dress it up as joy, it's really just frustration because she won, you lost.
It's a badge of victory.
And there you sum up the attitude by the Tories perfectly, what this whole thing means and what Thatcher's funeral will be seen as by many. This isn't just about remembering someone who's died, remembering a past leader of this country who's died - this is about your lot gloating and rubbing the noses of those who opposed Thatcher and those who suffered under Thatcher and the economic system she unleashed in it.
Thatcher came to power in a deeply broken, divided country. But she didn't try to heal it and bring it together, no matter what she said on the steps of 10 Downing Street: she came to win, to make her side the champions and to break the other side and to hell with the human consequences of that. She may not have wanted to wage war on the working classes, but it seems unlikely she considered them as any more than the collateral damage in her battle to draw power and wealth to the top of society.
And her funeral will be the ultimate reflection of that: rather than acknowledging the deep divisions Thatcher inherited, made worse and caused, it'll glorify her and her side and ignore those who have a different story to tell - rub their noses in it.
So that's it: you won and that'll be the message next Wednesday. And the divisions in British society will get worse and worse, and the consequences of that - consequences which the right complains about but which the right under Thatcher caused - will continue to grow.
-------------------- A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: quote: Originally posted by Albertus: Not frustrated, deano. Disgusted, angry, furious to think of what this country could have been and of what has been done to our people. But you wouldn't understand that kind of feeling. That's one of the differences between the right and the left, you see: the left, with exceptions, sees a big picture and cares about what happens beyond its field of vision: the right- the Thatcherite, neo-liberal right, anyway- doesn't give a fuck. The whole creed was built on not giving a fuck. When she spoke about 'our people' she meant 'us- and not you'.
You say potato.
I shudder to think what state the country would be in if Labour had won in 1979.
Happily we were spared that nightmare.
And what then Comrades? Jones would have come back!
-------------------- Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: You say potato.
I shudder to think what state the country would be in if Labour had won in 1979.
Happily we were spared that nightmare.
Spared one, but we had another instead; an unnecessary war, house-price inflation treated as a virtue, interest rates higher than the age of consent, 3 million unemployed and an economic dependence on the globalisation of financial markets.
All this despite the best of the North Sea oil revenues.
-------------------- "He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Sioni Sais: quote: Originally posted by deano: You say potato.
I shudder to think what state the country would be in if Labour had won in 1979.
Happily we were spared that nightmare.
Spared one, but we had another instead; an unnecessary war, house-price inflation treated as a virtue, interest rates higher than the age of consent, 3 million unemployed and an economic dependence on the globalisation of financial markets.
All this despite the best of the North Sea oil revenues.
I was just a child in the Thatcher era, but it seems to me that the arguments go like this:
Conservative: It was really bad when Thatcher took over. She got rid of all the bad things.
Liberal: Yes, she did, which was good and right. But what she replaced it with was just as bad. Bad, but in a different way.
Conservative: But what she got rid of was really bad! Imagine if she hadn't done that!
What I would really like to hear from the Conservatives is why what she replaced the bad things with was good, not bad, when as far as I can tell, for many, many people, it was very bad.
What I would really like to hear from the Liberals is, given that what she got rid of was bad, what should she have replaced it with?
-------------------- "Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider: And what then Comrades? Jones would have come back!
Do you mean Jones the KGB informer? [ 11. April 2013, 11:30: Message edited by: Anglican't ]
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: quote: Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider: And what then Comrades? Jones would have come back!
Do you mean Jones the KGB informer?
Well, we did have a PM who backed a neo-fascist regime in South America. She would have backed another had they not gone to war with us.
goperryrevs asked:
What I would really like to hear from the Liberals is, given that what she got rid of was bad, what should she have replaced it with?
Well, I'm not a Liberal (or a liberal) but I would have preferred that:
- the whole country shared in the North Sea oil bonanza. - council houses sold were replaced, to maintain the stock of social housing. - unions had been reformed, not destroyed. - trustees of company pension funds had not been given the power to invest in that company, or take 'pension holidays'. - the Ponzi schemes known as endowment mortgages had been outlawed. - her followers had seen the merit in her opposition to railway privatisation.
That do for now?
-------------------- "He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Matt Black: But she didn't become a man in that sense: she was far above (for good and ill) the men surrounding her, "a tigress surrounded by hamsters".
She was PM; the men surrounding her were the ones she chose to surround herself with. Her preference for ideological soulmates is well documented as is her intolerance of challenge. If she was surrounded by hamsters she must bear much of the blame for that.
-------------------- "We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Sioni Sais: quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: quote: Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider: And what then Comrades? Jones would have come back!
Do you mean Jones the KGB informer?
Well, we did have a PM who backed a neo-fascist regime in South America. She would have backed another had they not gone to war with us.
Even if those statements are true, it's not the same as treason.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
And fuck all to do with the point I was making.
-------------------- Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: Which was what?
A point fucking obvious to anyone passingly familiar with 20th century political fiction.
-------------------- Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Sioni Sais: That do for now?
Yeah, thanks, they make sense.
I didn't know she opposed the privatisation of the railways. It always seemed a dumb idea to me. Same with energy. The way that all the energy companies like to screw us punters over endlessly (and put up with all the fines, because they still get their profit) is rubbish.
-------------------- "Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Anglican't: Oh I see, Animal Farm.
See, I knew you'd get there in time. It's not true what they say. I said "That Anglican't, he's not stupid. He thinks slower than he talks, but he can see through a brick wall in time, as they say."
-------------------- Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
Actually, I've read neither Animal Farm nor Lord or the Rings. I know I ought to read the former, not so bothered about the latter.
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
Not Lord of the Rings?!
Seriously, read both!
-------------------- "Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by deano: I shudder to think what state the country would be in if Labour had won in 1979.
In terms of economics and business, almost certainly roughtly where we are now. Every single western European country ahs got more prosperous over the last thirty years at roughly the same rate, with a few fits and starts here and there. Regardless of what colour government they had at the time. Sometimes some of them surged forward a bit faster, sometimes some of them got held up a bit. Like the British economy in the early 1980s, though we caught up again later.
Governments haven;t really had much to do with that kind economic growth other than occasionally halting it by by incompetance or deliberate action. But these things too shall pass.
Politically? Well, every single Western European country except the Vatican and Lichtentsein (we could argue about Monaco) has some form of more-or-less Republican representative government, occasionally with a figurehead monarch, every single one of them has some sort of vaguely liberal-democratic constitution, every single one of them has a more-or-less free press (rather less free in England than most because of our libel laws deliberately designed to protect the rich), every single one of them has a basically capitalist economy with a certain amount of government intervention, every single one of them has a sort-of free market in goods and services (more in the UK than some others), every single one of them has a theoretically independent judiciiary, every single one of them has some sort of national healthcare scheme, every single one of htem has compulsory education funded by taxpayers, every single one of them has a klimited welfare state with old-age pensions, unemplyment benefits, disability benefits and so on. And so on and so on.
Why do you imagine things would have been much different now whoever was in government in 1979? What evidence do you have of that other than a mixture of right-wing arrogance and typical Tory misanthropic wet dreams?
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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alienfromzog
Ship's Alien
# 5327
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Posted
I would never dance on anybody's grave. Ask not for whom the bell tolls because I promise you, it tolls for thee too... However I can understand those that do, and to be honest, whilst it's a little bit thoughtless and offensive to her family those who can't understand it are lacking empathy - or possibly, intelligence.
I would not wish to compare Thatcher with various despotic dictators. However, I think that, notwithstanding what I've just said, the death of Mugabe would be a good thing overall. No one (aside from the odd neo-Nazi) would argue that the world is not a better place without Hitler in it. Hitler and Mugabe and all the others are accountable for their lives and actions and it is arguably the greatest tragedy possible for a human life that the world is a better place without you.
Once you concede the principal it is just a matter of degree and where you draw the line. Paradoxically I think the world is worse off with Margaret Thatcher not in it but I'll come to that. Firstly, it is not remotely surprising how strong the anti-Thatcher feeling is. It is not (except in the addled, deluded minds of Daily Mail writers and readers) some strange form of left-wing jealously and a result of the fact that 'The Left' can't forgive her for being right.
If we - for the sake of argument - concede that Thatcher did a lot of good*. However and it's a big 'however' even her most ardent supporters admit that there were many losers to Thatcherism.
If you are one of those losers - and we are talking whole sections of society impoverished and stigmatised and generally depressed by the actions of the state - if you are one of those, I think you are clearly entitled to neither like her nor think her record is something to be celebrated. Even if you wish to postulate that her reforms were necessary, I think you have to admit that those who felt the brunt of the effects are entitled to think negatively about her and all she stood for.
There are large sections of the UK who think this. (She never had majority support btw, but big majorities due to our electoral system). Then if you add on to such a justified feeling the message that the right-wing media has been pumping out for a long time, but in a quasi-orgasmic way this week that she was the greatest prime minister ever or quite possibly the greatest human being ever... and anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly defective in some way, then it is not surprisingly how strongly negative feelings get towards her.
The paradox for me, is that as an ailing old lady lauded by the right-wing ideologues she had some power - less than when she was in government, obviously - but still a big influence on thinking and ideology. As a deceased former Prime Minister and totem of the radical right she is much more influential this week than last.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls but no one should be surprised that hurt, angry people feel strongly about her.
AFZ
*Her economic legacy will be ground in stone by the Right as 'the woman who saved Britain' if they can manage it but (apart from to make a rhetorical point) this is something I would challenge deeply. There is so much evidence that the 'economic miracle of Thatcher' is basically a Myth, as Ken alluded to above. For starters:
Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winning economist
-------------------- Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. [Sen. D.P.Moynihan]
An Alien's View of Earth - my blog (or vanity exercise...)
Posts: 2150 | From: Zog, obviously! Straight past Alpha Centauri, 2nd planet on the left... | Registered: Dec 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Stejjie: Thatcher came to power in a deeply broken, divided country. But she didn't try to heal it and bring it together, no matter what she said on the steps of 10 Downing Street: she came to win, to make her side the champions and to break the other side and to hell with the human consequences of that. She may not have wanted to wage war on the working classes, but it seems unlikely she considered them as any more than the collateral damage in her battle to draw power and wealth to the top of society.
I love how you say all that as if the left wouldn't have done exactly the same thing had they won.
Actually, they probably wouldn't have done exactly the same thing. Thatcher was indifferent to the fate of her defeated opponents, whereas the likes of Scargill would have happily lined their defeated opponents up against a wall and shot them. "Glorious Revolutions" tend not to be so "glorious" for those who didn't want them to happen.
-------------------- Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by alienfromzog:
If you are one of those losers - and we are talking whole sections of society impoverished and stigmatised and generally depressed by the actions of the state - if you are one of those, I think you are clearly entitled to neither like her nor think her record is something to be celebrated.
Yes, I agree.
It's always easy to find losers. It's harder to find the people that would have been losers under the alternative, but are not losers under the new system. This is a well-known framing effect that makes people react worse than they should towards any change.
This doesn't mean that the losers don't exist, or don't have the right to be aggrieved. It just means that counting losers isn't the whole picture.
quote:
(She never had majority support btw, but big majorities due to our electoral system).
As I have pointed out, there's nothing special about that. No government since 1928 has had majority support, and there's not much to choose between Thatcher's vote share and Blair's, for example.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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