R.I.P. Maggie

[The Beard]

I'm afraid even if she was going to be buried in the local church in Grantham, the usual bunch would have turned up and it would still have needed policing.

Still, love her or loathe her, I can't think of another Prime Minister, living or dead, with the possible exception of Chamberlain or Churchill, who could have provoked so much debate.

Politics has become REALLY boring since she left office.

 

[The Beard]

What with Thatchers 80th birthday (when will the witch ever die?) and this post over at Stumbling and Mumbling, it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article of mine about why I hate her so much.

20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER

1. As Education secretary under Edward Heath in a foretaste of what is to come, stops free milk for school children. No chance of the widely praised 'free fruit' scheme ever being Tory policy! She later deregulates school meals so all they have on the menu is burger and chips! The health of the nation was not something Thatcher thought any of her concern.

Personally, I hated the milk at school. In winter it used to be frozen and in summer it was sour. Some kids at our school used to find full cream milk too rich, it made them sick. Margaret Thatcher did indeed have free milk removed from primary schools in 1971, but it appears she was following a template set by Labour in 1968 whereby they withdrew free milk from secondary schools.

 

[dave]

secondary school kids would just go nick it off a door step.

 

[The Beard]

------
2. Shamelessly uses the 'race card' to get elected PM in 1979! (Though I wont claim her to be the first Tory leader to use this and certainly not the last!) "We are being flooded!" she asserts despite figures showing emigration higher than immigration and immigration at its lowest post-war level. Her idols are Keith Joseph (who ruined his own chance of being leader with a demon eyed rant on TV about sterilising the poor (I jest not!!)) and Enoch Powell (the 'intellectual' racist). She promotes Keith 'Eugenics' Joseph to Education Minister!

Shame and the "race card" are two things that can, and have been used both ways. From trying to frighten people with predictions of high levels of immigration in order to get them to vote for a party, or trying to discredit politicians in order to get the electorate to vote against them. I've taken an hour to look through t'internet looking for references to her using the "race card" but so far can't find any, even on the Guardian website. Oddly enough, and this is subjective, but we are under more pressure from "inappropriate" immigration than ever before. We have Lithuanian shop lifting gangs robbing duty free shops while travelling on tickets bought with stolen credit card details. Arranged (forced?) marriages are an archaic system designed only for hegemony and influence which brings in unskilled people, many of whom don't speak English or have any recognisable qualifications or skill useful to this country. The last Labour government were the only EU national leadership to allow complete, unrestricted immigration from the "Accession States".

Any idea who marched through the East End of London (same general area as Mosely, oddly enough) behind Powell? Dockworkers and their unions.

My mother liked Keith Joseph, although she has never been a "political animal", because she was a primary school head while Joseph was the minister. At the time, pupils could only attend a school if they lived within its catchment area. One of the policies was to allow pupils to attend a school if they lived outside the catchment area, as long as there were a) vacancies and b) pupils from within the catchment area weren't adversely affected. My mother's school had a very good reputation whereas one nearby didn't. The small number of vacancies she had were oversubscribed and she was told by the LEA that she mustn't take on any pupils from the other school and was told her own school's assessment would be downgraded. She complained about the pressure she had been put under and her complaint was upheld by the Dept. of Education in London. This was based on the friendship between the other head and the chief of the LEA, in other words the future of children was to be affected by a poor performing school and the "Old Girls & Boys Network".

The Landed Gentry objected to Thatcher because she broke down their "Networks", but she also did the same for the "Town Hall Mafias". Make friends at the Town Hall and you can make screw-up after screw-up.

 

[The Beard]

secondary school kids would just go nick it off a door step.

The young people of today might, but we had real young people in my day. We just used to try and kick the s**t out of each other at football matches. None of this namby-pamby sitting on computers and posting for hours and.....er..... Right then, think I'll put the kettle on then

 

[dave]

no back in the day they nicked it, they cant today milk men are nearly extinct it would take all day to find a doorstep with milk on

 

[The Beard]

As a follow-up to the free milk question, I have a photograph of my father as a toddler playing in the street in 1929. He had nothing on his feet, when I asked him why, he said they could only afford one pair of shoes and they were for best. Lack of money was the main reason why children weren't fed properly and school milk was one way of making up for the lack of components like calcium.

40-odd years later people had a much higher level of income and could afford milk so it wasn't necessary any more

 

[dave]

40-odd years later people had a much higher level of income and could afford milk so it wasn't necessary any more

there are milk vouchers now that the dodgy shops on council estates swap for fags

 

[pooroldcodger]

Says it all really doesn't it?

 

[dave]

Says it all really doesn't it?

says kids ain't getting milk

 

[pooroldcodger]

And that to some people fags are more desirable than milk.

 

[Notorious131]

I'm afraid even if she was going to be buried in the local church in Grantham, the usual bunch would have turned up and it would still have needed policing.

Still, love her or loathe her, I can't think of another Prime Minister, living or dead, with the possible exception of Chamberlain or Churchill, who could have provoked so much debate.

Politics has become REALLY boring since she left office.

Was Adolf Hitler a Prime Minister

I think I've made my position clear too.

 

[The Beard]

Was Adolf Hitler a Prime Minister

I think I've made my position clear too.

He was the Chancellor. He also used the SA and SS to kill opponents. Anybody trying to offer a rational argument against Thatcher by comparing her with Hitler degrades their own argument. But seeing you've made your position clear........

 

[dave]

i think he means you dont have to have been around when some one else was to read up on them and form an opion. i hate hitler but there are others who think his ideas were good

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Indeed where did hitler come from? This thread is getting more and more silly as people struggle to make some meaningless point that no one is interested in.

Don't know if you'd not noticed but the funeral happened, no body cares what stupid arguments you have against thatcher she poses no immediate threat to taxation, schools, the Heath service or anyone's milk, these things all happened more than 20 years ago, it is definitely time to move on, it is now all so unimportant its gone beyond numerous and is not into being quite sad

 

[The Beard]

What with Thatchers 80th birthday (when will the witch ever die?) and this post over at Stumbling and Mumbling, it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article of mine about why I hate her so much.

20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER


3. Monetarism! Disastrous policy of trying to control money supply. In the first of her two recessions (the worst since the 1930's), one fifth of our industrial base is wiped out and unemployment is more than doubled, there are summer riots in every inner-city in the country. Not bad for her first 2 years in office! In the first of many U-turns (see point on 'myth of strong leader'), she abandons monetarism. Polls predict Labour landslide and despite the resolute support of the press, she is the most unpopular PM on record. How could she possibly get out of this one?

A government trying to control the money supply? No wonder we ended up in a mess. Perhaps they should have left the country to its own devices. I don't know how old you are, but my memories of the period was pay claim after pay claim after pay claim. Each one higher than the rest. Stopping that was vital. A 20% loss of the industrial base was down to the fact large parts of it were useless, overmanned, overpaid and grossly inefficient. Every publicly funded project was late and massively over budget. Plus British people wouldn't buy British goods. In the early to mid '70s I worked in both the paper and textiles industries and lost both jobs, first to the 3 Day Week and secondly to cheap foreign imports. U-Turn? maybe but she'd be a really crap leader if she carried on with a policy that wasn't working

 

[ChrisUK]

She'll be looking back from the afterlife going... 20years on, I'm dead and they're still arguing :devil:

 

[pooroldcodger]

Was Adolf Hitler a Prime Minister

I think I've made my position clear too.

I think you have made one thing clear, but probably not what you intended.

 

[The Beard]

What with Thatchers 80th birthday (when will the witch ever die?) and this post over at Stumbling and Mumbling, it seemed as good a time as ever to dig out this old article of mine about why I hate her so much.

20 REASONS WHY I HATE THATCHER


4. The Falklands! In a gross piece of incompetence (or was it deliberate?) fails to avert the Falklands crisis by ignoring intelligence on the Argentine preparation for invasion in early 1982. Indeed she seems to positively encourage it by proposing scrapping the only warship we have there and having her defence secretary Nicholas Ridley openly say we didn't want the Falklands, thereby giving the impression we are not bothered about the islands! In 1978 when faced with the same intelligence, the Labour government quietly averts a war through diplomatic channels by threatening to send a taskforce. It's the classic tale, to divert attention from disastrous economic policies at home a crooked leader engages in a foreign war (except I'm not talking about Galtieri!). Perhaps Thatcher was getting advise from some of the brutal dictatorships she helped prop up in South America, "Would you like some more tea Mr Pinochet?". Number of British soldiers killed, 278, Argentines, 3000+. Blood on her hands anyone?

This is looking increasingly like a Trotskyite manifesto. Either that or it's been plagiarised from someone who's a member of CND. If Ridley had said we didn't want the Falklands why didn't Argentina simply negotiate for them to take over the islands? Because it wouldn't have suited Galtieri's political aspirations. He couldn't glory in a negotiated settlement, whereas a famous victory over a former colonial power would have imortalised him. If she'd threatened to send a taskforce they'd have just invaded sooner. It was a lot easier to invade somewhere 300 miles away than it is to take it back from 10,000.

What "warship" was it they were going to scrap then? HMS Endurance per chance? If it was approached by the infamous Belgrano it would have been sunk before the Argentine ship got within 10 miles of it. The Endurance had a couple of automatic cannon. They couldn't even get near the Belgrano or the 2 Destroyers that were with it. Endurance was scrapped a few years later because its hull wouldn't be able to stand up to the South Atlantic seas. Pretty important in a ship serving in the South Atlantic wouldn't you think?

If the government of the day had kept a powerful force in situ, 2 Destroyers and a couple of Frigates plus maintenance staff, a regiment of troops and a few squadrons of combat aircraft you'd now be sitting here posting that it was a typical Thatcherite waste of money where there was no threat from Argentina.

Which South American dictator would you prefer? Pinochet or Galtieri? They were both unpleasant men who ran countries in very unpleasant manners, but Galtieri was a Fascist and Argentina did become the default destination for fleeing Nazis after WW2.

As for suggesting she deliberately allowed or otherwise provoked an invasion of the Falklands in order to divert attention from what was happening in the UK, I'm sorry but that's pure fantasy. Not only is that a completely defamatory statement, the potential for it to go badly wrong was huge. It wouldn't have worth the risk.

Blood on her hands? Oh no,

 

[dave]

She'll be looking back from the afterlife going... 20years on, I'm dead and they're still arguing :devil:

if there is a place for the good and a place for the bad she wont get into either they will all be arguing about it too.

bloke on the news reckons people will still be arguing the toss in 100 years, wonder if thread will be dead by then :chin: