How stupid can people be?
£75bn in rebate's since 1984, oh joy and how many £trillions to stay in the EU?????????
£5 million for policing to keep away the idiot protestors.......
Doesn't that tell you something...
Doesn't that tell you how hated and despised this thing/woman was...
Doesn't that tell you idiots just what misery she caused the majority of the population, the poor, the ill, the disabled, the destitute...
The most vulnerable in society...
The easy/soft targets
You may not have been born when she was pm or may choose not to remember or may choose to remember the good bits and forget the bad.
But remember this.
We are told we live in a FREE Democracy and that right and good will prevail.
The overwhelming opinion of the country is that Margret Thatcher SHOULD NOT have a state funded funeral, whether good ,bad or indifferent.
What ever happened to the words of our current illustrious leader and his lackey......
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
I think I've made my position clear on this, however, in this context it might be worth re-telling (hundreds of members are now logging onto sportingpunto orsomethingorother.com)
One of the problems of people criticising Margaret Thatcher is that they were either too young to remember much about it, or they're connected in some way to those who were on the wrong end of her policies, but these are mine:
The NHS functioned but incredibly inefficiently. At the time my local AHA built a new maternity block, but couldn't afford the beds/incubators and the like. When they could, a couple of years later, they couldn't afford the nurses to staff it. When they could afford the staff and finally got it up and running a few years later there was a dip in the local birth rate.
In about 1976 they bought a Range Rover fitted with lights, sirens & orange stripes. It also had a split rear seat and a stretcher. The idea was that it could be used in winter for urgent patient transfer as there were a few Cottage Hospitals and a General which were in outlying areas that were badly affected by snow in winter. It was planned to be driven by a porter and could also carry a doctor and a nurse. Unfortunately the ambulance unions got wind of it and threatened industrial action unless it was permanatly manned by 2 of their staff. That would have meant room for a doctor or a nurse, but not both. It served out the rest of its days as an internal mail vehicle.
At around about the same time the union that represented the laundry workers asked for a large payrise which would have meant they were earning more than nurses. The nurses used to strip the soiled linen off the beds, tied them up in other sheets, or used soluble stiching to bundle them up. The laundry staff just pushed the trollies to the laundry and tipped them into the machines. I, along with a number of other staff, clerical workers, doctors & nurses all gave their time up voluntarily to break, or at least reduce the effect of the strike. This involved working at night and weekend doing the laundry at a psychiatric unit. It worked.
The bus I waited for every morning (scheduled for every half hour) turned up only about 75% of the time and when I got to the station my trip to work was usually in the Guards Van. If the train turned up, which it quite often didn't. This seemed to be down to the NUR having an agreement with BR which meant staff could take a certain number of sick days without sanction, which many did, whether ill or not.
Apart from the sabotage I think I mentioned earlier in this thread, strikes were everyday occurances in the motor industry. If there was the slightest possibility of calling a strike, no matter how tenuous it was, it would be taken. If you fell asleep or were having your lunch on the line; on the sick for weeks without a sick note or even having a fight with another member of staff, and were disciplined for that....."with a hell of a shout, it's out brothers out, and the rise of the factory floor....." (I think) (Anyone recognise those words?) If Longbridge went on strike, in theory, the rest of the group could funtion so Pressed Steel Fisher or Unipart would come out in sympathy. When they went back there'd be another one. When all was quiet there the transporter drivers would come out, then the petrol tanker drivers, firemen, ambulance drivers, dustmen, bus men, train drivers, guards, station staff, signalmen and the miners. Then it was back to the car workers again. What Thatcher achieved by taking on the miners was to show the rest of the country's unions that she wouldn't back down which I think calmed everything down.
I was having a discussion with an aquaintance of mine yesterday and he was banging on about how she'd destroyed the mines and steel industry blah, blah, blah. He's currently undergoing eviction from the house he rents because of redevelopment. He was bleating on about Thatcher from the foreign car he owns and was in the process of moving out as he was waxing rhetorical. Anyway, luckily he won't be homeless because, fortunately, one of the 5 houses he owns and rents out has come vacant so this rental property owning Trotsky-ite is glad Margaret Thatcher is dead. He seems to have missed the irony that he's turned into a right little entrepenuer (sp).
My Mother-in-Law and late Father-in-Law were about as working class as you could get. Born and brought up in Middlesbrough, both served in the army in WW2, he served in Egypt, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and Italy again. She ran away from an abusive father and served in anti-aircraft battery in Kent. After the war he worked for Tar-Slag (now Tarmac) British Steel and ICI, always in manual positions. She worked for GEC and was a union convenor, yet both only voted Tory for the last 30 years of their lives. Not only that, but being able to buy their Council House meant that they could actually own a property. As their time in that house drew on, there was a noticable difference between houses owned and those rented on the same estate. The owned property were smarter, cleaner and had neater gardens than the rented ones. Ownership seemed to give people pride, renting seemed to make them more dependant on the council and more likely to leave the houses in a tip with old baby buggies, bikes and cars on the front garden.
I ramble on as per usual, but I can contribute more than just sound bites. I remember losing my job, not as a result of government policy, but because of the 3 day week. I remember waiting for trains and buses that didn't turn up. Of badly made or sabotaged cars, of people involved in producing things that nobody wanted but still expected the rest of the nation to support them.
On top of that, in late 1976 James Callaghan as PM had to ask the IMF to bail out the country to the tune of about £2,500,000,000. At one stage the US was so concerned about our debt they were about to take it over, which would effectively have made us the 51st state of the Union. Even then the IMF had to impose conditions that included budget cuts and job losses. Sound familiar? That's almost exactly what Greece, Cyprus and Spain have been going through recently.
So, was she as bad as the Trots make out? Not in my view. I think she probably saved this country from becoming an even bigger serf to the USA than it is now. As to how this country was perceived, and as a famous man once said: "The perception is more important than the actualite", in one of the Cannonball type films, an E-Type Jag fails to start. One of the occupants says it might be because of the rain. His companion points out that it also rains in England. That summed up a lot of what was wrong with this country at the time. Of all the cars in the film it was the only one not to start. All the American, German, Japanese cars started and ran well, except the Brit.
She didn't save the country per se, but it needed a very good kick up the arse, instead of what was happening, which was being kicked in the nuts.
£10M? I don't know if there'll be a fly past by the RAF, or a 21 gun salute and I'd be very surprised if she will have even a 10th of the number of statues of her as there of Disraeli, Gladstone or Churchill, and the bill won't be all taken up with the funeral, but wherever the "Left" turn up to protest, the Police always have to turn up as well as previous anti-capitalist protests have shown. If the BNP turn up to protest no-one would notice, until the ANL or similar turn up to counter protest. Then the Police have to turn up as well.
