Shame on you Ed Milliband.......

[mjdgreg]

and anyone else that thinks it's acceptable to rejoice in Maggie's death. It's only the economically illiterate that would hold that view:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4533645/Fury-at-union-party-packs-if-Margaret-Thatcher-dies.html#ixzz26EvNdIMN

[MrFrost]

What a tool.

[jucyberry]

I find this quote a bit rich if I'm honest..
'Tory MP Douglas Carswell said: “Is this what the British Left have become? It shows how ethically bankrupt the movement is if it thinks this is acceptable.”'

These is a special kind of irony when a member of the morally corrupt party points out the ethics of another body.

Actually, I would say those slogans are a tad mild when you think of the contempt the woman is held in, not just in Yorkshire but countrywide.

[Filo]

and anyone else that thinks it's acceptable to rejoice in Maggie's death. It's only the economically illiterate that would hold that view:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4533645/Fury-at-union-party-packs-if-Margaret-Thatcher-dies.html#ixzz26EvNdIMN

Put me down as an economic illiterate, the Champagne is on ice for her long awaited call to the bowels of the earth, and may she burn and rot there eternally!


Until then, I recall what Menzie from the Angelic Upstarts said at their gig in Sandall Park many years ago "I hope her fanny festers and her fingernails drop out so she can`t scratch it"

[MrFrost]

What I find ironic is the way people wish death upon her, yet the same people on this forum were picking fault that Osama Bin Laden was "murdered".

[mjdgreg]

How anyone can have anything but the utmost respect for the woman is beyond me. You can only appreciate the transformational importance of her by studying the gloomy period before she came to power. It's time for a history lesson for all you economic illiterates.

In the 1970s Britain had to adopt a three-day week because the nation couldn't afford enough electricity to power industry for a normal working week. TV stations were ordered off the air at 10.30pm for the same reason.

Later in the same decade Britain had to go, cap in hand, asking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Like Gordon Brown's Labour government, the Labour ministers of the 1970s also borrowed too much and Britain was drowning in debt.

The trade unions ran Britain in the 1970s and by the "winter of discontent" of 1978/79 the streets were piled high with uncollected rubbish. Even the dead went unburied. Children were sent home from school for a fortnight. There simply wasn't enough money to afford to heat their classrooms.

Civil servants described their job as the management of decline. Throughout the world Britain was known as "the sick man of Europe". The nation was humiliated.

It took the Iron Lady, as she came to be known, to heal the sick man. Elected in May 1979 she didn't, of course, get everything right. No politician ever has. But she got the big judgments right and it was her iron will that made her special. The western world's first elected woman leader had the guts to do things that her male predecessors had failed to do.

Every honest person knew that the union leaders had too much power. Strikes started at intimidating mass meetings where workers were asked to raise their hands to authorise industrial action. Mrs Thatcher passed laws that meant walk-outs never happened unless approved by a secret ballot.

Every honest person knew that government was too big and inefficient. Tax rates of 98% were introduced on high earners but they 'brain drained' out of Britain to places where taxes were reasonable. Margaret Thatcher brought state spending and taxes under control. She closed down or streamlined state-owned industries that were making things that nobody wanted to buy but were costing taxpayers millions of pounds.

Every honest person knew that communism was a totalitarian ideology but most wanted to appease it. The Labour Party wanted Britain to give away Britain's independent nuclear deterrent without demanding anything from Moscow in return. Margaret Thatcher had the courage to enhance Britain's nuclear defences.

She also had the courage to send a fleet of warships to the South Atlantic after Argentina's fascist military regime invaded Britain's Falkland Islands. Victory in the Falklands and, years later, in the Cold War were great moments for Britain. Suddenly a strong and victorious Britain was able to hold its head high again.

Margaret Thatcher went to the European Union and banging her handbag on the negotiating table, she got a rebate from Brussels, partly ending the unfair way Britain paid so much into Brussels' coffers but got little back.

She made it easier to invest in Britain and by the end of the 1980s Britain had overtaken France and Italy in the global economic league table.

Margaret Thatcher's other great service to Britain was the defeat of a very left-wing Labour Party on three occasions.

If Michael Foot had been elected in 1983 the 1970s would have seemed a paradise. He wanted more powers for unions, tax rates of 90% and a dismemberment of the police and army. His defeat and the defeat of Neil Kinnock in 1987 ensured that Labour had to modernise. She defeated socialism and made Britain great again.

[mjdgreg]

What I find ironic is the way people wish death upon her, yet the same people on this forum were picking fault that Osama Bin Laden was "murdered".

You find that with lefties. Their use of double standards takes my breath away. The current crop moan about 'austerity' and that the coalition is cutting too far and too fast. They fail to engage their brains, because if they did, they'd find that the coalition is actually spending more than Labour did!!!

[mjdgreg]

Until then, I recall what Menzie from the Angelic Upstarts said at their gig in Sandall Park many years ago "I hope her fanny festers and her fingernails drop out so she can`t scratch it"

I just hope there weren't any impressionable youngsters at that gig listening to such filth. I'm sure if she did get 'itchy fanny' syndrome and hadn't got any fingernails, being the resourceful person she was she 'd have found a way around the problem. Maybe Dennis could have helped out?

Anyway, I hope Menzie's cock has fallen off and his balls have grown to the size of balloons, the upstart.

[Filo]

How anyone can have anything but the utmost respect for the woman is beyond me. You can only appreciate the transformational importance of her by studying the gloomy period before she came to power. It's time for a history lesson for all you economic illiterates.

In the 1970s Britain had to adopt a three-day week because the nation couldn't afford enough electricity to power industry for a normal working week. TV stations were ordered off the air at 10.30pm for the same reason.

Later in the same decade Britain had to go, cap in hand, asking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Like Gordon Brown's Labour government, the Labour ministers of the 1970s also borrowed too much and Britain was drowning in debt.

The trade unions ran Britain in the 1970s and by the "winter of discontent" of 1978/79 the streets were piled high with uncollected rubbish. Even the dead went unburied. Children were sent home from school for a fortnight. There simply wasn't enough money to afford to heat their classrooms.

Civil servants described their job as the management of decline. Throughout the world Britain was known as "the sick man of Europe". The nation was humiliated.

It took the Iron Lady, as she came to be known, to heal the sick man. Elected in May 1979 she didn't, of course, get everything right. No politician ever has. But she got the big judgments right and it was her iron will that made her special. The western world's first elected woman leader had the guts to do things that her male predecessors had failed to do.

Every honest person knew that the union leaders had too much power. Strikes started at intimidating mass meetings where workers were asked to raise their hands to authorise industrial action. Mrs Thatcher passed laws that meant walk-outs never happened unless approved by a secret ballot.

Every honest person knew that government was too big and inefficient. Tax rates of 98% were introduced on high earners but they 'brain drained' out of Britain to places where taxes were reasonable. Margaret Thatcher brought state spending and taxes under control. She closed down or streamlined state-owned industries that were making things that nobody wanted to buy but were costing taxpayers millions of pounds.

Every honest person knew that communism was a totalitarian ideology but most wanted to appease it. The Labour Party wanted Britain to give away Britain's independent nuclear deterrent without demanding anything from Moscow in return. Margaret Thatcher had the courage to enhance Britain's nuclear defences.

She also had the courage to send a fleet of warships to the South Atlantic after Argentina's fascist military regime invaded Britain's Falkland Islands. Victory in the Falklands and, years later, in the Cold War were great moments for Britain. Suddenly a strong and victorious Britain was able to hold its head high again.

Margaret Thatcher went to the European Union and banging her handbag on the negotiating table, she got a rebate from Brussels, partly ending the unfair way Britain paid so much into Brussels' coffers but got little back.

She made it easier to invest in Britain and by the end of the 1980s Britain had overtaken France and Italy in the global economic league table.

Margaret Thatcher's other great service to Britain was the defeat of a very left-wing Labour Party on three occasions.

If Michael Foot had been elected in 1983 the 1970s would have seemed a paradise. He wanted more powers for unions, tax rates of 90% and a dismemberment of the police and army. His defeat and the defeat of Neil Kinnock in 1987 ensured that Labour had to modernise. She defeated socialism and made Britain great again.

Here you are Mick I`ll provide the link for some one else`s writing you`ve stolen

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154970949


By Tim Montgomerie, Editor, ConservativeHome



Hardly independent and unbiased is it?

[Filo]

And just to cancel your copy and paste out Mick, I`ll raise you with this copy and paste!

When Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street for the last time as prime minister in November 1990, she told the press: "We're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here 11-and-a-half years ago."

Judged against certain criteria, she had a point. Few enjoy paying tax: her time in No 10 saw the basic rate fall from 33p to 25p and the top rate plunge from 83p to 40p. Everybody enjoys more disposable income: during her premiership, the average salary rose from £5,427 to £15,252. She also oversaw a decline in the annual number of working days lost in strikes from 29.5m to 1.9m.

Dig beneath the surface of these statistics, however, and a different picture emerges. In order to achieve constructive changes, Mrs Thatcher subjected Britain to a sequence of destructive upheavals. Her cure for the UK’s ills was attractive enough for a portion of its population to vote her into office three times, but the medicine was so objectionable she never received majority support.

In short, the apparatus she used to achieve her goals harmed just as many - if not more - than they helped. This was because her policies tended to involve short-term pain for many, but long-term gain for only a few.

Inflation doubled

Rather than stimulating the economy through investment and tax cuts, she tried to control the amount of money in circulation. Mrs Thatcher thought this would reduce inflation from its 1979 level of 10.3%. It didn't. Inflation doubled within a year and only fell to present day levels of 2-3% in 1986.

By this point, the damage had been done. To get to such a low level, indirect taxes had been hiked (VAT rose from 8% to 15%), as had interest rates (topping 17%). Subsidies for industry were reduced. The result was a massive rise in unemployment from 1.4m in 1979 to 3.5m by 1982, or one in eight people out of work. "I knew that when you change from one set of policies to another, the transition is very difficult," Mrs Thatcher later reflected, "but benefits would come in the longer run."

Margaret Thatcher leaves Downing Street after announcing her resignation on November 22 1990 (© Image © PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images)

Image © PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images

A disunited kingdom

Benefits did come, but not for everyone. Long-term unemployment blighted an entire generation in Northern Ireland (where 20% of people were left out of work), Scotland and the NE and NW of England (16%). Supporters insisted work was there to be found; critics argued it was unreasonable to expect people to leave homes and families to take a job 100 miles away. 

A disunited kingdom emerged, as some parts of the country flourished while others faltered. Industry declined in the north; new sectors such as financial services boomed in the south.  Mrs Thatcher went further, advocating both economic and moral belligerence. There was "no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families." People should look to their own and not rely on the government for help. 

This crystallised into her observation that the only reason the Good Samaritan did any good was "because he had money". Fine: everyone wants money and some made a lot during the Thatcher years, but what if you happened to live in a place where you couldn't earn any?

Selective prosperity

The prosperity Mrs Thatcher brought to Britain was selective, antagonistic and temporary. She did indeed leave Britain "very, very much better", but only for some. She also left it in recession, with unemployment, inflation and interest rates rising. 

Above all, not only was she bad for the country during her premiership, she continues to be bad for the country today. The causes of the present slump - unrestricted credit, deregulation and too much financial speculation - all date back to the 1980s. No successive government dared reverse these decisions: a blessing to her legacy, but a curse we must now all share

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=150369015

[mjdgreg]

Here you are mjdgreg I`ll provide the link for some one else`s writing you`ve stolen

How many times do I have to remind you about my photographic memory?

[wilts rover]

Here you are mjdgreg I`ll provide the link for some one else`s writing you`ve stolen

How many times do I have to remind you about my photographic memory?

For as long as you steal someone else's work I guess.

Love the way you have taken your story from the newspaper who are all over the news today being forced to admit how shameful their reporting is - which about sums up this whole story and Margaret Thatcher;s premiership.

[grayx]

Another economic illiterate here then. I detest the awful woman and all that she stood for.

[mjdgreg]

Another economic illiterate here then.

At least you're honest if very misguided.

[Glyn_Wigley]

How many times do I have to remind you about my photographic memory?

What photographic memory? Surely someone with such a fantastic memory as yourself would have remembered this in your favourite newspaper LAST YEAR:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384726/Ed-Milibands-regret-link-Maggie-grave-man.html

[Glyn_Wigley]

Oh, and what do you think about your hero's actions over Hillsborough, as revealed in the documents released today? Still the saint you think she is?

[Glyn_Wigley]

How many times do I have to remind you about my photographic memory?

And one more thing...how come your photographic memory seems to have let slip our forum policy of linking to copyright material, and not incorporating it into individual posts?

[BobG]

pseaking entirely personally, once the wonderful day dawns when her arms, legs and head do all drop off, I am going to bide my time, and, at a suitably innocent point, drive to her fetid hole in the ground and I am there going to dance on it. I mean it. I have never despised anyone as much as I loathe that dreadful dreadful woman.

Although it's unpopular to say it, she remains the cause, even today, of many, many of our ills. Just a couple of really simple examples: do you enjoy paying for a car park space when yo take someone to hospital? why do they do it? Answewr: beacuse they are not funded properly. And why not? because she made it politically impossible for well over a generation to levy a sensible rate of tax.I would far rather pay more tax myself and have a more sensible approach to basics like that. School playing fields? State of the roads? Continuing delusions of grandeur about the UK role in the world? The sod you selfishness of this entire nation which continues today? Ambulance chasing lawyers? Rocketing insurance costs? Banking scandals? I cold go on and on. But one thing they all have in common: they are all traceable back to the policies and actions of that sodding woman.

BobG

[DC-]

The Sun? Really? Please ...

[BillyStubbsTears]

Ah yes. This old myth about how Maggie transformed the British economy.

As with anything that Mick copies and pastes, it's b*llocks. Demonstrable b*llocks.

Britain's long term average growth rate from 1945 to now has been 2.1% per annum. It was that before Maggie. It was EXACTLY the same after Maggie. I'll post a graph from the Office of National Statistics data to demonstrate when I get back to my laptop.

What she DID do was put us through a roller coaster 10 years of massive recession, massive boom and massive recession, all of which eclipsed anything we had seen in the previous 35 years when, apparently so her hagiographers tell us, we were a basket case.

She left office with interest rates, unemployment and inflation higher than they were when she arrived. She ushered in an era of horrific unemployment and enormous social divide where some became spectacularly rich and areas like ours were left to rot.

We did NOT have a stronger economy than France when she left office. Our GDP was 81% as big as France's in 1979 and 83% as big as France's in 1990.

When Thatcher took power. Our GDP was 20% bigger than Italy's. When she left, it was 2% smaller.

But why let facts get in the way of a canonisation eh Mick? You don't normally worry about facts do you, so why change now?

She was a manic ideologue who put us through a decade of  right wing experiment. She did nothing, repeat NOTHING to transform our economy. But she made millions suffer along the way.

I have a bottle of champagne that's been on ice for 5 years waiting for the day that she shuffles off. I can wait.

[Mr1Croft]

pseaking entirely personally, once the wonderful day dawns when her arms, legs and head do all drop off, I am going to bide my time, and, at a suitably innocent point, drive to her fetid hole in the ground and I am there going to dance on it. I mean it. I have never despised anyone as much as I loathe that dreadful dreadful woman.

Although it's unpopular to say it, she remains the cause, even today, of many, many of our ills. Just a couple of really simple examples: do you enjoy paying for a car park space when yo take someone to hospital? why do they do it? Answewr: beacuse they are not funded properly. And why not? because she made it politically impossible for well over a generation to levy a sensible rate of tax.I would far rather pay more tax myself and have a more sensible approach to basics like that. School playing fields? State of the roads? Continuing delusions of grandeur about the UK role in the world? The sod you selfishness of this entire nation which continues today? Ambulance chasing lawyers? Rocketing insurance costs? Banking scandals? I cold go on and on. But one thing they all have in common: they are all traceable back to the policies and actions of that sodding woman.

BobG

And that in itself is a reason why we are all referred to as "Children of Thatcher" , she was the most successful Prime Minister and perhaps politician in that she not only successfully implemented her policies, she implanted a legacy that describes Great Britain today, it may not be a Great Britain to be proud of, and one some of us would rather not live in, but you cannot deny that it is still Thatchers Britain.


Tbh the debate has been done to death on Thatcher and not just on this forum but across the entire nation. The towns and Cities of industry up north generally take the view of 'dancing on her grave' while the south who blossomed through the economic boom salute her. She was voted both the most unpopular and popular PM in her 11 year premiership, she proved Britain was not a force to be reckoned with with the Falklands but she also ruined families across the nation which she described as one of her greatest victories while she survived by pure coincidence when the IRA attempted to assassinate her. Inequality grew bigger and while 90% of us got richer the bottom 10% fell through the gaps and were left even poorer. She never lost a General Election but she was finished by the enemy within, and 2 years after that John Major's Conservative Party won the general election with the biggest ever turnout on the books; was that a reward for stabbing Maggie in the back? Tony Blair's successful time at number 10 is often perceived to be because of how much towards the right and Thatcherism he moved Labour.


Love her or hate her you cannot deny that she changed this country (of course whether it was for better or worse is still debatable), she was more than a politician, she was a hurricane in human form...

[silent majority]

Oh dear Mick, whatever credibility you may have had, and personally you didn't have any, then you've really pissed it against the wall. Time to invent another personality.

[RoversAlias]

Whether you like Margaret Thatcher or not (believe me I am somebody who sits with the former) nobody should ever 'celebrate' the death of another human being. Disgusting but not surprising, trade unionists are among my most loathed people on the planet.

[DC-]

Whether you like Margaret Thatcher or not (believe me I am somebody who sits with the former) nobody should ever 'celebrate' the death of another human being.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Mick's just been viewing, but not bothered posting. Can't think why...unless perhaps he's away on Google finding a reply..!

[hoolahoop]

Whether you like Margaret Thatcher or not (believe me I am somebody who sits with the former) nobody should ever 'celebrate' the death of another human being. Disgusting but not surprising, trade unionists are among my most loathed people on the planet.

I couldn't agree with you more, it was horrific in the 70's + 80's ; it was an intransigent management v a truculent and unbending TUC. A war neither would/could ever win even if they think they have. To celebrate the death of any human being to me just fills me with disgust and says alot about the folk who think this way.

[hoolahoop]

Mick's just been viewing, but not bothered posting. Can't think why...unless perhaps he's away on Google finding a reply..!

Perhaps Glyn it's because both sides can twist the facts to suit their arguments........no winner here, there rarely is!

[mjdgreg]

Look, I understand she polarised opinion and does provoke very strong reactions in people. People are entitled to their opinion and she did get quite a lot of things wrong. However I will make another attempt to defend her as i feel if it hadn't been for Maggie we would all be a lot worse off now. Just imagine what would have happened if Foot or Kinnock had got in. I dread to think.

I remember the sheer unremitting awfulness of the 1970s. We had double-digit inflation, price controls, incomes policies, power cuts, the three-day-week and the winter of discontent. The country felt like it was finished. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, we had been outperformed by every European economy. The Wall Street Journal wrote our epitaph "Goodbye Britain, it was nice knowing you."

Then came Maggie. Inflation fell, strikes stopped, the latent enterprise of a free people was awakened. Having lagged behind for a generation, we outgrew every European country in the 1980s except Spain (which was bouncing back from an even lower place). As revenues flowed in, taxes were cut and debt was repaid, while public spending – contrary to almost universal belief – rose. In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher showed the world that a great country doesn't retreat forever. And, by ending the wretched policy that had allowed the Soviets to march into Europe, Korea and Afghanistan, she set in train the events that would free hundreds of millions of people from what, in crude mathematical terms, must be reckoned the most murderous ideology humanity has known.

Why, then, do Lefties loathe her? Anti-Thatcherites tell you that it's because she closed down the old industries. (She didn't, of course: she simply stopped obliging everyone else to support them.) Yet it must surely be obvious by now that nothing would have kept the dockyards and coalmines and steel mills open. A similar process of deindustrialisation has unfolded in every other Western European country, and the only parties that still talk of "reviving our manufacturing base" are Respect, the Scottish Socialists and the BNP.

No, what Lefties find so hard to forgive is the lady's very success: the fact that she rescued a country that they had dishonoured and impoverished; that she inherited a Britain that was sclerotic, indebted and declining and left it proud, wealthy and free; that she never lost an election to them. Their rage, in truth, can never be assuaged.

[Glyn_Wigley]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/10037993/Margaret_Thatcher_saved_Britain/

[Glyn_Wigley]

How many times do I have to remind you about my photographic memory?

And one more thing...how come your photographic memory seems to have let slip our forum policy of linking to copyright material, and not incorporating it into individual posts?

No answer, Mick?