When Margaret Thatcher is returned to the dust whence she came from and where she shall return like all of us, a little bit of a bygone age will go with her. She will be eulogised — but, I fear, her age will not. She will receive the usual accolades: the victor of the Falklands, the Iron Lady, the winner of the great welfare battle of the 1980s. Yet those ring hollow from the mouths of postmodervatives like Cameron, to whom Thatcher was more a figure to be occasionally visited and nodded to, but never taken seriously, never mind respected. The affectedly-courteous respect for a deceased great one will ring as forced as it ever does from the mouth of the petulant, childlike Miliband, knowing the core constituency of his party has been dreaming of this day and cannot hope to get to dance on Thatcher’s grave soon enough. And they ring forced from today’s media establishment, forced praise without profundity from a clique of despicable characters that just as soon would have fuelled a fake media outrage for every little thing Baroness Thatcher did. If there is a heaven, and she is in it, she must be grateful she only had to put up with Scargill in her time.

With Thatcher, one of the few remaining heroes of an era goes in which you still had earnest political discussions. Today, you have snark. Fake witticisms from the witless and 140-character quips of genius are the level of modern political conversation. Anything beyond that is tl;dr (that’s ‘too long, didn’t read’ for those who haven’t been told so yet). Anything disagreeable is ‘trolling’, or, if you’re unlucky, harassment. Anything suggesting a value system that places a premium on hard work and perseverance is ‘vile’. Or ‘evil’ (we are waiting with bated breath for the left to roll a 6 and be allowed to pick another vowel).

In Thatcher’s era, the belief still existed that somehow, somewhere, sometimes people act out of honest motives – up to and including people in power. After a government that cynically denied the impact of mass immigration (which, as an immigrant myself, I will never stop resenting), that systematically denied the British people the slightest of say in Britain’s involvement in the EU in favour of Monnet’s ‘elite-led gradualism and that systematically turned the rule of law upside down to garner the love of the influential human rights bar, it is hard to sustain that belief. It is hard to have anything but what we have — a political elite that is suspected without proof to be filled with crooks, and having no other choice, lives up to that.

In Thatcher’s days, you could count on genuine debate. Scargill, boorish and dull as he was, lived in the land of reality. He may have been a vocal opponent of Thatcher’s policies that sought to limit the stranglehold of trade unions on the British industry, but he did so disagreeing with Thatcher’s priorities and policies, not the reality they were based upon. Today, reality is the political equivalent of contraband, and anyone in the Westminster bubble would sooner wish to be caught with syphilis than disagreeing with someone’s ‘creative, original, idiosynchratic definition of reality’ (formerly known as a ‘delusion’), whether on their side or the other.

What we do have is a generation drunk on positive reaffirmations of its own oh-so-specialness. What we have is a generation so drunk on its own worth, it has produced the Kim Kardashian of British policing, Paris Brown, whose meteoric rise to power (and £15,000 p.a. of taxpayers’ money — as well as, I presume, expenses) has only been temporarily overshadowed, rather than duly turned into an equally meteoric fall, by the utter absence of her grasp of social etiquette, common sense and awareness that hash brownies doth no police youth commissioner (whatever one does) make. I quite presume her ‘youth outreach’ — which one only hopes will not take place over hash brownies and will not be live-tweeted — will be a great comfort to residents suffering property damage from the freshly outreached and empowered youth’s occasional rampages through the Essex countryside. What we have is a generation so drunk on its sense of entitlement, it knows it deserves a free home, and will get it — and if it’s not big enough, they quickly confabulate a tale of a dead man’s ghost haunting their poor council abode (I am sure it’s an ordeal to live in a free home when some old taxed-to-death Tory’s poltergeist is making the 72″ plasma screen flicker), or just burn the whole place down (the latter option, I’m told, comes with funeral donations in Argos vouchers). What we have is a generation so drunk on its visceral impulses of hatred and revenge, it has dispatched serial MP and Parliament addict George Galloway, formerly of Glasgow, Bethnal Green and currently of Wherever-They’ll-Still-Elect-Me West, into the hallowed halls that once shook with the tenor of Disraeli and Churchill, just so that he can cheer the death of Baroness Thatcher and wish for her to “burn in hellfire” over a nice taxpayer-subsidised meal.

What we no longer have is the realism of Thatcher’s era — that government does not exist to provide a safety blanket for people, that it is not government’s job to maintain a fixed level of welfare to everyone regardless their wish to be gainfully employed or not, and that no government has yet successfully spent its way out of a recession. Rather than tackling poverty, the big societal bogeyman to fight is ‘inequality’: we are no longer interested in beneficence, but revenge, envy and class warfare. Rather than tackling the complex dynamics of a multicultural and multi-ethnic society, we are in earnest arguing about whether we can in earnest argue about arguing in earnest about it (lest we be deemed racists by the ‘right-thinking members of society’). And rather than focusing on Britain’s economic future, Britain’s despicable political caste, most of whom I wouldn’t trust with a rusty shilling, is obsessed with regulating everything vaguely profitable into oblivion, then tax it for good measure.

The streets of Brixton and Islington have been filled with Thatcher parties since midday (clearly, I have no doubt that everyone there was severely disabled or strenuously trying to find work, rather than unemployed, unemployable and sponging off a state all too willing to shed a tear for every sob story). This is the reward this age pays for courage, conscience and steadfastness as Baroness Thatcher showed. By no means do I wish to subscribe to what I sometimes feel is akin to idol-worship on the right for Mrs Thatcher: while she did have a profound and quite personal impact on my life, she, too, was fallible in her own particular way. History, however, is made by the right person doing the right thing at the right time. Baroness Thatcher was the product of an age that created people like her: and it was that age that created the nation that under her leadership beat communism. This is Mrs Thatcher’s unforgivable sin — this is why people are getting drunk on cheap cider tonight — this is why people whose thinness of their human veneer does not usually show parade their animal impulses of hatred and spite tonight. Mrs Thatcher destroyed their golden idol. What is truly unbearable for those that celebrate her death has nothing to do with the Welsh miners or Bobby Sands, but everything with the fact that this shopkeeper’s daughter beat the ever-living hell out of a regime that did not merely promise to bury the West and its decadent bourgeois way of life, but was also believed — and hoped for — by the bohemian-bourgeoisie of useful idiots that it will prevail. Mrs Thatcher killed what to many of the then fashionable and ‘right-thinking’ folks was the wave of the future.

Baroness Thatcher may be gone, and so has her age. What we are left with is a new Britain of self-obsession, greed and envy, and a world that grows ever more unstable by the minute. History will judge Mrs Thatcher, no doubt producing the usual collection of hagiographies on one side and hatchet jobs on the other that the lives of great characters evoke. Her legacy will be much assessed and re-assessed. What does not, however, stand to be doubted is that the forces of envy, greed and hatred that fuelled world communism met their match in a shopkeeper’s daughter from Grantham, Lincolnshire — and lost. No Brixton street party, nor Islington Guardianistas’ sneering over their Chianti, can take that away. Where, O death, is thy sting? Where, O grave, is thy victory?

Chris

miss mildred
April 10, 2013 at 10:13

Well Maggie has been well and truly turned over, as she always has been. No
name could spoil parties and start rows better than Thatcher. My brother could
not buy his council house because his council was always labour. Until
forceful Maggie came on the scene. In January 1971 my mum died just before
rampant inflation and decimalisation she would have died a thousand deaths of
anger, had she not gone then. Were you ever in supermarkets when the clicking
of price stickers rent the air, as prices moved up before your very eyes? Were
you at the checkout when the handles were being cranked on the cash registers,
with dull emergency lighting, for a strike caused power cut? Smelly black bags
piled high. Lights off as you were about to deliver a baby. Strikers refusal
to bury the dead. Union leaders hobnobbing with labour leaders at No 10. A
whole of the seventies was a s**t decade brought on by nincompoops in charge.
The electorate voted in Maggie. Best days work ever done. Again RIP.

binao April 10, 2013 at 11:02

You were obviously there too.
Perhaps we could set up some history
lessons for the BBC and their endless parade of faded but unreformed lefties
currently filling the air waves.
Just for balance.
Or is it me?

Ministry of
Truth – Brain Cleaning Section April
10, 2013 at 12:49

Yes it is you! Your thought crime has been noted.

Please proceed to the nearest MinTruth Brain Cleaning Centre
immediately.

There, you will be taught the facts, such as how M.Thatcher ate
everybody’s babies, how she single handedly killed all Liverpool
supporters at Hillsborough, how she made coal miners indulge in the worst
working practices in the world, how she then forced them to accept record
redundancy payouts and then forced same miners to waste it all away and
not bother to retrain and then finally evil Maggie forced these poor
miners to whinge incessantly for 20 years to any passing TV camera about
how it was all her fault.

Your nearest Brain Cleaning Centre can be found
below:
      List of BBC
Properties
      State Schools

rabbitaway April 10, 2013 at 09:47

Moor – I’ve sent you and Anna an email – I will put my thoughts on the site
too but just in case it gets lost in the comments !

Moor
Larkin April 10, 2013 at 09:34

@ except incomprehensible and expensive train fares @

I regularly travelled London to Liverpool return off -peak and would buy
tickets in advance for £48 or so. It varied according to season but the most I
ever paid was about £60. It was cheaper than the petrol for my car for the
journey – a no-brainer.

This was the case for several years A year or so before the last election,
Labour got some regulator or other to change the “unfair” system currently
prevailing at that time (something to do with some people not having the
internet). Next time I travelled the route it cost me around £90; which price
has recently risen to just over £100. Petrol now would probably cost me about
the same for the return journey.

corevalue April 10, 2013 at 09:24

MT had the luck to come to power just as the money from the North Sea oil
started coming in. Now the oil and gas are running out, we’ll see her true
legacy. The destruction of British manufacturing and it’s replacement by
financial “services” in retrospect was not a terribly good idea, and I’ve yet
to see any of the vaunted benefits of wholesale selling of the national assets
into private hands, except incomprehensible and expensive train fares, and
opaque energy tariffs.

Jabba the Cat April 10, 2013 at 11:34

Alistair Heath does an excellent summary for historically challenged
bellends like yourself…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9982316/To-blame-Margaret-Thatcher-for-todays-problems-is-to-misunderstand-history.html

Moor
Larkin April 10, 2013 at 08:05

The good news is that we can all donate online now…………… )
…….
http://donthatedonate.com/

Junican April 10, 2013 at 03:57

I am sure that others have already commented, but it is late and I have not
time to read all the comments.
I have seen lots of statements extolling Mrs
T for her emasculation of the Unions and such things. But I have not seen
previously to the above post a claim that she, in collaboration with Reagan,
brought down communism.
However, Maggie made a famous statement, which was
that: “Britain is open for business”. It was simply a mantra with no basis in
fact, but I feel that this simple mantra reverberated around the world. It may
well be that this simple mantra brought down communist ideology, since it
implies FREEDOM and initiative.

It is extremely odd that, since ‘Britain became open for business’, the
people who gained the most from the wealthy thus created – the academics –
have ceased to teach. They have become RULERS. They rule by being accepted as
the fount of knowledge by the CABINET. How is it possible that harmless
environmental tobacco smoke could be thought to be a killer and banned? The
answer is because THE CABINET could not be bothered to examine the evidence.
Smoking Ban laws were passed by default. For example, it is precisely as a
result of ‘default’ that a decent outdoor smoking shelter cannot have a roof.
(It can have a roof provided that it is not a decent shelter)

But politicians prefer to play musical chairs – forever exchanging jobs
which they know nothing about and cannot do.

Our political system stinks and stinks more and more as each day passes.
There is very little prospect of repair. It needs to go to the junkyard along
with all the operatives. Cameron, Clegg, Milliband etc, should be declared
redundant, and forced to repay the cost of their ill-gotten expenses-derived
goods. And all the laws which they have originated should be repealed, along
with all the laws which the likes of the hopelessly common and illiterate
ex-junior minister, Edwina Currie, caused to be enacted. Also, we should not
forget that harridan, Patricia Hewitt. Lovely though she might be, she
instigated the persecution of 15 million citizens via the smoking ban.

There is no doubt.

Jabba the Cat April 10, 2013 at 04:28

Hmm…I’m trying to work out if your logic process arises through the
natural evolutionary process, or was molded in the modern state education
system?

Ho Hum April 10, 2013 at 10:01

Alternatively, perhaps, to parody a popular song….. ‘it is what you
smoke, not that way that you smoke it’

Richard Walker
April 10, 2013 at 00:22

It is a huge sadness that there is no one of her calibre in politics today.
She was by far the greatest peacetime Prime Minister in memory.

Jonathan Mason
April 10, 2013 at 00:31

Except that she was not a peacetime Prime Minister.

Richard
Walker April 10, 2013 at 00:34

Daft comment.

Bill
Sticker April 10, 2013 at
04:03

Not so daft Richard. It all depends how you determine peace and
wartime. During her tenure as PM there was the continuing undeclared war
by the IRA, the Falklands war and the Cold war, Hardly peacetime. Come
to think of it, I can’t recall a day of my life when the UK wasn’t at
some kind of war footing.

Chris
Barratt April 9, 2013 at 21:09

Re: the aside of about Paris Brown
Gobby shouty teenagers used to grow
up – they don’t now, they just grow older. Like dogs, the education system
& media have trained them to be “puppies for life”. Even when they have
teenagers of their own they will still be painting their artificial nails
sparkly & posting pictures of them on Instagram. “It’s wot u do,
innit”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEQ4F4PRzUg

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 21:29

Twas ever thus. All that’s different is that fashions and forms of
expression have changed, and that everything everyone does is now more
readily accessible, obvious and public. But those that do grow up can be,
and will be, more readlily knocked down, for entertainment or just out of
sheer spite, as all they have done or said is dug up and thrown, by the
swine, before the other swine, to be trampled on. A world without
compassion, the ability to forgive and ‘overlook’ the past is going to be a
very cold, hard, nasty place

JuliaM April 10,
2013 at 05:42

“Gobby shouty teenagers used to grow up – they don’t now, they just
grow older. “

+1

Ho Hum April 10, 2013 at 09:52

Presumably the ones that didn’t grow up now just write gobby blogs?

Everyone adapts to the times, even if they don’t realise it.

Fat Steve April 9, 2013 at 19:38

Well henceforth I shall comment (in so far as I am permitted to so do)
under my real name and not Stephen Davies in order that there can be no
question as to my gender —it would be Fat Steph if I was a member of the
fairer sex.Neither Union Bosses nor Yuppies (or the whingers and whiners that
this blog so eloquently and wittily pillory ) go down well with Foie Gras I
suspect (but not that I know having never indulged) but I do know they all
spoil the enjoyment of a fine Claret particularly when it is drunk in their
presence even if it is from a distance across a wine bar and I am pretty sure
that if I had had the misfortune to bump into the Blessed Margaret whilst
imbibing something of note it would have turned to instantly to vinegar in my
glass

Engineer April 9, 2013 at 20:02

Just be grateful that you can afford to patronise a wine bar! If the
Unions had had their way, such luxuries would have been beyond most Britons,
I suspect. The public bar for us, and a ration of one pint of watered beer
per person per day….

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 21:06

Nah! They’d have had the sense to see that if everyone was properly
pissed, no-one would notice what they were doing. It’s today’s hair shirt
guardians of the public morality that would have us drinking weak
urine

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 21:03

Nice reply. I had noticed the undue boob surplus immediately after
pressing the button, but I just couldn’t face the thought of reaching the
900,000 mark

Tina Willis April 9, 2013 at 18:36

Britain today is often a paranoid, divided, mean-spirited nation, full of
resentment, envy, greed and distrust. Still racist in it’s institutions and on
the streets, selfish and inhumane – sadly we do not see that we are now
nothing but turkeys with no real option but to continually vote for Xmas.
Thatcher is dead but her terrible legacy in axis with Reagan, lives on. An
unleashed beast-of-greed Monetaryism, in a de-regulated, pirate-ized
Anglo-Fraud Market.

Inevitably causing a global crash with toxic fallout worldwide for the
forseeable future. We must rebuild the shattered, violent lands she and Reagan
have left behind by placing people before profit – by tossing into the dustbin
of history all their acqusitive, self-centred, hate-filled bile. We must
re-build communities and defend the Health Services and a Welfare State now
with Food Banks growing by the day.

While among all the current so called debates, hate, and eulegies, with
bent-media walls of waffle and half-baked print drivel. What’s STILL missing
is the unseen, unmentionable ongoing ELEPHANT indispensible in the ongoing
Thatcherite Tory cabinet room. The unholy, unelected non-Brit media Fraud
Market propagandist, tax-dodging oligarch War-Monger, MURDOCH. Whose mere
name, like ‘Jehovah’, cannot even now be uttered.

Monty Python ‘Life Of Brian’ (don’t say ‘Jehovah’)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeq2Utm0nU

Moor
Larkin April 9, 2013 at 18:44

@ Thatcher is dead but her terrible legacy in axis with Reagan, lives on.
@

The end of European Communism you mean….

As your final point….. Murdoch….. Oooh….. I’m still alive……

Tina Willis
April 9, 2013 at 21:14

Non-Brit Murdoch Dumbed Down, MoorCascadiAlan, Fact-Free Zones.

Facts ??? Like wot Non-Brit Criminal Murdoch made for Mag’s Reign of
Terror ? Tell it to the Hillsboro 96 families, friends and millions more
Murdoch n Mag Victims. ” If it’s in Rupe’s SUNazi it must be true, ‘We Luv
$hit !’ ”

And, misquote RocKing Pedo Pres, “Modern-EU doin’ swell, ’til all
me$$ed up by that Evil Jezebel & Ray-Gun’$ £egacy.”

Don’t Dumb Down. Check facts, Join dots – Wize Up!

Engineer
April 9, 2013 at 21:27

With Murdoch, the choice is entirely yours. You can buy his papers if
you wish, or not if you so choose. You can watch his telly channels, or
not. Erm – that’s a fact.

Stadtler
April 9, 2013 at 21:30

I do believe Tina’s playing Dave Spart bingo. I got a full house
after only two paragraphs.

It’s a worrying thought for all the leftoons out there though – now
the Blessed Margaret has left us, when Ol’ Rupe does go to the great
newsroom in the sky who will they have to blame for their own lack of
achievement ?

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 21:35

That’s the first comment I have read in months that has made me
spontaneously laugh out loud

‘Dave Spart Bingo’ Positively brilliant!

Thank you so much………………

Tina
Willis April 10, 2013 at 09:42

Non-Brit Rupe Dumbed Down – HoHum EngineeredStadtler. We’ve met
some slow learners but…

Naevely trusting that the Grantham-Hag’s fave Rotten-Rupe’s rote’s
gonna evaporate like a deadly fart on his celebrated overdue death
?

Check this FACT suckas.

Rupert Keith Murdoch at NeswCorp AGM Tuesday evening October 7
1997. After gutlessly hiding for 5-weeks in his Adelaide bunker
following the death-by-tabloid of 3-young people, including the
BIGgest non-sport media event ever with the funeral of a globally
loved young Brit leaving her two young children motherless/abused
(including the future UK King). The non-Brit, unelected, tax-dodging,
multi-billionaire mass mind-rapist was asked of his regrets.

“MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT I PAID TOO MUCH FOR SOME PHOTOS !”

And for 4-decades the raving-Right Grantham-Hag backed, and was
backed by, raving-Right/Wrong-un – Rupe-for-the-rope.

Suck on sad suckas.

Or, as ever. Don’t Dumb Down, check facts, join dots – Wize Up!

Cascadian April 9, 2013 at 19:06

Anyone wishing to start a fact-free diet could dine on this for a
week.

Jabba the Cat April 10, 2013 at 04:18

Quite a few good one liners floating around at present. Saw this one at
the Indy today…

“Wonder where Owen Jones got his PhD in hindsight?”

alan scott
April 9, 2013 at 20:38

Dear Tina Willis
I wish you a swift recovery. All that bile must be
dreadful in your oesaphagus.
AJS

JoBlow April 9, 2013 at 14:16

Britain today and the ghastly society that has risen to the top is the end
result of the Cult of Thatcherism that was continued unabated by T.Blair and
the awful Noo Labour.
There was no ‘era of Thatcher’ although history is
being re-written as we speak to proclaim Margaret Thatcher invented modern
Britain.

Before her there was a country that had operated in more or less
homogeneous fashion and then came Maggie to dismantle all that.
She didn’t
actually do it herself off course, it was the “faceless men ‘behind her who
recognised her as a cult like figure for the times who would keep the populace
diverted whilst they did the dirty work. A brief interlude with Major and then
the horrendous T.Blair arrived to execute the coup de grace to civil
society.
I always thought the Private Eye joke about Maggie was spot on
:”they bundled the poor woman out of No 10, weeping and still believing that
she had once been the Prime Minster of Great Britain”

The Kim Kardashians are Maggie’s legacy. And Essex as well.

JuliaM April 9,
2013 at 14:59

See the Engineer’s comment @ 12:43 above for the answer to your peculiar
belief system…

Engineer April 9, 2013 at 15:00

Britain didn’t seem all that homogeneous when Clive Jenkins, Vic Feather,
Mick McGahey and their mates were doing their worst. It didn’t seem all that
homogeneous when we had power cuts, when the print union chapels decided
what would be in the papers (or whether there would be papers at all), and
when the NUM effectively dictated the country’s economic policy.

If it’s a choice between Union hegemony and Yuppies, I’ll take the
yuppies. The only equality under the Union hegemony would have been
everybody being equally poor, cold and miserable.

Bill
Sticker April 9, 2013 at 16:20

Amen

Jabba the Cat April 9, 2013 at 16:35

+1

Daedalus
X. Parrot April 9, 2013 at
19:37

+ approx 40 million (all of us well-meaning, normal folk who
experienced the unpleasant side of the marxist-driven, destructive
strikes)

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 17:34

Count me in on most of that too.

Maggie actually made some things become very much more homogenous, not
less so, and actually to our real disadvantage. In particular, it is now
almost impossible to differentiate between one group of power hungry,
oleaginous, snake oil peddling, opportunist, weasel politicians from the
next, other than that they wear different coloured rosettes, as they are
now almost all of fairly posh origin, happy frequenters of the VIP and
corporate hospitality suite and other such places beyond the scope or
reach of the average man or woman, when previously, at least some of them
used to stand on the terraces with the rest of the plebs and actually
understood where they were coming from. Not, I should add for balance,
that some of our former politicians couldn’t be thick oafs, or that the
Union bosses weren’t averse to being deep in the same sort of troughs
then, as some still seem to be now.

But I do agree with JoBlow on his, or her, taste in that he would take
neither Union Hegemony nor Yuppies. Neither of those go down at all well,
especially with the foie gras

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 17:36

Erratum. Number 899,999 in a series of 1,000,000

‘But I do agree with Stephen Davies on his, or her, taste in that he
would take neither Union Hegemony nor Yuppies. Neither of those go down
at all well, especially with the foie gras’

Engineer
April 9, 2013 at 18:42

I can’t really say that I found Yuppies particularly palatable
myself either; but on the basis of chosing the lesser of two evils,
better a society in which most are a bit better off and some idiots
show off about being a lot better off, than a society in which all are
poorer.

Daedalus X. Parrot April 9, 2013 at 20:46

To: Ho Hum

Engineer is absolutely right.

In the final analysis, when you compare the morality and
consequences of the yuppies’ actions with those of the 1970s marxist
trade unionists, the yuppies win every time.

Sad from your ideological viewpoint, but true.

—

Q.
How many people were murdered by militant trade unionists
during their protests?
A.
David Wilkie (9 July 1949 – 30 November 1984) was killed
during the miners’ strike when two striking miners dropped a concrete
block

Q.
How many people were murdered by the yuppies during their
yuppie protests?
A.
Er, … none

—

Q.
How many Hospitals had their electricity disconnected by the
ruthless, bullying trade unionist to bring down a democratically
elected government?
A.
Hospitals work by candle-light, baby units run on
emergency generators

Q.
How many Hospitals had their electricity disconnected by
greedy, bragging yuppies while they tried to bring down a
democratically elected government?
A.
Er, … none

—

If those are the only choices, then I’d rather have the unpleasant,
obnoxious, bragging yuppies any time.

At least they were creating wealth as well as ostentatiously
consuming it. This is in stark contrast to the bigots of the hard-left
trade unions of the 1970s who sought to bring desolation and ruin upon
us all.

Ho Hum
April 10, 2013 at 09:49

er, Mr Engineer, didn’t we get both yuppies and a society in which
we are now all a lot poorer? Or are the referred to yuppies different
from the ones that rose to positions of prominence in the banking
industry, etc, in which they screwed up royally? I suppose it’s just
possible that all the cuddly fluffy yuppies of that era retired to
leather sandalled obscurity in the wilds of Wales, but I doubt it
somehow.

binao April 9, 2013 at 20:28

The misery of the strikes and the ‘blacking’ of machinery while the
customers took their business elsewhere, often overseas.
Worse, to go
to that most soul destroying of places, a closed factory. It’s sad and
creaking, life gone.
To take away the equipment you installed and
commissioned with such hopes only a few years before.
Done it and hated
it.

Stephen Davies April 9, 2013 at 16:54

Here Here Jo Blow If its Union Hegemony or Yuppies I will take neither
—-both are equally a bunch of self centered little sh*ts

Cascadian April 9, 2013 at 19:03

The Kim Kardashians are Maggie’s legacy. And Essex as well…………Oh dear, UK
edjoocayshuun on display.

Thank goodness we have Engineer to counter it.

jaded April 9, 2013 at 12:22

When the current crop of politicians snuff it in the future will be the
reaction be a collective shrug?

Anna
Raccoon April 9, 2013 at 12:31

More likely to be a rash of compensations claims on the grounds that the
‘victims’ were ‘too frightened’ to speak out at the time…..

JuliaM April 9,
2013 at 14:54

Well, why not? It’s all they deserve. Though I’m not sure I can even
summon up the energy to shrug for such towering intellects as Keith Vaz and
Chuka Ummuna…

Moor
Larkin April 9, 2013 at 11:04

@ I remember her stance on Nelson Mandela and apartheid @

I was listening to the World Service last night and apparently she sent de
Klerk a note advising him to release Mandela, and that’s what happened. Nelson
did the rest.

So far as the miners are concerned, I’ve never seen fully explained why the
Notts miners didn’t agree with the Yorkies, but no point in poking at the old
coals now. Brothers Disunited are brothers defeated.

John Pickworth
April 9, 2013 at 18:25

“So far as the miners are concerned, I’ve never seen fully explained
why the Notts miners didn’t agree with the Yorkies….”

Largely they did… Its just that they refused to strike unless the union
first held a national ballot. Scargill seemed to believe the union could
skip holding one of those silly piffling things.

The hare April 9, 2013 at 10:51

The decisions and actions of politicians are almost impossible to judge
without the benefit of a great deal of hindsight. I have no doubt that she
acted from conviction, but her fundemental ideology was simply wrong, and i
believe that history will prove that to be the case. On the minus side, I
witnessed swathes of British industry destroyed, I witnessed the soul being
ripped out of communities. I still recall police harassment simply because I
happened to be young, male, and driving on a stretch of road close to a
colliery during the miners strike. I remember with considerable shame and
sadness watching the insanity of my friends and neighbors decorating their
homes with union jacks as the British task force set sale for the Falklands. I
recall the horror of watching British citizens in my local publ, reduced to
little more than animals chanting “bomb bomb bomb the bastards” on hearing the
news of the sinking of the Belgrano, and I recall hearing of the death of a
school friend killed in that conflict. I recall thatchers political posturing
on the back of those events. I remember record youth unemployment, I remember
the poll tax riots, I remember her stance on Nelson Mandela and apartheid .

On the positive side, I took advantage of a free university education for
which I will be eternally grateful. As much as I despised much of Mrs
Thatchers personal philosophy, and despite my opinion that for the most part
she was a silly deluded, albeit manipulative woman, I’d still rather have her
like in parliament than the sad excuse for politicians we see today. It gives
me no pleasure to witness the public celebration of her death, i understand
that feelings are strong, but her family deserve respect and condolences.

Engineer April 9, 2013 at 12:43

The problem was that by the 1970s much of British industry was dead on
it’s feet, outclassed by overseas competition and becoming an increasing
burden on state funds. For example, much steelmaking was still being
undertaken in plants built in the 1920s, and thus failing to compete on
price, quality and delivery with Japanese and German plants built in the
1960s. In 1979, 45% of public spending was going on propping up loss-making
nationalised industries – coal, steel, shipbuilding, car making and
railways. All Thatcher’s government did was clear out the deadwood, and
reduce the burden on the taxpayer.

Bill
Sticker April 9, 2013 at 15:53

Engineer; I too recall those times. The power of the unions had to be
broken. Remember the ‘closed shop’? Can’t get a job there unless you are
union or have a mate on the inside? Over manning? Lame duck industries?
Jokes like “I see the Daffodils are out – Leyland are coming out in
sympathy.” (Nothing ‘gay’ about coming out on strike) were all too real.
Industry was already in serious decline in ’71. Those foundations were
laid in the 1960′s Wilson years, compounded by Heath, Callaghan & co.
Scheduled two and four hour power cuts because the Power workers were on
strike? The Winter of discontent? The UK being the ‘sick man of Europe’?
Bloody glad it was cold and miserable 78/79 otherwise the stink from
mountains of uncollected bin bags would have been unbearable. We were
lucky to be able to burn most of our rubbish that year.

I was young, but I remember the economic train wreck that was the 70′s
all too well. Yet there are people who blame Thatcher for the ‘British
disease’? Totally wrong. She was the nasty medicine. Unpleasant but
necessary, and part of an economic cure. It took eighteen years of that
medicine to get the UK from almost terminal economic decline to a modestly
healthy state in the late 90′s. Now, if the cycles of history hold true,
the UK is going to have to walk that path all over again, and I wouldn’t
expect any real recovery to begin for another ten years. Even if the Yanks
don’t screw up on this side of the pond. Which currently seems
unlikely.

There is worse to come for the UK. Much worse; and the blame (at least
as far as the UK is concerned) lies firmly with the Blairs, Browns and
Camerons.

GildasTheMonk April
10, 2013 at 11:24

I think that sums it up

Saul April 9, 2013 at 10:38

When does Britain’s Got Talent start again?

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 11:51

Is this the sort of suitably topical thing you mean, or want?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4tbuuBczjQ

On the other side of the tracks, though, their ‘hands on your hips’ would
probably get them arrested now.

JuliaM April 9,
2013 at 10:17

Note that, while Ho Hum above pooh-poohs the author’s description of the
youth of today as ‘outreached and empowered …on occasional rampages’, said
youth are, well, see for yourself:

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Arrests-injuries-Bristol-Margaret-Thatcher-street/story-18653368-detail/story.html

“Six officers were injured in the clashes which followed and one police
vehicle was damaged.”

All no doubt parasitically living off the State that has failed to teach
them respect for even their own dwellings…

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 11:05

If you think that I wrote anything which did that, or even directly or
indirectly implied that, then you really need to brush up on your reading or
cognitive skills. As my children would say, ‘Fail’

miss mildred
April 9, 2013 at 10:11

No person, however exalted, gets everything right. Thatchers big boob was
‘poll tax’. That hurried meeting at chequers that nodded it through in the
contrived absence of a powerful objector……politicians tut tut. I wasn’t too
happy about the floggery of council houses either. Hypocritically I am glad my
brother could buy his humble dwelling off the council. I was worried about the
future squeeze on the people in humble jobs who could not buy a house on
mortgage even then. I recall youngsters coming and going from home, and the
resentment at them having to pay poll tax. The impracticality and expense of
collection. A silly decision ignoring real life family situations of wandering
older children. I remember rows at dinner parties about Maggie’s forceful
activities. A lot of adults resent other forceful adults. They hate bossiness,
but it gets things that need to be done well and truly done. I never felt
completely comfortable with The Iron Lady. However she was the best peacetime
PM we ever had in the 20th century. May she rest in peace.

Moor
Larkin April 9, 2013 at 10:16

Council houses were being sold before Maggie. My own parents bought
their’s off Jim Callaghan.

The Left does seem to have a certain cultishness about death. I recall
the bizarre amount of eulogising when John Smith pegged it, a bloke who’d
done pretty much nothing, yet to read the papers at the time, you’s have
thought all hope for the future was lost….. and we got Tony Blair so maybe
they were right…..

John Pickworth
April 9, 2013 at 18:03

The Community Charge (aka Poll Tax) was actually a pretty sound idea…
albeit badly sold to the electorate. The Rates system had been around in one
form or another for 400 years and was recognised widely as needing to be
reformed. Many had tried before Thatcher, both Tory and Labour. Other
alternatives had also been considered by Thatcher’s Government so it was
hardly rushed. It was ultimately decided that a simple flat charge on
everyone was the fairest way to raise local taxes.. after all, most adults
used at least some (if not all) of the locally provided services so why not
have everyone share the cost? Naturally, those that had previously had
‘their tax’ paid by someone else (parents, property owner, the State)
resented having to put their hands in their own wallet/purse to pay for the
services they used and kicked off. So, less Thatcher’s downfall more the
birth of the selfish entitlement society we see today.

As for council house sales. Many councils not only sold housing to
private buyers in the 60′s and 70′s but they bought private houses too AND
some even provided mortgages for those not able to lend from the usual
institutions. All Thatcher did was give everyone the right to do this not
just those with a friendly council… or indeed the privileged few with
friends in the council. Wink wink, nudge nudge. But of course those on the
left can’t possibly acknowledge these acts of fairness can they?

binao April 9, 2013 at 20:06

Entirely agree John P about the Poll tax. A lost opportunity.
Local
authorities provide services; should those services be charged for on the
basis of cost or on just one narrow indicator of the apparent wealth of
the customer? Why not dearer utilities if you live in a big house as well?
My view has always been that these compulsory charges for services are
just that and should be mainly related to the cost of provision. Deal with
envy or tax wealth another way.
This issue hasn’t gone away. The
present system of community charge only has a limited life.

Mudplugger
April 9, 2013 at 20:31

The monumental tactical error with the eminently sensible Poll Tax
was to pilot it first in Scotland – of all the uncooperative, resistant,
belligerant and militant places to pick, only Loony-Left Liverpool could
have been worse. Incomprehensible idiocy.
If they had started in
Tunbridge Wells, leafy Buckinghamshire or even the East Midlands, it
would have slipped in quietly to public acclaim, proved its worth and
then been rolled out nationwide the next year without a murmur, but no,
it had to be Scotland.
Maybe it was that bit of so-flawed judgement
that started to indicate it would soon be time for her to move on.

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 21:12

Got to disagree there. The Scots recognise crap when they see it.
The people of Tunbridge Wells might be expected to lap it up, or at
least wallow in it. (and look up the Scots definition of ‘crap’ before
you make undue assumptions – although I will confess to a deliberate
double entendre
)

carol42
April 9, 2013 at 21:26

I was in Scotland at the time and the then called rates were much
higher than England. Local councils were going to raise them yet again
and some in Scotland wanted to have the poll tax. Trouble was the
local authorities set it far too high, I think deliberately, and with
a high threshhold. It didn’t make much difference to us as it worked
out about the same but almost everyone I knew with grown up children
who simply refused to pay as they had not had to pay before were in an
impossible position. I still think it was fairer to everyone and could
have wokred if the level had been lower and the means of collection
better.

Dioclese April 9,
2013 at 10:03

Reflecting on the leaders of today : Cameron is a huge disappointment,
Clegg is proving two faced (see local election campaign), Miliband is a
Scargillian wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I despair for the future of this country. Many years ago I wrote that the
next great war will not be between the rich and the poor, or the left and the
right but between the intelligent and the witless. Parties in North London to
celebrate someone’s death – whoever it may be – proves my point.

The brain dead, the selfish, the lazy, the scroungers have taken over. God
help us. Especially if the 2015 election delivers us into the hands of
Miliband and Balls i.e the unions. 1979 will return, although it is often
forgotten by Orwellian fools that rewrite history that the winter of
discontent was presided over by a Labour PM…Jim Callaghan

Moses said “Pick up thy shovels, load up thy asses and I will lead you to
the promised land.” The left say “Put down thy shovels, sit on thy asses, this
is the promised land!”

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 10:13

Moses said “Pick up thy shovels, load up thy asses and I will lead you to
the promised land.”

I have been telling my industrious children “Pick up thy shovels, load up
thy asses and leave for the promised land.” Strangely they don’t see the
world quite as old fogey dad does, and want to make something better of it,
but that’s surely a good thing, isn’t it, as if they and their like went,
what chance do any of us then have?

Mudplugger April 9, 2013 at 09:27

Anyone who was politically and economically alert through the UK 1970s, who
lived through the 1980s and who followed it through until now, usually finds
it almost impossible to comment objectively on Margaret Thatcher. How you
viewed her depends almost entirely on how you believed you were persoanlly
affected by her conduct in office, and everybody was affected. So at the
moment of her death, all we see are the predictably polarised knee-jerks from
each side of that divide. It will only be at a distant time of mature
historical analysis, devoid of the emotions of being there, that any genuinely
objective summary of her impact will emerge.

My own view, for what it’s worth and being one who lived through it, is
that it’s all about place and time. In the total circumstance-mix of the late
1970s, the economy, the Cold War, societal changes etc., Margaret Thatcher was
the right person, in the right place, at the right time. She proved uniquely
able to grasp what needed to be addressed and, more importantly, to grasp the
painful stinging nettles of doing it. But others got stung too, as is
inevitable when any change of such substance is invoked – those who were
willing and able to go along with the changes came out of it better, those who
for whatever reason did not, were the losers. And, in any such changes, just
as the current Coalition is finding, the losers will always make more noise
than the winners.

At other times, in other places, Margaret Thatcher would have been entirely
wrong, in her time and place she was mostly right. And ‘mostly right’ is all
any politician can reasonably aspire to achieve.

Most of her real legacy will require the passage of considerable time to
obtain true analysis, but it is certainly not all positive. ‘Sir’ Mark
Thatcher ? A final aberration indeed.

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 09:37

Mudplugger, thanks for this. Brief, eloquent, and sensible. That’s about
as good as we’ll get.

GildasTheMonk
April 9, 2013 at 18:11

What a balanced and correct summation

GildasTheMonk
April 9, 2013 at 09:23

An interesting exchange between former Home Secretary David Blunkett and
writer/editor Charles Moore on the radio just now. Part of the problem was
that she moved too fast with reform, said Blunkett. No, retorted Moore. The
problem was she was put in a position in which she had to, because the
problems failing Britain and failing industries had been ignored for 20 years
or more, and had become so acute. I tend to the latter.

m.barnes April 9, 2013 at 08:42

It’s very well written but I neither recognise the cartoon Britain you
desribe today (selective choice of examples there) nor the one from the
past.

Ted Treen April 9, 2013 at 12:31

Well, I’m 63, and I recognise the pastiche of today’s ‘entitlement’
Britain, and the downwardly mobile days of the 1970′s.

Excellent piece, Chris. I shall now be a regular reader of
Scribbler-at-Law.

m.barnes
April 9, 2013 at 14:09

Well I’m 47 and I don’t recognise either of the worlds Chris writes of
here and what on earth has our respective age to do with this? Unless of
course you leapt to an assumption or 4? But I’m sure that wouldn’t be the
case.

The two best comments I’ve read on this so far are David Aaronovitch in
the Times and Heresy Corner (although I doin’t entirely agree with some of
his analysis). And Mudplugger has made a pretty good point too.

And Mrs Thatcher shouldn’t have a funeral paid for by the UK tax payer
– unless of course everyone is happy to give one to Tony Blair. No? Mmmm,
the problem with giving politicians a state – oh, I’m sorry, a
‘ceremonial’ – funeral, is that a precedent gets set.

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 14:17

She could have had the last laugh, of course, by requesting a state
funeral pyre, funded by private donations, with the excess contributions
from the ‘Offended of Islingtons” used to pay off the national debt.
Somehow, I doubt if they would even see the irony……..

m.barnes
April 9, 2013 at 14:46

I believe Mrs Thatcher declined a State Funeral – or was she just
responding to speculation and not a formal offer? Perhaps is was
really to be taken as a hint… ‘oh no, no, I couldn’t possibly…. well,
if you insist’

I look forward to the comments thread when it comes to Tone’s.

Moor Larkin April 9, 2013 at 15:04

@ I look forward to the comments thread when it comes to Tone’s
@

Just so long as Tone’s not running our country, nor blowing
everyone else’s to smithereens, that’s just tootin’ for me. I can rest
in peace.

Roy Fernley
April 9, 2013 at 17:28

I’m very happy to give Tony Blair a State Funeral, the sooner the
better!

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 17:42

No! Not the cruelty of a State Funeral! We’ll need millions upon
millions of candles, and all the whales will become extinct as we try
to satisfy the balancing of supply and demand!

m.barnes
April 9, 2013 at 18:18

I take it you are equally happy for others to express the same
opinion of Mrs T? Neither of them is exactly a Stalin or a Mao.
Celebrations of anyones death (all joking aside) says something sad
about the person doing the celebrating.

Roy
Fernley April 10, 2013 at 00:23

In response to m.barnes.

I am happy for anyone to express an opinion as long as they
recognise that free speech is a responsibility, not a right.

I wouldn’t celebrate Blair’s passing, nor would I lament it.

Fidel Cuntstruck
April 9, 2013 at 08:42

What a truly excellent read .. Bravo Chris.

binao April 9, 2013 at 08:38

Great article Chris.
I remember it well; in those times I worked in
industry in various parts of the country.
I remember just how bad things
were.
It makes my blood boil that the BBC and it’s fellow travellers still
peddle the same old blame MT line.

c777 April 9, 2013 at 08:03

The commies just moved from the unions into the public sector.
We now
have a more sinister type of commie cabal, control freak, subversive and
secretive.

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 07:57

How strange. I didn’t think that I would find a need to query this current
particular issue here

Paris Brown may indeed be an unspeakable little twerp for all I know, but
my sympathies lie with her in her predicament right now

The people who created laws that would make potential criminals of
teenagers (and the rest of us, actually) for merely doing the teenage shouty
thing were clever fools, where clever means that some of them they exactly
what they were doing, and fools is in the biblical sense of being someone who
is ‘nae quite the hale shillin” in their attitudes to the love of God and
their fellow man. Criminalising words and thoughts is despicable

The people now using them against others are utter swine. They are the sort
of authoritarians and totalitarians and general moral busybodies who made
places like the Eastern Bloc such a wonderful place to live in the middle to
late 20th Century

Those in positions of power now displaying callous opportunism in using the
resultant consequences to bash their political enemies, rather than use their
influence to get rid of of these despicable laws, are turds of such magnitude
that one can hardly that they believe might exist, even when they float past
you in the great sewer of life, alongside all the other little ones

I doubt if our landlady is really saying that what teenagers say and do
constitutes ‘unforgiveable sin’, as if it were to, then I presume she must
dread the post arriving each day in case it has her ‘recall’ notice
There are more important issues underpinning the PC mob’s pursuit of that
little tyke’s earlier yakkings than meets the eye, or which the sideswipe
above deals with

And as for Maggie, the most wise thing I ever heard said of her was when I
was working for someone who I found to be a very Christian gentleman, a true
blue Tory, who played an active part in some Christian Conservative
organisation (not the other way round!).

One day, after she had been in office for some time and we had been through
the various problem involved in getting a bit more economic order in place, he
surprised me by saying, as we were discussing what was going on in the world
then – unfortunately I can’t remember exactly what it was – that he thought
that it was time she went, and that we had a change in government, as it was
starting to be needed.

In expanding on that, he said that while she had done a tremendous amount
for the country, for which we should all be very grateful indeed, that had now
been done, but she had forgotten, or didn’t seem to understand, that one of
the cardinal rules in any form of fair fight is that when you do have the
other bloke down, you don’t then carry on kicking him when he’s down. He had a
fair point at the time

She could, and would, have been even much greater had she seen that

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 09:03

erratum, para 3

‘where clever means that some of them KNEW exactly what they were
doing’

Roy Fernley
April 9, 2013 at 09:20

Certainly her greatest fault was in outstaying her welcome, although I
suggest that anyone who wins three consecutive general elections would have
that fault.

Perhaps the American system of restricting Presidents to two terms in
office should be emulated?

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 09:34

Agreed

Then we might have been spared Yo Yo Yo Blair.

Can we have one exception, though? Please somebody, anybody, find us
some way of ensuring that people like Gordon Brown are restricted from
having ANY terms in office at all

Engineer
April 9, 2013 at 12:32

It does occur that one of the reasons for Mrs Thatcher’s ability and
determination to address the problems of the day was that she genuinely
had a moral compass. Brown, regrettably, just said he did.

Whilst I agree entirely that some people should never be allowed near
the levers of power, the problem is spotting them before the event.

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 13:02

The trouble with Brown’s moral compass was that he believed that
the needle on everyone else’s compass should necessarily point in the
same direction as his, regardless

Elena
‘andcart April 9, 2013 at 13:03

The trouble with people who don’t have a moral compass is that they
don’t know they haven’t got one. The rest of us just hope we have.

JuliaM April 9,
2013 at 09:53

“The people now using them against others are utter swine. They are
the sort of authoritarians and totalitarians and general moral busybodies
who made places like the Eastern Bloc such a wonderful place to live in the
middle to late 20th Century.”

You think no one should be accountable for their speech, Ho Hum?

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 10:03

You know I do

But there’s a difference between a twat being a twat, and being made a
criminal for it, and a rat being a rat, and not as much as being called
out on it, especially those clever, cunning, media rats, who know what
harm is intended by their speech, who think that they should get away with
it merely because they are as deluded as see themselves as Kings, and
whose self perception doesn’t extend to understanding that the only
territory of which they will ever be sovereign is the cesspit

JuliaM April 9,
2013 at 10:02

“…but she had forgotten, or didn’t seem to understand, that one of the
cardinal rules in any form of fair fight is that when you do have the other
bloke down, you don’t then carry on kicking him when he’s down. He had a
fair point at the time.”

Really? I was always taught that in a fight, you make sure your opponent
cannot continue…

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 10:06

Careful, careful. There are naughty people out there who might say that
the state of British Industry proves your point

Johnnydub
April 9, 2013 at 20:55

Try Some Facts Ho Hum:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/04/08/margaret-thatcher-did-not-devastate-or-destroy-british-industry/

Or the fact that Tony Benn closed more pits than Mrs T. did…

The Anti-Thatcher left are lying bastards and have never stopped…

Tough on Crime, Education Education etc….

Ho Hum
April 9, 2013 at 21:14

Tell me, what, if anything, do you laugh at?

Jonathan Mason
April 9, 2013 at 21:17

I agree about Paris Brown. For whatever reason, (beats me, though), the
woman who hired her thought that she had what it took to assist her in her
job as police commissioner and selected her from a large number of qualified
(I suppose) applicants. I don’t see why the hell she should resign because
she twittered teenage nonsense. Perhaps a first hand knowledge of
promiscuous teenage sex, drinking, drug use, and casual racism would be very
useful to the Commissioner. Perhaps it would deter her from allowing her
police force to waste their time on things like Yewtree.

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 22:01

How true. It’s funny to watch those who might have argued below the
landlady’s prior missives argue that applying today’s New Puritan
standards to the past is out of order, because things were different then,
yet seem also happy to think that those should then now be applied to
others, merely because they come from today, and they really don’t like,
or understand, those who come from today.

I think it’s popularly known as the ‘Generation Gap’, some sort of
nonsense where people forget, as they age, what they were like when they
were younger, and lose any ability that they ever had to put themselves
into the minds of young people today, see the very different world that
they live in it through their eyes, and be able to make, or draw,
comparable parallels with that to their own experience in their own
generation. It’s also something to do with people all too often growing up
to be their parents.

To try to be fair, very very few people really have the intrinsic
ability to empathise with, or stand in the shoes and heads of others, so
it’s not entirely to be unexpected, but it’s really sad to watch

rabbitaway
April 11, 2013 at 11:02

Here Here – Ho Hum – well said we need to HEAR more from those with
the ‘intrinsic ability to empathise with, or stand in the shoes and
heads of others….’ too much hatred, not enough careful consideration of
the facts. As for Maggie, I lived in Sunderland between 1984 and 1989,
enough said !

davidb April 9, 2013 at 07:23

There is no doubt that she was the best Primeminister we have had since the
war. She had one characteristic which is sadly lacking today. Right or wrong
she made a decision and she stuck to it. It would be nice to elect someone and
know you were getting what it said on the tin today.

As to coal mines, they are closed pretty much everywhere in the EU. As are
car plants and steel mills and aluminium smelters. It could have been handled
better, we could have saved a few bits of manufacturing, but overall, if the
pruning hadn’t happened while the oil revenue cushioned the blow, we would
have lost the whole damned bush.

She tackled the privileges of all the special interests. She stripped
Lawyers of their monopolies as easily as she tackled trades union restrictive
practice. She made it aspirational to want to run your own business. It is
such a pity she did not slash the civil service, and it is tragic that the IRA
disabled Norman Tebbit’s wife and prevented him from following her and
continuing the revolution.

We don’t get held to ransom by strikes about the price of rolls in the
canteen any more. All you young people buying into the anti propaganda should
google what it was like in the UK before she was elected. Bodies unburied and
rats eating piles of rotting uncollected rubbish. 3 day weeks and power cuts.
A few weeks in a caravan at Butlins if you were lucky, and 90% tax for those
who stayed – the moneyed went to LA or Switzerland as tax exiles. She sorted
that nonsense for which we should all be grateful.

Oh, incidentally, I never voted for her. In her time I detested her too,
but I was wrong, she was right.

I Love the BBC
April 9, 2013 at 20:21

‘Right or wrong she made a decision and she stuck to it.’
No she
didn’t. A myth made by people who were not watching at the time and are
still incapable of reading history. Thatcher nailed her first
administration’s colours to the mast of monetarism, and after less than two
years – with the country on its knees, whole swathes of perfectly good
manufacturing capacity sacrificed to an ideology and the polls the worst she
could have imagined, she quietly ditched it. She had to be persuaded and she
hated doing it, but she reluctantly dropped virtually the entire
idea.
The myths being promulgated about this woman are astounding.

Moor Larkin April 11, 2013 at 10:48

@ The myths being promulgated about this woman are astounding. @

I was reading today that the BBC show, “The Boys From the Blackstuff”,
which is now held up as an indictment of Thatcher’s Britain was in fact
mostly written in 1978…………….

We seem to be drowning in an ocean of BBC dreams these days……

Mark April 9, 2013 at 06:56

Who is this Chris fellow? Rather good, isn’t he?

Anna
Raccoon April 9, 2013 at 07:40

Good? He has extra brains where other people have ears!

Ho Hum April 9, 2013 at 08:03

He needs to write his name larger for us older poorer sighted people,
though, as some of my comment now seems a little out of kilter. Unless, of
course, he’s the one writing your ‘recall’ notice.

Robert Edwards
April 9, 2013 at 06:51

She took one look at the comfy post-war consensus, which allowed a diluted
Soviet to co-exist with us and decided that what it really needed was a good
kick in the balls. Which she duly delivered. Clearly, some are still
limping.

Here enemies (including those in government) were weak, though. Heath,
Callaghan, Kinnock, Scargill, Galtieri, Hatton, etc. Would you send any of
them out for a Pizza? Cunts, all of them.

Joe Public April 9, 2013 at 06:35

Ironically, since WWII, the only PM we’ve had who had balls.

carol42 April 9, 2013 at 01:19

Many of those cheering have no idea what life was like in Britain in 1979
as most were not even born then. Those of us who do felt nothing but gratitude
to Margaret Thatcher for restoring our country. She made mistakes of course
but was the right person for the times, where now is a politician of even
close to her stature.

Jabba the Cat April 9, 2013 at 02:19

“Many of those cheering have no idea what life was like in Britain in
1979 as most were not even born then.”

Within that paradigm resides a thorough indictment of the state education
system, which has brainwashed several generations of children, including
those now matured grown into parents, with the revisionist
concept that somehow there existed some fantasist land of milk and honey,
the length and breadth of England, before ‘Fatcher’ ground it all down into
a pile of capitalist dust…

Cascadian April 9, 2013 at 01:14

At last, the essence of Margaret Thatchers victory is defined, the death of
the cult that all the loony left praised, communism. Long may their followers
whine. They will take some pleasure in Margaret Thatchers death, but when they
awake their death-cult will still lay in tatters, never to re-appear.

Thank goodness there are immigrants around who understand this and can
relate it to the residents. Well done Chris.

Mewsical April 9,
2013 at 01:07

The last great Prime Minister was Sir Winston Churchill. He got a State
funeral. Thatcher isn’t. ’nuff said.

Good luck, England. You’re going to need it.

Roy Fernley
April 9, 2013 at 07:16

Thatcher specifically didn’t want a State Funeral. ’nuff said!

JuliaM April
9, 2013 at 07:35

And some idiots, knowing this and not caring, are demanding she have
one! Because it’s all about them..

Ellen Coulson (nee
Dunn) April 9, 2013 at 14:29

She didn’t want one and indeed is going to be crenated. I will go to
London to pay my respects!

Jonathan Mason
April 9, 2013 at 21:09

I went to Churchill’s funeral. It was a very cold day. Went to a dog show
in the afternoon, which was more enjoyable.

Ellen Coulson (nee
Dunn) April 10, 2013 at 10:41

I queued for hours to see him lying in state but had to watch funeral
on TV (was at Duncroft at time) but some of us were taking to see his
grave at Bladon.

Roy Fernley April 9, 2013 at 00:26

It is sickening to watch these people, many of whom were clearly not around
in the 80s, celebrating the death of an old lady who did much to restore
Britain from the damaged state that the Left and the Unions had brought it to.
Sadly “the forces of envy, greed and hatred” are to be seen dancing in the
street.

GildasTheMonk
April 9, 2013 at 09:19

A very apt point Roy. Most of these people were not there, did not know
what Britain was like in 1979 and the challenge that she had to face. These
are mindless people, without perspective, wit, understanding or thought.
They are social and political zombies, and a reminder that just because we
live in a democracy, it does not mean that all the citizens can be trusted
to excercise rational judgment. In a sense, I regard them as a tribute. You
upset people like this Maggie? Well, you must have been doing something
right

Engineer
April 9, 2013 at 12:20

Hear, hear.

Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s greatest strength was, in the late 1970s, to
stand up to to the political concensus of the day that Britain was in
terminal decline, and that all government could do was manage that
decline. She determined that Britain would be Great again, and with hard
work, a little luck and immense determination, she succeeded in making it
so. That she did so against the concensus view of her own cabinet, and
many in her own Party, is very much the measure of the woman.

The finest Prime Minister of my lifetime, and a very patriotic Briton.
RIP.

Daedalus
X. Parrot April 9, 2013 at
19:06

Hear, hear.

alan scott
April 9, 2013 at 20:24

Hear, hear! we can confidently expect not to see her like again; not
that the “citizens” of Britain (a majority, anyway) deserve anythinf
better than Miliband and his ilk. As for Galloway, he should be exported
to Iran – or Venezuela.

GildasTheMonk April
10, 2013 at 11:10

Hear hear!

Dioclese April 8,
2013 at 23:20

“What we are left with is a new Britain of self-obsession, greed and envy”
Eloquently put as ever, Anna – and sums it all up better than I ever could
have. Well done for a great piece.

Ian
Hills April 8, 2013 at 23:48

You can tell Anna is impassioned about the subject because she is now
posting as a bloke called Chris.