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Help me explain to my teenager why Thatcher was bad.

Johnny Canuck3 said:
Does she have a cousin? A nephew?

Are they evil, too?
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I think many people would accept that Carol and Mark Thatcher are both pretty fucking odious, independent of who their mother is.

Never met Thatcher's nephew, so can't comment, but wouldn't be altogether surprised...
 
Regardless of whether or not you hold Thatcher personally responsible for the many negative things that happened under her watch, the inescapable fact is that her government and ideology set in train the processes which have culminated with the monstrous clusterfuck we find ourselves in today...
 
She launched a ferocious onslaught on behalf of the 'haves' against the have-nots, a war on behalf of the ruling class (and their middle class lackeys) against the workers, smashing a near-4 decades worth of progress for ordinary working people.
In so doing, she did her utmost to hand this country over to a bunch of greedy, parasitical capitalist predators (and largely succeeded), and as a result we are in the state we are in today; a society with a massive regional imbalance, a horrifically imbalanced economy, a trashed society.
And a country which is a nastier, crasser, colder, more selfinsh, far more socially atomised place than it was back then, in whch "looking out for number one", "FUJIA", "greed is good" and "money is all that matters" are the dominant ethoses.
 
Streathamite said:
She launched a ferocious onslaught on behalf of the 'haves' against the have-nots, a war on behalf of the ruling class (and their middle class lackeys) against the workers, smashing a near-4 decades worth of progress for ordinary working people.
In so doing, she did her utmost to hand this country over to a bunch of greedy, parasitical capitalist predators (and largely succeeded), and as a result we are in the state we are in today; a society with a massive regional imbalance, a horrifically imbalanced economy, a trashed society.
And a country which is a nastier, crasser, colder, more selfinsh, far more socially atomised place than it was back then, in whch "looking out for number one", "FUJIA", "greed is good" and "money is all that matters" are the dominant ethoses.
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^This
 
Johnny Canuck3 said:
All those negatives, you're prepared to ascribe all of them to one person.
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To a large extent, yes - her and her governments, of which she was the dominant member. Johnny, I haven't time to post here, right now, why this is so, but if you read U75 today _ and other parts of the web - you'll see why this is so. I'd recommend stuff it's excellent post on this thread (#49) as a good place to start. She is quite sim ply the most damaging, destructive PM the British have had in a long, long time.
To give another large clue; there are street parties breaking out yesterday and today, and there will be other parties, celebrating her demise. The last major political figure to trigger this was Hitler.
I doubt very much if so many people will feel the same way about John Major or Tony Blair.
 
StoneRoad said:
The list Stuffs has re-posted above should help......urbz might even be able to add a few more
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Here's my go without checking anything - may be mistakes but there we are:



Dr. Furface said:
I don't believe 'ignored' is the right interpretation. The scrapping of the Royal Navy patrol ship amounted to an open invitation to Argentina to invade the Falkland islands. Thatcher's regime knew full well that, given the opportunity, that was more than a likely possibility, and they would also have known that Argentina's pathetic navy and rag-bag army of mostly conscripts was no match for our military might - we may not have had the resources of the real superpowers, but compared to Argentina we were a relative military superpower. So in my opinion, that war was a complete set-up.
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Scrapping of the Royal Navy patrol ship was not an open invitation to invade, no one in the Foreign Office believed any sort of invasion was likely, had they thought so the patrols would have remained.

The conflict over the islands were a major breach within the Western side, gave the Soviets inestimable propaganda run at exactly the time it was under the cosh over Poland and Afganistan - there is no evidence that Thatcher wanted a war, of course once the Argentinian move happened a secured negotiated end with swap-back rights over undersea resources would have been a massive blow to 'British credibility - so a full victory was essential and force was the only way to do that.

Having a think this morning the following also come to mind:-

trying to block any funding for students unions deemed too political
limited student union funds to polytechnics as compared with universities
campaigned for a yes vote in the eu referendum

accepted sadistic thug grunwicks boss george ward as a conservative candidate
ending social security for those on strike

ending the right to a closed shop imposed by a majority of a workforce
weakening employment rights for new people in a job (flexibility for employers)
reestablished diplomatic relations with chile early in 1980, routine torture, including that by rape/anal rape and drugged rape continues to the late 1980s, after 1990 chile becomes an imperfect dictatorshp
tried to block - minimal as it was - assistance to sandinista nicaragua
authorised the sas to reinstate loyal pro-british kleptocrat dawda jawara in gambia by military force in 1982
failed to oppose the us invasion and occupation of grenada, another commonwealth country
supported the promise made by the turkish military in 1980 that democracy was their intention, opposed any symbolic nato request to return to civilian government

extended british business opportunities in indonesia to the point of touring with suharto in jakarta in
1985

secured the largest ever arms transfer in history to jordan
introducing the assisted places scheme in september 1979 for the state to subsidise private schools
introducing rate capping to stop central govt assistance and oppotunities for local govt to look after its people
promoting shirley porter as wise leadership for london
abolishing the glc because it was against conservatives
promoting asil nadir and poly peck as ethnic minority business
stopped development aid to bolivia's poor for fear that some of it might help the leftist miners trade union comibol in opposition to military-managed democracy

proposed managed decline for major urban areas after the disturbances of 1981
sending her children to private school, whilst cutting education funds
consistently using and boasting of using private hospitals, whilst cutting health funds
refusing to change any laws that meant rape or sexual assaut within a marriage was impossible
supporting the sas over the gibraltar three execution
supporting mi5 surveillance and assaults against the anti-nuclear protests at greenham base
battle of the beanfield
heavily attacked the bbc for broadcasting anything controversial or political
promising more funds to councils if they privatised services in the late 1980s
backed the behaviour of the police and media (and collusion between the two) when ending the protests at strangeways and elsewhere in 1990 (prisoners castrate guards, hang guards, strangeway prisoners have killed dozens etc etc to stop public support for a non-military resolution)
 
Thatcher and the words no one mentions: North Sea Oil
opendemocracy.net 8 April 2013
Her 'conviction' would have been nothing but folly without the North Sea's black gold. It was oil revenues that bankrolled the unemployment, the destruction of manufacturing, the high-exchange rate, the termination of British coal mining, and the big-bang that turned London into a capital of global neo-liberalism and pumped growth into the South-East in the early 1980s.

As North Sea Oil came on stream bringing in an estimated £70 billion in revenues, it turned the UK into an OPEC country, an oil-exporter, and it overturned a chronic balance of payments problem rooted in the post-war period of clinging to imperial over-stretch.
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Thatcher and the establishment squandered our inheritance on these failed experiments all the while feathering the nests of their friends and cronies.
 
unusual_solid said:
they said on the radio the streets were covered in rubbish anyway not playing devils advocate cannot see this many people hating her for nothing but how much how bad did she fuck things up?
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I'm assuming that the "streets...covered in rubbish" comment is referring to the so-called "winter of discontent" in '78. There was less rubbish on the street then (it was mostly neatly bagged up by householders and deposited on the nearest designated piece of public land) in many places than there is now, with privatised refuse collection.
I used to get up at 06.00 to do a couple of paper rounds before going to school. Invariably I'd pass the same couple of street cleaners every weekday and saturday morning, going up and down the main road and side roads with their big hoover-like contraptions. Not something I've seen in the last 20 or so years. She started the rot in services provided by local authorities by imposing a practice called "Compulsory Competitive Tendering". This ensured that rather than providing stuff like street cleansing, rubbish collection, roads and buildings maintenance from their own directly-employed workforces, councils had to put service contracts out to bid, with the "best value" (i.e. under govt criteria, the cheapest) bidder winning. This invariably meant that some bunch of corporate cowboys, utilising a workforce small enough to ensure that the job still got done, but nowhere near as thoroughly, won the contract. These principles were then extended throughout service procurement by govt, and pretty much presaged full privatisation of the utilities.

How bad did she fuck things up? She took a country with a little over a million unemployed, and put it in recession so that by 1982 there were more than 3 million unemployed.
How'd she do that? She declare war on the manufacturing and extractive industries.
Why'd she do that? Because that's where the unions were strongest - break the unions and you break a bond of solidarity within communities.
 
unusual_solid said:
just watched the birkenhead documentary grim viewing indeed but were the shipyards on their way out anyway...
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Arguable. Certainly a few of the shipyards were uneconomic, but that was as much due to a need for modernisation as anything else.

and also the influx of heroin at the time did not help matters no doubt something better could have been sorted. heartbreaking to see people going through a dump just to get by but what can you do without any income akin to many soup kitchens up and down the country today. sad times all round.
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The influx of smack (not just to Woollyback country and the 'pool, but to the north in general) was a consequence of capitalist economics, both in the destruction of industry and employment causing a demand for escapism, and in the rising of a supply to meet that demand.
 
Streathamite said:
Do you actually realise what a massive, astonishing understatement that is?


.
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I didn't live through those times in Britain; but do people think that the country would be in better shape if she'd never been PM? [nor anyone like her who did the same things?]

My recollection of Britain pre-Thatcher was a visit for a couple of weeks in approx. 1980. I was astonished at how dysfunctional the place seemed to be - so many different types of worker were on strike. Something was affected or compromised every day. The final insult to injury was, the airport arrival/departure flipper board sign workers were on strike - so it was a big scramble to find out when and where my plane would be.

She may well have been overly zealous and draconian; but for those old enough to remember, didn't it seem to you like the country was headed for the rocks back then?
 
Free market economics.

She saw first hand what Milton Friedman's whacky theories did to Chile and she saw how old fashioned Keynesian economics was that country's salvation. Yet she imposed Friedman's nutjob shit on Britain and got Regan to do the same to the US, which has in turn ruined economies around the world via the World Bank/IMF. Billions of people have had their lives made miserable as a result of this.

You can not have a free market in a monopoly. Even a 6 year old can see that this is stupid.

And it's still going on, the current government is preparing to re-privatise the East Coast train route; this has been privitised and failed, yet under nationalisation it is turning a profit.

And now Britain is about to reep the whirlwind of free market madness, Asia and South America are taking up the service industries, leaving the UK with nothing.

She has quite possibly done more damage to this country than anyone else in history.

Rot in agony.
 
Johnny Canuck3 said:
I didn't live through those times in Britain; but do people think that the country would be in better shape if she'd never been PM? [nor anyone like her who did the same things?]

My recollection of Britain pre-Thatcher was a visit for a couple of weeks in approx. 1980. I was astonished at how dysfunctional the place seemed to be - so many different types of worker were on strike. Something was affected or compromised every day. The final insult to injury was, the airport arrival/departure flipper board sign workers were on strike - so it was a big scramble to find out when and where my plane would be.

She may well have been overly zealous and draconian; but for those old enough to remember, didn't it seem to you like the country was headed for the rocks back then?
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No.
 
Has this been posted yet?

tumblr_mkyhl4xtlq1rl4ee4o1_1280.jpg
 
stuff_it said:
HTH
  • Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and polarising politic leader of the last century. This is an incomplete list of why many of us fall on the side that does not regard her with anything other than odium…

    1. She supported the retention of capital punishment
    2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry
    3. She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws
    4. She abolished free milk for schoolchildren ("Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher")
    5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)
    6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration
    7. She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)
    8. She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million
    9. She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands
    10. The poll tax
    11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad
    12. She compared her "fight" against the miners to the Falklands War
    13. She privatised state monopolies and created the corporate greed culture that we've been railing against for the last 5 years
    14. She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS
    15. She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits
    16. She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA
    17. She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control
    18. Section 28
    19. She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as "that grubby little terrorist"
    20. She support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and sent the SAS to train their soldiers
    21. She allowed the US to bomb Libya in 1986, against the wishes of more than 2/3 of the population
    22. She opposed the reunification of Germany
    23. She invented Quangos
    24. She increased VAT from 8% to 17.5%
    25. She had the lowest approval rating of any post-war Prime Minister
    26. Her post-PM job? Consultant to Philip Morris tobacco at $250,000 a year, plus $50,000 per speech
    27. The Al Yamamah contract
    28. She opposed the indictment of Chile's General Pinochet
    29. Social unrest under her leadership was higher than at any time since the General Strike
    30. She presided over interest rates increasing to 15%
    31. BSE
    32. She presided over 2 million manufacturing job losses in the 79-81 recession
    33. She opposed the inclusion of Eire in the Northern Ireland peace process
    34. She supported sanctions-busting arms deals with South Africa
    35. Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitkin
    36. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher
    37. Black Wednesday – Britain withdraws from the ERM and the pound is devalued. Cost to Britain - £3.5 billion; profit for George Soros - £1 billion
    38. Poverty doubled while she opposed a minimum wage
    39. She privatised public services, claiming at the time it would increase public ownership. Most are now owned either by foreign governments (EDF) or major investment houses. The profits don’t now accrue to the taxpayer, but to foreign or institutional shareholders.
    40. She cut 75% of funding to museums, galleries and other sources of education
    41. In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions
    42. 21.9% inflation

    Most people recognise the massive changes that evolved during the 1980s. However, to ascribe the positive changes to one person, as though they never would have happened in her absence, is laughable.
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Terrible and utterly shameful as this list is it's not like she invaded Iraq or anything.
 
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