| Thatcher dead 12:56 - Apr 8 with 94847 views | six_foot_two |
Skynews are are saying Magaret Thatcher has died of a stroke |  | | |  |
| Thatcher dead on 00:26 - Apr 11 with 1644 views | Brightonhoop |
| Thatcher dead on 23:28 - Apr 10 by QPR1882 |
. [Post edited 1 Jan 1970 1:00]
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I've tried to stay off this thread but you are truly thick and clearly think shouting and pursuing some non-sensical view somehow makes others wrong and you right. I've seen nursery school children with better grasps of rational debate and certainly better manners with regards the views of others. Do you think it is clever to be such a moron?
Social Housing, or Council Housing, was built with public money after the war to house the population from a bombed out housing stock and slums that had fallen into disrepair after years of war. Therefore assett cost at time of sale was the only measureable feature. So when houses were sold for 20% of value it was all of us that were robbed, to gift the purchases. One purchaser I recall was a cabinet minister who bought three houses through convulated family arrangements, one ending up in ownership by his hamster. (I'm lying about the hamster by the way). This was why they brought in rules about having to retain ownership for years afterward and then stopped it completely more or less, because even Thatcher was embarrassed by the frenzy of pigs she'd unleashed. Worst of all she didn't allow Councils to re-invest the paltry sums against Market values of the properties in rebuilding which is the single largest contributor to the fake and inflated housing costs now, in both rent and ownership.
As for Vehicles? All Councils and Private Companies use an agreed depreciation index to measure assett value and report accordingly each year in Accounts. There are several different indexes all producing largely the same results.
For the Thatcher record this Housing Act of 1980 was her only major piece of legislation. This from the Downing Street website, all subsequent legislation either massively watered down or repealed later.
Attlee meanwhile, as Deputy PM to Churchill in the War, ushered in the Housing Act that saw the Council Houses she sold and failed to replace, built. He then as PM ushered in National Insurance, to help fund the worlds first National Health Service, amongst all the other incredible achievements below in a Five year span.
Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945
Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1946
Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946
Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act 1946
National Health Service Act 1946
National Insurance Act 1946
National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946
New Towns Act 1946
Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1946
Hill Farming Act 1946
Agriculture Act 1947
Pensions (Increase) Act 1947
Electricity Act 1947
Town and Country Planning Act 1947
Transport Act 1947
National Assistance Act 1948
Children Act 1948
Factories Act 1948
Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1948
Agricultural Holdings Act 1948
Employment and Training Act 1948
Nurseries and Child-Minders Regulation Act 1948
Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948
Local Government Act 1948
Representation of the People Act 1948
Housing Act 1949
Superannuation Act 1949
House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1949
Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949
Lands Tribunal Act 1949
Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949
Adoption of Children Act 1949
Marriage Act 1949
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949
Parliament Act 1949
Representation of the People Act 1949
Distribution of Industry Act 1950
Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act 1950
Allotments Act 1950
Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act 1951
It doesn't take Einstein to see that Thatcher was shyte by comparison and similar degrees of contempt for English people not seen since Hitler started bombing us. But carry on with the sycophantic eulogising, because the facts speak for themselves, She was such a great PM that even the Tory's couldn't stand her in the end and queued up to knife her in the back. Lovely people that they are. Tebbit himself stated today in the Lords, that after the IRA Bomb and his retirement to look after his wife, he regretted having not been there for Thatcher lamenting and I quote 'I should not have left her alone with friends....' An astonishing statement.
The last decent Tory was Lord Carrington. He had the b4lls and integrity to resign on principle of having lost the Falklands. He was the very last Gentleman in the Tory Party. In one generation you gone into terminal decline and reached the giddy heights of the odious Michael Howard.
And for the record Labour did the same. They went from the formidable intellect of Michael Foot, gracious man of peace we could still learn alot from, to Tony farking Blair who hated Thatcher so much he embraced her and carried on her work once elected. |  | | |
| Thatcher dead on 00:37 - Apr 11 with 1640 views | FredManRave |
Thoroughly interesting thread which I've followed from the start. I can relate to what Bosh has been said more than anything else which is why I've found this thread so interesting and educational and as someboday else mentioned recently it's been good to see that there has been no inter R's fighting just two sides trying to get their point across, albeit forcibly, but within acceptable limits.
However, the worst part, imo, and not just on here, is those that see fit to want to "dance on her grave" and such like. It's not really surprising as she was obviously such a divisive politician/person but really just putting your argument/point across on the reasons "against" her should suffice, no need for the vitriol, but that's just my opinion.
It should also be taken into account that any one of us would have made a few dodgy decisions and maybe been a bit dogged if we'd have only slept for 4 hours a night for 11 years. |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 00:43 - Apr 11 with 1634 views | carrotcrunch_R |
If a manager can't please all the fans after winning the championship ?what chances does a pm have to please the whole country.? |  | | |
| Thatcher dead on 01:18 - Apr 11 with 1618 views | jo_qpr63 |
She did nothing of value for this country.
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| Thatcher dead on 02:30 - Apr 11 with 1608 views | NW5Hoop |
And you probably would have seen an awful lot fewer striking miners killed and injured.
Of the 10 deaths that happened in and around the mines during the strike, one was a taxi driver taking strike breakers to work. The strikers responsible were jailed. Three were kids picking coal on a colliery waste heap. The other six were striking miners; two of the deaths remain suspicious.
As a result of the "Battle of Orgreave", South Yorkshire Police had to pay £425,000 in compensation and £100,000 in legal fees to striking miners, after accusations of assault and unlawful arrest. Despite the payments, not a single police officer was even disciplined, let alone charged.
Although I identify myself as centre-left, my own feelings about the miners' strike are ambivalent at best. However, to hail the police for the job they did in 1984/85 is simply wrong. | | | |
| Thatcher dead on 03:26 - Apr 11 with 1603 views | jonno |
| Thatcher dead on 12:43 - Apr 10 by nadera78 |
There's a profit guarantee. If they don't make X in prices then the government makes up the rest. |
Total rubbish. Certainly in the case of gas/electricity suppliers. You are thinking of the railways. |  | | |
| Thatcher dead on 03:36 - Apr 11 with 1600 views | jonno |
| Thatcher dead on 15:34 - Apr 10 by Stanisgod |
You must live in a very different world to me mate, HR is human resources, which took over from personell departments, two very very different animals. The old personell departments were very much 50/50 and on the fence help both sides people ( at least the ones I've been associated with ), who you could talk to about literally ANYTHING, home problems, work issues, union issues, health, anything. And they listened even if they couldn't always help.
I've found since it went to HR they have become cold, uncaring totally employer biased places.
The first two lines are so naive I can't even get my head round it. No offence meant, but I get the impression from previous posts you are not exactly shop-floor orientated, so are completely blinkered as to all the good unions do, which far outway the bad, which is all you hear about. Again, no offence,perhaps just differing experience and a different walk of life involved. |
That is absolutely correct. Once the "Personnel" dept changed to "HR", suddenly "HR" became a "profession" and obviously companies employed HR "professionals" for their own interests, ie to work on their side against the interests of their employess. That has certainly been the case where I work anyway. | | | |
| Thatcher dead on 07:29 - Apr 11 with 1572 views | hoopstilidie |
| Thatcher dead on 20:24 - Apr 10 by easthertsr |
Having read all this thread, one point has not been mentioned, under Thatcher the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. And being poor was demonized for the first time, it was a horrible, hateful time with people turning against each other in every section of society. All down to that spiteful woman and her wicked, nasty policies. I was 24 when she came to power and 11 years later when she left office my country was a nastier, greedier, more violent place to live. |
The rich/poor divide widened under the last Labour government.
That's a fact. |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 08:47 - Apr 11 with 1543 views | R_from_afar |
| Thatcher dead on 16:34 - Apr 10 by Snipper |
Another thing that really pissed me off about her, she got Dennis awarded a hereditary knighthood. It's already been passed onto her son.
She really hated her working class roots and ensured the title is passed down the generations.
Bitch. . |
On this note, I was stunned to see that her son is Sir Mark. He was involved in a coup d'etat! To quote Wikipedia:
Thatcher attracted attention as a result of his role in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, for which he was fined R3,000,000 rand (approximately £313,000 or $500,000) and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.
Hells bells (shakes head gravely)!
RFA |  |
| "Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1." |
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| Thatcher dead on 08:48 - Apr 11 with 1541 views | easthertsr |
The gap between rich and poor widened under the last Labour government because those bar stewards Blair and Brown largely continued with the same policies the previous Tory governments had started! | | | |
| Thatcher dead on 08:54 - Apr 11 with 1534 views | R_from_afar |
| Thatcher dead on 19:07 - Apr 10 by TheBlob |
So fracking is a short term fix.It's either that or having the punters marching on Downing Street when the lights go out.I don't accept nuclear is sporadic - depends on what kind of reactor you use.And it'll be a fill - in until you humans finally decide to mine Helium3 on our nearest celestial body.
Maggie would have approved - more privately sourced wonga for the UK. |
I double checked my facts, from a paper by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and on average, it's two days per month. When New York suffered those power cuts in 2003, working nuclear plants - nine, from memory - had to be taken offline and it took 12 days to get them back up and running. A close friend worked in the UK nuclear industry and led a project covering safety instrumentation for one of the UK's plants. The plant was down for at least weeks, as I recall, which is why there were punitive clauses for late completion of the project running into thousands of pounds per day.
RFA | |
| "Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1." |
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| Thatcher dead on 09:03 - Apr 11 with 1525 views | hoopstilidie |
| Thatcher dead on 08:48 - Apr 11 by easthertsr |
The gap between rich and poor widened under the last Labour government because those bar stewards Blair and Brown largely continued with the same policies the previous Tory governments had started! |
For all those who hark back to the halcyon days of Labour government that preceded the Thatcher years:
"When Labour was elected in 1974 its manifesto promised, 'It is our intention to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.'
In fact the 1974-9 government imposed the greatest attacks on working class living standards since the hungry years of the 1930s.
Housing - by 1978 fewer council houses were being built than in any year since the Second World War.
Health - 25,000 hospital beds went in the first two years of the Labour government.
Education - teachers suffered large scale redundancies for the first time in living memory.
Prices - doubled between February 1974 and December 1978.
Jobs - 1,000 a day went in Labour's first three years. Unemployment was 500,000 in 1974. It reached 1.6 million in 1976.
Wages - a family of four on average earnings was worse off in 1979 than in 1974. Behind those cold statistics lay the shattered lives of millions of working people."
Source: "The Socialist Worker", 26 January 2002. | |
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| Thatcher dead on 09:14 - Apr 11 with 2054 views | londonscottish |
| Thatcher dead on 23:52 - Apr 10 by MkPaul |
My god there are some drama queens on here, if she was the devil then she wouldn't have been voted in 3 times some people need to get a grip on reality because the strange world they live in doesn't seem the kind of place I would want to live in
Please please get a grip |
Well she was lucky in that through the first two terms she was fighting against a completely divided and ineffective opposition.
Two years into her first term she was massively popular and IMHO only the Falklands War puller her out of that. Inflation was raging, unemployment was soaring, it was ugly.
When she won her second term she won far fewer votes - it was just that Labour were in pieces at the time.
When she cam to office there were 10 Tory MP's in Scotland. When she was done there were ZERO. Poll tax anyone?
In fact the SNP openly credit her for giving them the opportunity to progress their particular brand on unhinged politics. They are even more nuts than she was but the serve as a reaction to the contempt that she showed to the Scottish people.
Yes she did a lot of good things - but by Christ did she make people hate her as a person. I respect some pf the things, totally disagree with others she did but loathe the way she went about things. |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 09:23 - Apr 11 with 2042 views | nadera78 |
| Thatcher dead on 03:26 - Apr 11 by jonno |
Total rubbish. Certainly in the case of gas/electricity suppliers. You are thinking of the railways. |
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2301903/Fears-grow-mounting-cost-nuclear-deal-energy-giant-EDF.html
They'll get profits guaranteed by government. In other words taxpayers. | | | |
| Thatcher dead on 09:31 - Apr 11 with 2030 views | nadera78 |
| Thatcher dead on 09:03 - Apr 11 by hoopstilidie |
For all those who hark back to the halcyon days of Labour government that preceded the Thatcher years:
"When Labour was elected in 1974 its manifesto promised, 'It is our intention to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.'
In fact the 1974-9 government imposed the greatest attacks on working class living standards since the hungry years of the 1930s.
Housing - by 1978 fewer council houses were being built than in any year since the Second World War.
Health - 25,000 hospital beds went in the first two years of the Labour government.
Education - teachers suffered large scale redundancies for the first time in living memory.
Prices - doubled between February 1974 and December 1978.
Jobs - 1,000 a day went in Labour's first three years. Unemployment was 500,000 in 1974. It reached 1.6 million in 1976.
Wages - a family of four on average earnings was worse off in 1979 than in 1974. Behind those cold statistics lay the shattered lives of millions of working people."
Source: "The Socialist Worker", 26 January 2002. |
Housing - fewer built than since the war is still better than selling them all off and not replacing them.
Health - compared to how many lost in the 1980's? And now we're faced with no A&E unit at Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Central Mid and Ealing. Over a million people with no local A&E.
Education - Classrooms with too many children, kids sharing books, schools with outside toilets. That was in 1997 ffs!
Jobs - Unemployment was 1million in 1979. Thatcher took that to the previously unimaginable 3million.
btw growth in the 70's (the decade regarded as most disastrous) was 2.4%. Growth in the 80's (when Thatcher saved us from the shackles of government and unions) was 2.4%.
And the Socialist Worker as a source? They hate Labour even more than the Tories.
There are many brickbats you can throw at the late 70's Labour gov't, most of them true, but the Thatcher gov't is even worse by comparison. Unless you were given something for nothing by her gov't and asked to turn a blind eye to what they did elsewhere. I'm all right Jack! [Post edited 1 Jan 1970 1:00]
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| Thatcher dead on 09:37 - Apr 11 with 2019 views | Bedford_R |
| Thatcher dead on 09:03 - Apr 11 by hoopstilidie |
For all those who hark back to the halcyon days of Labour government that preceded the Thatcher years:
"When Labour was elected in 1974 its manifesto promised, 'It is our intention to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.'
In fact the 1974-9 government imposed the greatest attacks on working class living standards since the hungry years of the 1930s.
Housing - by 1978 fewer council houses were being built than in any year since the Second World War.
Health - 25,000 hospital beds went in the first two years of the Labour government.
Education - teachers suffered large scale redundancies for the first time in living memory.
Prices - doubled between February 1974 and December 1978.
Jobs - 1,000 a day went in Labour's first three years. Unemployment was 500,000 in 1974. It reached 1.6 million in 1976.
Wages - a family of four on average earnings was worse off in 1979 than in 1974. Behind those cold statistics lay the shattered lives of millions of working people."
Source: "The Socialist Worker", 26 January 2002. |
Does any of that make Thatcher less of a bitch? Thought not.... |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 09:44 - Apr 11 with 2011 views | hoopstilidie |
| Thatcher dead on 09:37 - Apr 11 by Bedford_R |
Does any of that make Thatcher less of a bitch? Thought not.... |
In your opinion? I guess not.
Other's vary.
I like life like that.
Facts are facts though.
I grew up in the 70s, it was horrendous. | |
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| Thatcher dead on 10:12 - Apr 11 with 1986 views | TheBlob |
| Thatcher dead on 08:54 - Apr 11 by R_from_afar |
I double checked my facts, from a paper by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and on average, it's two days per month. When New York suffered those power cuts in 2003, working nuclear plants - nine, from memory - had to be taken offline and it took 12 days to get them back up and running. A close friend worked in the UK nuclear industry and led a project covering safety instrumentation for one of the UK's plants. The plant was down for at least weeks, as I recall, which is why there were punitive clauses for late completion of the project running into thousands of pounds per day.
RFA |
Were those reactors water or gas cooled?Big difference. |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 12:32 - Apr 11 with 1882 views | TacticalR |
ElHoop, could you reduce the size of that map jpeg? (By at least 50%). It's made this page of the thread much harder to read. |  |
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| Thatcher dead on 12:33 - Apr 11 with 1874 views | ElHoop |
| Thatcher dead on 12:32 - Apr 11 by TacticalR |
ElHoop, could you reduce the size of that map jpeg? (By at least 50%). It's made this page of the thread much harder to read. |
Ok sorry. Will do. It's hard to read the map without making it big, but i see what you mean. |  | | |
| Thatcher dead on 13:24 - Apr 11 with 1832 views | TacticalR |
| Thatcher dead on 09:44 - Apr 11 by hoopstilidie |
In your opinion? I guess not.
Other's vary.
I like life like that.
Facts are facts though.
I grew up in the 70s, it was horrendous. |
I guess the facts don't always lead us to the same conclusions.
I also grew up in the 70s, and yes it was horrendous. That's one reason I find 70s nostalgia so bizarre. One thing I remember particularly well from the mid-70s was one of my teachers telling me that unemployment was a temporary phenomenon which would soon disappear. Because he had grown up in an era of full employment (relatively speaking), he was completely unprepared for what was happening in front of his eyes and had no inkling that unemployment was going to become a permanent feature of British society. (It wasn't just him of course, Margaret Thatcher said in 1977: 'We'd have been drummed out of office if we'd have had this level of unemployment', when unemployment was 1.5 million).
What I have concluded from the long list of failings of the Labour Party in the 70s that you provided, was that these failings were a product of the decline of Britain in particular combined with general problems of the world economy (illustrated by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971). The militancy of the workers was simply a response to the rapid decline in living standards brought about by high inflation (which afflicted the entire western world). I haven't been able to find the original quote, but I read somewhere in the 1970s more strike days were lost in Switzerland per capita than in Britain. So I attribute Labour's problems in the 1970s to structural problems with the capitalist economy. Those problems weren't amenable to Labour's past solutions, and led to the abandonment of Keynesianism. (By the way, I think that your jabs at Labour for closing mines in this thread show that any capitalist party would have behaved in roughly the same way). Labour, through its intimate connections with trade union officialdom had often been able to get the workforce to accept job losses and reduced living standards. In the 1970s the militancy of the workforce showed that trade union officialdom was no longer able to exert the same controlling influence that it had done in the past, and therefore was of no further use to the British establishment (no more 'Beer and sandwiches at Number 10'). Instead, much more confrontational methods were needed to smash the most militant sections of the workforce (although Thatcher did proceed very cautiously at first). In my opinion that explains 'Thatcherism' more convincingly than the individual psychology of a particular leader of the Conservative Party. | |
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| Thatcher dead on 13:47 - Apr 11 with 1802 views | MkPaul |
| Thatcher dead on 09:14 - Apr 11 by londonscottish |
Well she was lucky in that through the first two terms she was fighting against a completely divided and ineffective opposition.
Two years into her first term she was massively popular and IMHO only the Falklands War puller her out of that. Inflation was raging, unemployment was soaring, it was ugly.
When she won her second term she won far fewer votes - it was just that Labour were in pieces at the time.
When she cam to office there were 10 Tory MP's in Scotland. When she was done there were ZERO. Poll tax anyone?
In fact the SNP openly credit her for giving them the opportunity to progress their particular brand on unhinged politics. They are even more nuts than she was but the serve as a reaction to the contempt that she showed to the Scottish people.
Yes she did a lot of good things - but by Christ did she make people hate her as a person. I respect some pf the things, totally disagree with others she did but loathe the way she went about things. |
I have never agreed with everything anyone does and also agree there was good and bad in what she did, what I can't get my head around is people going as far as celebrating someone's death, it just feels wrong to me... Probably excluding the likes of hitler etc
In principle was the poll tax such a bad thing in so much as if there are 10 adults living in a house using all the services etc why shouldn't they pay more than 2 people living in a house using the same services etc? Some of the issues with the poll tax as I remember them was caused by the way councils used it to score points and generate more income than before... But time may have clouded my memory
In some stuff posted earlier on here I seem to remember that the numbers that voted for her did not change that dramatically between all three terms and were no worse than most of the governments we have had since.
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| Thatcher dead on 13:47 - Apr 11 with 1800 views | jonno |
| Thatcher dead on 09:23 - Apr 11 by nadera78 |
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2301903/Fears-grow-mounting-cost-nuclear-deal-energy-giant-EDF.html
They'll get profits guaranteed by government. In other words taxpayers. |
Errr.....EDF are a commercial company (in fact they are state owned by the French). Do you expect them to build the nuclear power stations we need for nothing? The fact is that successive governments in this country have neglected to update existing power stations, and now they are mostly coming to the end of their lives and need replacing. The UK's largest energy supplier (Centrica) was going to be involved with EDF in building the new power stations but have now pulled out. Why do think that is? Because the Govt expected them to pay the full cost - after failing themselves to invest for many years. | | | |
| Thatcher dead on 13:48 - Apr 11 with 1793 views | TheBlob |
| Thatcher dead on 13:24 - Apr 11 by TacticalR |
I guess the facts don't always lead us to the same conclusions.
I also grew up in the 70s, and yes it was horrendous. That's one reason I find 70s nostalgia so bizarre. One thing I remember particularly well from the mid-70s was one of my teachers telling me that unemployment was a temporary phenomenon which would soon disappear. Because he had grown up in an era of full employment (relatively speaking), he was completely unprepared for what was happening in front of his eyes and had no inkling that unemployment was going to become a permanent feature of British society. (It wasn't just him of course, Margaret Thatcher said in 1977: 'We'd have been drummed out of office if we'd have had this level of unemployment', when unemployment was 1.5 million).
What I have concluded from the long list of failings of the Labour Party in the 70s that you provided, was that these failings were a product of the decline of Britain in particular combined with general problems of the world economy (illustrated by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971). The militancy of the workers was simply a response to the rapid decline in living standards brought about by high inflation (which afflicted the entire western world). I haven't been able to find the original quote, but I read somewhere in the 1970s more strike days were lost in Switzerland per capita than in Britain. So I attribute Labour's problems in the 1970s to structural problems with the capitalist economy. Those problems weren't amenable to Labour's past solutions, and led to the abandonment of Keynesianism. (By the way, I think that your jabs at Labour for closing mines in this thread show that any capitalist party would have behaved in roughly the same way). Labour, through its intimate connections with trade union officialdom had often been able to get the workforce to accept job losses and reduced living standards. In the 1970s the militancy of the workforce showed that trade union officialdom was no longer able to exert the same controlling influence that it had done in the past, and therefore was of no further use to the British establishment (no more 'Beer and sandwiches at Number 10'). Instead, much more confrontational methods were needed to smash the most militant sections of the workforce (although Thatcher did proceed very cautiously at first). In my opinion that explains 'Thatcherism' more convincingly than the individual psychology of a particular leader of the Conservative Party. |
The seventies were great.Well,until Punk came in and that whole world of petty jealousy.You could have a surprising amount of fun on very little dosh.But even then there were always those who preferred siiting around with their thumbs up their arses spouting political and economic theory - always sounded like they were reading from a prepared statement.
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