Margaret Thatcher dies

[Beef Oven]

....and yes indeed RB is more than capable of answering you himself

So stop being such a silly sausage and let him.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Just seen a quip which great tickles my funny bone when it comes to word play. I'm not sure if it has featured on here already:

Only two days in and already we've reached the point of Thatcheration.

[amateur51]

Just seen a quip which great tickles my funny bone when it comes to word play. I'm not sure if it has featured on here already:

Only two days in and already we've reached the point of Thatcheration.

[eighthobstruction]

#525 Scotty....Yes indeed , yes indeed ....thanks

[french frank]

it was the Earl of Stockton, Harold MacMillan, who doughtily (but also with wily mischievousness) complained about MT 'selling off the family silver'. He was responding particularly to the various privatisation programmes, not necessarily council housing, but even so, those words have always stuck with me because they contain within the folly of selling off an asset.

Actually, he made it clear that he was not against privatisation but against the using of the finance as income.

In that, MT duly obliged him: councils were prevented from reinvesting any of the finance raised by selling council houses in new housing stock.

ADD: In fact 'reinvestment' would not exactly constitute 'spending income', but it is another facet to the great council house sell-off which - in my view - bought votes and removed power from local government.

[eighthobstruction]

So stop being such a silly sausage and let him.

...yes but at least this is a sausage that listens and learns....This thread is about Thatcher, not you....

[amateur51]

Actually, he made it clear that he was not against privatisation but against the using of the finance as income.

In that, MT duly obliged him: councils were prevented from reinvesting any of the finance raised by selling council houses into new housting stock.

If she had followed her own 'logic' she would have used the funds liberated by council house sales to generate more public housing to be sold on later - hardly SuperMac's housing boom but it would have been something.

Did I just write 'logic'?

[Tapiola]

My memory is that people of the Nationalist community were attacked by some on the Unionist side which resulted in the British Army being called in ... I even recollect photos of Nationalist women giving the British soldiers cups of tea and cakes in gratitude! However, as we all know, that didn't last long and tribal divisions have been there for centuries.

There certainly has been officially-recognised collusion between the British Army and 'Loyalist' groups. David Cameron recently 'apologised' for that in Parliament. Of course as it was the IRA that was attacking the Army and planting bombs in England maybe such collusion was inevitable in such a dirty war. I once read that 'Loyalist' groups were responsible for around twice as many murders as the IRA, though I don't know whether that is true or not.

A plague on all paramilitaries as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately, things are rather better now and let's hope things get better still.

Scotty, I would go along with almost all of this, apart from the bit about loyalist responsibility for twice the amount of murders as the IRA, of which I am unsure. There is a website somewhere that details the whole grim history of every murder, who was responsible, etc. Wish I could remember what the site is.

What I would say, and this is statistically correct, is that - ironically - the IRA was responsible for the deaths of more innocent Catholics than any other group in the conflict. Over 800 Catholics in fact.

[Beef Oven]

...yes but at least this is a sausage that listens and learns....This thread is about Thatcher, not you....

Yes, it's a good point that you make, I will reflect on it. I must say in my defence, I actually thought I was talking about Lady Thatcher (RIP) in the main, but I seemed to got dragged into a ding-dong about it.

[Julien Sorel]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173731/why-would-anyone-celebrate-death-margaret-thatcher-ask-chilean#

[Beef Oven]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173731...r-ask-chilean#

I agree entirely that Pinochet was a dark chapter in recent human history. Mrs T's support for him is beyond my understanding.

What also puzzles me though, is that Galtieri and his fascist henchmen were arguably worse. We brought that dispicable regime down in the Falklands conflict, yet the left, both then and now, thought that we should have never had gone to war. Seems to me that we had two rock solid reasons to face-off with that fascist dictatorship.

If anyone doesn't know too much about the Argentinian Dictatorship's 'Dirty War' 1976-1983, and is interested, here's a wiki-link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers..._Plaza_de_Mayo

[Tapiola]

I once read that 'Loyalist' groups were responsible for around twice as many murders as the IRA, though I don't know whether that is true or not.

Scotty, I'm yet to find the link to the site I previously mentioned, but the CAIN project at the University of Ulster has reported that, up to 2001, the IRA was responsible for just over 48% of all killings in the Troubles.

[vinteuil]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt

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[An_Inspector_Calls]

ADD: In fact 'reinvestment' would not exactly constitute 'spending income', but it is another facet to the great council house sell-off which - in my view - bought votes and removed power from local government.

Yes, that is slightly strange until one remembers that those were the days of councils lead by such luminaries as Derek Hatton.

[Nick Armstrong]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt

Lovely!

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Your minimalist use of the full stop... or is it a fractured, de-constructed version of "..."? ... is always rather intriguing, vindoux