Margaret Thatcher dies

[Beef Oven]

A few hours or a few months, it will make no difference to the dead, but maybe offend some of the living.

I know people who suffered huge hardship under MT's policies, and others who benefited hugely (e.g. council home ownership which later saw handsome profits). In the case of Thatcher few modern politicans have so polarised a nation, so "extreme" responses are to be expected.

Agreed. But hopefully not spitefulness and cowardice.

[kernelbogey]

Her most recognisable legacies for me are a pervasive selfishness and sociopathy in British society.

[MrGongGong]

Left to this lot in here, we'd all be speaking German

HI dad
I didn't think you used the internet

This takes me right back to the 1970's all over again aaaaaaargh

(Would that make us related to the queen then ? )

[ahinton]

I am aware that there are two threads on the subject of Mrs Thatcher's death.

I am not remotely interested in gloating or anything of that nature, so I'm writing on this thread. I am, however, equally uninterested in the kind of hagiographical hyperbole to which some are now resorting, which is why it might have been better to post on the other thread. As I am therefore unsure to which of the thread I should be contributing, I will say this.

Few Prime Ministers have an unblemished record in office; Mrs Thatcher was undoubtedly no exception. If I am to praise one aspect of her conduct in office, I could, I think, do no better than to quote (albeit only as accurately as memory allows) Anthony Wedgwood Benn at an evening at Bath's Theatre Royal one Sunday evening some decade or more ago when, having described her, calmly and with not a trace of angst or venom, as one of Britain's most damaging Prime Ministers in any era, he was nevertheless at pains to point out that "you always knew where you were with Margaret Thatcher", his implication being that you might have wanted to be almost anywhere else but his point being to testify warmly to the honesty, integrity and clear-sightedness that marked our her leadership abilities for what they were (and his deprecation of the lack of such qualities in other Prime Ministers before and, more especially, since, was pretty thinly veiled). I think that his summing-up of her was broadly accurate.

I really do not want to say anything more about Mrs Thatcher than this.

[ahinton]

Left to this lot in here, we'd all be speaking German

But surely some people here DO speak German, don't they?

[Serial_Apologist]

Just our of respects to Lady Thatcher, since this is what this thread is supposedly all about, shouldn't someone correct the misspelling of her first name on the thread title?

[Done - ff]

[scottycelt]

As someone who lived through union-ravaged years of power cuts and Red-Robbo I believe the Thatcher years certainly brought sanity to the trade union managers. And she and the nation showed guts to deal with the Argentinian aggressors so many thousands of miles away.

I am not a Conservative but these were two huge achievements which very likely would never have been accomplished under any other leader. Then there was the initial rapport with Gorbachev which paved the way for Reagan and started the thawing of the Cold War. Her more thoughtful and objective political opponents have long since tended to acknowledge these achievements. The more petty-minded never will.

Margaret Thatcher RIP

[Julien Sorel]

I am not a Conservative but these were two huge achievements which very likely would never have been accomplished under any other leader. Then there was the initial rapport with Gorbachev which paved the way for Reagan and started the thawing of the Cold War. Her more thoughtful and objective political opponents have long since tended to acknowledge these achievements. The more petty-minded never will.

Margaret Thatcher RIP

Although it's in The Guardian this http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...eath-etiquette seems to me spot on.

Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted – and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown."

To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. As David Wearing put it this morning in satirizing these speak-no-ill-of-the-deceased moralists: "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims. Tasteless." Tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the west pass away. Here, for instance, was what the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez:

To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance."

Nobody, at least I know of, objected to that observation on the ground that it was disrespectful to the ability of the Chavez family to mourn in peace. Any such objections would have been invalid. It was perfectly appropriate to note that, particularly as the Guardian also explained that "to the millions who revered him – a third of the country, according to some polls – a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral." Chavez was indeed a divisive and controversial figure, and it would have been reckless to conceal that fact out of some misplaced deference to the grief of his family and supporters. He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies.

[Serial_Apologist]

I am not a Conservative

You've got to be kidding, scotty! Where, if indeed anywhere, do your politics differ from the Tories?

(OK off-topic, but you did choose to mention it here ).

but these were two huge achievements which very likely would never have been accomplished under any other leader.

In bashing the union leaders as unrepresenting their members' views, Thatcher indeed played the SWP card before the SWP (or anyone else) had any chance of getting in first on making union leaders accountable and no longer paid exorbitant sinecures; but she did it by saying "leave it to us: we'll change the laws on disputes behaviour and terms", while at the same time telling management now was their time.

Then there was the initial rapport with Gorbachev which paved the way for Reagan and started the thawing of the Cold War. Her more thoughtful and objective political opponents have long since tended to acknowledge these achievements. The more petty-minded never will.

I must re-read Gorby's "Perestroika" sometime... My main impression of Thatcher and Reagan's biddings were on behalf of businesses getting the chance of freeloading without such hassles as trade union rights getting in the way of profits offered by the freeing up marketisation of E Europe, and that arms reduction was a mere gambit opener to these ends.

Margaret Thatcher RIP [/QUOTE]

[Mr Pee]

Get back on the other thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. GG, do as Beef Oven asked, and get back on the other thread.

[MrGongGong]

Mr. GG, do as Beef Oven asked, and get back on the other thread.

People died so we can have the right to speak freely peester so the answer is NO

If you want to have a little englander support group then i'm sure the Daily Mail has a place for you ........

[Richard Barrett]

Respect? Thatcher wreaked more damage on British society than any single person since Hitler. What makes me sad is that she got away with it and died in her bed.

[MrGongGong]

Careful Richard that's not "on message"

[Beef Oven]

Respect? Thatcher wreaked more damage on British society than any single person since Hitler. What makes me sad is that she got away with it and died in her bed.

How would you have liked her to have died Ricky? Tell us a little more about how your mind works.

[rauschwerk]

The comment by Peter Morris here http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...t-8564674.html is spot on as far as I am concerned. Today's benefits culture started under Mrs Thatcher.