Margaret Thatcher dies

[Flosshilde]

But I don't get the sense that it's how our creator made us.

I didn't realise that you are a Creationist.

[Flosshilde]

Emily Lau, a former reporter and current legislator, recalled asking Mrs. Thatcher during her 1984 visit to Hong Kong whether it was morally defensible to deliver six million Hong Kong residents - most of them British - into the hands of a communist dictatorship. Mrs. Thatcher replied that she believed most Hong Kong people accepted the arrangement, and rudely and offensively suggested that Miss Lau was perhaps the "solitary exception."

Which brings to mind another of her famous sayings - "They're all out of step except me."

[Richard Barrett]

Thank goodness she died now and not near to May 2015 elections....(thinking pragmatically as was her wont)....

Before the May 1979 elections would have been good. But let's not forget she was also surrounded by a band of rogues and psychopaths (much as Cameron is now) without whom her programme wouldn't have got very far: Tebbit, Howard, Joseph, Parkinson, Ridley, to name a few of the most egregious, plus all the lower-profile scoundrels like "Dame" Shirley Porter.

[eighthobstruction]

Exactly.

An "armchair sociologist" writes: actually I don't even own an armchair, apart from which the only substance in your jibe, Beef Oven, seems to be that some prefer to find some objective evidence to support their arguments while others depend on personal anecdotes, which in your case seem to be coloured by a certain bitterness. Like Serial_Apologist I think the cooperative qualities of humankind are more significant than the competitive ones, and I try to live my life according to that principle. However, if I were to cast around for an example of a person whose "cooperative qualities" were stunted to a pathological degree, the name Thatcher would come to mind fairly quickly.

Had she thought 'Communities', especially communities outside the Tory rural and southern heartland, i.e. those communities in S Wales, Midlands, the North and Scotland....instead of Social Engineering via removal of Industry& manufacture , traditional work,and Monetarism, she might be better remembered in these places....Anyone who visited with w/c during this time (as I did, excepting Scotland[though i met many Scots who had had to come south]) would realise how these heel-grinding actions could only be seen as an irresponsible Tory Operation Barbarosa....

[Beef Oven]

Don't worry. There is plenty (plenty) of evidence that we have evolved as a co-operative species. The same is true of many creatures, but it is especially true of humans. Of course, this is behaviour that developed mainly when we lived in small groups, each member of whom was probably closely related to the rest. Hence our empathy and willingness to collaborate, even though we now live in large groups. We have lived in fixed communities for only a few thousand years or so (as compared to at least 2-3 million years as hunter-gatherers) so we haven't lost our inborn gregariousness. Particular individuals may have lost it, of course, but not most of society as a whole. Oh!...there's no such thing as society? Must be, else what I've said can't be true. And it is.

As for a creator, I've no idea what one of those is, but it probably had no part in the natural process I've described above, since we understand that very well and a creator doesn't get a look-in.

So the answer lies in small communities? Cities being 'un-natural'? Makes sense.

As for the creator bit, just a figure of speech - I have no idea how we all got here. Answers on a postcard please, to someone who cares.

[Beef Oven]

I didn't realise that you are a Creationist.

It's all coming out today, me a creationist and you a Monarchist.

[Beef Oven]

Exactly.

An "armchair sociologist" writes: actually I don't even own an armchair, apart from which the only substance in your jibe, Beef Oven, seems to be that some prefer to find some objective evidence to support their arguments while others depend on personal anecdotes, which in your case seem to be coloured by a certain bitterness. Like Serial_Apologist I think the cooperative qualities of humankind are more significant than the competitive ones, and I try to live my life according to that principle. However, if I were to cast around for an example of a person whose "cooperative qualities" were stunted to a pathological degree, the name Thatcher would come to mind fairly quickly.

Please, don't say bitter, just a chip on my shoulder.

And it wasn't a jibe about that armchair. Some people prefer to stay in the abstract, because reality (or personal anecdotes as you call it) contradicts the theoretical world they want to live in.

[Barbirollians]

A glance at some figures suggests that Mrs Thatcher enjoyed a good deal of luck during her premiership.

During the 1970s, the price of oil rose from around 15 US$/barrel to nearly 90, peaking in 1980. No government of that period really knew how to respond. It's easy but, in my view, simplistic to blame solely the trade unions for the resulting mess. Fortunately for Mrs T, North Sea Oil began to flow in the early 1980s and the price of oil fell sharply: by 1985 it was US50$/barrel and a year later only $25 (figures adjusted for US$ inflation).

As for economic growth: between the recessions of 1980 and 1991, it was higher than it had been in the late 70s but on average was no better than it had been in the 60s. So much for a Thatcherite economic miracle. Where did all that oil money actually go?

Further strokes of luck for Mrs T included the Falklands invasion, repelled shortly before a general election, and the leadership of the NUM during the miners' strike by a a man who evidently had no political nous.

Under Mrs T, inequality (the gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest 10%) increased by 40 percent, with thoroughly damaging effects on society. No succeeding administration has even attempted to reduce it.

Where did the oil money go ? On paying unemployment benefit for 3.6 million and invalidity benefit for loads of others who were encouraged on the sick to keep the unemployment figures down .

Without North Sea Oil she would have bankrupted us in 1982 - with the stratospheric high pound and high interest rates.

[Mr Pee]

But let's not forget she was also surrounded by a band of rogues and psychopaths (much as Cameron is now)

Blimey, of all the garbage I've read in the last 24 hours, that pretty much takes the biscuit.

[ahinton]

It seems to be hard to separate the anger that many of us still feel about the damage wreaked by Thatcher and her gang in the 1980s (and continued by her successors, of course) from the person herself. Objectively one can understand that it's acts and not people that are "evil". On a more personal level, however, I remember the daily sight and sound of Thatcher on the TV eventually made me feel physically sick, and they still do, and this is one moment when I'm most glad not to live in the UK any more, because I dare say that sight and sound have been much in evidence over the last couple of days.

You are indeed well off out of it and, although I do not know to what extent there has been coverage in Germany, I have had to do a lot of switching off over here; last night's half-hour news bulletin on BBC Radio 4, for example, made no reference to any other news item besides the death of Mrs Thatcher - not even an "in other news..." section.

You refer above to "Thatcher and her gang" and, in a more recent post, you wrote "let's not forget she was also surrounded by a band of rogues and psychopaths (much as Cameron is now) without whom her programme wouldn't have got very far: Tebbit, Howard, Joseph, Parkinson, Ridley, to name a few of the most egregious, plus all the lower-profile scoundrels like "Dame" Shirley Porter"; as a matter of interest - and given both Mrs Thatcher's near-paranoid single-mindedness and the ways in which she was finally disposed of by senior members of her own party - how differently (if at all) do you suppose the 1980s might have played out in Britain had she been unable to attract the support of her henchmen and really had to try to go it alone? In other words, to what extent do you perceive that we're looking solely at Mrs Thatcher and her self-designed legacy or to what extent might we in reality be considering the actions and consequences of a bunch of broadly like-minded people with Mrs Thatcher as their most vociferously obsessive rottwelier-in-charge?

[ahinton]

Blimey, of all the garbage I've read in the last 24 hours, that pretty much takes the biscuit.

Not a sweet biscuit, it would seem, from the way that you write this - but why do you say so? Do you believe that Mrs Thatcher would have said and done what she said and did irrespective of the kinds of people in her entourage that Richard Barrett has mentioned? What you write doesn't really make your view on this clear.

[Mr Pee]

Not a sweet biscuit, it would seem, from the way that you write this - but why do you say so? Do you believe that Mrs Thatcher would have said and done what she said and did irrespective of the kinds of people in her entourage that Richard Barrett has mentioned? What you write doesn't really make your view on this clear.

I should have thought it is perfectly clear. To describe Lady Thatcher's cabinet colleagues as "rogues and psycopaths" is not only inaccurate and offensive- although both those descriptions seem to fit much of the venomous bile being spouted on this thread- but it is also quite possibly slanderous.

[JimD]

Anyone care to enlighten me as to why, in certain branches of politics, it is essential that one's opponents are not merely mistaken, but positively evil. I particularly have in mind Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

[MrGongGong]

I should have thought it is perfectly clear. To describe Lady Thatcher's cabinet colleagues as "rogues and psycopaths" is not only inaccurate and offensive- although both those descriptions seem to fit much of the venomous bile being spouted on this thread- but it is also quite possibly slanderous.

Give it a rest troll boy
I'm sure they can take it as they are supposedly "successful" people

[ahinton]

I should have thought it is perfectly clear. To describe Lady Thatcher's cabinet colleagues as "rogues and psycopaths" is not only inaccurate and offensive- although both those descriptions seem to fit much of the venomous bile being spouted on this thread- but it is also quite possibly slanderous.

That's a matter that you would need to take up with Richard Barrett; while you consider how - or indeed whether or not - you might do so, please bear in mind not only that some of them are now dead but also that Mr Barrett's point is that Mrs Thatcher was not alone in her intent and actions.