Margaret Thatcher dies

[amateur51]

So, precisely put, her constituency HAMPSTEAD & KILBURN.

Your list reinforces my point! Go take a look around!

Beefy of course lives in everso-trendy-now-but-one-time-working-class Stoke Newington

You come to Kilburn on a weekend night when the Irish pubs are sluicing out Beefy - I'll hold your hand

[amateur51]

That is interesting, especially when found in The Telegraph.
I can't help thinking that the proposed format of Thatcher's funeral recalls the near-hysterical reaction to the death of the "People's Princess" and the subsequent inclination of people to attach flowers to lamposts at the scene of fatal road accidents. Can it be that these "chavvy" tendencies have worked their way up the social scale?

"near-hysterical" sums up the Daily Mail response nicely, anotherbob. I purloined a copy from a local caff yesterday & I intend to keep it - truly dreadful hysterical gnashing stuff, Quentin Letts say no more. ;sadface:

[Pabmusic]

The thrust of my post was to point out that greed and selfishness existed long before Thatcherism. So I wholly fail to see what is logically false about simply stating that!...However, my original post didn't refer to any of this, I simply pointed out the extreme partisanship of Jackson in totally ignoring the greed and selfishness and lack of concern for others that had gone on long before Thatcher ever arrived on the political scene.

Well, I'm perfectly capable of misunderstanding, Scotty. It seemed to me that you were implying that any greed (etc) that Mrs T. showed was somehow justified because the trade unions had been so greedy (etc) before her. That was what I meant when I pointed out the logical fallacy.

Of course, if all you meant was the objective statement that greed (etc) existed before Mrs T., no-one could argue with that at all. But it's very difficult to avoid unintentionally raising a second logical fallacy, that of false comparison. The behaviour of trade unions, or of any greedy person or institution cannot be comparable with the behaviour of government in a democracy - or at least it should not be. Government is (by any definition I can think of) expected to be above things like greed (etc), and when it is not we rightly complain. To attempt to justify something because someone else did it first is bad enough, but to attempt to justify government policy, or the Prime Minister's behaviour, on the basis of someone else's previous doings (when we objected to that behaviour anyway) really is not acceptable.

[Beef Oven]

Beefy of course lives in everso-trendy-now-but-one-time-working-class Stoke Newington

You come to Kilburn on a weekend night when the Irish pubs are sluicing out Beefy - I'll hold your hand

A few of us were over there on a Saturday night around 3 weeks ago. Pretty tame I thought, not like I remember it.

[anotherbob]

"near-hysterical" sums up the Daily Mail response nicely, anotherbob. I purloined a copy from a local caff yesterday & I intend to keep it - truly dreadful hysterical gnashing stuff, Quentin Letts say no more. ;sadface:

I read the on-line version of the national dailies and I always start with The Mail Online. So OTT is their Thatcher coverage that the "Ding-Dong" parties could be seen as a reasonable opposing response.
I see in The Telegraph that suggestions are being sought for a suitable memorial for MT. Surely there are countless already in existence e.g Shotton?

[Beef Oven]

Beefy of course lives in everso-trendy-now-but-one-time-working-class Stoke Newington

You come to Kilburn on a weekend night when the Irish pubs are sluicing out Beefy - I'll hold your hand

A few of us were over there on a Saturday night about 3 weeks ago. Found the locals to be a tame bunch, not like I remembered it

P.S. I am born and bred Lower Clapton, NEVER Stokey. I would kindly ask you to take note.

[MrGongGong]

I see in The Telegraph that suggestions are being sought for a suitable memorial for MT. Surely there are countless already in existence e.g Shotton?

There are also a few memorials in East Timor , Chile etc

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Scargill's NUM was indeed a prime example but, as such, served to give trade unionism a bad name that it had very little business to deserve.

Messrs Blower, Crow and Serwotka are doing their best to restore Scargill's vision of union working.

[french frank]

And selling council houses had no impact on those who declined to buy and stuck with their affordable rents. No one evicted them. And no money was given away, money was received in return for a declining asset and maintenance liability.

But it presumably (at least eventually) made waiting lists longer for those hoping to gain council accommodation since there was less of it to go round.

I'm not saying actual public cash changed hands, merely that public property which had a market value was sold too cheaply to private interests.

But it comes back to the point that (regardless of whether Council Z's Housing was provided at a profit or loss) it was a public service. And public services can often not be provided without expense rather than profit. Public services often "don't pay": it's not their function.

[gurnemanz]

"near-hysterical" sums up the Daily Mail response nicely, anotherbob. I purloined a copy from a local caff yesterday & I intend to keep it - truly dreadful hysterical gnashing stuff, Quentin Letts say no more. ;sadface:

I've just been reading some American reaction to our reaction to Mrs T's demise. One person who stumbled across the Daily Mail site commented: "They make Fox News look actually fair and balanced."

[alycidon]

The thrust of my post was to point out that greed and selfishness existed long before Thatcherism. So I wholly fail to see what is logically false about simply stating that!

Well, of course they did, scotty, but it has to be said that Mrs T promoted avarice on a grand scale, and that is why we now live in such an anti-social society. I didn't agree with anything that Thatcher did, but I have to say that this promotion of greed was possibly the worst legacy of her policies. Yes, the miners were greedy, but society was generally much more pleasant pre-Thatcher.

[Flosshilde]

I've just been reading some American reaction to our reaction to Mrs T's demise. One person who stumbled across the Daily Mail site commented: "They make Fox News look actually fair and balanced."

[Julien Sorel]

Well, of course they did, scotty, but it has to be said that Mrs T promoted avarice on a grand scale, and that is why we now live in such an anti-social society. I didn't agree with anything that Thatcher did, but I have to say that this promotion of greed was possibly the worst legacy of her policies. Yes, the miners were greedy, but society was generally much more pleasant pre-Thatcher.

Were the miners "greedy"? http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/w...00/2809239.stm

[Richard Barrett]

A few of us were over there

Christ, there's more than one is there?

[Serial_Apologist]

I did not go along with much of what happened under Thatcher but the taming of bullying trade unions was certainly long overdue and was beyond previous governments of either hue. So I certainly supported that, like the majority of the country at the time.

I do agree that the political "pendulum" swung much too far in the other direction (doesn't it always?) but now we have a global economy there are no easy answers as to how the UK competes successfully and has a fairer society at the same time. However, the Germans seem capable of largely achieving the best of both worlds so why not us? This has always baffled me. I don't consider us to be, in any way, intellectually inferior.

An economic/political system built on unsustainable growth and inequality, with business interests prioritised over and ultimately at the expense of all others, lies beyond the control of national governments. Hence the dividing line between the old "wets", (Heseltine & co) prepared to push expanding capital globalisation, and the both older and newer hardliners using protecting "national sovereignty" as a shibboleth synonym for self-determination. Government oversees costs and uses supportive mass media and religion to "explain" the population to the population by varieties of diversionary scapegoatings to keep people off its scent, resorting to the defense wing of the state (law, police, army if necessary) to enforce control wherever and whenever strategy and tactics fail, starting at the fringes.

The western powers made sure a defeated demoralised Germany would never choose future pathways putting the future of capitalism in danger at its strategically most vulnerable point, facing the Communist east, and so implemented programmes of inter-class consensus (what we would once have called class collaboration) assisted by generous Marshall Aid to rebuild a brand new industrial base on the latest techology, ironically giving Germany a head start in the competitive race at the same time that British management continued to act on the principle that the sun would never set on the Empire, come what may, and that Management had the divine right to continue along the old lines of intransigence and union/boardroom confrontation. As has been said (and admitted), the problems of British decline through the postwar period of Kenysian demand-management were largely attributable to management inefficiency/old fashioned ideas in the old boy network; complacency on both, indeed all sides that capitalism had overcome its innate contradictions, and a rising purchasing power ascribable to sheer weight of numbers among a Baby Boom generation convinced by our elders and betters that war would be no more and new techology meant living standards were ineluctably set for steady improvement, account for what others see as decline into greed and sloth. Insecurity is hard-wired into a "working class mentality" that takes what chances there are when they are on offer, because a certain part of "class consciousness" consists in knowing that if you're not rich and proctected, it ain't going to last.