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Notable Deaths 2013

Jordanovichy said:
If it wasn't for her we would likely not have possession of the Falklands,
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Yeah, they're so useful.

we would have been blown to bits by the USSR too.
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Whattttt are you talking about?

My feelings...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQLQ1Rc_Js[/youtube]
 
Mixed view as I am old enough to remember things that happened.

I remember the strikes, the power cuts the riots and people out of work.

I remember people who wanted to work hard and start a business doing well.

But I do remember everything getting privatised and people saying short gain for long time loss. Yes we are paying for that now with high power costs and train fares. They also near enough broke the NHS and education system.

Trying to think of a something good and tbh I really cannot, am sure there must be something or she would not have been in power as long as she was.

But people did fear her and respected her sound the world, the UK was not a walk over like it is now.
 
Annette Funicello - Original Mouseketeer and Disney legend dies at 70

http://on.today.com/12zTNyA

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RIP Maggie even though I never got to live under her leadership from what I've heard and read she seemed to me to be a good leader. She got our islands back and it seems like she didn't take any nonsense so she had a spine and was not afraid of her own shadow like the politicians are today.
 
marc said:
Mixed view as I am old enough to remember things that happened.

I remember the strikes, the power cuts the riots and people out of work.

I remember people who wanted to work hard and start a business doing well.

But I do remember everything getting privatised and people saying short gain for long time loss. Yes we are paying for that now with high power costs and train fares. They also near enough broke the NHS and education system.

Trying to think of a something good and tbh I really cannot, am sure there must be something or she would not have been in power as long as she was.
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I think it was fear that labour might get back in. The country was completely broken under the previous labour government. Thatcher fixed those bits but then broke other bits instead. She destroyed UK manufacturing and (with the help of Scargill) the coal industry. She then went to war when it perhaps wasn't necessary. Though a successful military campaign is always useful for a politician.

Her second term though saw the country turn around. Offering council house tenants the right to buy, and privatisation allowed the divide between work and upper classes to crumble to what we have today. We're essentially all a little more affluent because of it. It's not all good, but in some areas things are much better. I'd rather have BT forced to work under competition than be the expensive, lumbering nightmare they used to be. Our telecoms industry was the laughing stock of the world - if BT had remained national, we'd still be using rotary phones ;) . Are the trains better? I don't know to be honest- does anyone have figures?

The biggest issue though is that it allowed some people to become incredibly rich. Though that's kind of what makes the country tick.

We don't have manufacturing any more as we used to, but we have a consumer society and service industry instead.

Then it all went tits up in the end. The late 80's/early 90's were a nightmare period for her and she made far too many mistakes politically.

I think the telling thing though is that nobody has reversed anything. The poll tax finished her off, but neither Major nor Blair reverted back to the old rates system. Labour didn't renationalise anything either.
Her policies destroyed a huge number of lives, and we're living on the benefits of that now and each successive government lives on the benefits of her decisions while all the time just saying "don't blame me, it's what he inherited from Thatcher - we're doing the best we can... Pass me another half million from my shares please!"

She was heartless and almost robotic in her decision making. Or "firm and decisive" ;) The only really good thing I can say is that she honestly seemed motivated by the idea of making things better (however misguided it may have been) rather than monetary greed. I know she was left well off, but she at least started out as a "commoner", rather than being able to play at politics while living on daddy's millions - then helping to grease palms when she got into power. Or at least that's how it appears.

I do think it's a shame that when so much harm is being done to the country at the moment through cuts, while the rich are rewarded for tax evasion or failure in business - so many people focus on Thatcher dying to spew their hatred. She's not directly influenced politics for more than a decade and was a sad, lonely old woman in the end. There's a bill going through this week which is the start to privatising the NHS, which will slip through unnoticed because people are too busy celebrating the death of this sad old woman - the same people that the bill will affect the most. It's no wonder politicians get away with so much...
 
At least she actually got stuff done, more than what can be said for any of her successors...
 
marc said:
I do remember everything getting privatised ... we are paying for that now with high [sic] train fares.
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furie said:
Are the trains better? I don't know to be honest- does anyone have figures?
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My favourite subject to read about is British politics. I've read several books (for and against) Thatcher and I'm currently 3/4 though her memoirs of The Downing Street Years. Believe it or not, Thatcher did not want to privatise the railways. She wanted them run efficiently at minimum costs but in the 80's they were too valuable for trade to be privatised. Ideas to semi-privatise the railways were thrown around in the last year of Thatcher's reign, but they never materialised.

The railways were privitised by John Major's government in 1993, a year after he won a mandate from the British public to govern and several years after Thatcher resigned.

It is a common misconception that Thatcher privatised the railways. Granted, her privatisation schemes probably eventually led to the privatisation of the railways, but it was Major, not Thatcher.

As for ticket prices and the state of the train network 20 years after Major's privatisation of the railways, I recommend reading this excellent article written by the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21056703

As for Thatcher herself....she was one of the most interesting political figures of our lifetimes. Everything that is wrong and right with Britain is a result of the culture and society that she helped create in the 1980's. I find her fascinating and my family were one of the lucky ones to benefit from her policies. She enabled my Dad to set up his own business, buy his first home and be able to comfortably support two children and stay-at-home wife. I appreciate that if I was born north of the Watford Gap, life could have been very different, but I wasn't so I'm not going to shirk from calling her a great woman who created opportunities for those with the drive and ambition to increase their family's finances and social standing.
 
I'd argue theme parks were also more able to flourish under her type of government, so maybe she is due some backhanded credit. History will treat her fondly. Even with all his things like the nhs, atlee fared no better in the end.

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Well, at least the railways ran on time ;) :lol:

Cheers for the correction Ian - as I said, everyone used her as a convenient scape-goat, but nobody ever reversed her policies...

I think there are so many complexities and so much we don't actually know and can never know.

She killed the coal mining industry, but if it was lucrative, why didn't a private firm start them up again? Possibly because it would cost too much and it was costing the government too much? Again, I don't know, but there has to be a reason why? Similar UK manufacturing. Was it being held up by the government, living on hand outs but still unable to compete with Japan and China?

As Slappy suggests, the way we viewed the world changed very subtly. There was generally more money in the hands of people for things like days trips. There was also suddenly a lot of unemployment, but rich people wanting to make more money. So we ended up with service industries replacing manufacturing. I've never understood how the economy actually works like some perpetual motion machine on this front, but meh :lol:

Theme parks, shops, tourist attractions - they all come from the death of a manufacturing industry. That's not to say they wouldn't have flourished anyway - and that's part of the problem - there's no way of ever knowing how things would have turned out anyway - but her second term was a massive boon to the majority of Britain. She gave with one hand while slapping you away with the other :lol:

She was hard line, but my opinion is has always been similar to Ian's:
Ian said:
she was one of the most interesting political figures of our lifetimes. Everything that is wrong and right with Britain is a result of the culture and society that she helped create in the 1980's.
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^ I'm resisting a "limp Koch" joke.
 
Cheers for that Ian, really thought she done the railways along with everything else.

I know in an interview she said she regretted privatising things etc.

It's not all her fault but as the leader the blame comes down on her.

Some people made money out of it all though as the time and with shares. I know my family bought some at the time.
 
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