The woman was a Goddess. It warms my heart reading the comments of the usual suspects.

She's not a goddess anymore then?

Oh she is. The hate of you worthless plebs only serves to make her stronger.

She closed kids cancer wards while praising champagne swilling yobs who made money while the country crashed into recession.

She engineered a war and got hundreds of servicemen killed because she was lagging behind in the polls and would have lost the next election.

She closed down whole communities which depended on coal and allowed heavily subsidised imports to come into the UK, while refusing to subsidise UK coal.

Basically, she did not care one iota about the suffering of the majority and did everything she could to increase the wealth of the already obscenely rich.

I for one would pi$$ on her grave

This is the kind of exaggerated bull that gets talked about Mrs Thatcher.

- She increased spending on healthcare

- She didn't engineer anything in the Falklands. A right wing fascist dictator General Galtieri invaded them without warning and the UK recaptured them. It was Galtieris military government in Argentina that engineered the Falklands war and it was entirely avoidable in fact there was already a process of talks about sovereignty about the Falklands and some discussion about a 'lease back' agreement offering the islands to become Argentinian territory in exchange for protecting British laws and way of life for the islanders. Galtieri then invaded the islands by force and imposed the same military rule that he had over Argentina. The islanders didn't want that. The UK sent a task force to recapture it (at high cost).

- The UK wasn't subsidising the coal it was importing. It was importing it from places like Poland where their own government was subsidising it, which isn't the same thing as us subsidising the imports. Yes you are right she didn't subsidise our coal but if it needed those heavy subsidies it was a declining industry.

To give a fair answer on Mrs Thatcher I would say you can see the seeds of the problems we have today in Mrs Thatcher's policies in the 1980s. She presided over a large structural change in the economy when many manufacturing industries became uncompetitive due to an increasingly globalised market offering cheaper goods from abroad. The writing had been on the wall since the 1970s but we tried to subsidise the industries then to keep them going, the result was strikes, industrial unrest, high inflation. Mrs Thatcher stopped the subsidies, allowed those industries to go to the wall and shifted the UK's source of competitiveness to the financial services sector by deregulating financial services, making it easier to lend and attracting business to the City of London. (She carried on subsidising agricultural sector which annoyed industrial trade unions but then farmers were mainly Tory voters so she kept them onside).

IMO this structural shift made the UK economy more competitive as a whole, it allowed us to focus on something we were good at, but it did create winners and losers, in communities that had used to be based on the industries that had died out you now got a cycle of unemployment, poverty and crime and Mrs Thatcher's government didn't do much in the way of adjustment to help them adapt to the modern economy.

However the irony is now a lot of the problems the Tories blame the last Labour government for, were really down to Mrs Thatcher. George Osborne talks about how the UK suffered the biggest contraction out of any of the developed countries during the global financial crisis, and the worst deterioration in public finances. This is because the global crash was in the financial services sector and the reason we were most exposed to it was because of Mrs Thatcher's policies re-orienting the economy around finance. That's why we faced such a big bail out bill for the banks as well. Had we remained a manufacturing oriented economy we would have not been as exposed.

Also the Tories blame Labour for leaving the UK the country with the highest level of household debt in Europe and having gone on a debt binge of personal credit. Again this is because lending was all deregulated in the 1980s. Before then only a small number of lenders (eg building societies) were able to give mortgages, she made it easier to get credit as she wanted people to borrow to get mortgages and get their own homes. She wanted the UK to become a society of homeowners not renters and this is what we became, but the flip side of a society of homeownership is everybody has mortgages and then can get extra credit secured against their property, hence households have high levels of debt. This doesn't happen in other European countries where they are more renters than home owners.

And then you get the best of all, the Tories blame Labour for not regulating the banks...thats true, but the Tories were never supporting banking regulation. The reason the banks had little regulation started off in the Big Bang of 1987 when she cut down all the red tape and rules and regulations from banks to encourage business to come to the City.

So unfortunately the Tory government now is reaping the long term consequences of Mrs Thatcher's policy but they are trying to make out it was all down to Labour.

And steel, don't forget what she did for towns like Consett and Motherwell (Ravenscraig).

Were you struggling with the question about the past tense?
How ironic of you to be calling others plebs.

She brought in McGregor specifically to close down pits that were "uneconomic" but the real reason for the closures was nothing to do with economics, it was purely and simply political, to smash the unions.
And illegally carried out too, using the police as a private army.

Scargill (whom I despised almost as much as Thatcher) did point out that if coal received the same %age of subsidy as nuclear, the coal board would be able to give away the coal for free with some money thrown in as well.
Obviously, in empirical terms the amounts would not be comparable but it did point-up the subjective way that the government labelled some things as uneconomic but not others.

The pits could have been closed in a controlled and gradual manner but they weren't, the labour market was suddenly flooded, especially in one-industry areas (which was, of course, another means of exerting power).
The rocketing unemployment made an utter mockery of the posters they had put up in 1979 showing enormous dole queues with the slogan "Labour's not working".
I can't remember which of the tory chancers ... whoops, sorry, chancellors ... of that period said that mass unemployment was "a price well worth paying" but, for me, that summed-up the attitude of the Thatcher era, they didn't want to run the country for the benefit and well-being of its populace but for the benefit of those who Thatcher termed "one of us".

Much has been said about how bright Thatcher was, for me this is hugely overstated, her grasp of economics was broad-brush at best and her policies emanated from certifiable nutters like Keith Joseph (who thought that poverty would be eliminated if you sterilised poor people) and her poisonous husband Denis.

She was a cruel and hypocritical bully.
Sure, there were things that needed to be sorted out but Thatcher's supposedly-sensible-monetarist hammer blows rained down indiscriminately, except on the rich.

The same attitude prevails today, Cameron has simply stuck a "Big Society" label on it.
If the label said "OK pal, we've got your money, now you're on your own" it would mean exactly the same.

So, should Thatcher get a state funeral?
Of course not, putting aside (if that were possible) the harm that she did ... in these austere times, it simply cannot be justifed.

That's a full and fair and assessment. She's a divisive and polarizing figure, IMO, because the confrontational/belligerent attitude of her government fractured (an already divided) British society. You were either with her or you could off and die. [uThe openess[/u of the mutual disdain you see between the leftish liberal types and the conservative right on here has its roots in that time. It was a formative moment in Britons realizing that they don't actually like each other all that much.

Right here.

I think a state funeral would be a terrible idea.

For all the good she did, sadly it was undone by what is widely perceived to be (rightly or wrongly, depending on your view) by all the bad she did. There would be protests and all sorts.

Whatever your view on Thatcher, when she dies, she is entitled to a funeral that doesn't involve politics, protests, declarations of joy/grave dancing et al.

Thatcher freed people (a nice by-product, but not the intended purpose) as miners from ruining their health.
That's about the only good she did.

It was easy and short-termism to just let the CEGB (as it was then) buy the cheapest coal it could.
Yes it seemed to make sense and it does if when everything else is factored in it is still the cheapest.
What needs factoring in are things like...

The money going out of the country instead of staying in the country with British Coal and then flowing down to it's workforce into the communities and flowing down to it's suppliers in this country etc. etc.

The money then needed for rejeneration, retraining, unemployment benefits, welfare payments etc..

The money needed for redundancy payments.

The cost of damage to communities, lives, etc

There will be others ....

But were those factored in?
If they weren't, my bet would be our coal was cheaper to use in our own power stations than foreign coal in the long run.

Although, I think it's good that people are not allowed to ruin their health in pursuit of their living. I know advances had been made in dust supression, but dust got into lungs still.
And mechanisation would have reduced the manpower anyway.

I wonder how long it will be before we get another female Prime Minister?
It's not looking promising is it?
Did Maggie have any bearing do we think?

Well, you never can tell.
Footage exists where she said herself that she didn't think she'd see a female Prime Minister in her lifetime.

Just to add to the explanations given: not only did she preside over an era of pushing home ownership – that, of itself, was not a problem. The problems came because she also banned councils from re-investing funds from sales of council houses into new social housing. We've had a housing shortage ever since – with the inevitable result of property prices going through the roof. And that links in with the recent/ongoing crisis, as explained earlier.

You start looking back and seeing other things too, which seemed quite isolated, but now tie in with a greater scheme, if you will.

The reform of the Sunday trading laws was touted as a need to tidy up some ridiculous things in the law of the time (the specific example often mentioned at the time was that it was illegal to buy a [iBible[/i on a Sunday, but legal to buy porn). But what that obviously helped to do was create the conditions for the 24/7 shopping culture.

Another thing that comes to mind was privatisation – both in the NHS ('soft services' – and we know what happened to rates of MRSA and c-diff when the numbers of cleaners were slashed as a result of privatisation) and of the utilities. I remain to be convinced that I have anything like a meaningful choice when it comes to, say, electricity or water, beyond who I pay my money to. We know that companies tend to all put their prices up at around the same time and at around the same amount. Even Tory grandee Harold Macmillan took issue with this, describing it as 'selling off the family silver'.

One wonders how, for instance, it benefits domestic customers in the UK to be subsidising the electricity supplies of customers in other countries? See EDF as an example.

But instead, we see government telling us that it's our responsibility to find the 'best deals' on utilities. What was wrong with having a basic, national provider, providing a service where any profit was re-invested directly into that service and where customers know that they're not simply being used as cash cows for something that is not a luxury, but that they need?

Make a note of the date - I sort of agree with you.

It was a fair and sensible post.

I'm struggling to see the problem with the whole Bible/porn issue.

I don't have a big problem with that.
Nowadays women work rather than do the shopping between 9 and 5.

If I (as usual) don't want to shop on Sundays, I don't do it, but a lot find it useful.

Whilst I do think that we are somewhat overly-materially-minded these days, I don't blame the fact that shops are open.

That's why I suggested making a note of the date too

I can see that this policy was flawed in hindsight, but I can see why this policy made sense at the time.

If a council tenant buys their house through right to buy, then that is one house and its tenant out of the council house system, so technically at least, there was no need (not immediately anyway) to create a new house to replace it, because that tenant has been taken out of the system too.

Clearly, though, this should not have been a permanent plan, as new tenants are naturally 'created' as time goes on, and of course, housing stock needs to be replaced as it gets 'past it', so to speak.

What I'm trying to say is that I can see both sides.

As someone who lost both grandparents during Thatchers era, both to cancer in an NHS hospital, I cannot see where she increased spending on health (unless it was on private business consultants advising on how to spend less on the front line services). My grandmother died in appalling conditions in a Victorian ward in Kingston General in Hull, which had no heating due to the boilers being knackered (and funding denied for replacements), the ward was understaffed and the ward sister apologised to my mam when she went to her in tears asking for her to be moved somewhere more 'human' to spend what was her last days with us. All the hospitals in Hull were starved of funding during her time in office and conditions were very poor at best.

As for the Falklands war (i spent from Jan 1973 to August 1983 in the navy and served in the war from start to finish), she had ample intelligence that the Argies were planning an invasion, in fact HMS Endurance was in BA in the December preceding the war and reported disturbing intelligence to the government at the time, which was ignored. She had ample opportunity to prevent this war as there was a warship with support vessel within 7 days of the area, along with a nuke not to far away (a friend was on it), all she need to do was the same as what Jim Callaghan did in December 1977 when intelligence sources reported a similar build up of forces in the southern naval areas or Argentina, he dispatched HMS Phoebe, a nuke sub and a support vessel from Plymouth just before christmas, but kept its destination secret ( a friend was on Phoebe and he said they were sailing in the morning but destination was classified, they even head north for a day to throw any 'spies' that might be watching). This action prevented an possible invasion. All Thatcher had to do was take similar action and even increase the small Marine detachment with a number of soldiers (flight time in a Hercules is around 18 hours), but she chose not to and preferred the flag waving task force to 'check them out' once they had invaded. This was unnecessary and would have prevented the death of many a servicemen (two of which were mates).

Leadership isn't just about showing your willingness to fight, its about doing whats right and safeguarding the safety, where possible of your citizens. She used the war as an election winner as lots of Sun reading pillocks thought it was a show of strength, which in actual fact it was a show of weak leadership on her part.

As for the coal, if you make something at a cost of £100 and sell it on at a £10 profit, you cannot compete against someone who then gets £30 from the government to make their outlay £70, they can then sell it for £80 and make the same profit. This does not make your item 'too costly' to make, it makes it unfair competition and thats why the coal industry died, all she had to do was place a tariff on coal from nations who subsidised, but she did not believe in this and would rather let communities die instead. I now work in a lot of these areas and they have never got over her policies 25 years on.

Thatcher was bad for this country

You're being very restrained



The main issue with the sell off of housing stock was there was no plans to replace it in the medium to long term which is where the problems would have (and did) occur, the drive to own your own home was a sound idea but an ideal that was taken way too far by both politicians and the public, it shifted the age at when people got a mortgage for the end of their working life (the 25 or so years up to 65) which are usually the best paid, to having to get on the property ladder in your early twenties when people should be having a good time, settling down and breeding.

I always try to see both sides too and of course hindsight is 20/20.

But quite honestly the scenario that you describe should have, and almost definitely was, forseeable and forseen by those who concocted the right to buy scheme, it doesn't take a great mind to look at the social housing stockpile as a whole and agree that there is a demand for such a thing and that demand is self perpetuating and always will be.

Remove one house out of the stock without replacing it and you affect future renters - I expect those who rule the country to have a little ability to think things through.


Afterthought - and the really stupid thing is that it was a gold-plated opportunity to IMPROVE the social housing stock by using all of the proceeds to build new social housing or renovate old stock, I was in the building trade at that time and contractors would have been falling over themselves to employ tens of thousands in building or rennovating social housing, its a real *shakes head in dismay* moment when you reconsider what happened instead.