Things Mrs Margaret Thatcher didn't do

reply to post by fairguy




When you have copied the address,use the youtube video link,paste address then delete the address from the equals sign backwards,leaving only the video number.

reply to post by glen200376


Sometimes ATS takes a bit of getting used to and the (usually) fairly informed posts can come as a bit of a surprise to those more used to expressing their views in less questioning forums.

However, choosing Thatcher as a thread topic is bound to create a heated debate - her divisiveness is unquestionable - and anyone starting a thread on this subject, particularly at this time, really has to be prepared to deal with posters strong, heartfelt views.

reply to post by glen200376


Nice one

Now all I have to do is remember that

reply to post by christina-66


Totally agree,a thick skin is needed.
I have noticed in these threads that the Thatcher lovers all spout the same line-"she let me buy my council house"
The song I posted has a great line about this-"sell us what we own"

reply to post by glen200376

Totally agree,a thick skin is needed.
I have noticed in these threads that the Thatcher lovers all spout the same line-"she let me buy my council house"
The song I posted has a great line about this-"sell us what we own"

Yep- it seems people who feel that they personally benefited from her time in office cannot see past her. But did they actually benefit?

Most council housing stock is at least 50 yrs old now. At the big council estate near me houses are undergoing major renovations - new roofs, new cladding, new heating systems, new plumbing, new wiring, new bathrooms and new kitchens - but only to the tenanted housing. It's easy to spot the houses bought by the residents - because they're becoming dilapidated - simply due to the fact that the owners don't have the money to maintain them.

Then of course there's the fact that the local authorities weren't permitted to re-invest the cash raised from the sale of their housing stock into more (modern) housing which has caused a massive housing shortage, spiralling house prices and people having to take on huge mortgages (benefiting only the banks).

It was a cynical political maneuver which played on the (unfortunately) commonly held view of the time - that private home owners voted tory.

And your song's reference to 'sell us what we own'....that's a sore one for me when I think about the privatisation of the utilities. It was tax payers' money that paid for their infrastructure to be put in place - they belonged to the people not the government. It was a robbery - they nationalised the costs and privatised the profits - and did indeed have the cheek to sell us what we already owned. It galls me that no political party since has had the gumption to reverse that decision despite it obviously being in the national interest to do so.

reply to post by ballymoney50


I will give you this you are correct on these point's and every prime minister after her has been worse it is just that she was no saint in our eye's though in her defence she actually believed she was doing the right thing's and at heart she was not so bad but god she succeeded were the luftwaffe failed and destroyed Liverpool, Tyneside and many other area's, her policy of privatisation was misguided (don't know about you but I have not had a clean cup of water from the tap for over twenty year's now), the destruction of the coal industry led to the demise of british steel and once unsubsidised that led to the inevitable decline of the british ship building industry and all subsidiary industry's that fed into this great cycle, she had a somewhat twisted view of christianity but at least she spoke her mind and was not a hypocrite so weather liked or not she was not actually a bad person, just not a good one and the view south of birmingham is skewed as all the money she made from the sell off of public asset's was invested there, the loss of the revenue they raised was made up for by the infamous poll tax.

I could go on but there is really no point, She was the right person for the international stage at that time but god help us here. She claimed credit for the pick up in the british economy that really had nothing to do with her policy's as it originated in the asien stock market's that picked up and ended the Global not English recession.

reply to post by HelenConway


You know something, I was determined to keep out of any more Thatcher threads, I've made my feelings perfectly clear - but I just can't help myself and have to counter some of the claims you have repeatedly made.

She was an achiever and a woman and people hate her for that.

Thatcher was an achiever but like all politicians she had to rely on the backing of powerful and influential industrialists / bankers etc to achieve anything - to suggest anything other displays a considerable amount of naivety.

And to suggest that 'people' hated her because she was a woman is a complete cop-out and something of an insult to the many people who have offered considered and reasoned explanations why they disliked her policies and even her as a person.

Her gender is an irrelevance.

Churchill was leader of a coalition govt, he was not liked before the war and was voted out after the war.

Yes, and he was that disliked that he was voted back in again and was PM from 1951-1955 when he retired.

ATTENTION!!!!

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Even dislike can be done in a polite manner.

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Failure to abide by the rules can result in further post removals and temporary Posting Bans.

It's weird to me how many females seem to blindly support the worst human beings simply because they're female. Thatcher, Clinton, Gillard, etc, all receive unusual levels of support from women, supposed liberal women at that.

You have girls with nice as you like images of ponies, love hearts and smiley faces as their avatars promoting the worst, ugliest human beings going. It's really sad how sexism can drive otherwise nice people to support evil, heartless psychopaths. I don't see any of these people championing Kissinger or Blair, of course not, they're both men.

That these sexists are even pulling the sexist card on other people is profound, first for the hypocrisy but second for the fact that feminists, proper feminists, didn't even like Thatcher!

reply to post by ballymoney50

Things that Mrs Thatcher didn't do

1) Abandon the Falkland Islands to the Argies.

True, but there is much more to the story.

Thatcher had begun implementing a Defence Review which would have seen more cuts to the Armed Services than anything that had been seen before and since - she was quite prepared to decimate the UK's ability to defend itself and would have been wholly reliant on NATO.
Part of the cuts was the withdrawal from service of HMS Endurance which was stationed in the South Atlantic thus leaving The Falklands more or less unprotected.
Privately Thatcher had also intimated that she was willing to discuss sovereignty of the islands with Argentina.
Thatcher was informed that withdrawing HMS Endurance would send the wrong signals to the ruling Argentinian Junta and was strongly advised against it.
Thatcher chose to ignore that advice.
The Junta took the withdrawal of Endurance, the planned defence cuts and rumours of willingness to negotiate as a sign that the UK would not defend The Falklands.
When they then chose to invade Thatcher's civil servant advisors and spin doctors strongly recommended armed response which Thatcher then committed to.
If Argentina had waited a year the UK would have been unable to retake the islands.

Thatcher had been enormously disliked by the UK electorate prior to The Falklands War and it was thought a foregone conclusion that she would lose the scheduled election in 1983.
However, largely due to 'the Falklands factor' she was re-elected.

Not quite the Iron Lady or the supporter of The Armed Services that MSM and The Tory's portray her.

i respect her because she didn't back down to anything, she might have been a woman.....

And is it a good thing that she never 'backed down'?
We all have to make compromises almost on a daily basis in life - why would anyone assume that the PM should be any different?

So what that she was a woman?
It's as if you yourself believe that most women are somehow weaker of inferior to men - I couldn't give a toss about her gender I just disliked her and most importantly her domestic policies.

Nobody wanted a woman in as PM

On the one hand people are defnding her record and mentioning how she was voted in three times then the same people are being accused of not wanting a woman PM - which is it, can't have it both ways?

Thanks to Maggie i was able to buy my dad's house

My favourite - The Right To Buy Scheme.
Great idea and to be commended, I know many people who took advantage of it including my parents.
But guess what, that's not the whole story.
Local councils raised quite a large amount of money through the council house sell off's but they were forbidden to use that money to build more cheap and affordable housing for young families and low income earners.
So what happened?
People were forced into the private housing market fuelling the over-inflated housing market that we are still paying the price for now.
People were forced to take on mortgages they couldn't really afford - record level repossessions, less discernible income etc.
Or for those who couldn't get mortgages they had / have to rent which lead to landlords greatly increasing rent fee's - simple supply and demand.
This in turn has lead to the housing benefit payments which is causing so much outrage at present - a direct result of her policies.

Most could have been avoided by implementing a nationwide building programme providing cheap and affordable housing.

Well if this is the way ATS'ers get on i no who won't be writing another threads.

Sure it get's a bit heated at times - that's the nature of the beast and Thatcher stirs up people's emotions, both for and against.
There's an ATS saying 'Debate the subject not the person', or something like that - it help's if everybody reminds themselves of that every once in a while.
Stick with it.

Originally posted by ballymoney50
reply to post by fairguy

 

Fairguy woman used to sit behind desks and type or be a nurse, I did all sorts of things work wise that my ole dad would have thought impossible, i remember when i was 16 i wanted to be a boiler maker in the shipyard just cos my dad did it but i was allowed so i went back to school for another 5yrs and came out with exams up to my arm pits.

Guess what i couldn't find a job so i trained for something else instead, i through all those years of learning down the drain.

After Maggie, women went out and became soldiers, lorry drivers, boiler makers and the list goes on and on

People went out and become soldiers, lorry drivers, boiler makers in lots of other countries where Thatcher didn't matter. Actually, we're a measure behind many other countries when it comes to equality in the work place, and it's exactly because of right wing nuts like Thatcher.

Women being accepted in a wide range of jobs is part of the natural LIBERAL evolution of the work place. Thatcher was not a liberal and nor did she promote a socially liberal society, you silly person.

reply to post by Freeborn


Thanks for your imput Freeborn i enjoyed reading it though i knew most of it anyway but you wrote it a lot better than i would have and i learnt a bit more of what i didn't no lol.

Pity everyone else couldn't have been this helpful, i was fed up saying i no she did bad things but the gloves where of and i was the target, i'm a big girl i'll get over it i think my next thread will be about fluffy bunnies, lets see someone rip that one apart lol.

Thanks for the encouragement and i'll keep your comments in mind and i'll not run away to far, your a gentleman. (i hope)

Originally posted by Parksie
Didnt do. LoL. Had to delete my post

edit on 14-4-2013 by Parksie because: (no reason given)

OK she didn't provide any kind of back up plan for the miners that were going to lose a job and the families that were going to split up and people starving. A simple screw you and people went through riots and beatings. She should have handled it differently.

edit on 14-4-2013 by Parksie because: (no reason given)

Dozens of villages had the local coal-mine as the sole employer. The coal-mines had been given the option of modernization in exchange for voluntary redundancies, but the unions couldn't accept that. Computer technology like the Internet and the desktop PC just didn't exist, so there really wasn't anywhere that the workers could have been retrained in such a short notice. They wanted time, but that cost money, and the government didn't have money.

That's my nightmare scenario - to wake up one day and find that my skills are out of date.

reply to post by DreamerOracle




Clement Atlee was labour prime minister when India got it's independence in 1947

which was rubber stamped and finalised in 1948....The Tories didn't come into power till

1951 So I think it's you who need to deny ignorance. And although there were some

Indian immigrants most people returning were British who had been working for the British

government for the previous 200 plus years! :

Originally posted by ballymoney50
Hi ATS'ers i'm a bit nerves here as this is my first real Thread but i won't tell you when you read it not to write nasty things about Mrs Thatcher that is up to you and Onesideofthecoin my first real Tread is dedicated to you, hope your allowed to do that??

Things that Mrs Thatcher didn't do

1) Abandon the Falkland Islands to the Argies.

2) Cow down to the IRA

3) Allow 200,000+Immigrants into the UK EVERY YEAR (It was between 13-50,000)

4) Institute the Human Rights Act, thus allowing Murderous Scum and Terrorists to live here with no chance of
kicking them out.

5) Roll over and allow Europe to dictate what we can and cannot do.

6) Run up hugh depts by spending money the country didn't have and getting our credit rating reduced.

So before you sit there slagging her off (especially those who weren't born when she was Prime Minister) take a look at what has happened to our Country since she resigned.

Welcome to ATS mate the problem with the media is that they control peoples ways of thinking by only telling one side of the story

I will point out 2 things one you can research and the other you will have to wait 30 years to find out the truth.

The one you can research is about Operation Gladio this is where soldiers from the british army infiltrated the IRA and made them a lot more worse than they ever were, do enough research and you will see before the british government took over the IRA they were called the good IRA you can also find a book written by a soldier who was ordered by a british politician to go and randomnly execute irish citizens to stall the peace talks not sure what the books called but if you want to know the truth about the world then you will find out for yourself.

And the second thing is about the Falklands where maggie thatcher was directly responsible for the sinking of the belgrano this information had a 30 year secrecy act put on it and when it came up to be released they put another 30 year act on it.

once you understand about Gladio you can then look at the brighton bombing where the bomb conveniently stopped at thatchers door if you look at thatchers cabinet 25% were jewish as thatcher was too and thatchers consort was a rothschild nathan i believe, why don't you see how many of these guys were injured in the brighton bombing and see if you can work out who was really responsible?

Do not believe what you read in the newspapers or on the telly they are brainwashing you to think a certain way.

reply to post by DreamerOracle




The poll tax was introduced to replace a tax which was already in place called

"rateable value" but this applied to "owner occupiers" only. For example a house with

10 people living in it (and six of them working) paid the same as the house next door with

2 people living there (and only one working) social housing tenants were exempt. Now

was that fair ??

The poll tax was introduced in in an attempt to make it fairer for all so that everyone paid

equally for the council services they received

Anyone else older enough to remember ....

She was trash who did nothing but serve the rich capitalist class.

Woo hoo!

reply to post by ballymoney50

Pity everyone else couldn't have been this helpful, i was fed up saying i no she did bad things but the gloves where of and i was the target, i'm a big girl i'll get over it i think my next thread will be about fluffy bunnies, lets see someone rip that one apart lol.

Fluffy bunnies you say? Well, I should hope you plan to give fair coverage of both the snow white and mutli-colored bunnies..large and small, wild and domestic, right? (cocks an eyebrow) Hmm?


Sorry, I couldn't resist. I did a facepalm when I saw your OP and read this was your first thread. Not against you ...but being late to the thread? Oh goodness...I just knew what this would turn into, given the topic. I hate being right and I feel bad you had this one as your first.

I hope you don't think badly of anything from this whole experience. To be quite blunt? I had to take a couple days off 100% of my own choosing when news first broke of her passing and the ....VERY strong feelings came out in a virtual tsunami. So, don't feel bad. You're not the only one whose feelings run against the tide on this one. I respect the heck out of your strength to have stuck with this all the way through and even kept a sense of humor!

reply to post by eletheia


I do - but I realised long ago in this thread that the ' bullies' want to jam their thoughts right or wrong into the head of any one who thinks differently. Waste of time even answering them IMO - well done for trying, but they do not even read your response