25 Years on - What Thatcher did for us

Today marks the twenty fifth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's rise to power.
The Mirror interviewed seven people who were directly affected by what she did during her eleven years as Prime Minister.

TWENTY five years ago Margaret Thatcher walked through the door of 10 Downing Street as Britain's first woman Prime Minister.

During her 11 years in power she transformed the country, her policies affecting every man, woman and child in the land, for better and - more often than not - for worse.

THE MINER'S WIFE
... I went to Madam Tussaud's in London a few years ago and stood in front of her dummy. I said: 'I know you, lady. And I'll never stop hating you' ...

THE POLL TAX REBEL
"I went to jail rather than pay her �300"

THE YUPPIE
"She rescued the UK so I bought her handbag"

Read the rest of the article here

At the beginning she was like a breath of fresh air after the calamitous years of the Callaghan Government, but power soon went to her head and she ended up as a bitter, twisted old megalomaniac.

THE POLL TAX REBEL
"I went to jail rather than pay her �300"

I don't understand why people don't like poll tax???

It is a tax where you pay based on the number of people living in a house, not on the value of a house. So an old granny living on her own in a big house won't pay huge amounts in tax. This system would allow people to pay their fair share! I don't see why 2 people living in a larger house should pay more for the water they use than 4 people in a smaller house using twice as much water.

(Poll Tax and Council Tax are the amounts paid for rubbish collection and water etc.)

Personally I blame the whole reason so many people in the UK hate politics squarely on Thatcher. She started off the string of bad PM's that have ruled this country since and before I've been alive. I was born in 1987 and I don't remeber thatcher but after researching what she did I soon learned to hate her. Any Tony Blair is basically just a female Thatcher anyway.

There's only one thing I can really say about this because I feel so strongly about it. I hope she burns in hell, and I mean that.

If hell doesn't exist then I want it created just for that no good pile of infected pig intestines.

I don't understand why people don't like poll tax???

It is a tax where you pay based on the number of people living in a house, not on the value of a house. So an old granny living on her own in a big house won't pay huge amounts in tax. This system would allow people to pay their fair share! I don't see why 2 people living in a larger house should pay more for the water they use than 4 people in a smaller house using twice as much water.

(Poll Tax and Council Tax are the amounts paid for rubbish collection and water etc.)

Just to say poll tax and water rates are completely different. Poll tax (now community charge) is paid to the council for services such as education, refuse collection etc, whilst water rates are paid to the waterboard for the provision of water and sewage, and consumers can to choose to have a water meter if they prefer to only pay for the amount of water they use.

Originally posted by John Nada
There's only one thing I can really say about this because I feel so strongly about it. I hope she burns in hell, and I mean that.

She'd probably sack the Devil and make the demons redundant.

As somebody said: there's no inbetween with Thatcher. You either love her or hate her.

Personally, I think she was great because her economic policies dragged the UK away from becoming the Third World economy that it was becoming under the power of the unions.

She'd probably sack the Devil and make the demons redundant

...and give the contract to Halliburton

Personally, I think she was great because her economic policies dragged the UK away from becoming the Third World economy that it was becoming under the power of the unions.

....and put it under the power of Corporations

Maggie sold the Nations silver.


zero lift

I say we dump all the tax and pay it ourselves instead!!!

Im kidding... Some of it is good some is for pure greed, but what can 5.9 billion people do about a handful of wreckless people?

Originally posted by zero lift

Maggie sold the Nations silver.

And New Labour sold the Gold Reserves. So what's your point? Governments have always used Reserves to fund this and that. Sure she sold. Silver was at a high price. It's since been bought back at a cheaper price.
Economics dear boy.

As for selling to major corporations? What's your beef? The power that those corporations have? Try looking at the power that the Nationalised Industries had. They actually bought the country to a stand-still on numerous occasions - three day weeks, no heating, lighting, water, food, garbage collection, burials of dead. The unions hit the common man far harder than any corporation.

The poll tax protests (inflammatory language: "riots") were less to do with the poll tax than they were to do with giving Thatcher a metaphorical bloody nose. We're going to see the same policy/politic confusion for the referendum on the EU constitution. It happens to all politicians who function through a cult of personality. Churchill, Thatcher, Blair, Howard...

Well, not Howard, obviously. You need a personality to have a cult of personality. Maybe the Tories should turn to Boris Johnson?