General Chat

Now Mark Thatcher will become Baron Thatcher with voting rights in the House of Lords.

Now,there's one to ponder!

is it hereditary???

Unfortunately it is, Sylvia.

How I go along with all that Sylvia says.I was also brought up in Manchester,went to school during the war,passed scholarship for High school.
Was put in Latin class as In those days you had to have that language to go to uni...no grants,even had to pay for all the school books.
Parents couldn't afford for me to go to uni,so had to get a job and give wage packet to mother and got measly spends back.

Had a job at ICI for which I had to have at least 6 O levels...there till I had to leave when I married and no women could have children and work.
How times have changed.
I turned that around in my 30's and eventually ended up with my own business and was a workaholic..

I admired Mrs T for her work ethic and I do believe she was an inspiration to so many women ,giving them a belief in themselves that had been played down for years.

Im not a feminist,but question would all this go on if it had been a man in power during these years?..and if she was so bad why did Tony Blair carry on with some of her ideas?

Thank you,Errol Sheep for an interesting thread,and to the people who have contributed to it.

Here in Australia the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper devoted the first 3 pages of today's edition to her death,with the front page having a huge headline "Farewell Maggie" with a photo of her face taken from when she was in power.Beside this was a quote from David Cameron,"We've lost a great leader,a great Prime Minister and a great Briton."Beside the giant headline were the words "The world is paying tribute to the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher who died last night.She was 87." At the top of the page was written "Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013."Then the next 2 pages were devoted to her life
and her accomplishments.

Like her or loathe her,she was a strong woman who always stood up for the things which she believed in.She had no hesitation in expressing her strong opinions and didn't suffer fools gladly.She will be remembered for being the first female British Prime Minister and for being a strong and capable leader for 3 terms, and for many other things also.Whatever you thought of her,you couldn't ignore her!

RIP Baroness Thatcher.

Interesting point made by SylviainCanada about what Margaret Thatcher achieved as a woman. I suppose if you look at the "big picture",that the same thing would be true not only for the UK,but for the women of many other nations as well.She certainly did make a difference, and was an inspiration to women around the world.

Margot.

I am truly surprised that some people really think it was Margaret Thatcher alone who made the Countries decisions, she, like most other Prime Ministers, are only a mouthpiece.

Another thing I did a double take on, was on a man interviewed on the radio, the interviewer asked him what he thought about the death of Margaret Thatcher, after a real belly laugh, he said he had been waiting 20 years for this day, and every year had kept a day back from his holidays, waiting for "this moment" so he could celebrate, but his real celebrations would be on the day of her funeral :-( and he thought Margaret Thatcher was wicked :-S

Interesting to see that the grocery shop where she grew up is now a holistic medicine shop.

Margaret Thatcher accomplished many great things during her time as Prime Minister, however the social cost of many of her policies are still affecting the lives of many ordinary people today. She will be remembered as the first female prime Minister, a formidable politician, the person who curbed the trade unions, and as a leader who stood up for the United Kingdom on the world stage.

However she will also be remembered as a the person who with her friend Ronald Reagan, as the person who initially loosened the controls on the financial institutions, and that is when the seeds of the current financial crisis were sown, she will also be remembered as a very divisive Prime Minister whose ideologies divided many areas of our nation.

At the time she came to power, the strikes during the winter of discontent had shown that the trade unions had got totally out of hand and the country was being held to ransom by them. Unfortunately Margaret Thatcher used, a sledge hammer to crack a nut, by opting to use confrontation to deal with the situation, as she did not want to negotiate with the trade unions, she wanted to destroy them.

Many strikes were crushed, the most notable being the coal miners strike, the result of her industrial relation policies are still with us today. During her premiership unemployment soared to nearly 3 million, at the time it was said it was a price worth paying. Was it, as what this did was to provided employers with a large pool of cheap labour, in short take the job or leave it as there was no shortage of takers. We had now entered an era of cheap labour that we still have today, one where the bosses get rich on the backs of the less well off.

Her views on the welfare state are well documented, just do a search using - "Thatcher's secret plot to dismantle the welfare state" there is plenty information to be found on her views about, the welfare state, the NHS. Schools, and housing.

One of today's biggest social issues is the shortage of what is referred to as social housing and that can be directly attributed to her policy of giving people the right to buy their council house. This was in many ways an excellent policy, where it failed was that councils were not allowed to use any of the funds from the sale of the houses to replace the houses that were sold off. The result of this is that we now have literally hundreds of thousand of people seeking an affordable place to live while on the other side of the equation we have thousands of private landlords charging exorbitant rents which is one of the reasons the housing benefit bill is so high.

Baroness Thatcher, the first woman to rise to the highest political office in the land, a formidable politician, a great orator, a great defender of Britain on the world stage, but alas someone who will be surrounded in controversy for many years to come - R.I.P.

It is 23 years since Margaret Thatcher left office..............why does she alone get blamed for so many of the problems today :-S

I genuinely don't understand why no government before or since her time in office is criticised alongside her...............or am I missing something here?

excellent post OFITG beautifully written :-D

KittytheCook, the most likely answer is that many of her policies, the combined effects of them, have made them more or less irreversible.

Thank you......I am not a political animal as you can probably tell :-D

Can we just let the lady be buried & her family have closure .she will go down in history as First woman Prime minister who did her very best for her country .its a pity she didnt reign .longer we would not be in the mess we are now / she stood up to the unions & EU .who the heck do we trust i for one have no confidence what so ever in politicions of today .enough said !!

OTIG I find your post 09:14 interesting and would be interested in debating the points you highlighted at a later date But until then I will refrain from comment apart from the "Thatcher's secret plot to dismantle the welfare state"

It was not a secret plot, It was work/research done into what the affects would be, Which is what all governments do on a regular basis as part of their duty in regard to basic housekeeping and budgeting for the future, All governments including Labour have done the same work/research on most areas where public money is spent, notably in recent times with the defence review 1998 they called it a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) to justify cutting defence, which I was part of and can assure you that it was not based on the Strategic needs or requirement in today's changing world as people where led to believe but it was a budget requirement and budget led (Cutting our cloth according to what we could afford)

Roy

Thank goodness I was in London during the 60s and some of the 70s as opportunities were obviously far more equal :-D certainly in my experience and that of my friends.

for information
Mark Thatcher inherited his baronetcy from his father

Margaret Thatcher the Politician was known world wide -

hence the positive and negative comments about her.

Interesting reading all the comments.

Erroll. A very interesting thread thank you, its good to read varied opinions without resorting to personal attacks. How very refreshing!

Paula I couldn't agree more thank you