Thanas wrote:She literally claimed that Germany would immediately become Nazi again if allowed to reunify.
To be scrupulously fair to the woman, so did rather a lot of people who lived through the Second World War.
Guardsman Bass wrote:For beating the coal miners' union in the 1980s? Those mines were fucked anyways - they would have closed as soon as the tap of public money was cut off (which is what happened once the industry was re-privatized in the early 1990s).
Honestly, if it hadn't been Thatcher, it would have been someone similar in terms of economic and labor policy after the Winter of Discontent. She did do some good in that area, even if she had a ton of shitty policies elsewhere.
Maybe so, but it didn't have to be done the way it was. The communities that depended on those mines were just left to die; the Tories couldn't even give the the newly-unemployed miners a bit of cash to help with the cost of relocating or training for a new trade, but apparently decided they'd rather leave 'em to draw the dole 'til they were ready to collect their pension.
For all that, though, I can't bring myself to hate her anymore. She had one other thing in common with Reagan, you see, namely Alzheimer's.
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-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Parties all along northern England tonight I'm sure. Liverpool must be heaving.
Siege wrote:I suspect the pubs in Scotland will do well today.
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One of my uncle's Facebook friends wrote:They both fucked loads of miners.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Thanas wrote:She literally claimed that Germany would immediately become Nazi again if allowed to reunify.
To be scrupulously fair to the woman, so did rather a lot of people who lived through the Second World War.
And yet none of the others having access to similar intelligence and/or being public figures said the same thing.
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------------ My LPs
Thanas wrote:
I suspect that in a few decades there will be a more nuanced view of her, right now she is very polarizing.
This. My rule of thumb is not to trust any historical evaluation written less than 25 years after the subject's death. It takes about that long for the bullshit and old hatreds to fade out of memory, and for the "not until after my death" archives to start opening. Longer if the person was especially polarizing- 30 years on I don't think there's been a really impartial assessment of Nixon's Presidency, for example.
I wondered if I hadn't gone wrong somewhere in life when the majority of Facebook posts were sad about her passing or tributes to her.
Then I remembered the majority of Facebook posts weren't about her, the few that were were from conservative leaning friends, and most of my left leaning friends aren't complete assholes so they refrained from commenting.
Hell must be a bit nippy, for once I am in agreement with Gerry Adams.
Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British Prime Minister.
Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies.
Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent whether in support of the Chilean dictator Pinochet, her opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa; and her support for the Khmer Rouge.
Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations, including the targeting of solicitors like Pat Finucane, alongside more open military operations and refused to recognise the rights of citizens to vote for parties of their choice.
Her failed efforts to criminalise the republican struggle and the political prisoners is part of her legacy.
It should be noted that in complete contradiction of her public posturing, she authorised a back channel of communications with the Sinn Féin leadership but failed to act on the logic of this.
Unfortunately she was faced with weak Irish governments who failed to oppose her securocrat agenda or to enlist international support in defence of citizens in the north.
Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81.
Her Irish policy failed miserably.
My political leanings are such that I fear most of my sentiments towards her will be at least a little crass. So I shall confine myself to expressing irritation at the effect this has had on the news programs.
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Thatcher's election was a landmark event for UK and even global feminism, given the amount of sexism in 1970s UK politics rising through the Conservative party to become PM was an amazing accomplishment even disregarding her subsequent achievements.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Guardsman Bass wrote:For beating the coal miners' union in the 1980s? Those mines were fucked anyways - they would have closed as soon as the tap of public money was cut off (which is what happened once the industry was re-privatized in the early 1990s).
Honestly, if it hadn't been Thatcher, it would have been someone similar in terms of economic and labor policy after the Winter of Discontent. She did do some good in that area, even if she had a ton of shitty policies elsewhere.
Maybe so, but it didn't have to be done the way it was. The communities that depended on those mines were just left to die; the Tories couldn't even give the the newly-unemployed miners a bit of cash to help with the cost of relocating or training for a new trade, but apparently decided they'd rather leave 'em to draw the dole 'til they were ready to collect their pension.
This, basically. I'm from a mining family, but I don't shed a tear for the mines - appalling work and they left the landscape showered with coal dust. However, just taking away the only employment in town and putting nothing back was scandalous. You want to talk about "Welfare UK" - this was where it all began.
There was a great comment on twitter about the most visible form of her legacy being that fact that all the tweets and FB posts of support and denouncing the left for speaking out were misspelled or had terrible grammar.
FOREIGN Minister Bob Carr has accused Margaret Thatcher of making "unabashedly racist" comments when she warned him against large waves of Asian migration to Australia.
Senator Carr said while he respected Baroness Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, for some of her government's big policy decisions, he disagreed with her "on a hundred other things".
"I recall one conversation I had with her in her retirement where she said something that was unabashedly racist," Senator Carr told ABC television last night.
With Senator Carr's Malaysian-born wife Helena not far away, the former British PM warned Australia risked being taken over by Asian migrants.
"(She said) that if we allowed too much of it we'd see the natives of the land, the European settlers, overtaken by migrants," he said.
"I couldn't believe it."
I've also heard China pays their respect. After all they did outmanoeuvre her on the Hong Kong issue so they most probably can't hold a grudge when they won.
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Celebration parties to me are a bit much. I don't care for "don't speak ill of the dead", but on the other hand it must suck for her family to have stuff like that right after she's died.
Its one thing to have someone you love die and a few people make some comments about her being horrible. Its another thing when someone you love dies and people are celebrating in the streets.
She always struck me as Britain's version of Ronald Reagan. Pro-business, pro-military, xenophobic, and utterly unconcerned with the fiscal well being of her country beyond the next decade. Give us the good life right now! Fuck everyone who will have to pay the bill later.
I find her as one of the most over rated politicians in modern history.
I will say this of her, even as someone of the north: she at least had a sound head when it came to climate change, and she came from an era where you could at least communicate with conservatives about issues. Not like now, where the likes of Fox News or The Daily Mail have made the other side simply batshit insane.
Starglider wrote:Thatcher's election was a landmark event for UK and even global feminism, given the amount of sexism in 1970s UK politics rising through the Conservative party to become PM was an amazing accomplishment even disregarding her subsequent achievements.
It's a shame she never saw it that way.
"I owe nothing to women’s lib. The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison."
That's not to discredit her achievement in rising through the ranks, but she certainly had little interest in reaching down and pulling any other disenfranchised group, women or otherwise, up with her.
Darth Yan wrote:Also, how was she a xenophobe? she just struck me as very conservative.
She literally claimed that Germany would immediately become Nazi again if allowed to reunify.
Was she serious about that? I though that was just the usual "Nazis!" used to push through own interest. And with the british tabloid press at home Thatcher had to more extreme than the other governments.
Sharp-kun wrote:Celebration parties to me are a bit much. I don't care for "don't speak ill of the dead", but on the other hand it must suck for her family to have stuff like that right after she's died.
I thought her son was still in jail for plotting a coup to claim his own african kingdom?
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dragon wrote:did she accomplish anything good while in power?
If you'd ever tried to use continental, then UK "public" transport, you'd knew reply to that question.
Incidentally, Thatcher has big legacy of crushing any opposition to her absolutist rule, even when that opposition happens to be democratically elected government of UK's very capital. For everyone who didn't heard the story, here's short summary of what happened to between others GLC. Right wingers always cherish voter's opinion, if it agrees, that is...
Sharp-kun wrote:Celebration parties to me are a bit much. I don't care for "don't speak ill of the dead", but on the other hand it must suck for her family to have stuff like that right after she's died.
I thought her son was still in jail for plotting a coup to claim his own african kingdom?
Nah he got a suspended sentence and a fine....it does remind me that her other spawn got fired from the BBC for using racist slurs....
Kind of puts the whole, "think of the grieving family" thing into perspective really.
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Irbis wrote:Incidentally, Thatcher has big legacy of crushing any opposition to her absolutist rule, even when that opposition happens to be democratically elected government of UK's very capital. For everyone who didn't heard the story, here's short summary of what happened to between others GLC. Right wingers always cherish voter's opinion, if it agrees, that is...
I take it you didn't read the section immediately above about Red Ken's coup?
