hodgy0_2

Pinochet was a dictator who rounded up people in a football stadium and had them tortured & shot (men, women and children)

who was also on trial for embezzling millions of dollars before he died

other than that, nice guy

jonc

I'm waiting for the tenuous link that some how Thatcher had a part in this...

dpb

She decided this guy, on the whole ,done well for his country, despite everything


And on the other hand that Mandela was a dangerous 'activist' and that sanctions would only hurt the majority. ( forever more, presumably )

Go figure

boomer

mb

hodgy0_2

well know fact that during Thatchers university days, studying the economics of banana production at the university of Santiago she demonstrated against the Allende government and so helped Pinochet to power

jonc

...and yet the anti-Thatcher minority feel its ok to defend the 10 IRA terrorists who were intent on maiming and killing British civilians and soldiers....

dpb

And low and behold today they share power

jonc

Go check your history, they didn't go on hunger strike in the hope of sharing power and the IRA leadership opposed the strike.

dpb

Well here's a nice resume on what the rest of the world thought

http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2013414125927351482.

jonc

I like your thinking, one article = rest of the world, BRILLIANT!

dpb

You got me there,of course I mean the vast majority

jonc

Vast majority? Evidence? On your point regarding Pinochet, Thatcher felt she owed him for his support to Britain during the Falklands conflict. That does not mean she condoned what Pinochet did to his people.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

That article has to be the most far fetched fantasy I am yet to have read.

One woman, yes ONE woman dominating half of the world and their dictatorships?

One could only wish.

jods

Margaret Thatcher was one of a kind
Unions were killing productivity in the UK.
The EU was taking too much out of the UK.
Milk for primary school kids was a cost too far.

She sorted the Unions
She negotiated a rebate from the EU
I never liked the milk anyway

We need a PM with the strength of MT now.
I can't imagine that we'd be paying hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to accommodate jailed aliens if she was in charge.


God bless M H T

warrenm2

The thing with Maggie is she never found an issue that was too difficult. Other politicians would kick the can down the road on something because it was controversial, she would grasp the nettle and deal with it head on. This made her a) effective b) unpopular in certain circles. I know what the country needed and am glad we had her. This was why she was respected around the world, other countries were envious

wrxyz

iTrader: (2)

Too many find it too easy to join the crowd instead of stepping back to look at the whole picture.
She was a visionary and whats more a true Brit'.

Thats all I gotta say about that.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

How many of the Thatcher sycophants on this thread are 50 or over?

If you are not then you cannot comment about the state of the nation pre-79 as you were all kids at best. You crticise those students for protesting against her for being too young yet were too young yourselves to remember what the country was really like before her preferirng instead to trot out the same old mantra about how the unions ran the place and everything was terrible like it was the Dark Ages.

The economy may have been bad, but there were also a lot of good things about this country and its society in the 70s...... Thatcher killed a lot of that along the way not that I expect any of you to get that as you are all way too far up yourselves to cosnider you may not be right about something.

I am glad she has gone and I wish people could forget about her... sadly her legacy of a selfish and crooked society won't allow that and we are living in the sh1tpit she created and her fan Blair perpetuated. A visionary she may have been, it's a pity her visison was such a p1ss poor one!

trails

iTrader: (41)

trails

iTrader: (41)

I'm 40 Chris...but no sycophant, how old are you?

dpb

I think he was 47, same as me

trails

iTrader: (41)

So unqualified by his own requirements?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

How so? I'm not the one saying the 70s was all doom and gloom and Thatcher was some kind of saviour of the country. That seems to be more your department.

My point is that it is hypocritical to slag people off who weren't of working age under Thatcher's government whilst praising her to the high heavens and slagging off the pre-79 UK as a total basket case when very few people here can have known truly what it was like back then one way or the other.

If you are 40 that makes you born in 1973 so by the age of 6 Thatcher was in power and gone before you even made working age..... LOL at how you can judge her time with any degree of real world experience let alone what came before

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

No, but you are coming from the opposite side so to speak. Surely if you are in the same age group as people you claim are too young to remember what things were like, then you too are too young to remember. Surely it goes both ways, she should neither be praised nor condemned by people that were too young to recall events of that time first hand.

I'm 30 and can't remember her time in power (well, little bits, but no real detail). I can read all the comments about her from all different perspectives, but I think it is unfair for me to have a love or hate for her, because I would be basing that on other people's recollection, not my own.

RA Dunk

Forty two left school in eighty six and remember her so well, not fondly of course..

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

No I am not coming from the opposte side. I am saying there was good and bad in 70s society and good and bad in what Thatcher did. I just think people have a very black and white view of it on here. The 70s = bad, the 80s under Thatcher = good. The truth is a bit of both in both eras. My point was most people on here commenting on the 70s being all bad cannot even properly remember that time. trails was 6 in 1979 for instance, how can he really 'remember' the 70s or even most of the 80s except through a child's mind?

Thatcher did do some good initially, but the things people praise her for are not what I see as being good things when the biiger picture is considered and I will stand by my argument that society as a whole is worse off for her time as PM. Yes I am a socialist at heart so not likely to find her political beliefs very palatable, but there you go!

As for me personally, I started full tie work in 1981 so the first 10 years of my working life were under her government. I did OK as did many others, but I think society as a whole did not!!

The society we live in today is not as good as that we lived in in the 70s. For instance back then most kids had respect for their elders, old age pensioners did not get mugged, robbed or assaulted, there wern't knifings every weekend, gun crime was a rarity, people weren't stealing metal from railways and electricity companies, scammers were few and far between, towns weren't full of drunks fighting every weekend and even the criminals had a code of ethics..... so on and so forth... that has all gone and is at least partly down to the society that Thatcher's government created.

Most other European countries aren't like that or not to the same extent so it's not just modern soceity, it's us here in the UK, the British and we are generally viewed as the scum of Western Europe and I can't argue with that!

P.S. Having re-read your comment I think given my age I am perfectly qualified to comment on Thatcher, I can't really see why you would think otherwise.

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

I agree with you on the first part about society today.

My comment wasn't saying you weren't qualified to comment, it was just saying that if you fit in the same age group as others, no one person is more or less placed to have an opinion. I don't know the age of all the SN members.

As I always say, opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one. If people view her as great and that everything she did was right, it is unlikely you or anyone else is going to change that.

trails

iTrader: (41)

Me neither...I'm in favour of balance rather than rhetoric and I've been educated on the subject by my parents and their friends who were living it (my mum and dad are both 67...).

My comments then are based on their experiences and what I've read around the subject...I've never claimed any real world experience of the pre-Thatcher UK.

As for castigating the students; when you are a twenty-something you think you know everything when in fact you know nothing. Been there, done the right-on student thing and know it is just noise. That's why I can judge them

trails

iTrader: (41)

Although I worked all through further/higher education and spent 18months full time as a ramp builder after I graduated I didn't get my first proper office job until '96

mrmadcap

I no longer wear a tie for work as i think they are uncomfortable and inappropriate in the 21st century

jonc

Well then it's hypocritical of you to say that the 70's was good as going by your logic means that you were too young to realise what society was really like pre-Thatcher.