Margaret Thatcher

MT was insufferable in many ways and undoubtedly divisive; many contributors to this thread seem to think she was also a disaster for the country. Yet she won three general elections with majorities of 43, 144 and 102, all with a turnout of more than 70%. Do the Gransnetters in question think the electorate got it massively wrong three times? Or do they not believe in democracy?

I was on my honeymoon during the bakers' strike - we managed to copper up enough for a coach trip to Llandudno for a week. When we got on the coach it was full of people of the age I am now and above, a jolly lot who kept asking for the Des O'Connor tape to be turned up on that interminable very long journey. The ladies smuggled bread rolls into their handbags at every opportunity, and when they found out we were on honeymoon we returned home with around 20 souvenir teatowels and teaspoons featuring Welsh beauty spots and hats. I still have some of them.

But it wouldn't have been Arthur Scargill that you wanted to kill.

Sorry, janerowena, I'm not entirely sure how my thought processes were working (or not!) there...

I well remember it as a student nurse in London, queuing for bread because living on £28 a month it was pretty much our staple diet....

I am in my early 50s, Ana! I was still at school then, I remember coming home to a dark house and an exhausted mother trying to stay warm, do washing for four girls and OH, keep the one small coal fire going in a very large house because in the 6os they took out the main fireplace.

Interesting article in today's Times 2 about spending Christmas Day at with the Thatchers. All very formal x

Of course, I do mean the bakers' strikes (the bread itself did not go on strike)

www.dailyecho.co.uk/heritage/news/11117954.How_housewives_battled_the_bread_shortage/

You are still so young, Ana

I remember because I was a new mum with nappies to wash.
I also remember the bread strikes - making the bread, in between feeding baby, washing nappies, rushing back and forth to playgroup with DD, no car .....

Certainly the three-day week happened in the 70s - 1973 actually, I remember it well because it was the year I got married for the first time!

But I was 22, so unless you're only 50-ish you wouldn't have been a child then, janerowena.

The power cuts were in the 1970s surely?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6729683.stm

There was strike after strike.

My father, a life-long socialist and trade unionist, was nonetheless disgusted by it all.

Just how young are you janerowena to have been a child in the 1980s?

That's true. I can see your point. But I also remember as a child seeing how upset my mother was during power cuts years ago and vowing to kill Arthur Scargill!

janerowena I said that "I would never wish for anybody's assassination" but, as you pointed out, it did occur to me that Hitler, or someone of his ilk, may be an exception.

On thinking about it further though, as absent says, an act of this kind may well have repercussions that are even worse. The assassination of senior members of the Taliban and other dissident groups in Pakistan does not, in my opinion, make Pakistan a safer place but leads to revenge attacks and an ever increasing spiral of violence.

Also, you can kill one person but, as is commonly said, you can't kill an idea or belief and you may actually fan the flames to create something even more terrifying.

Stephen King wrote 11.22.63 in which he imagined someone being able to travel back in time to kill Lee Harvey Oswald before he killed Kennedy. From what I recall from a plot that became increasingly complicated, the result wasn't necessarily good.

Political assassination rarely achieves the desired aim and sometimes leads to appalling consequences. Think Gavril Princip.

'To suggest that any Gransnetters, even one, support, approve of or advocate political assassination is pretty outrageous'



Doesn't anyone else fantasise about travelling back in time and killing Hitler, to name but one? In fact I am more surprised that there haven't been more assassinations.

Yes of course rosequartz. I'm sure someone will come along soon with another link proving the Spectator article wrong.

Well, other posters are always providing links and statistics galore Ana so why not!

Oh this has made us laugh!
Mr Pickle swears every time the Milk Snatcher's name is mentioned...
Mousey toungue of China was another, along with Pol Pot

Laissez-faire economics strongly admired by Joseph and Thatcher has never existed, and MT's insistence on supply side economics, with her emphasis on monetarism ignored this fact.

Taking laissez faire economics it to its logical conclusion, there would be no regulation or overseeing of for e.g. the banks or company /employment law throughout the world and the horror this suggests doesn't bear thinking about.

Of course, the Spectator is a right-wing publication, so you're on a hiding to nothing there, rosequartz!

Economics - the truth rather than leftist imaginings?

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-in-six-graphs/

Of course, the economy is safe in Labour's fists

I certainly think she was barking at the end of her premiership, and another one of her fellow ministers who was certainly mad was Keith Joseph, absolute lunatic. He supported MT in her economics.

Fair point, GillT57, there were indeed attempts on the lives of Churchill, De Gaulle, and indeed MT herself. Perhaps we're being kinder to her than she was to many of us.

But Labour continued that for 13 years! and their target driven culture!

Of course, people were so happy under Labour with their houses rocketing in value and spending on their credit cards being never-ending.

DH and I had a more realistic view.