Thatcher has died

It's a shame that, after all those strikes, most of the manufacturing industries and the coal mines closed down anyway, and now we haven't got anything to get us out of this financial mess.

Selling off the council houses was a bad move. But she did it for what she thought was a good reason - to allow more people to become homeowners and, thereby, have more of a stake in the country. Hoping, I suppose, that that would make them better citizens.

So wrong to presume we know the relationship with Margaret thatchers children!

Great nan they may not be totally surprised but it is always sad to lose a parent be kind to remember that!

I may not have agreed with all her policies but impossible not to admire her incredible passion for politics and her achievements.

She was an incredible lady.

About sweat shops - the same was said about ending slavery, and about child prostitution, etc. I am always surprised that people are prepared to buy very cheap goods from chains which have been shown to use sweat shops.

She sold off council houses because it was a vote catcher.

The proceeds from the house sales were not used to replenish the council housing stock - such a policy meant that eventually there would very little council housing and most people would have to rely on private, unregulated rentals.

Of course, people in council houses were delighted and those that were able to, bought their houses - who can blame them? But the fact is that such a policy prevented other people from being housed properly and at an affordable rent.

Jo8 One reason for the strikes was the justified fear on the part of the strikers that their employment was about to disappear because of government policies!

Celebgran - it is not always sad to lose a parent. I disliked my father and felt no sorrow at all when he died.
The sale of council houses was cynical gerrymandering - it was thought, rightly, that people who bought their council houses would be more likely to vote Conservative. Try googling 'Dame Shirley Porter'. Another 'strong' woman - and a crook.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal

I can't believe the picture painted by some of this idyllic Britain pre Thatcher. I remember the unions ran the place. There were outrageous wage demands and if they weren't met, then strikes were gleefully called. Didn't we have power blackouts, rubbish piling up in the street? I seem to remember a very bleak time when there was one strike following another. The country was bankrupt and still the unions demanded more and more.

The fact is, it became cheaper to import rather than to produce here due to the unrealistic wage demands. That was the major cause of the demise of British industry, not Margaret Thatcher. And that unaffordable cost was driven by the unions.

I too am a firm believer in a free market, the nationalised industries were bloated and inefficient - why should the tax payer support them? The car industry was a joke, the labour force was a joke internationally whereas now, productivity and labour are of world standard. The sick man of Europe is no more.

Now more than ever we have to compete. It's an alien concept to a Socialist mindset and that's unfortunate - things aren't going back to the way they were, that's not the way the world works. Everyone isn't equal. I agree too with the comment made about the education of our children. Many are leaving school unemployable, many even leave University with a third rate degree in the same condition. They will face competition for jobs, not from people from the same village but from people in Europe and beyond.

Well Sel now we've got the banks running the lot - and it's been a great success hasn't it.

Eloethan I notice many posters love to blame the bankers for the current mess. Before the financial crisis happened, the country was in a financial mess of it's own making courtesy of Gordon Brown, advised by Ed Balls and Ed Milliband. GB created the useless FSA and stripped the Bank of England of it's powers to regulate banks. Labour embraced the PFI with a vengeance, spending like there was no tomorrow and keeping the debt nicely off the books. We're paying for that now and will be for 30 years. GB also sold off the gold reserves at the bottom of the market - how useful that would be now and I wonder what it would be worth.

I and many others are filled with horror at the idea of the Labour Party being back in control of our finances. The cuts which are having to be made now are causing untold distress to so many people but they are happening because of what the Labour Party did to the country.

As far as I am concerned, Sel, you are preaching to the converted - certainly Gordon Brown was very proud of his 'light touch' with the bankers and I think my view of Blair is pretty clear. However, these threads are about Thatcher, and I can't see how what happened after she left office excuses what she did whilst she was in charge. And surely, the same applies to the Conservative government that took over from Labour as applied to the Labour government that took over from the Conservatives - why did they continue to allow the financial sector to run riot!
Surely you don't exonerate the bankers from any guilt about the global financial melt down?

It is surely significant that there were was none of this criticism on the death of any other PM?

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-etiquette

J08 Well said. I don't want to buy clothes made by seven-year-olds locked in sweat shops or even by adults in similar conditions. I don't want to buy clothes made in a place where emergency exits are barred and the workers are told stay put in spite of screaming fire alarms with the obvious and inevitable consequences.

The auction of the North Sea gas fields was a badly run fiasco but you can't turn the clock back on that any more than on the closure of heavy industries.

Sel agree with everything you say regarding the "unions running the country" and I can see us going straight back there once Ed Miliband
( the union puppet) gets into power.

I have many reasons to dislike Mrs Thatcher . I was a working single parent for much of her "reign" and she did nothing very little for me. I lived and worried in an extremely deprived part of the country and saw first hand the effects of the miners strike with food parcels being distributed and my neighbours having to literally burn their garden fence in order to heat their house. However being older and hopefully wiser (and also the owner of a small business) It worries me the kind of powers that the huge unions could have with a labour government and once again we could see the ridiculous non jobs created in the public sector with the country being held to ransom on the back of ridiculous wage demands.

I end by saying I have very little faith in any political party at the moment and would not know where to turn should a general election be called tomorrow.

Sorry you felt like that about your father great nan.
Mine was not the best but still felt dreadfully upset but was only 16!

Do you not think was good to encourage people not to rely on the state to provide housing? My pet hate is seeing these families complaining about their rented accommodation and berating council for not providing! What happened to working hard and not having kids you can't afford?

We have so many singlemums set up in lovely houses whe does the money come from? I personally know several from my course.

They don't work don't see point when their lifestyle is funded! From my poor husbands hard earn pension of which half goes to taxman!

Last week we heard Mick Philpott described by a judge as having 'no moral compass'. Someone else lacking in this respect was undoubtedly Margaret Thatcher. IMHO she was a woman entirely lacking in compassion, humility and humanity.

Unlike some of these very young people celebrating on the street, I am old enough to remember the Thatcher era well. I worked in the voluntary, charitable sector at that time (in a suburban area) but I will never forget the distress caused by her wretched (and unworkable) Poll Tax, the hardships suffered by huge unemployment, the people handing back their homes to lenders because they were trapped in negative equity due to inflation - and at the same time the City traders were prospering.

Her supporters are now asking for her to be shown some dignity and respect in death. Unfortunately in life, she denied the same dignity and respect to thousands of her own countrymen and women whilst presenting herself as a great patriot.

We reap what we sow........

A great, insightful article by Russell Brand here:

www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-brand/margaret-thatcher-our-unm_b_3046390.html

I admired her greatly. She took on the unions, the Argies and lily livered politicians and won.

I didn't agree with everything she did, especially the sale of council houses. This would have been fine if the money was used to build more, if you can afford to buy you should go out into the market place.

Towards the end of her `reign` I did feel she lost the plot and it was time for her to go.

To the hate brigade I say she never murdered anyone and for those who say she sent our troups to war for the Faulklands, I say it was a just war not like Tony Blair who truly does have blood on his hands.

Thanks for this link, when. A personal view written with eloquence, insight and intelligence.

when great, insightful from Russell Brand? Intriguing, I quite like him. He does capture the spirit of the times - I was going to question a few of his claims but reading the first comment after the article, I could just copy and paste.

I often think in life how great it would be if we could go back and take the opposite tack, how would things have turned out with a 'what if?' I don't dispute that for many communities, centred on heavy industry, who's way of life was shattered, the effects of MT's economic policies were catastrophic. But what was to be done? The country was virtually bankrupt, there was no foreign investment, money had to be earned. Our industrial sector wasn't competitive, competition was coming from further afield from countries not dominated by unions. So does a bitter pill for some, prescribed for the greater good make sense? Much as I disliked MT at the time because I did understand the mindset of those areas, I do believe that she did what she did because she wanted Britain to recover and become a viable economic entity.

It wasn't the rich and privileged who gave her power, rather 'Mondeo Man', Mr & Mrs Average who were tired of being held to ransom by union demands and could actually see where that was getting us.

Whatever she was, she wasn't a hypocrite unlike most of the subsequent lot.

gilly I agree with you when you asy "I end by saying I have very little faith in any political party at the moment and would not know where to turn should a general election be called tomorrow." I might well spoil my ballot paper, again.

Could someone please confirm for me who sold of North Sea Gas? DH said it was Gordon Brown but someone on here seems to think it was Mrs T.

I think we all agree that the money from the sale of council houses should have been spent on replacing the housing stock.

I don't think Mrs T was responsible for inflation, I think that was before her wasn't it?

I agree that the unions had too much power when she took over the reins. It was necessary for someone to take on people like Arthur Scargill who said something like - we are not striking for what we deserve but for what we can get. I'm sure someone will come up with the correct quotation, please? Apparently there are now 3 NUM leaders in, I think, Nottingham on huge salaries with just one member, .

I agree about the bankers but think that if what they did had been illegal or if they had been properly regulated it would not have happened. It appears their behaviour was immoral rather than illegal. I still think their auditors have a lot to answer for.

Am I the only person who finds the use of the word Argies, highly distasteful?

when what thoughtful, well written article. Thanks.