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You could pool the entire intellect and "ability" of every Labour Prime Minister this country has ever had and it would still only be a fraction of Mrs Thatcher’s
Probably the most intellectually able was Harold wilson. Acheivements are a different matter. Like brown (who isnt dumb by any means) the personality was the problem
clivexx, the media, bar the Mirror after the war, at least, played the same viciously destructive role in before the war, as the US media have played these past ten years.
The Daily Mail, for one, raved on their front page about Mussolini and his Black Shirts. Also, ‘Mt Hitler’ Quite recently, I read an article in the same paper contending that Halifax favoured the rational option, i.e of coming to terms with Hitler, which of course, inevitably, would have been initially on disadvantageous terms, and then scorned by Hitler.
Thatcher’s Mr Law and Order, Hailsham (Quentin Hogg), actually canvassed during his campagn for the Tory seat in Oxford under the slogan, A vote for Hogg is a vote for Hitler! AND HE WON. That should show you the political complexion of the monied classes of this country before the war – at best, still crypto-Nazi. It was all about empire. They go together.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/artic … racket.htm
The right and war are blood brotehrs. Except, it won’t be their own blood or that of their progent spilt, if they can help it.
It was press who played the devil’s role in promoting Thatcher as the saviour of Britain. She was a puppet of very modest abilities, but she had that one thing that really ‘turned on’ the more louche among the rich elite, the shamelessness to spout patently un-Christian ‘ideals’, as if they formed an addenddum to the Bible, and engineer the most deeply divisive and oppressive policies on the working man and woman. With the harlot press and supine TV behind her, she managed to win power, though never with a majority. She actually said, BEFORE she was frst elected: ‘My sympathies are with middle-management.(!!!)’ Truly a ruler for all the people. Not.
The right trot out the same old nonsense about Labour, but the Labour party, what NuLab(c) call Old Labor, of course, since it is history now), have always had an economic record superior to that of the right wing in the guise of New Labour. And had the Tories remained in power, it would really have been all up for the country, already.
The unswerving policy of the political right has always been the enrichment and aggrandisement of the few – those already rich – at the expense of the poorer, general public, THE COUNTRY. Yet they had the bare-faced gall – the TV, too – to speak of the country never have been richer; meaning of course themselves. As Wdgewood Benn put it: ‘The working class are the last of the colonies.’ They must oppress and exploit. It’s who they are.
And on the back of what? A mega ‘bubble’ fuelled by borrowing to make good the loss by the public of a living wage. The rich had to get their profits from somewhere. Extending subprime credit was their answer, but being pathologically greedy they massively overdid it, and with Peak Oil, ecocide kicking in, and the resultant resource wars in prospect, we are facing a very ugly picture, indeed.
Grimes, you really do write the most outrageous twaddle; I can’t help thinking that you do it only to prompt a reaction.
I recognise a lot of what you say as similar to the left-wing feelings I had when I was in my late teens / early twenties. (Although I was prepared to hear the other side of the story and accept that both Labour & Tory ideologies had strengths and weaknesses)
However, although a Labour member and lefty then, I had to grudgingly admit that Labour and the Unions (and our membership the EU – but don’t get me started on that) had made a complete and utter balls-up of our country back in the ’70s.
I worked in both the car industry and printing industry in the seventies. Britain was then the sick-man of Europe, strike-prone and beholden to extreme "lefty" union troublemakers. No wonder foreign businesses wouldn’t invest here.
Some nutty shop-steward who’d make Stalin look moderate would decide to call a vote for an unofficial strike over something trivial. In an open vote, those who voted against striking would mysteriously find their locker broken into, or worse. Maybe you’re too young to remember those days. Maybe you’re too blinkered by reading only one opinion on the Thatcher years to realise that Britain was going down the tubes. She helped turn it around.
I still hear numpties moaning about the demise of British industry being down to Thatcher & Co. It doesn’t occur to them to take into account the prevailing industrial and economic conditions prevalent at that time. It’s just too easy to blame the government.
Our heavy industry was dying a death and would do so whoever was in power. Why?
Take the shipbuilding industry and its demise during the late 60’s and 70′ All down to Thatcher & co you’d no doubt say without even turning on a brain cell to consider:-
1) Many of Britains shipyards had refused to upgrade in the newer technologies or equipment that would keep them competitive. Management put the short-term shareholders dividend before the long term viability of the yard (a typical problem with UK management in most industries). Consequently emerging shipbuilding countries (eg. S. Korea / Tawain) had superior equipment and could build BETTER ships quicker and on budget. Many of our shipyards didn’t see the point in investing millions when they thought the Navy would always keep them in work. Blame Thatcher for that?
2) Foreign emerging shipbuilders employed staff with the same or better skills than GB but need only pay them a fraction of what UK workers got. Consequently they were much CHEAPER than GB Ltd. So, they got the business – simples! Blame Thatcher for that eh?
3) Even if a UK shipyard COULD compete on quality, price and delivery time, those companies wanting new ships would reject the UK because they couldn’t rely on the workforce not to down tools and screw the whole project up. Blame Thatcher for that?
4) Many emerging industrial nations could subsidise (some might say to the point of bribery) production making it a shoo-in to get contracts before the costly UK. Blame Thatcher for that?
5) Early on in the UK’s Common Market membership / EU / EC (call it what you will), Britain was told by Bruseels that it HAD to cut either shipbuilding capacity or steel-making production (don’t ask me why, but I remeber at the time wondering why people weren’t clamouring to leave the EC/EU). Thatcher (or whoever had been in power) HAD no power to stop this.
A similar story could be told about nost of the heavy industries here at the time. Short-sighted management; refusal to invest; sh1t lefty unions with power in the hands of troublemakers who’d rather cause disruption than work (many of them commies). Too many industries in the UK were undercut by better managed, better skilled, better tooled-up emerging nations. Blame Thatcher for that?
Yet dullards still imagine it was all somehow Thatcher (and the tories) fault.
I’ve no love for the Conservatives but refuse to blame them for something they had no control over. And, credit where its due, Thatcher saved Britain economically and restored its reputation. (Under the Thatcher/ Major years – the UK received more overseas investment in industry than any other European country – some turnaround!)PS Clivexx – you overrate Gordon Brown. I don’t think he’s especially clever re. intellect/economics. He’s just a successful bully. Besides, isn’t his degree in Scottish History – it certainly doesn’t seem to be in economics.
Insomniac, "…. restored Britain’s reputation?!’ She was a laughing-stock among the European leaders, as indeed, was her friend Reagan. They only conceded ground to her on one issue, because she looked as if she was going brust into tears!!!! I think it was the rebate that was touted by our louche media as a particular triumph of her ‘strong’ leadership!!! I kid you not.
You just don’t seem to be aware that Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys have been totally discredited. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it was always we who were the Sick Man of Europe and will remain so, as long as there is a Tory Party. They’d tax you to death in France, yet for the past 5 years it’s been voted the country most people would like to live in.
‘No wonder foreign businesses wouldn’t invest here.’
You nut! Other countries deliberately eschewed selling off their flagship companies abroad, and now the folly of our lot has come home to roost. They wrap themselves in the flag, but always show they are totally without shame. They’d sell their grandmother for a tanner. Those who still possessed a sense of shame and honour – the One-Nation so-called Wets resigned or wouldn’t back down and were sacked.
You know who make Rolls Royce cars now? Rolls Royce Deutscheland! They’re taking the wee-wee. And who can blame them?
It was Thatcher and Reagan who started the deregulation of credit, and Big Business, generally, which has led our world to the brink of the abyss. I’m not surprised you can’t sleep at night.
You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts. ‘We are a grandmother’ should have given you a clue.
‘I’ve done this, I’ve done that.’ That’s the mark of someone who wants to claim his authority without expressing it on the page. What are you Tory Boy? I could see Thatcher coming from a long way off, and needed no indoctrination.
But here is a little pabulum for you, though I know it will be lost on you:
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I read a long time ago that Mrs T had accepted a lot of money to promote sales of cigarettes to Third World Countries; unfortunately I lost the article, so questioned my memory. I was disgusted at the time and was surprised how little publicity it was given. Maybe she had the sense to decide against it.[was pleased to read that half the money she received was to go to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation..oh, good, I thought, she’s at least going to help starving children or something..alas, it was just to fund some sort of website about…Margaret Thatcher…].
Did she really? Do you think she’ll buy shares in IRA incorporated. Contraband sales should go through the roof now
Grimes’s comments might be taken a little more seriously if he didn’t sound quite the misogynist. ”lionizing the woman”…”burst into tears”… the general tone seems to be anti-female leader to me. Something I find occurs quite a lot with those from the extreme left of politics who, strangely, seem more inclined to keeping women at the kitchen sink than any other group.
Bearing in mind our choices at the time, Michael Foot, Dennis Healey and later Neil Kinnock, Mrs Thatcher was a welcome change and the right person, given the weakness of the opposition. Slating Mrs Thatcher today is a very easy bandwagon to jump on. I didn’t agree with all her policies by any means, but we’ve had no one of her stature since and she didn’t defer to celebrities either, like some lily-livered males seem all too happy to do these days.
Thatcher was reviled in Scotland, and rightly so in my opinion. She represented greed over need.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
Grimes, you have an absorbing way with words which are a pleasure to read, but dear boy I think you fall into the trap of believing all you read and/or reading only what you want to believe
Left wing dogma is as tedious and dangerous as right wing dogma and it really is time to amputate both those arthritic now-featherless appendages and allow the battered body to creep forward on the solid ground towards a New Order, leaving those wings – which on the few occasions they actually managed a take-off soon crash-landed – to quietly decay unnoticed and forgotten, save for a picking over of the bones by the vultures who inhabit academic eyries
Bearing in mind our choices at the time, Michael Foot, Dennis Healey and later Neil Kinnock
Apropos the Portillo thread: Healey was the best leader the Labour Party never had. Worzel Gummidge and Kinocchio, what on earth possessed them?
Grimes, if you think taht the Uk did not improve its international standing during the 80s and into the 90s as an economy, you are frankly wilfully blind. That is absolute nonsene
Two other "facts" that need correcting
Thatcher was NOT held in contempt by her european peers and nor were her ideas. Why do you think that most european countries quickly followed the privitisation and economic models succesfully implemented here. That is simply a FACT
Secondly, re the press and the Nazis, you are wilfully misleading again. Only the Mail, which was then a minority paper backed the rise of teh Nazis, but what you conveniently ignore is that it quickly rescinded that view. The idea that the whole british press endorsed and was responsible for the rise of the nazis is laughable
But Perhaps the far left should take a good look at itself when we talk about nazis?
Your constituency has embraced hard line nazi supporting Imans such as Quadari (friend oif livingstone who called for a new genocide) and groupings such as Hezbollah and Hamas, who have called for "the eradictaion of jews worldwide"
but the Labour party, what NuLab(c) call Old Labor, of course, since it is history now), have always had an economic record superior to that of the right wing in the guise of New Labour
This is terrible stuff Grimes. There would not be one single economist (even far left ones surely) taht would claim that the economic record that led to the IMF bailout is "superior" to the record over the past 15 years. Simply not one stat or fact that would back that up
To say that thatcher has "very limited abilities" is crazy. I am ambivalent about some of her work, but she also argued her case with real intellectual firepower. The British public arent stupid and knew that they were dealing with someone who had a far stronger economic understanding than….Kinnock, Foot, Benn. The idea that she was somehow "dim" is nuts
Grimes
Yet more awful facts
They’d tax you to death in France, yet for the past 5 years it’s been voted the country most people would like to live in.
Why didnt you simply check the tax rates before looking. I knew you were wrong but heres the link
http://riviera.angloinfo.com/countries/france/intax.asp
Rates are lower than ours perhaps? Top rate kicks in at a much higher level
Not good enough when this information is so easy to find
I don’t think we’re ‘slating Mrs Thatcher now’….I can’t remember a Prime Minister that has ever been so despised by so many during their time in office, and I know of no one personally who has changed their view since. Ok everyone I knew worked for the railways and a lot of my family lived in Wales so perhaps we saw a different side to the ‘tough love’ that she gave the country. I realise that the unions had become powerful and greedy, but I’m sure that a lot of the greed stemmed from the fact that inflation was so high and everyone desperately wanted pay increases each year just to cover themselves. The collective ‘greed’ of the unions was replaced with a ‘me for myself’ attitude in this country which prevails to this day and which I find very sad. The cigarette incident just confirmed what I always thought of her. I’m not very well off but I would never accept money under such circumstances.
I can’t remember a Prime Minister that has ever been so despised by so many during their time in office,
Selective amnesia Mo?
Immediately before Mrs Thatcher was James Callaghan and he was even despised by many on his own side.
I would also add that as an individual he was, by all accounts, one of the most obnoxious people one would ever want to meet.
Read a pretty impartial bio of Callaghan Paul and few other bits and pieces, and think thats probably a bit harsh. Bit of a bully though…
He wasnt perhaps despised (a/la Brown) but not respected by those with huge egos and more formal (as they always reminded all and sundry) education…ie Roy Jenkins and Healy (now theres two egos)
He wasnt perhaps despised (a/la Brown) but not respected by those with huge egos and more formal (as they always reminded all and sundry) education…ie Roy Jenkins and Healy (now theres two egos)
Think you will find the unions were not that fond of him Clive. Especially the public service unions. These were the days of rubbish piling up on the streets, being unabloe to bury the dead – it was akin to living in a third world country.
My comments about him being obnoxious are based on observations from people who knew him. One of whom, a very good friend of mine, was one of his personal protection offices so spent a great deal of time in his company.
Its only right that a Nationalist is to be the 1st Minister, as Nationalists and Catholics represent the majority in Northern Ireland now. As a Catholic from the Republic, I can safely say that general opinion regarding Martin McGuinness has changed dramatically in recent years. Contrary to what some people have written here, he has been very quick to condemn ANY violence or terror acts, carried out by any organisation in recent years. Yes, I had no time for him, Gerry Adams and the rest of Sinn Fein for a long time, but credit where it is due. They have moved with the times, and progressed dramatically in recent times, and the same cannot be said about the DUP. Unfortunately, the bigotry will always be a part of Northern Ireland politics, but hopefully Martin McGuinness can get the emphasis back on effective politics in the North, after the shameful and disgusting behaviour of Iris and Peter Robinson. I really do not believe there are any concerns regarding his colourful past, as it goes, thats exactly what it is, the past. Everyone deserves 2nd chances, if they really want to change, and I for one, firmly believe that McGuinness, and Sinn Fein are not the thug-dominated organisation they were 20 years ago. Once all the parties continue to work together, and not against each other, then the future of Northern Ireland will only continue to improve. I, for one, will drink to that.
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