- This topic has 120 replies, 27 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 6 months ago by
.
- Posts
No problem Firefox (or whatever else you want to call yourself – was it Kwai and / or MP previously?).
Oh and thanks very much for the response I’ve just won a £100 bet with a fellow Forumite as you response was more or less word for word what I predicted you would reply – you are so predictable.
BTW it is actually quite a relief you don’t agree with my views – I would find it very disturbing indeed if your views agreed with mine.
Oh by the way don’t bother sending another of your offensive PM’s in response – they do get rather tiresome.
paulostermeyer… doing my tax return – yawn.
Paul
Has yours only recently arrived too?
If so do you know why?
Only till end of October for a hard copy return too, better down a stiffy and open the envelope then
I am firefox, no more, no less. Just because I happen to disagree doesn’t mean I don’t have a mind of my own.
Paul, pm’s are "private" which means they are meant to be such.
As I stated to you I chose the pm path as I did not want a silly tit for tat thread to develop which had happened with Clivex on the music thread. I sensed that may happen given the over the top and aggressive post you made on my PCN thread.
I made a reasonable pm to you. Your reply began with "You are even more stupid than I thought in that case."
That is hardly the sort of response that would endear anyone to you is it.
But no worries. I was under the misapprehension that you were portraying yourself as a reasonable liberal minded soul (not unlike someone such as Grasonscolumn). However I am glad I now understand your dubious polictical leanings, and that I will no longer rise to your reactionary comments.
Clearly your definition of "reasonable" differs from mine. BTW if PM’s are private then why are you publicly quoting from one then? Not that I have any issue with you quoting from any PM I have sent you – indeed I am quite happy for the all the PM’s we have exchanged to be published in the open forum in full.
But like you say I don’t want to engage in a "tit-for-tat" slanging match – so let us agree to differ.
Let me ask you a serious question though? If we are discussing political leanings – why do you have this urge to compartmentalise people as right wing or liberal.
Is it not possible to have views that cover both ends of the spectrum – or is a complexity such as that too difficult a concept to grasp.
I fully accept I believe union power needs to be controlled and that is a view some would compartmentalise as "right wing".
However if you took the trouble to find out my views on say, race, then I think you would find my views are decidedly liberal.
As you have said yourself – you should not judge people without knowing all the facts.
well, i reckon she did more for this country than diana, except soldiers, and she got one
That’s a matter of opinion.
Sorry to disappoint Crizzy but this "discussion" is now over.
and no more offensive green ink PM’s for me if you would mind
None that start off "hello Slimeball" for instance
Thye will be deleted unread
However, let’s not forget that she also sold the assets of the state in a series of knock-down boot-sales, removed the index-link for pensions, determinedly perpetuated an unworkable status-quo in Northern Ireland, hiked the VAT rate (amongst other stealth taxation measures), had a devil-may-care attitude to the unemployment figures, single-handedly helping dismantle centuries-old communities, removed means-testing of local taxation and stopped kids getting free school milk because it cost too much
Havent cuaght up with posts subsequent to above yet Grass but
would agree assets were sold off too cheap…in certain cases anyway
and other points fair enough although the romantic old communities stuff is probably a bit overdone i feel. I know people who got out of those "coimmunities"
Poll tax was a disgrace. No argument there
Milk…well…ok
For all her failings and successes, I am grateful to Thatcher for one thing – she prevented Neil Kinnock from being PM.
In fact thats a pertinent point isnt it? Or Foot too…
The opposition simply wasnt up to it. There was an old joke about left liberlas voting labour but praying they wouldnt get in
Whatever people think of Maggie I think she deserves more of a send off then either Blair or Brown and all of their cronies.
At least she won a war – the Falklands. (Blair incidentally thought the British would lose against the Argies and was against it.)
For me Blair and his lot are nothing more than cowards and traitors for betraying the working class and the socialist cause.
For me Blair and his lot are nothing more than cowards and traitors for betraying the working class and the socialist cause.
When asked what her greatest achievement in politics was, she answered "New Labour"
Brillliant!At least she won a war – the Falklands.
Whilst Britain may have won the Falklands War, sending our troops in against a conscript army, was rather like putting Denman up against a plater – albeit on inconvenient ground.
The Argentinian Navy refused to leave port after the Belgrano went down, and the threat from the air could have been completely neutralised if British ships had been equipped with proper anti-aircraft defence. That they weren’t, was the responsibility of the Government of the day.
I confess it somewhat sticks in my craw that Mrs Thatcher is credited with winning the Falklands War, when it was actually down to hundreds of brave servicemen (and women?), many of whom gave their lives in a conflict that could very likely have been avoided, if the Goverment hadn’t signalled their intent to withdraw HMS Endurance from service.
For me Blair and his lot are nothing more than cowards and traitors for betraying the working class and the socialist cause.
If the left really thought that and had the courage of their convictions, then they should have had the guts to do what the right of the labour party did in the early eighties…and form a breakaway party
Why wont they?
Because they know as well as anyone that far left politics is dead and buried. A failed ideal which is now reduced to scrubbing around extreme right islamists for support
confess it somewhat sticks in my craw that Mrs Thatcher is credited with winning the Falklands
I agree in so far as it was her goverments (deliberate?) mistakes which led to the war in the first place. David Owen didnt get the same credit for taking preventitive action a few years prior as foreign secretary of course
As for Northern ireland,..her supposed intransigence (and i think it was more compliacted than that) perhaps had its roots in the loss of at least one close friend (Neave) to the IRA
but whatever else she was responsible for in that arean , her speech at Brighton after the bomb, was one of the most stunning performances i have ever seen from any politician. I was pretty ambivlent about her at that time but that was seriously impressive…
Both of you are right. My post was more of a dig at Blair and Brown then it was in praise of her.
I used to be a bit of a Blairite back in the day but now 1997 seems a long way away.
I suppose I’m just tired of how things have become after a year of Brown In power.
At least she won a war – the Falklands.
Whilst Britain may have won the Falklands War, sending our troops in against a conscript army, was rather like putting Denman up against a plater – albeit on inconvenient ground.
The Argentinian Navy refused to leave port after the Belgrano went down, and the threat from the air could have been completely neutralised if British ships had been equipped with proper anti-aircraft defence. That they weren’t, was the responsibility of the Government of the day.
I confess it somewhat sticks in my craw that Mrs Thatcher is credited with winning the Falklands War, when it was actually down to hundreds of brave servicemen (and women?), many of whom gave their lives in a conflict that could very likely have been avoided, if the Goverment hadn’t signalled their intent to withdraw HMS Endurance from service.
Agree on some points but disagree on others here.
The Rapier Air Defense System that was then in use by the MOD was acquired during the cold war with the intended purpose of defending our airfields and ships against aerial attack from the russians, and it was very good at that task. Unlike Iraq the Falklands was not a war that was seen coming from a long way off and the troops went with what they had.
It was the falklands terrain however that exposed the flaws in the rapier system of that time, IT COULDNT POINT DOWN, as it had never been designed to, yet the only tactical places where they could be placed for air defense was on the top of the many mountains in the falklands. The well trained and well equipped Argie Air Force soon realised that that the way to avoid being hit was to just fly low in the valleys, underneath the arc of fire of the Rapier.
It is also worth remembering that those (mostly) conscript soldiers took the Falklands and South Georgia from the Royal Marines, and furthermore that those conscripts had almost every tactically significant area minefielded to high heaven. Many areas of the island still are inefielded because the argies havent yet removed them.
It was no mean feat to take back the falklands (I wouldnt compare it to denman vs a plater) because of the sheer scale of the operation to get an invasion force down there sharpish. Not many leaders would have had the bottle to sink the belgrano (we can look back and call that a tragedy but how many lives did that save, we will never know) because that was a military decision to minimalise the naval aspect of the conflict, a type of warfare that at the time we did not have the resources to sustain for any long period.
I whole heartedly agree that not enough credit is given to the servicemen, and especially the parachute regiment, and especially those who fought at tumbledown ridge, because there are few military feats of endurance in history that can compare with what they done. Last year I was in the falklands (including for the 25th anniversary celebrations) and I had to "yomp" a kilometre of the terrain that they covered in the war, with much less weight than they carried, and due to the terrain I along with everyone else there was soon completely hooped. Add in the fact that they also done it in the middle of falklands winter, having been in the freezing sea water when landing, that they fought a battle at goose green (and lost people including their Commander) after about 40 kilometres, anmd then then went about a further 70 kilometres to tumbledown ridge, Mount Longdon etc and fought as battle in a minefield, where they werent up against conscripts, and where they took a battering and Sgt McKay won his posthumous VC. Full credit aswell to the other regiments who deployed straight to the falklands off ceremionial duties with very little (or no) preparation for what was ahead of them.
The Falklands war was won by the servicemen, but they were led by a prime minister that did everything possible to win that war, the troops were much better equipped than they have been for more recent far further forseen conflicts. In almost every bar you go into in the falklands they have pictures of Thatcher, when she visited there, which they keep with pride, along with the memorials for those who died liberating them . Since the war the island has been well defended in terms of manpower on the island, and training on the ground.
In the next few years, and especially with the price of fuel becoming increasingly expensive, the oil rigs will getting erected in the waters off the falkland islands and south georgia (and the area towards the antartic that through those two we hold claim to), and that will be British oil (what so many died for).
For all her faults she was some leader, and I think she should have a state funeral.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.