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Can someone explain Margaret Thatcher to me?

Brought back a medieval tax system which didn't work, destroyed important manufactoring and primary industries, privatised the infrastructure and generally led to the self-centred, greedy and lazy attitude we have now. The only thing she did of any merit was to "win" the Falklands War, but to be honest (as has been said previously) that would have been done by any other PM as it was the soldiers who did the fighting. If you seriously believe that such ridiculous right wing policies are the way to go then I suggest you look at the countries current state of affairs and see that much of it can be traced back to her.

Reply 61

Remarqable M

15

hamzab

Best thing this country ever had.

Didn't bow down to Union pressure, actually cut spending which did lead to unemployment but why lull yourself into a false sense of security.

God Save The Queen.

she is not the queen :lol:

A heartless bitch.

Matt_1892

A heartless bitch.

Don't be silly.

Reply 64

Sagand42

She invented Mr Whippy ice-cream.

Reply 65

MagicNMedicine

20

CandyFlipper

- She opposed EU integration, and our entrance to the Euro, despite pressue from many in her cabinet e.g. Nigel Lawson, to adopt it.

Not quite right, I know what you're getting at in that she opposed the idea of Eurofederalism, however she did allow Lawson to persuade her to join the ERM, which was the precursor designed to converge the currencies to lead to the Euro. Had we not fallen out of the ERM in 1992, and stayed in it, the odds are we would have adopted the Euro in the first wave. If you're writing an essay on Thatcher be careful how you word the fact that she opposed the single currency, because you have to acknowledge the fact she did enter us into the ERM, against her basic instincts, at the insistence of Lawson and Howe, and she regretted it soon after when her government was having to raise interest rates in order to keep sterling high enough to stay in the ERM, this was at a time when there was a recession which meant rising mortgage payments for all the new homeowners who had bought their homes under her right-to-buy scheme and were the voters she saw as her natural supporters.

Basically we were raising interest rates that were not in the interests of the UK economy, purely to keep us in a European 'currency zone', which was everything she hated about the idea of the single currency. It was odd and unlike Thatcher that she had allowed herself to be convinced on this one when usually she would have just said no, perhaps it shows that in her last couple of years, she was not quite the politician of old.

Reply 66

Teaddict

17

Margaret Thatcher was probably the greatest leader of all time... OF ALL TIME!
Naturally I am Tory so :biggrin:

Reply 67

paddyman4

14

Lone Commissar

Brought back a medieval tax system which didn't work, destroyed important manufactoring and primary industries, privatised the infrastructure and generally led to the self-centred, greedy and lazy attitude we have now. The only thing she did of any merit was to "win" the Falklands War, but to be honest (as has been said previously) that would have been done by any other PM as it was the soldiers who did the fighting. If you seriously believe that such ridiculous right wing policies are the way to go then I suggest you look at the countries current state of affairs and see that much of it can be traced back to her.

Could you elaborate on that last sentence please?

And industries which are not economic are not important - artificially keeping unemployment down is unsustainable.

Reply 68

d123

17

She was ready to step on anyone to get where she wanted. She can be held responsible for the recent credit crunch because of deregulation. She ruined the lives of ordinary people. Due to her economic policies there were high levels of unemployment which she didn't care about - her aim was to contract the economy.

She also stole the milk.

Reply 69

CandyFlipper

16

MagicNMedicine

Not quite right, I know what you're getting at in that she opposed the idea of Eurofederalism, however she did allow Lawson to persuade her to join the ERM, which was the precursor designed to converge the currencies to lead to the Euro. Had we not fallen out of the ERM in 1992, and stayed in it, the odds are we would have adopted the Euro in the first wave. If you're writing an essay on Thatcher be careful how you word the fact that she opposed the single currency, because you have to acknowledge the fact she did enter us into the ERM, against her basic instincts, at the insistence of Lawson and Howe, and she regretted it soon after when her government was having to raise interest rates in order to keep sterling high enough to stay in the ERM, this was at a time when there was a recession which meant rising mortgage payments for all the new homeowners who had bought their homes under her right-to-buy scheme and were the voters she saw as her natural supporters.

Basically we were raising interest rates that were not in the interests of the UK economy, purely to keep us in a European 'currency zone', which was everything she hated about the idea of the single currency. It was odd and unlike Thatcher that she had allowed herself to be convinced on this one when usually she would have just said no, perhaps it shows that in her last couple of years, she was not quite the politician of old.

True and I knew all that, I simplified. She was certainly reluctant to enter the ERM and it was partially resentment at being forced into it that made her demote Howe.

Reply 70

d123

17

paddyman4

Could you elaborate on that last sentence please?

And industries which are not economic are not important - artificially keeping unemployment down is unsustainable.

By that logic we would have to import all our food, clothes, machinery etc from elsewhere which would mess up the planet even more than it already is. Economic industries are not the most important and they certainly aren't the only important ones - I see agriculture as vitally important. Just because it doesn't require overpaid idiots doesn't make it worthless.

Reply 71

paddyman4

14

d123

By that logic we would have to import all our food, clothes, machinery etc from elsewhere which would mess up the planet even more than it already is. Economic industries are not the most important and they certainly aren't the only important ones - I see agriculture as vitally important. Just because it doesn't require overpaid idiots doesn't make it worthless.

You're talking about the state of the planet but you would have liked the coal mines to stay open?

Pretty much all our clothes are imported, but that's a different situation, where it is cheaper to make the clothes abroad. The mines were in a more extreme state. The pits which were closed were not making money. The coal was worth less than it cost to extract it. They had been propped up by heavy subsidisation from the government, who paid the difference simply to create artificial jobs. That was unsustainable. The pits were always going to have to close as the coal became more expensive to mine, transport of fuels from abroad became cheaper and the number of coal power stations fell, lowering demand and therefore worth of coal. Thatcher just happened to be the one in charge when the plug got pulled and then refused to cave to the unions. She reduced their power and today we get to see what powerful unions are like, after over a decade led by a government which is funded and thus controlled by them.

Closing the mines also had to happen for the country to become less dependent on dirty coal. It is the most polluting of the fossil fuels and we are only just seeing the technology to be able to burn it more cleanly.

Mines were also closed on a massive scale all over Europe, it wasn't just evil Thatcher.

Reply 72

MagicNMedicine

20

in_vogue

I've been reading up on Thatcher because I'm embarrassed by my lack of knowledge. The problem is, I've never studied politics or educated myself on many political topics, so the material I'm trying to read seems a bit difficult to make sense of.

Can someone give me an explanation of Thatcher, what she did, her policies, perhaps her ''pros'' and ''cons'' (if you can simplify it that far), maybe your personal opinion. I'm happy for you to get into whatever debate you want with each other about it, but before you do it can you focus on giving me an outline please.

Rep to the clearest/fullest one :o:

Mrs Thatcher had many ideas, one of the most important which you will come across is "Popular Capitalism". She basically believed that the free market was better than state intervention, and her policies were developed to try and make a lot of lower income people who would be traditionally state-intervention Labour party supporters, have a "stake" in the free market doing well, and thus support the Conservatives.

Basically after the Second World War the government built a lot of council houses, so by the time Mrs Thatcher came into power in 1979, a lot of people lived in these relatively cheap rent council houses. A lot of them were pretty scrappy but the idea was to make sure there was affordable housing available for everybody. Mrs Thatcher didn't like council houses. Her view was that it created a two tier society, those who owned their own homes were on the property ladder and could progress to better houses, and those who lived in council houses were going to stay where they were, in addition they didn't really care about their houses because it was the council's responsibility to maintain them, and hence a load of the tenants just neglected them creating generally dismal neighbourhoods.

Mrs Thatcher's idea was that if you increased home ownership by offering council tenants the right to buy their council houses for a seriously discounted price, they would then take more pride in their home because they owned it, once most of the houses in the street were owned by their owners, they would be better maintained and the street would be better so the houses would increase in value, so now the people living there had made a profit and were on the property ladder, could look at buying a better house in the future etc. She believed that giving people this sort of responsibility would make them take pride in their houses, it would take the pressure away from the councils to maintain them, and the overall standard of housing would improve. In the early to mid 1980s, many people took advantage of this right to buy scheme, and they got a very good deal, buying their houses cheap and watching them shoot up in value as the property market suddenly had a load more people in it.

As well as wanting people to become homeowners, she wanted them to become shareholders, traditionally it had just been rich people and businesspeople who owned shares, but she wanted to give lower income people the chance to become share-owning capitalists, because that fit with her vision of a private sector dominated, not state sector dominated, society, and she hoped that if they did well out of it, they would become natural Conservative voters rather than Labour. She privatised off many of the state industries, rail, gas, steel, british telecom etc, again these shares were sold off cheaply.

So for a few boom years in the mid 1980s, a lot of people who otherwise would have never owned their own home or shares, now thanks to Thatcher had a house, maybe had moved onto a bigger and more expensive house, and had shares, and generally felt wealthier, hence Mrs Thatcher after being elected with a small majority in 1979, got returned with landslides in 1983 and 1987. The problem was, a lot of these people had also got something else now which they wouldn't otherwise have got....big debt, mainly in the shape of a hefty mortgage where the payments depended on the rate of interest.

Towards the end of the 1980s, the economy went into recession, lots of people got made redundant, interest rates were high so suddenly peoples mortgage repayments shot up to levels they couldn't afford, the shares they had which had once boomed in price now crashed, and their houses lost value as well - for the unlucky ones who had moved up the property ladder at the time the market was at its peak, they were now in negative equity (ie their house was worth less than it was when they bought it). Many many of the people who had gained from Thatcher at first, were now in financial misery, and they held Thatcher responsible. Whereas in the past the more actively interventionist governments of the 50s, 60s and 70s insulated people from financial crises to a certain extent, guaranteeing wage rises, keeping people living in their council houses, now the state safety net was smaller so when families fell through there was nowhere to catch them.

Now the above is just a simplified account of one Thatcher's ideas and its effect on the people who benefited (at first) from it, there were many people in manufacturing/mining communities who never had any benefit or stake in Thatcherism, but this is a long enough post for now.

Reply 73

CyclopsRock

11

Ki_Kudos

I have to disagree buddy, I think for the majority of a country to vote against a party they do not want to represent them, yet the party still takes control, effectively makes the vote worthless. I can see were you come from about when to draw the line but Scotland is a legitimate nation with a parliament, although we never did back in Maggie's time we did have that proud national sentiment. I think a little nationalism is healthy but too much of it and it begins to cause hassle I reckon.

Hmm, I really don't understand that. Surely the arbitraryness is of absolute importance. You say that Scotland is a "legitimate nation", but what does that have to do with the political process? If a group of people just above Newcastle like Labour and didn't like being ruled by a Conservative, and a big group south of Watford liked the Conservatives and didn't like being ruled by Labour, I don't see why those north of Newcastle have any greater right to be separately legislated on than those south of Watford purely because 300 years ago they weren't in the union. It's a convenient border for sure, but I don't know how - morally or philosophically, if that's your kettle of fish - you can that Scotland has a right to self-determination but other large geographical groups with a largely cohesive political view don't.

Ultimately the solution is to devolve as much responsibility down to the individual as possible, thus removing this worry. That's not going to happen, though, so as it stands I'm entirely in favour of Scottish devolution. But then, I'm also totally in support of all kinds of regional devolution. If a single town wants to set its own tax bands, it should be able to, wherever it is. To distribute that right to only a handful of areas based on historical borders seems mental to me.

Reply 74

nihility

13

Teaddict

Margaret Thatcher was probably the greatest fascist leader of all time... OF ALL TIME!
Naturally I am Tory so :biggrin:

second only to hitler! :facepalm:

Reply 75

lauren--c

1

Clearly the milk is the most important thing, HOW DARE SHE

Nobody's going to give you an unbiased view cause everyone seems to have an opinion on her. I personally don't agree with her politics in general, I'm too much of a daft lefty.

Reply 76

Teaddict

17

nihility

second only to hitler!

There is just not enough negative rep.
At least Hitler was elected... which is more than I can say for Brown :wink:

Reply 77

nihility

13

Teaddict

There is just not enough negative rep.
At least Hitler was elected... which is more than I can say for Brown :wink:

lol. please do neg rep. its a badge of honour. i agree with you about brown. though i wouldnt equate him to hitler... :s-smilie:

Reply 78

Teaddict

17

nihility

lol. please do neg rep. its a badge of honour. i agree with you about brown. though i wouldnt equate him to hitler... :s-smilie:

Yeah... at least Hitler could paint and get elected to public office...

Brown is just terrible.... He can't even rally people to his cause.

Anyway, I will stop this now because no matter how bad Brown is he isn't as bad as Hitler...

Reply 79

vandiola

1

Well, she closed down all the mines (I think) and advised miners to go on incapacity benefit. She caused a massive reccession while she was in power. A lot of unemployment and bad economic growth. Oh and she took milk from kids. Sorry, I don't know any pro's about her, I've practically got all this information from my economics teacher.

Can someone explain Margaret Thatcher to me?

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