to not shed a single tear?

[ModernToss]

BBC saying that Thatcher has died following a stroke

Re hating feminism....I feel she partly had a point....but perhaps my experience so far has been from feminists who have taken the idea way too far and look down their noses at any woman who doesn't choose to be rich and powerful.

Erm, I don't think feminism is about women becoming, or as you say 'choosing' to become rich and powerful.

what I've said about Jimmy Saville was fact, he was proved to be guilty of certain crimes

Can you point me to a court judgement on that then Hohoho? No? Didn't think so.

OP, you are emphatically NBU.

Feminism isn't about being rich and powerful. Thatcher, on the other hand, was part of a political outlook that saw nothing wrong - in fact positively applauded - people becoming rich and powerful.

I'm a lifelong card-carrying feminist and I don't know a single feminist of my generation who didn't hate Thatcher.

That is an interesting definition of feminism there flamin.

I will be sad when Nelson Mandela dies: not least because he spent decades in prison by a regime that Thatcher supported.

Mainly, I am agreeing with ComposHat.

'anyone celebrating the death of a human being is pretty vile in my eyes'

Er...like , you mean?

Not to mention Bobby Sands and co...

I think its disgraceful people celebrating her death. Have some compassion for a fellow human being and her family.

Personally its attitudes like this that make me feel sad about the world we live in. The actions of ordinary people make up more about the world we live in than a single politician if we had more kindness, compassion and patience towards each other then our country would be much nicer place.

Grow up and remember if you have nothing nice to say then best you say nothing at all.

This sums it up beautifully.

I love you Composhat. Have my first ever emoticon/picture thingy

I personally have just picked up some nice cheap champagne from co-op.

And to all the posters who are banging on about her being a human being, she didn't give two shiny shits about human beings when she was alive. Why should we when she's dead?

No tears here. Are people really in tears? Is she the new Diana?

del so you feel the need to lower yourself to her level? Can you not be the bigger (wo)man? Why do you feel the need to spread hatred? Just because she made you hate her first?

Elsie...I would agree...although I wasn't defining feminism - my understanding always having been that feminism was supposed to be about choice. The comment was purely surrounding my own very limited experience concerning feminism.

Thatch saw kindness and compassion as weaknesses.

I am quite 'grown up', thank you, I just don't think that being all pink and fluffy about a completely appalling human being is necessary.

I think this has a lot to do with how people see death in different ways. For some it seems no matter how awful you are/were death brings a sort of blanket forgiveness and respect. others don't. I loathes her alive and never had a good word to say about her and as I don't want to be a hypocrite I am sticking with that

Hi trazzle- Because my hatred for her at least wont hurt anyone. It may mean people think less of me (I can cope with that) but at least my emotions towards a person/people I have never met, won't make them go hungry, it won't destroy communities, it won't lose them their jobs, and it won't leave despair and depression for hundreds of thousands of people.

My hatred for her is harmless, hers for me and people like me wasn't

All together now "ding dong, the witch is dead"..

How long before that gets deleted

Love her or hate her, she was still an astonishing woman. First female PM, came from a working class background to run the country, was elected 3 terms, gave many opportunities to many people from all classes.

She stood up for her beliefs with true conviction, and complete passion. Whether or not one believes in her politics or decisions, we clan still learn much from her attitude.

I for one, am sad she has passed, but given some posts in this thread, am guessing that the economy may well be boosted by the amount of champagne planned for tonight

People keep on worrying about her family being upset by our criticism... Her son Mark is a fraudster convicted of trying to start a coup in Africa. He seldom visits the UK, his kids are being brought up in the States and I'd imagine her grandchildren seldom if ever met her. Her daughter made it clear that her relationship with her mother was chilly. Carol spent 12 years only seeing her mother by appointment via a secretary and her twin, Mark, was blatantly their mother's favourite. Back in the day it was downright embarrassing. Not a happy or united family.

So there's no loving band of rellies grieving. Mrs Thatcher's marriage was, it seems, very successful, but he's been dead 10 years. Her son will grieve, perhaps. She was, after all, Mark's greatest fan, despite his unsavoury reputation.

"Mr Thatcher must rank among the most successful businessmen of the 1980s. Some estimate his fortune at more than £40m. Yet before his mother became Prime Minister in 1979 he had little money; by the time she stood down, in 1990, he had a mock Georgian home in Dallas and was shortly to buy a £2.1m mansion in Kensington, south-west London. There have been allegations, but never proof, of mother and son working together to win overseas contracts."

Old profile of Mark Thatcher in the Indie.

My hatred for her is harmless, hers for me and people like me wasn't

this ^^

I would never call Thatcher a feminist. Anything but. But still, becoming the first, and only, female PM (especially in that era and coming from her background) was a staggering achievement that showed a disbelieving populous it was possible for a woman to not only lead the country, but lead in anything but a fluffy way.

Without her we would still be waiting for a female PM, and I for one am glad I can tell my dd that it has happened, albeit once.

George Galloway, Saddam's mate, wasn't fit to shine her shoes. And needs to send pathetically juvenile tweets in order to try and forget that fact

I've never really taken much notice of her...I was a child of the 80's and remember coal miners picketing etc, I remember the Faulklands et. I had no idea she was from a working class background and find it astonishing that she seemed, from what I have read here and the few recollections I have of her time at number 10, to hate the working class. Or perhaps that had to do with her hating that she was working class and wanted to get rid of the working class all together. If I had been her I'd have wanted to do everything possible to promote the very communities I had come from.

One of the reasons given for her attaining the leadership of the Tories (against all the outwards odds) was that the old-style wet Tories were reminded of their childhood nannies by her bossy, hectoring ways - they seemed to find this vaguely alluring in the beginning. . Of course, once they grew sick of it she was far too firmly ensconced in power for them to get rid of her and she gradually got rid of them instead, replacing them with Thatcherites, many of whom came from less grand beginnings. She wasn't working class either, she was lower middle class, a shopkeeper's daughter as she proudly trumpeted - all the while enjoying the life provided by her millionaire husband and the opportunities available for feathering her own nest that being PM provided.

It was barely working class.