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AIBU?

To wonder why thatcher was at the ritz

146 replies

Lockedout434 · 09/04/2013 07:38

I understood that she was very ill with alzimers and had been suffering since 2000 ish. Was she living there or had she been taken out by someone.

Anyone any ideas?

OP posts:
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CruCru · 13/04/2013 13:15

Re security - I think all ex PMs have police security assigned to them for the rest of their lives. Tony Blair definitely still has them.

Also re Mark and Carol - if they hung around more in the UK, it would be their partners and kids also having to hang around. These are adults with jobs and responsibilities. Presumably they are also affected by the vitriol against their mother; if I were them I would stay away too.

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ajandjjmum · 13/04/2013 12:16

Heseltine's motivation was that he was determined to be PM.

Tebbitt left mainline politics to care for his wife who was seriously injured in the IRA bomb attack in Brighton.

My father met Tebbit on one occasion, where he (as a steelmaker) was complaining about the EU quota system which was being ignored by other countries, but maintained rigidly by the UK. They had a full order book, but couldn't produce as they had reached their quota levels, which would have meant laying off (good) men. DF was impressed with the speed in which Norman Tebbit grasped the problem, and more importantly resolved it, so that this privately owned (not by DF sadly!!!) company could continue to make profit, and therefore employ people.

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DioneTheDiabolist · 13/04/2013 00:40

My ExSiL had private breast augmentation. The payment covered recuperation in a 5star hotel. Apparently it was cheaper and easier to cover her costs there than in a hospital, where she would have had to relinquish the bed (and state healthcare nurse) for the actual sick and dying.

Big hotels have big rooms (for medical equipment) and the cost is only monetary, not need.

Many nurses (especially in London, where cost of living is greater) moonlight for private firms to top up their salaries.

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PTA · 13/04/2013 00:34

Yes you did have some big characters but none lasted as long as MT.

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edam · 13/04/2013 00:30

I'm not sure about that, you had big characters like Heseltine and Tebbitt, it's just as time goes on you forget about what seems like detail from today's perspective. She certainly gave the appearance of being dominant, however.

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PTA · 13/04/2013 00:24

But I think that is the point Edam, she ran the Government, seemingly on her own. I know this isn't true as she couldn't possibly do it all but she seemed to.

Even in the present set-up you have Dave, George and IDS but MT was onmipresent.

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edam · 13/04/2013 00:12

PTA - that's the difference between one individual woman and women as a group. One individual can be like this or like that. But if you have boardrooms and courtrooms and cabinets that always include a good mix of people, men and women, black and white, disabled and non-disabled etc. etc. etc. you will probably get better decisions - because you are choosing from a wider pool of talent and getting all sorts of different viewpoints and styles, not just same old same old recruited in the image of the person doing the job now.

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PTA · 13/04/2013 00:08

Thanks Ginger but I can't take credit as its from the Durham Miners.

MT is always going to polarise opinion, with each side believing that they are right and the other is wrong.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of her policy decisions, it was her unwavering conviction that she was right that seems to have caused most offence.

I have read/caught the tail end of programmes on "if women ruled the world" type discussions and all seem to think that if more women were is charge then there would be more consensus politics as women are more inclined to listen to others, think about the issues and not become so entrenched in a position as men. This was not true of MT, she rigidly stuck to her policies, some to the detriment of society ("the lady's not for turning"). In the end this was also the cause if her downfall as she still wanted to intoduce the poll tax despite opposition from her own party.

Some of what has been said about life in the 70's is true. (I remember the power cuts). However there are ways of doing things and then there are ways of doing things.

To me (and it is a very limited view as I haven't read/researched everything that I would like to come to an educated view) she did what may have had to have been done, but went about it in the wrong way. There is no argument that she destroyed some communities that have never recovered (mine included).

I also think that her legacy is living large within the present Government, and that frightens me. Again, there are things that need to be done given the current economic climate, but I think that the Government is going about it in the wrong way. As MT made the Unions, especially the Miners scapegoats, Dave and George are doing the same to the disabled (see the thread about ATOS), single mothers and the unemployed.

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ParadiseChick · 12/04/2013 13:28

I fear not!

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ajandjjmum · 12/04/2013 12:08

ParadiseChick
Maybe Holly was just trying to lighten the thread a little?

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ParadiseChick · 12/04/2013 08:17

holly you're losing credibility with comments like this
Five years of nagging as only a woman can, MT got all our money back from the IMF

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jennywren45 · 12/04/2013 07:11

Indeed the Ritz itself has paid no corporation tax for almost 20 years via (legal) tax avoidance schemes.


You mean Labour didn't do anything about this in their thirteen years in power? Shock

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Lottashakingoinon · 12/04/2013 07:06

I'm curious as to why people are calling her just by her surname, and not Mrs Thatcher, or Margaret Thatcher

LaQueen I have not yet read the whole thread (flame me, flame me now!) but my response to this is: I would not take part in street parties or celebrations; I have too much of a broad general woolly respect for life and death for that and in any case it's not like she died when she was still capable of doing damage. However in view of the severe and lasting damage and suffering she DID cause when she was at her height I will not accord her any personal respect at all. So I will ONLY refer to her as Thatcher, not even Mrs Thatcher

Genuine answer; a small thing but mine own! (Can't speak for anyone else obviously)

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HollyBerryBush · 12/04/2013 06:58

Unions have their place as a collective negotiating tool, but when they get out of control, as they were in the 70's, life becomes untenable for all.

I was a union rep for the thick end of 20 years, in the main because no one else would do it. I am vehemently against strike action.

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ItsYonliMe · 12/04/2013 06:54

Trade Unions destroy countries. I've heard a few Australians this week saying that they need a Margaret Thatcher here in Australia.

Oil & Gas companies are actually running jobs in the USA now to avoid employing Australians - due to the problems that Unions are causing.

An example - huge ships with pipelines from Italy are forced to change crews and employ local Australians when they arrive here. Guess what happens then; the Unions get involved, accident rates rise tremendously and work grinds along at half the speed it should.

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HollyBerryBush · 12/04/2013 06:47

Why does no one mention it was Harold Wilson who started the programme of ending free school milk? Convenience I suppose.

And it was Ted Heath who forced through the ending of milk for the over 7's. MT was very much against it, but being the only woman in cabinet at that time, took the flack as Education Secretary.

The miners will always have a slant. Again conveniently forgetting MT took on a bankrupt country; the pound had been devalued and Labour has allowed us to be screwed over by the then Common Market. Five years of nagging as only a woman can, MT got all our money back from the IMF.

Where are we now? Oh yes, being bailed out again after another disastrous run of inept Labour policies that have driven us to the edge of bankruptcy yet again. Gordon Brown and prudence? I think not. Remember the gold fiasco for one thing!

None of MTS major policies were overturned by NuLabour - remind me again, why was that?

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Gingerodgers · 12/04/2013 06:40

Great post PTA.

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RichManPoorManBeggarmanThief · 12/04/2013 01:03

It is our business, though, given that the Barclay brothers don't pay very much tax and the Ritz doesn't pay much tax either

Details please

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ravenAK · 12/04/2013 01:01

Blu - indeed. Grin

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thecook · 12/04/2013 00:45

The Barclay Brothers who own the Ritz invited her to stay for free. She brought her own security. This is a fact. I have inside info

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PTA · 11/04/2013 22:42

Perhaps this might go some way to explain why she is so hated and reviled.


From the Durham Miners;

"Margaret Thatcher - an Obituary

Margaret Thatcher died in the Ritz Hotel on the morning of Monday 8 April 2013.

She first came to attention in 1970 when, as Minister of Education in the Heath government, she ended the supply of free school milk to school children over the age of 7.

She never understood why this caused so much resentment and why it earned her the title ?Thatcher the milk snatcher?. It was this detachment and lack of empathy with ordinary people that was to define her political career.

Although highly educated, she had a simplistic philosophy. For Thatcher, the historic problems of British industry were caused, not by lack of investment and innovation, but by trade unions and strikes were caused not by grievances but by evil leaders.

To rectify this she introduced the most repressive anti-union legislation in Europe which, some claim, was her greatest achievement but those who have seen their wages outstripped by inflation year on year do not view it this way.

Her ?economics of the housewife? led her to the conclusion that Britain would be better off without manufacturing industry and that banking and financial services should be liberated from state interference and regulation.

This policy spectacularly burst into in flames five years ago when the state had to ?interfere? by bailing out almost the entire the banking system.

Those who inherited her ideology are now using the full force of the state to make the people of Britain pay for the orgy of greed that she encouraged so enthusiastically.

Many who loyally bought into her dream invested their hard-earned cash in pension funds and many have been duly informed that the promise of a comfortable retirement is not going to be honoured.

For some their pensions are next to worthless or have been stolen by fraudsters. These same pensioners are now at the mercy of the service industries she privatised with their price hikes and mis-selling scams. They have a right to be incensed, but this time they can?t blame the trade unions.

In the communities where once men and women worked in useful occupations, manufacturing useful commodities, we now have industrial deserts where hope for the young is dashed by the spectre of permanent unemployment. For the fortunate there is the low paid servitude of the call centres or the short time uncertainties of the service sector.

In her long term of office, she supported the apartheid regime of South Africa and dubbed Nelson Mandela a ?terrorist?. She was a bosom friend of Chilean fascist dictator Pinochet who overthrew a democratically elected government and slaughtered thousands of Chilean workers including its elected president. She sunk the Belgrano when it posed no threat, and sent hundreds of young Argentinean cadets to their deaths.

But it is, of course, the destruction of our mining industry and the damage to our villages and towns that exercise our anger most. It is an often repeated in the media that in 1984 Arthur Scargill called a strike. It is a lie. He did not. The truth is that Margaret Thatcher deliberately provoked a strike.

After the appointment of Ian McGregor to the chairmanship of the National Coal Board, on 28 March 1983, which was a provocation in itself, pits closed piece meal throughout 1983. But this was not good enough for Thatcher. Her political agenda required the destruction and humiliation of the National Union of Mineworkers and to do so she was prepared to destroy the industry.

The announcement of a massive closure programme in February 1984 caused a strike at Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire, a colliery led by moderate miners not noted for their support of Scargill and from Cortonwood the strike spread spontaneously.

There is irrefutable evidence that the Tories had been preparing this confrontation prior to 1979 when they were still in opposition. Central to these preparations was the organisation of a mobile and nationally controlled police force capable of rapid deployment to the coalfields.

From the first day of the strike miners were denied their legal right to travel freely. They were regularly falsely arrested, beaten and framed. It was this systematic gratuitous state organised violence, which turned many moderate local miners? leaders into militants. It steeled our communities, bound them together and made them more determined than ever not to allow state violence to win.

After a full year, the miners were defeated but Thatcher did not have long to savour her victory as Prime Minister. Her pigheaded imposition of the poll tax moved a people weary of the politics of greed to revolt. She became an embarrassment to her party and they brutally cast her aside.

When we say we celebrate her death, we are reflecting the deep and lasting bitterness of our mining communities ? and felt across the entire working class ? at the ravages of her brutal policies which destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people.

Even today, we see the legacy of her policies in the continued vandalism of the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition, this time aimed at dismantling the Welfare State. Thatcher infamously said, ?There is no such thing as society?. She was the person who wrecked it..

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ParadiseChick · 11/04/2013 22:26

Blu Grin

I got it!

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Snazzynewyear · 11/04/2013 22:09

How much of what's written on here is anyone else's business? We may as well close down Mumsnet altogether if that's a requirement. People come here to discuss stuff they want to discuss. They want to discuss this. Whose 'business' it is is irrelevant.

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edam · 11/04/2013 22:03

It is our business, though, given that the Barclay brothers don't pay very much tax and the Ritz doesn't pay much tax either. Essentially taxpayers picked up the bill for Maggie's last stay.

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edwardsmum11 · 10/04/2013 09:35

Really no ones business tbh...

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