To think that it's perfectly fine to be pleased someone is dead when they caused such a lot of harm?

[LoopaDaLoopa]

So, all these people saying it is inappropriate to speak ill of the dead are all positive and nice about Pol Pot are they? Stalin? Hitler?

Just because someone dies does not make them a nice person.

And did you feel sorry for Saddam Hussain's family? Or did it not cross your mind?

As a previous resident of west yorks I always wondered what the poor old mill workeers did to disqualify themselves from the cloying sympathy doled out in such liberal quantities to the miners by gobshites who couldn't find Yorkshire if their lives depended on it.
I think the sentimentality about the pits is probably a hangover from the hardships of the 1930s, which the parts of the ruling upper-middle class got very exercised about. When the 1980s came round they got retrieved their grandparents' bleeding hearts from the back of the cupboard. Wankers.

They weren't "whiners" Lesmis ( misnomer or what?) They were hard working people that her society left behind, there were no jobs after she was done, and its not that easy to Get On Your Bike if you have kids. Have a little compassion.

And Xenia, do you not realise that she created that? The dependency culture was a direct result of her policies. Read your history, people.

YY Xenia

And Bella - Few people have a problem with travellers who buy land, follow plannng regulations before building on it and pay council and income tax. Did your family do that? If not then they lived outside the law and thus cannot complain when being moved on. If what you say is true, it is unfortunate and unacceptable that some policemen involved were horrible though.

Moved on? Homes smashed up etc. do you mean?
Also its a way of life, I mean what if someone told you you need to move out of your house and go and live in a trailer, moving on every week, its the same thing
Also, its actually legal to stop anywhere you want as long as you move on when told

And no my family did none of that!

MS Bella, so what you are saying is that Mrs Thatcher refused to allow your family and others to break the rules that the vast majority of Britons live by? Sorry that you were personally traumatised as a child, but good for her.

Pfft, she declared war on a whole group of human beings you know, she caused a lot of peoples lifes to be ruined

There is definitely a north/south divide on the popularity of MT, her government and policies. She hated the North and her 'managed decline' policies of some parts of the North in particular Liverpool after the 1981 riots, were even too extreme for some of her own party.

That's right it was nothing personal against areas that were considered more socialist in thinking and non Tory voting. You know like introducing the Poll Tax in Scotland first. Just a coincidence that.

Quite a few people on here saying (as I did) I'm from the north and she did the right thing...
And, at least in 1984, the Tories won/held a number of Scottish seats and a number of northern ones too- they had to in order to get a majority...
The idea behind the Poll tax was to make local councils (mainly Labour ones ...like Liverpool, Manchester and Greater London) responsible for their own budgets -so that the local residents had to foot the bill of their excesses ....ie your poll tax is £500 under Labour but under a Conservative council it would be £300. It was supposed to be a vote winner for the conservatives...in Labour strongholds. It was very badly presented...
It would have been nearly impossible to collect (I moved flat every 6 months for a couple of years -and don't think any landlords would have decreased the rent!) but - why should a single elderly person whose children have left home, spouse has died pay the same as a family of 4 adults living in the same sized home next door ...who creates the most waste to dispose of, who uses the local facilities more? (having a bigger house means nothing except your upkeep costs/heating bills will be higher - doesn't mean you cost the local council anymore...)

Yes, loads of us from the North including on here supported Thatcher. If I compare the City of my childhood - pre Thatcher, waste, desolation, no work with the City that it now is and the many other Northern cities from Manchester to Leeds and beyond, they are so so much different. Yes, there are areas with poverty but there has been a huge improvement in infrastructure. Docks were done up. The abject poverty we saw as children is nothing like as bad and a whole generation were inspired by Thatcher to get on their bike and build things up. Some of those Northern cities are full of enterpreneurs who made something of themselves.

As for the community charge (poll tax) it was not popular but the principle was supported by many and indeed why should you not pay something for services if you use them? Paying makes people appreciate something more than if they are uninvested in their society. It is a good sound principle.

Harold Wilson closed more pits than Margaret Thatcher! In the same way that Labour has done more in Tony Blairs regime to fuck over the NHS and Welfare (by privatising providers and driving costs up) BUT that never got mentioned at the time! Now the Tories are blamed for the destruction of the NHS and the Welfare state. I am in the fence politics wise but do notice the bizarre bias of the press and BBC.

the rich get rich, the poor get poorer. Therein lies the Thatcher legacy

I think there are more fundamental factors than Thatcher responsible for increasing inequality.

"Over the two decades prior to the onset of the global financial crisis, real disposable household incomes increased an average of 1.7% a year in its 34 member countries. However, the gap between rich and poor widened in most nations ? the OECD journalist resource (2011-05) entitled "Growing Income Inequality in OECD Countries" states that with the exceptions of only France, Japan and Spain, wages of the 10% best-paid workers have risen relative to those of the 10% least-paid workers "

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality

While I don't think explicit redistribution change much under her, she is hated for putting a stop to an unfair hidden/parallel benefits system, the one where governments put billions each year into uneconomic enterprises. The impact of this would have been temporary in a textbook free-market economy, but if there are blighted communities today as a result of these changes, I put the blame on the UK benefits system, which traps people where there is no living to be made. In addition to universal credits hopefully making work always pay, maybe we should have a rule that if you live in the poorest x% of local authorities, and no-one in the household is in work, you should be required to move to a less depressed area as a condition of receiving out-of-work benefits. (Relocation costs should be paid.)

Someone here or somewhere else explained that the poll tax was brought in in Scotland as there was already great unrest there due to a rerating of the rates, making them more expensive than they were - so it seemed sensible to MT to bring in a poll tax to share the burden more fairly. The Scots (as usual) thought they were being picked on and rose against it.

The silent majority (I presume because the vociferous haters appear to be in abundance at the mo) voted her in 3 times. Apparently she got in on an unfair system according to previous posters. But in the end, like DCameron now, people wanted what she offered, they just don't/didn't spend time shouting about it.

I would have thought Labour's introduction of tuition fees (when they all benefitted from free education and student grants themselves) would be one of the factors most likely to increase inequality than anything Margaret Thatcher introduced.

Her detractors also conveniently fail to remember that the rates system in Scotland was incredibly unpopular, and that Scotland has long been subjected to wasteful Labour-run councils who had a tendency, more so in the past, to make poor use of the money they spent.

tbh if you were a young talented graduate, with no desire to work in the public sector, banking or the oil industry, it is going to be tempting to move down south or abroad, leaving the left wingers and their policies up here.

Grinkly - David Cameron didn't get a majority.

My parents were some of the people who voted Thatcher's administration in each time but they now say they made a mistake.

Dear god another stupid pointless thread with ill researched facts

Is it a case of your all trying desperately to justify you vile reactions to a womans death

And comparing her with those you have mentioned is ridiculous

desperately wanting to tell the 'celebrators' to shut the fuck up, grow up and learn how to behave like a respectable person

Cameron had to seek help to maintain a majority.
Cameron is continuing Thatcher's legacy by penalising the poor for their very existence. The only difference is that Cameron has decided to encourage the press to initiate the deserving and undeserving poor dialogue and this time the disabled are targetted too.

What I find amazing about her supporters and todays' Tories is that they seem to forget about the billons of the taxpayers money that has gone into supporting the loss making banks. I blame the DM which has lied and lied to their gullible readers to blame the 'undeserving poor' for the recession and not the Big Bang of the Stock Exchange which was pushed through by Thatcher, Lawson and President Reagan leading directly IMO to the recession we're in now.

New Labour would've been howled down by the fat cats if they had tried to change anything (they didn't try it's true but it was all okay then why shot the golden goose?).

*The Scots (as usual) thought they were being picked on and rose against it.

And whats the "as usual" comment meant to mean..

Let us hope they vote for independence. We are crossing our fingers in England.

No Xenia as usual you speak for you.

Have reported your comment, Xenia.

Hi Xenia, you may get your wish ,love, this bedroom tax will i assure you be Cameron"s poll tax,make no mistake about that ! Scots will undoubtable vote to split the union, out of absolutely fuck all interest re your dumn ass post ,>why do you think you speak for others ? as in "we are ....."