to think you can have an opinion on Maragret Thatcher regardless of when you were born?

[NewStartInSpring]

Sorry I know people are sick of MT threads. However this one isn't about whether you are happy/sad she died or whether she did have good/bad policies etc.

I have seen quite a few people say that your opinion (regardless of what it is) isn't valid if you were not born during the time MT was Prime Minister.

Aibu to think this is ridiculous?

Surely if you believe that then the majority of us wouldn't be able to express an opinion on Hitler for example.

I was born in 1989, so I was blissfully unaware about Margaret Thatcher and her politics. I am still not big on politics now at the age of 23. I really don't have an opinion on her because I have I idea what she did/ didn't do. I could very well go on to good old Wikipedia and "educate" myself about the whole thing but I won't.

To me an old lady has just died and she should be laid to rest peacefully.

Moomins I think as a former lecturer, I'm entitled to a well researched opinion. It's hardly a well worn phrase.

Of course you can have an opinion on her regardless of whether alive during her time as PM.

Part of taking a balanced approach (whichever side of fence you're on) should be realising that it's probably not coincidence that most people have very similar politics to their parents, and that mainstream discussion/views on issues will tend to get polarised and look very different with hindsight.

Even research will be read though the lense of your initial view of something.

YANBU. I have opinions on people who not only were in power before I was born, but who lived and died all before my birth.

You can of course also have a poorly-thought-out knee-jerk not-worth listening-to opinion of Margaret Thatcher, regardless of when you were born.

I think it's ridiculous that all the policies are blamed on one person. She was just the figurehead for a cabal of people who would have had their way regardless of who got into power. It's awful and macabre that people are celebrating her death, it's not like she was the British equivalent of Pol Pot (albeit granted some of the foreign policies in her term actively supported such people in other lands).

YANBU

what a stupid thing to say that you are. I think if you were born after or too young to remember you will not have experienced such a political time as politics are less extreme now it was a very political time with huge changes within our society

Dawn - I didn't refer to you at all. I was commenting on the phrases repeated in the press by people who are not informed or have political education. I think there are fewer people these days with an interest/knowledge of politics than there was 20/30 years ago.

Oh Lordy. I am very sorry Moomin. If it's any consolation I did make a Doctors appointment today, to go back on the HRT.

I think if you are well read and have heard both sides of the argument, you are entitled to have an opinion. If you are a mindless sheep accepting everything that is poured down your gullible throat, without taking time to analyse and critically question, then you still have the right to an opinion, and I have the right to consider you an ignorant plonker.

^^ This.

What is amusing me is the idea that it's ok for younger people to have an opinion on the Thatcher era if they have done their research and if they fully understand what went on, but it isn't ok for them to just regurgitate "propaganda" that they have heard in the media. And yet, when judging our current government, isn't that exactly what many people do? How many voters really do their research and how many just listen to what they see/hear in the media?

YABU to say it's a 'ridiculous' idea that younger people can't have an opinion. The Thatcher legend is something that has grown and got exaggerated as the years have gone on and I think the one thing that younger people don't have access to or maybe don't appreciate is the experience of life in the time before Thatcher. Because that provides the context against which subsequent decisions and actions have to be judged. If someone's always taken for granted, for example, that they can go into a shop and buy a new telephone or go onto a comparison site and change energy supplier then it's hard to imagine life when that simply wasn't possible.

Under Thatcher I was able to go to university and come out the other end debt free. Thatcher's milk snatching fades into insignificance compared to that.

The human and financial cost of following 'Dubaya' Bush into Iraq and Afghanistan is much greater than the Falklands War and Desert Storm.

Then there was the 2008 financial meltdown and the pitiful 'recovery'. Today, the City fat cats are even fatter than under Thatcher.

Some/most of the Prime Ministers that came after Thatcher were just as bad, if not worst. Anyone who singles out Thatcher as an especially bad PM is IMO displaying an ignorance of politics, history and current affairs

YABU - because this is the second thread on whether first-hand, direct experience matters.

Everyone can have an opinion. But whether you actually lived through it (and more importantly the internationally bailed-out, finanically wrecked Britain of the 1970s), or whether you learned of it as a topic makes a big difference.

I think historians would describe this as the difference between primary and secondary sources.

YANBU

Otherwise people would not be allowed an opinion on the political ideology of Hitler, Winston Churchill etc etc

Having an opinion without much actual knowledge on a subject is U. But you don't have to have been born when a leader was operating to have an opinion on them. That is irrelevant.

Of course you can have an opinion. I think that's different from having feelings as a result of direct experience though. The people with sincere emotions about Thatcher, one way or another, are mostly those directly affected by her policies, while she was in power and who took those policies personally. Those are really the only people I can understand having a visceral, personal response to her death.

(And she was not just a figurehead, Minimishi, she is regarded as powerful and memorable precisely because she drove through changes that she originated and that possibly no-one else could have implemented).

Of course you can have an opinion, but if you were actually living through it your opinion might be one that is more 'real'.

I lived through it and it was not pleasant I can assure you, but whether she is dead or not does not concern me.

And the day she was chucked out of downing street by her own party I certainly breathed a sigh of relief.

As others have said, of course it's fine to have an opinion but at least have a read around and form a balanced opinion. Much of what has been said is simply lies, ignorance and selective memory.

UK before Thatcher came to power was not some sort of socialist utopia. Well maybe if you were 'in the club'. You know, some union official. Then life was just peachy. But for most people it was pretty damn shit.

So those who think Thatcher fucked up their cosy little lives may take a moment to consider how much worse things would have been if she hadn't have dragged the UK back into the 20th century by it's bollocks rather than continue being the sick man of Europe with double digit inflation, power cuts, rubbish piling up and millions of days lost each year because of strikes.

I was alive and working during the 70s and it wasn't "pretty damn shit" - I remember life being pretty good. My recollection of what blew it for a lot of people was the oil crisis of 1972 - house prices rocketed for example.

or maybe I remember 15.4% interest rates on my mortgage.

My rates being £250 per year and poll tax put it up to £1400 per year [just like that]

Also shall I forget the way she cosied up to dictators of the world like saddam hussain and helped arm him so he could fight Iran.

How she single handely wiped any power any union ever had.

and in the end even her own party had had enough ,, says it all really!!

I could go on and on.

[my spelling is shocking today]

lavolcan.... AGREE

YANBU. I don't object to anyone having an opinion so long as it is their own. If you are repeating someone else's views as fact then I start to have a problem .

I was 15 and very uninterested in politics when MT left office. Everything I know about her has been learnt as an adult, it didn't help me to have been alive while she was PM at all (information wise).

Oh nice guy, do stop banging on about how awful socialism was. It really wasn't, and the fantasy to which you refer is as much yours as others.

I was 9/10 when she came out of power. I can't remember her policies but I know my parents divorced because of all the trouble with the coal mines. My dad was a miner and lot his job when the colliery he worked at was closed.

During WWII the Japanese killed millions of Chinese civilians either with a bullet or by starving them. Stalin and Lenin killed millions of their own people. Fast forward to recent years and the 'ethnic cleansing' in Eastern Europe and Rawanda.

My point? People tend to fixate on Hitler being the most murderous leader in recent history or how Thatcher was the worst PM. But when you step back and read the history books, there were worst before and after them.

M0na - Fast forward to today. A lot of people are getting divorced as a result of the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis.

Shit happens under every government, not just the ones where Thatcher was PM.