People who think Margaret Thatcher was good...why?

[malificent7]

I have s tory froend who worshipd Margaret Thatcher and cried when she died...just why? Can anyone explain please?

She contributed to the destruction of the steel and coal industry.

Except more coal mines closed down in the decade before she took power than in her first decade. But don't let the facts get in the way!

Coal was in decline due to the dominance of road transport, gas fires/boilers in homes, etc. People didn't have coal fires anymore, they didn't travel by steam trains. What was the point in continuing to mine for coal that no one wanted??

Not to mention that she was popular because she came after a decade in which we had regular power cuts, a 3 day week, emergency bail outs from the IMF, dead unburied, piles of uncollected rubbish, etc. People were ready for a change and wanted someone to take on the power of the trade unions.

She contributed to the destruction of the steel and coal industry.

Except more coal mines closed down in the decade before she took power than in her first decade. But don't let the facts get in the way!

The fact is she contributed to the destruction of the coal and steel industry. The fact others did too doesn't mean she didn't.

She didn’t take shit from
Anyone.

Data indicate that Thatcher’s housing policies were effective in boosting home ownership in the very short run, but have proved ineffective (at best) in the long run. A recent (Conservative) Prime Minister admitted as much in her 2017 conference speech, going so far as to promise a ‘new generation of council houses’ to ‘fix our broken housing market’ (May, 2017).

Nor were Thatcher’s policies for creating democratic capitalism any more effective in the long run. An increasing proportion of the UK’s productive assets and housing stock is now in the hands of foreign capitalists, while British households run up increasing debt to compensate for stagnant incomes. As a patriot, it is unlikely Thatcher would regard this as a positive outcome of her policies. Neither did her policies foster the moral economy for which she hoped; if anything, rather the opposite.

Some of us could see through her at the time.

academic.oup.com/cje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cje/bez037/5550923

She didn’t take shit from Anyone.
Bollocks - the Americans gave her sod all help in the Falklands which is why she had to get into bed with Pinochet.

Working hard doesn’t pay off for the majority.
Absolutely true.

To the person who said she raised the twins...they lived in an adjacent flat with the nanny.
And for all that she said about owing everything to her father, she rarely saw him or phoned him in his old age, which he spent with his other daughter.

Amazing how arrogant the hard left posters on this thread are, mere days after receiving the biggest electoral kicking in years. Some people just don't learn.

I really wish the Labour Party and groups like Momentum would start listening more, and shouting less. We need credible opposition, actual competition and political choice FFS.

Amazing how arrogant the hard left posters on this thread are, mere days after receiving the biggest electoral kicking in years

I know 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Op why didn't you ask her?

I grew up in Derbyshire in the 1980s. Thatcher was not exactly popular where I lived. In fact she was viscerally loathed.

During the miners’s strike she effectively declared war on us and our working class communities. We were ‘the enemy within’. She genuinely believed that the men who did horribly dirty and dangerous jobs digging coal out of the ground to keep our country’s lights on were Britain’s enemies. She hated us, so we hated her. Some things can never, ever be excused, mitigated or forgiven.

I remember the morning of the Brighton hotel bombing like it was yesterday. If I wrote down my true feelings about that day I would be banned from MN.

I understand that Thatcher’s later years were miserable, empty and lonely as she struggled with dementia. Again, if I wrote down my true feelings about that, I would be banned.

She was a detestable person who created a generation of 'Thatchers children' who put 'profit and self' before the common good. She treated Scotland like a test bed for her hated poll tax. She lied about the sinking of the Belgrano and she point blank refused to even try to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland through dialogue, while being prepared to dialogue with and defend Pinochet!

Funnily enough I spent most of Friday with the Billy Elliot song "merry Christmas Margaret Thatcher" head.

Can never think of Margaret Thatcher without thinking of the line in The Thick of It where Hugh says that he doesn’t understand how she got through on only four hours sleep a night, to which Glenn replies:

“Monkey glands. And she was mad. Mad people have different needs.”

Coal was in decline due to the dominance of road transport, gas fires/boilers in homes, etc. People didn't have coal fires anymore, they didn't travel by steam trains. What was the point in continuing to mine for coal that no one wanted??

We still use coal today 😂

The problem wasn’t the decline of the coal industry per se - it was the lack of long term planning for communities built around an industry that would collapse. She literally left them to rot.

Disgusting.

Not exactly true the Americans gave far more help than they admitted to at the time.

I think it was more to do with the vast improvements for the people who like her (like people who used right to buy or people who were not in the direct line of fire so benefited from a country that was working better). Obviously the people who were worse off like those working in subsidised industries don’t feel that way. If you were putting up with essential services that were not working you’d probably be grateful to whoever it was that fixed them too.

Amazing how arrogant the hard left posters on this thread are, mere days after receiving the biggest electoral kicking in years. Some people just don't learn.
Stating the facts about history I lived through isn't arrogance. You may be pleased we have another hard right government, but challenging your views and some of the more far-fetched and ridiculous revisionist assertions isn't arrogance. To cast it as such is just typical Thatcherite anti-intellectualism - don't deal in facts, just sneer at opponents.

I’m not hard left.

It’s amazing how those who vote Tory and defend the likes of thatcher just won’t own the fact that they think the poor deserve what they get.

I was a child of a single mother growing up under a thatcher government. She really struggled - awfully so and the state left me to rot.

In the end I’ve done pretty well and I’m sitting here in my big fancy house, with my fuck off big wage drinking my expensive wine.

I’ve done alright. However unlike a Tory, I want others to have more opportunities and don’t believe for a second that hard work is enough. It takes luck and, in my case, a helping hand from the state.

I’m paying it back now - and my salary puts me in the top 10%.

That’s what I want for everyone. Opportunity.

Yes you’ll get some scroungers - but that happens at every level in society and I’d rather believe that the majority of people are decent so let’s give them a helping hand eh?

That’s not hard left.

She took the milk out of schools... she will always be my hero.

My DF never drinks milk, or has cream in anything. I went to the same school as he did, with the front door in full sun in summer - where they 'stored' the milk. Nuff said.

Politics wise - meh, not that keen on all her choices.

I thought some people liked her because she was the first woman to do a job that had traditionally been a mans

Iron Lady isn't a compliment. Some people think it meant she was made of tough stuff, not to be messed with etc (which to a point she was) but most meant it as she had a heart of stone, who couldn't give a toss if the working class starved. I cant respect that side of her.

She was one of the first politicians to recognise Climate Change as a threat (her arguments were shot down by advisors who said they would only appeal to the left)

Never understood why people are so upset the mines have closed. Would you want your family to work down there?

Her handling of the dirty protest and the hunger strikes meant she was the best recruitment agent the IRA ever had. It also resulted in increased funding as her attitude evoked international sympathy for the republicans.

In a round about way, this probably led to the peace process as the IRA campaign increased as a result of her policies and thus made it much harder to ignore.

She was appalling. She fostered a selfish, uncaring society and the effects are still trickling down. Unfortunately I suspect we’re in for period which will make her look benevolent.