Maggie is Dead.

[Talkinpeace]

at last.

Good for you that were able to. I'm just imagining what it must have been like to have been a miner since leaving school, to live in some rain sodden bloody Welsh valley, your nearest town being BRIDGEND for God's sake, knowing nothing else, and suddenly facing the wholesale dismantling of the only industry and employment there has ever been in your village, in fact the village's entire reason for existing. And then a dole cheque and a job in Tesco's. Have you ever been to Nantymoel for example? I am not saying the coal industry as it was was sustainable. But the rapid and wholesale closure of the industry, and the obvious pleasure with which it was done is what people remember. Mines like Tower Colliery proved they were not all uneconomical, by any means.

It's all very well being told to get on your bike and look for work, but if I was one of them, I'd not be a fan of Thatcher either.

'erm..see the bank's bail out using taxpayers monies to keep their 'community' going, claig.'

Well yes, we all know teh bankers had New Labour under their thumb and they have teh current lot under their thumb too. But if Thatcher were in charge now, she would probably have sorted the bankers out too.

She took teh miners on and she would probably have taken the bankers on too.

It's comments like that which smack of hero worship and cult of personality.

'It's all very well being told to get on your bike and look for work, but if I was one of them, I'd not be a fan of Thatcher either.'

I'm not a fan of Blair, but I don't disrespect him.

The country does not run in order to keep people in their "communities" because they have known nothing else. The country does not run in order to keep MPs' in expenses either. Things change and times change and the global economy forces change.

Thatcher could not sit there like King Canute or King Scargill and order change to stop. She was responsible for the entire country, the entire economy and not just some "communities".

no she wouldn't have taken the bankers on. They are the vested interests that keep Tory ideology in place. Even you know that claig.

fwiw I despise New Labour. Gutless chancers and character-wise not holding a (1973/4) candle to Thatcher.

'It's comments like that which smack of hero worship and cult of personality.'

Thatcher was a brave woman. She took on the miners and faced them down in a battle that lasted over a year. She took on General Galtieri and won when many of her ministers and even some of eth military were saying it could not be done.

I think the bankers may also not have been a match for her, since she created the Big Bang and ended the dominance of our small merchant banks with their public school boys in bowler hats and opened up banking to the world.

All I hope from this is that when the dust settled she is remembered for ALL she has done, GOOD and BAD.

She changed Britain. It was out with the old, in with the new. It was the end of bowler hats and the decline of coal mines. It was a renaissance in small business and a share-owning, property owning working and middle class.

She took on the vested interests who resisted change - the miners and the merchant bankers and teh elites who looked down their nose at a woman leading teh country. She smashed through their glass ceilings and the working classes of Essex and beyond voted for her and her real "aspiration nation".

It was the end of the Etonians in bowler hats and the end of privilege and the rise of ex-market traders like Alan Sugar. It was a time for enterprise and the end of who you know and the start of what you know.

It was a time of change.

The class system has been shattered. We no longer respect the toffs because of their accents. Ther eis no longer a need for "elocution lessons" because it is now all about what you know and not who you know.

She started the real meritocracy where working and middle class people could earn huge rewards in business. They were no longer held back by stifling class structures.

She fought the elitists tooth and nail while they looked down on this middle class grammar school grocer's daughter.

"To the patrician, public-school Tory Wets, this was anathema. There was no love lost between the grocer?s daughter and the privileged men who once dominated the party. I felt no sympathy for them Mrs Thatcher said later of her well-heeled opponents ?They had fought me unscrupulously all the way.?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306560/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Maggie-did-workers-Leftie-critics-did.html

She was one of us, not one of them.

They said she had teh eyes of Caligula and teh lips of Marilyn Monroe, and like the great Caesar before her whe was betrayed by the grandees who acted like Brutus and brought her down.

She took them on, she changed Britain and eventually they did her down. But Britain was never the same again and their world has vanished as teh working and middle classes have been liberated and are on the rise.

They will never be able to hold us down again because of what she started.

Yes, they fought her unscrupulously but just like with Scargill, she was the ultimate winner.

And teh people were the winners too, which is why MP Connor Burns reported teh words of a taxi driver in parliament today.

"We've never had a good'un since"

You keep going on about miners Claig. Yes, the miners' strikes were iconic and historically important, but there is more to the context of Thatcher's rise to power than Scargill, no matter what your position on the strikes themselves is.

And quite frankly, the people who come down hardest on industries like mining and have a tough anti-union stance are often the first to say that what's wrong with this country is that we "don't make things anymore". I think we can now all see how dangerous it is to have an unbalanced economy which relies too heavily on the service sector and financial services - and yet that was exactly what Thatcher's economic policies sought to achieve. And it's going to be very hard to revive a manufacturing sector when your industrial infrastructure and skills base as been decimated.

It is nothing but fantastical to suggest that Thatcher would have taken on the bankers. After all, weren't the Barclays brothers footing the bill for her extended stay at the Ritz? And much of what is made of the social impact of the Big Bang is a pure myth. Yes, there was a very brief period where people (almost exclusively men, to be blunt) entered the trading floor and earned a lot of money very quickly, but that was just a blip in the end, and the establishment soon figured out how to dominate this newly deregulated industry. Take a look at the recruitment strategies of major banks and see how many new entrants come from an ordinary background. You won't find many.

IU don't think the Barclay brothers are bankers. I think they just share a name with Barclays bank.

'the establishment soon figured out how to dominate this newly deregulated industry. Take a look at the recruitment strategies of major banks and see how many new entrants come from an ordinary background.'

There was a time when they would employ old Etonians because of who they knew and what they sounded like. But those days are gone. They now employ PhDs from our top universities and from France and Germany and Russia. Not just anyone can be hired, but it is now about what you know, not who you know, because it is business skills that count, not social skills and which spoon to use at the dinner table. The two hour liquid lunches of teh bowler hat brigade went out of teh window and it was sandwiches over a screen as the American banks arrived. There was competition and teh old dogs declined and teh new dynamic entrants thrived. Thatcher lit the fuse of change and teh rest happened.

I mention the miners because that is what the BBC and our leftwing media are showing us, all these ex-miners speaking of partying and celebrating with a drink.

But yes you are right, instead of just shutting down failing industries, we should have invested in new ones. But Thatcher and presumably her advisers thought we should concentrate on a service economy where our skills were greater (in part due to our Enghlish language in a globalised business world). But I think we should have invested in manufacturing and modernised our companies.

She didn't do everything right. She was one woman against those who foughtunscrupulously against her.

She got things wrong, but she got a lot of things right.

They just had a man called Tony Cane on Channel 4 News. He left school at 15, stacked supermarket shelves. He was an Essex boy, who were often teh working class people who voted for Thatcher. He said he was affected and inspired by her philosophy and that you could do what you want regardless of your background.

He said she laid the ground to opportunity and he is now rich.

We can't all be like that. But it was Thatcher who released the vitality and dynamism of teh working and middle classes and allowed teh rise of people like Sugar and other entrepreneurs in a stock market world where business enterprise was important.

She left her mark on this country and one of teh effects was the end of stifling class barriers that kept the working class dowm.

Now, Tony Balir and George Osborne have to speak with mockney accents because the people are king and class is no longer king.

You can't kepp the people of Britain down. Thatcher released us from our chains and the rest is for us to do.

They fought her unscrupulously, but she beat them, just like she beat the miners.

Some of them may celebrate her death, but we won't be joing them. We, the people, celebrate her life.

As the taxi driver said

"We've never had a good'un since"

and it will be an awfully long time until we get another.

oh dear. Thatcher supporters are quoting dictators, racists, and now London cabbies. Lordy.

Glenda Jackson launches tirade against Thatcher in tribute debate

It is nothing but fantastical to suggest that Thatcher would have taken on the bankers.

I think if she were in power, RBS and HBOS would have been told to whistle (which they should have been). It would take someone with massive Cojones to take that decision, and I think Thatcher would have done it. All speculation of course.

She would of course then be criticized for the ensuing banking crisis.

Take a look at the recruitment strategies of major banks and see how many new entrants come from an ordinary background.

Many of them do. I was about to do a long post about why I know this to be the case - but Claig sums it up nicely. If you think the banks today recruit mainly from an "un-normal" background. Please tell us why, and give us your evidence.

You're confused and incoherent, claig.

You shouldn't be supporting anyone who praised mass-murdering dictator pinochet and called him a 'democrat' and called Nelson Mandela a 'terrorist'.

could we have evidence of people unscrupulously fighting Thatcher please.

Bombjack
that Thatcher would have told the bankers to go whistle is pure speculation.

Glenda Jackson launches tirade against Thatcher in tribute debate

Good for her! Who can tell me her achievements in politics without Googling?

Wow, thanks ttosca. Really powerful stuff.

I don't think she was arguing that she achieved more in office, Jack. Your Ad Hominem doesn't contribute anything.

'could we have evidence of people unscrupulously fighting Thatcher please.'

It was what Thatcher herself said. I believe what she said, because she was one of us and not one of them.

"To the patrician, public-school Tory Wets, this was anathema. There was no love lost between the grocer?s daughter and the privileged men who once dominated the party. I felt no sympathy for them Mrs Thatcher said later of her well-heeled opponents ?They had fought me unscrupulously all the way.?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306560/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Maggie-did-workers-Leftie-critics-did.html

Everyone knows that London cabbies are the font of all wisdom, they meet everyone from Lords to hoodies and they see all life and have their feet on the ground. Let us reflect on what one of their community said for they have an uncanny knack of summing up in one sentence what it would take a toff volumes to say.

"We've never had a good'un since"

Claig

that was what she said but could you provide evidence.