Margaret Thatcher's in hospital,Is this the beginning of the end? How will you mark the day? Black arm band or party 7.

[Cowwomanmoo]

After looking at the news about Mr T I found my self on wikiquote.

Classic:

In an interview with George Negus for the Australian TV program 60 minutes, the following exchange occurred:
Negus: Why do people stop us in the street almost and tell us that Margaret Thatcher isn't just inflexible, she's not just single-minded, on occasions she't plain pig-headed and won't be told by anybody?
Thatcher: Would you tell me who has stopped you in the street and said that?
Negus: Ordinary Britons...
Thatcher: Where?
Negus: In conversation, in pubs...
Thatcher (interrupting): I thought you'd just come from Belize
Negus: Oh this is not the first time we've been here.
Thatcher: Will you well me who, and where and when.
Negus: Ordinary Britons in restaurants and cabs
Thatcher: How many?
Negus: ...in cabs
Thatcher: How many?
Negus:I would say at least one in two
Thatcher:Why won't you tell me their names and who they are?

oh i see, tramp the dirt down... lol. it's a song, an 'allusion', not an exhortation to knock tories over. lololol.

Sorry Aitch, I was directing my post at squiffy. You get confused a lot don't you? Isn't that just code for 'I disagree and think you are talking bollocks'? If so then at least have the decency to say so, I don't bite you know!

But you will have to have the debate without me, I have kids to attend to.

Knock yourselves out!

"I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down", yes I'm aware of the lyrics and the allusion. But again, I was actually talking to squiffy.

People are very quick to say Mrs Thatcher ruined people's lives, ruined this and that with her right wing policies. But she was re elected THREE times.
If she did ruin the British economy etc, it was only because she was continiously re elected by the British electorate. So whose responsibility is that? I always voted against her but people on here make it sound like she was a dictator or something.

You can't remove the woman from the job-role. To become PM you have to be pretty driven. To be a dictator like MT was, you have to be personally very driven and you have to fully believe in what you preach. She wasn't wishy-washy. She didn't falter or show any regret. The woman was the iron lady, not the lady who just put forward the views of others.

Is she a focus for the hatred and the bile that was engendered by her politics? You bet. Does that fade because she's aged now and ill? Well....yes and no.

If Margaret the woman was stood in front of me and collapsed, I'd call an ambulance and hold her hand. I'd tell her everything was going to be alright. Then I'd go home and have a very, very hot shower and hope that it would make me feel clean.

Margaret Thatcher to me is not someone I could ever like or even empathise with. She is the complete opposite to me and everything I believe in. Was she a great mum? Not according to her kids. Was she a great leader? Not according to the millions who suffered under her regime. Was she the kind of woman I'd be sad to see pass? No. Definitely not.

It'll just mean endless, meaningless tributes being thrust in front of all our noses for the next few weeks, which I personally will find very hard to stomach.

Like I said Squilly, if she was that crap why did people keep re electing her?

oh come now, that's not how mn works. you put your thougths out there and anyone can answer.

but yes, i disagree with you (i'd have thought that was obvious but if you need me to spell it out?) and think you are talking bollocks. of course i do, we've been debating all day haven't we? when you're not taking us down arcane 'but would you stand on a tory?' lines? i would, for the record, help up an old lady but i'd be so horrified if she turned round and it was thatcher that i might drop her. where does this put me on your rhubarb's index of goodness?

I think she was a dictator...to some degree. We had a situation similar to the one we have now. The Tory's were bad, but Labour were not a realistic alternative. I voted for them regardless of this, just to get the old baggage out, but it wasn't to be.

And so she ruled for 3 terms.

And if you listen to any of her advisers and colleagues, most of them have said there was no nay-saying Mrs T. That's my definition of a dictator.

BGD...i think most parties are elected twice...they were elected the 3rd time because neil kinnock fell over on the beach.

squilly

Oh and yes, I agree with your last post. Just briefly before I go, what I'm really trying to say is that her policies, her views, her opinions, her beliefs were all abhorrent. But she was put into that position of power by others who believed in her, who supported her. She was just one of many. So all this anger, whilst understandable, is being directed at one, elderly, fragile, loony lady who looks like she might fall over if you so much as breathe on her. Yet people like Geoffrey Howe manage to get away with it.

And yes, there were plenty of people who voted for her time and time again and who would have continued to vote for her if they could.

BG it wasn't difficult. she ruined some lives and improved others. those whose lives she improved turned a blind eye to the rest, pocketed the cash and voted. that, unfortunately, is the way our democracy works, a minority of voters can get their party in. she barely bothered to fight in scotland.

BTW...I'm off to feed the kids, not posting from behind a rock, lobbing viewpoints then running...I'll be back..ack...ack...ack...ack!

A dictatoris a Hitler or a Stalin. She was elected by the Conservative party and de selected by the party. She was an authoritarian leader but she ruled in a democracy. Like I said if people did not like her she would have lost the election. Dictators don't lose elections, look at Mugabe!

Oh...and I quite like squiffy.. I may namechange

To me she is like Stalin and Hitler. I see little difference.

DP you raise an interesting poimt, Kinnock was a completely ineffective opposition leader as was Foot before him. If I remember correctly there was a despair atthat time how the Labour party were so useless in opposition. It was not until John Smith came along that Labour became a united force against the C|onservative party.

Honestly Squilly, read up on Hitler and Stalin, go to the Gulags and places like Auschwitz. Speak to the Poles etc who lived under both regimes. They will tell you what a dictator does.

perhaps it is part of her legacy that people now have discussions like this when they would have been ashamed to do so before she came to power? I am old enough to still find such debate distateful.

it's true BGD...the tories were voted in 3 times because there was no real alternative at the time...i loved micheal foot, but he had limited appeal.

Eh? She's not like Stalin or Hitler at all. She didn't mastermind the massacre of milllions. .

Her cosying up to Pinochet was utterly rank though, it has to be said.

Nor can I see what she did for women. At all.

I'm no fan of Thatcher - very far from it - but I think to rejoice when someone has died when they've not committed heinous crimes is a little bit twisted.

I won't be sad when she dies but I won't be dancing on her grave. That's a weird thing to do.

They're all frail now, Rhubarb. What does it matter? No one is threatening her in any way, just sharing our experiences and opinions.
It's quite patronising to assume that because she is elderly she should not be criticised but respected.
Why?

As long as she doesn't go somewhere like Argentina, she'll be OK, although even Pinochet was given immunity due to ill health.

BGD: I think you are underestimating the power of the media over Thatcher's election wins. In early 1982 various polls suggested she was very unpopular. So, in April Britain went to "war" over the Falklands. I remember listening to Radio 4 in April 1982 when it broadcast the Saturday session of Parliament [the first since Suez]. The press [mostly run by Murdoch and others who supported hers views on the Unions] gave her total support.

[As an aside how many on here remember Ian McDonald reading the officially censored accounts of the Falklands conflict]?

The press whipped up a hysteria of jingoism and her re-election in 1983, largely on the back of that little skirmish and the media campaign it engendered, provided her biggest majority. The Labour Party's manifesto for 1983 was the most radical it had been for many years - but was effectively destroyed by Tory election smears and a whirlwind of malicious reports in the press.

Once she got her 1983 victory she really let rip on the country. I lived in the North East in the early 1980s and I saw what her policies did to entire communities both in the steel and coal mining industries. It was brutal. Those who supported Thatcher at the polls were either those who were doing "very nicely Thank you" from her policies or those daft idiots who thought that buying their ex-council house and a few shares in British Telecom or Gas [which they quickly sold to large organisations for a small profit] would suddenly turn them into the new middle classes. It was Tressell writ large!

No mrsruffallo, you miss my point. Again. I am saying that she was not the only one responsible for bringing this country to its knees.

And as for respect. I do not like her, or her daughter, or her son. I hate her views, her opinions and her policies. But to dance on her grave when she's dead? To rejoice in her suffering? No.

I call that respect for another human being. No matter who they are or what they've done. I know you disagree and that's fair enough.

One point about the Falklands that hasn't been mentioned - it was the government, her government, that reduced the garrison. Which the Argentinian dictatorship took as a nod and a wink that we wouldn't resist an invasion.

The deaths on both sides were horrific but it is particularly poignant that the Argentinian soldiers were, IIRC, conscripts and subjects of a dictatorship. Doesn't make their suffering any greater than that of British soldiers, but it does mean Thatcher's opportunistic 'hurrah, a war, that will bring the nation together against a common enemy and win me the election' was particularly stomach churning.

As for her policies being reversed, she brought the NHS to its knees. We were spending something like 1/2 what other European democracies were on our health system. Labour have not made the NHS perfect, but they did save it from complete destruction. (Although unfortunately Blair's Thatcherite love of privatisation has wasted an awful lot of money on PFI/ PPP/ independent sector treatment centres/ management consultants.)