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?

oops i realised that i missed a chunk of this thread, lol at Steve Nallon 'mandelson, there is a shiver waiting for a spine to creep down'. he's pretty sharp still, isn't he?

and yyy pan, about the friends. that was mortifying, her blind eye to pinochet.

This isn't a particularly balanced thread. The anti-Thatcherites keep blethering on emotively and ignoring basic economic realities.

Sometimes hard decisions have to be taken. I'm sure that you are all right that she lacked basic empathy and didn't much care whether or not there were shoeless in Govan. But someone, somewhere had to deal with the fact that there was very little future for heavy industries in western developed economies.

ahhh, shoeless in Govan.....the poor mans sleepless in seattle...

i'm sure they'll get in next election Qc, so they can carry on where they left off.

Not patronising at all. Have you taken a look at your nearest sink estate recently? Have you noted the 'duty and community' at work in areas where teenage boys are stabbed for nothing more than just existing? Or where a creature like Shannon Matthews' mother can do what she did?

Say what you like about Mrs T. but she did not grow up in a community where these things happened. That's the point: she had no concept that there are lots of people who do need something like a sense of community or organised activity or a religion to make them behave. There are whole communities in Britain where nobody has any sense of belonging to anything bigger than a possibly fragmented and chaotic and shifting family unit. That's not patronising, that's stating the truth.

"where a creature like Shannon Matthews' mother can do what she did" - are you really suggsting that child abuse only takes place in areas of deprivation?

what on earth do you mean by "make them behave"?

yes you are right: "There are whole communities in Britain where nobody has any sense of belonging to anything bigger than a possibly fragmented and chaotic and shifting family unit" However alot of people on this post believe she is to blame for this, after all, she didnt believe in society...

Your last paragraph is EXACTLY my point.

Abraid yes she may not have grown up there but so what? When yopu put yourslef up for a job like being an MP you represent everyone in you constituency: there's no way she rperesented the worst off, or those on sink estates.

many of us grew up on sink estates, we learned or had the same values you list. But, unlike MrsT, we (and most who did not grow up there) can add compassion into the mix.

'yes you are right: "There are whole communities in Britain where nobody has any sense of belonging to anything bigger than a possibly fragmented and chaotic and shifting family unit" However alot of people on this post believe she is to blame for this, after all, she didnt believe in society... '

I have never encountered a alce where nobody has that sense.

there are palces where some do not for sure, but certainly not moral deserts as the posts suggest.

And I also suggest that the self same lack of values can be attributed to sections of other communitiews- high up in my mind is the money worshipping yuppy commuunities of the 1980's.

I stopped voting Tory for a while after I watched some Essex commodity traders braying at a party political meeting. I may vote for David Cameron because I think he does actually believe in communitarian virtues and responsibilities, more than just market values.

oh yes, a guy who joined the tories at the tail end of thatcher and major etc... who looked at the available parties and said 'that's the one for me'. i am highly dubious of anyone who could have found the tories attractive to pay a subscription to at that point in history.

I agree with Aitch: had DC chosen a different party I imagine I could find him quite electable, he didn't though did he? It's that very act of choice that is both self defining and insurmountable for me.

And what if we end up with a different PM than we thought we were getting after a few years? Nobody out there in Tory land who woudln't fillme with dread- triply so for George Osborne.

YOu know what SMC? i think we differ on one small but essential point

I totally agree she rose by her own efforts.

What I don't agree with is that it's a particuarly great thing in itself. It's what you do that counts, not what high sopcial strata you land yourself in.

Better a council house dweller who gets her hand in and helps people whoa re struggling, than a high rise abandoner of the needy..

completely agree with peachy. you seem to be missing the point, swc. i know plenty of people who didn't raise themselves throught the class structure but who used what little power they had to improve the lives of others around them. and yes, oh horror of horrors, those people around them were also poor and lower class so obviously didn't count for much.

whereas maggie's social climbing rewarded those around her, greedy, grasping yuppies and power brokers. oh yes, and general pinochet.

This the same David Cameron who accepted an invite to have a "jolly" in South African when the Apartheid regime was in full swing?

That David Cameron? Electable?

'what if we end up with a different PM than we thought we were getting after a few years? '

Couldn't be worse than what happened with Gordon Brown, who has never been elected by anyone to ruin run the country.

oh lord this is so BORING, this party bickering. yyy gordon brown is awful, never elected blah blah, david cameron a demi-god and not an eton pr twat, mrs thatcher a people's princess, we get it.

like i say, when the old witch does bite the dust it will be unbearable because we'll have to put up with all those greedy beggars who did SO WELL out of her and her despicable grabby politics keening and wailing over her loss. we'll never see her like again. here's hoping, ffs.

That's another bit we'll have to disagree over abraid then, i've given up on Gordon's leadership from a practical POV because I recognise very few people see him as I do, but I don't dislike him myself and would choose him over DC any day.

It takes all sorts

Rhubs- I didn't know that about SA.

Gone down even more in my estimation, it would seem.

oh i like GB, met him, think he's decent etc. all the tories people who bang on about him being unelected do tend to skip over the fact that we don't actually cast our vote for the PM in this country, just the local candidate. do think that him not calling an early election was a fatal dither, though.

I'm certain in my mind he'sdecent and a Good Man, not so much aboutb his leadership skills perhaps but it's pretty much the worst of times to be a PM, a recession.

Here's how I shall mark the passing on of one of Britain's most transformational figures....

(I hope transformational doesn't get imbued in a positive light, rather the opposite). Where there was light she brought darkness...to paraphrase the old sow on entering Downing Street in 1979.

I think it is tasteless to have any minute's silence at her passing. I also think it's tasteless to have a jolly party as no one should think of the dead in that way, no matter who they are. Nope folks there's going to be wall to wall coverage of her popping her clogs when it comes. Better to show her the same kind of treatment she showed most of us during her reign....indifference.

Simply switch off the telly on that day, and ponder quietly on the poverty of opportunity we have in Britain that creates environments fit for Jade Goodys and Shannon Matthews.

Mind you I think Thatch did one fantastic thing for me - she made me move abroad!

MIAD (5 yrs Saudi, 8 yrs Germany)

and who gets the credit for your cross-dressing?

[a bit silly]

[juvenile]

[old enough to remember communities laid waste out of spite]