Dh and I get on well ususally, then he sings the praises of Margaret Thatcher and I want to punch him.........

[DrNortherner]

Why oh why did I marry a tory

Aaaaargh....................

Help me with a list of things she did not do well:

Poll tax
Closure of industry
Privatisation of services
Crap schools
Belgrano

Mark Thatcher - or was she not responsible for him? I rather like Carol - barking, but a kindly soul.

he was a compassionless twat, smallwhite, i have to say.

Well my memories of the Thatche years was of my Dad who was a skilled worker in the 80s being made repeatedly redundant as the manufacturing industry disappeared, going on marches shouting Thatcher Thatcher Thatcher Out Out Out, being sent to depressing skill centres, and my Mum a married mother of 3 skipping through the house when he finally got another job.

However I am finding myself in the same position. I am a skilled IT worker and am going to be made redundant as the work is outsourced to India. And people come and go on 6 month visas. So is it any different? Can I still blame Maggie or do I have to look to Tony/Gordon?

NuLabour is just Toryism in sheep's clothing.

At least those who stand up and say they are Tories have the balls to do so, not hide behind a bunch of spin like Gordon and Tony and assume people are stupid enough to believe it.

I find that more insulting, personally.

Think she was an excellent leader actually, and just what Britain needed after the 70s (during which my grandmother died, in freezing conditions, in the back of open army truck on the way to hospital, as the ambulance workers were on strike... )

I have read a lot of political history and biographies of the period, and Thatcher is widely misquoted and misrepresented in the press (read Matthew Parris's account of working for her for example).

The 'there is no such thing as society' quote is a case in point. What she was arguing was that without personal and moral responsibility there will be no such thing as societal norms and values, after all, what is 'society' if it isn't comprised of the people who live within it?

I think she took a number of decisions that others had been afraid to take - the unions needed breaking up. Anyone who knows anything about economic history will know that there was no chance of ANY industry in the UK surviving unless it became more competitive in Europe/ the rest of the world. It was a terrible time for those people affected, but it would have been worse to give them false hope by continuing to pump money into essentially 'dead' industries.

Bloody marvellous woman I say - agree with the OPs DH.

However I also know that I will be in a minority on MN, so I won't be posting again on this thread!

I am rather bitter atm swc. Re the pay off, they are TUPEing us over to an Indian company who have statutory minimum redundancy. I am in a rut and concerned about finding part time/local work. Really I ought to obtain some balls from somewhere and go out and sell myself.

I think quandry is right about the UK needing to be competitive but I think Thatcher was responsible for creating the "greed is good" society that has had a huge impact on this country. She helped make us one of the most unequal soceities in Europe with the highest levels of child poverty and very high levels of social exclusion.

Expat - I accept that New Labour has adopted the liberal economics of the Thatcher/Major era but I don't think that you should ignore the real steps that this Government have taken to lift people out of poverty and protect the vulnerable. Minimum wage, £200 fuel payments for pensioners, pension credit, Sure Start, free TV licenses for over 70s, tax credits (a good idea, if mismanaged). They have also increased development spending.

oh, yes, those tax credits that put us thousands of pounds in debt and left us in rent arrears and looking at homelessness.

thanks, NuLabour!

why didn't you just increase the personal threshold? you know, tax us less? oh, yes, of course, because then you wouldn't have been able to put in this huge bureaucracy to misadminister these tax credits.

their housing policies, too. so proactive.

everyone buy to let! up, up, up prices!

thanks, NuLabour, we're totally priced out. we'll be leaving the country in a couple of years because we can afford to buy nothing and thanks to the tenancy laws you never thought about revising, we're sick of living with the constant threat of homelessness every 6 months or trying to scrape together money to move yet again.

did they reverse right to buy? or allow and encourage councils to replace their housing stock?

nope.

how about a £200 fuel grant to the working poor on their minimum wage? there are plenty of folks on here who can't afford to heat their homes for their own children.

I couldn't have married a Tory. End of.

No, I couldn't have married a Tory, either.

def selling off the housing stock - the local councils were told they would be given the money to build more social housing but the thieving tories kept it. That is why we have an over inflated housing market, I own my own home but the whole lack of affordable housing because of the lack of rental property disgusts me. How can it be right that it is cheaper to pay a mortgage than rent the same size property???????????

Err, Quandry, there is no room on this thread for gloryfying Maggie. Please leave or I shall have to punch you too

My Dad is a labour councillor and I was raised on a council estate in Teesside that was home to steel industry workers. I have seen the result of Thatcher's legacy first hand. I was that child who had her milk taken away, who went to the local sink comprehensive where we had 1 text book between a table of 5 kids, I saw my friends Dad's lose their jobs one by one (and eventually their sons cause they would have worked in teh same place). My upbringing is so so different to dh's (middle class, entrepeneur Father) he knows how passionate I hate MT and that I will dance on her grave when the lord finaly takes her. I really can not be rational about it when we debate this. I literally want to resort to violence.

He says I am brain washed.

He thinks she did wonders for the economy and encouraged people to make something of themselves etc etc

Ignorance is bliss isn't it?

Hating Thatcher is a knee-jerk reaction. The lady never asked to be liked. Great politicians don't ask to be liked. Churchill didn't ask to be liked.

The reason why Blair is such a simpering fool is because to be liked was so uber-important to him. He went into the war in Iraq out of a desire to be liked. Thatcher would not have gone to war in Iraq. She was too much of her own person to take second-hand information at face-value.

She was in power for nearly 12 years. It's very easy, on this site, to believe that pro-Thatcherites are/were in the minority. But she was voted for, by the majority, time and time again.

You can argue the toss as much as you like, but thems the facts

Is she a nice woman? I doubt it. But I never asked her to be ... and anyone who lived through the 70s will realize what a bloody difference she made.

'encouraged people to make something of themselves etc etc '

Yes, because surely if they're poor it's their fault. They didn't work hard enough and pull themselves up by the bootlaces.

See, I grew up in the Regan era.

I remember the year 1985.

When I became a socialist.

The reason you lost all that stuff, DrN, was because the Labour party had been in power rather shortly beforehand. They left the country in a bloody mess, and the Conservatives had to spend a few years digging it out again.

I remember the free milk being stopped. Most of the kids were delighted .. it tasted like shit and we were made to drink it

lol at 'couldn't marry a tory'
have they got it tattooed on their head, like damien with 666?
what if they pretended to be a labour voter and then only revealed themselves on your wedding night, would it be grounds for divorce?

On mumsnet the comments about hating Tories are a kind of shorthand for people claiming a moral superiority.......

northerner,
I had school milk taken away by MT as well. Bloody good thing actually, as it turned out I am allergic to it.

I went to a posh private school that usually features in the Oxbridge top 20. Guess what, we shared text books during the 80s, because there weren't enough to go round.

I now work in the software industry, where redundancies are commonplace, and you can expect the chop if you aren't constantly learning new skills, because your job will be given to someone from India who is willing to work for less money. It's just a fact of life.

it is unfair to blame one person for all the things you mentioned, even if she did support Pinochet and liked Ronald Reagan.