Do you think part of the vitril/hate aimed at Thatcher is because she is a woman?

[lesley33]

Okay Margaret Thatcher enacted a lot of policies that made a lot of people very angry and she certainly didn't set out to do anything to promote the rights of women.

But I am struck about the amount of vitriol that is still aimed at her all these years later. There have been male politicians - Norman Tebbitt springs to mind - who have been responsible for similar policies and have been hated at the time, but I never read about people still hating these politicians many years later.

I'm not sure if this is just because Thatcher was PM or is it because she is a woman and by behaving the way she did, she stepped well outside traditionally permitted female behaviour?

What do you think about this?

Why should more productive people (significantly more productive people) live in less comfortable accommodation than manual workers? It is your definition of reasonable accommodation (and the realities of urban workers' lives) that needs revising.

The gardienne in my apartment block lives in one room with her taxi driver husband and two young sons. She sends her elder son to a French Catholic (private) school and works bloody hard, as does her DH. But she doesn't think she is badly off.

Aren't manual workers productive, then?

Seems an odd and somewhat artificial dichotomy you're imposing there!

Do you not understand that some people generate more value for the economy than others?

I think you're being a bit simplistic. Anyone would think, reading your posts, that all white-collar professionals are living in Mary Barton type slum dwellings one on top of the other, whilst the binmen live it up in mansions.

I have said nothing of the sort. I have given real life examples throughout. This is where the problem lies. People have no idea of the luxury that Westerners have got used to and think they deserve for the mere feat of being born.

She did a lot of breathtakingly awful things and destroyed so much. I think a man would be hated in the same way for all that. But re being a woman, paradoxically that makes be admire her more and hate her more. Kudos to hr for having the strength and determination to get to where she did - that takes an amazing woman. But then, she was one of those women who hold other women back, and that was a crushing disappointment - as a feminist, to see a woman become pm, and then realise there was no feminist issue on the agenda. It feels like such a let-down that we had a female pm, and she squandered the opportunity to speak out for women and take on the patriarchy. OK she took it on for her own personal progress, but not ideologically.

One thing I find is Cameron reminds me of thatcher, but I don't think I would be quite so aware of quite how evilly right-wing he is if it wasn't for the obvious policy comparisons with thatcher. She was so obviously, tangibly "iron" and ruthless. He makes quite a good fist of appearing cuddly and nice, while shoving poor-hating policies through wherever he can. But because of Thatcher I see what he's up to.

Ultimately, I don't hate hate hate her though. She was a conservative politician, what do we expect - she did her job. I think people who want to dance on her grave etc. are distasteful and nasty and don't do themselves any favours.

TheresaMay Please don't try to pull the age card, we aren't all naive twenty-somethings here.

That was the last thing I was trying to do. I was trying to ascertain to what degree the views of Thatcher expressed here was inculcated as part of history/anecdote and what part was through direct experience of the decade previous to her premiership.

I don't think your remark was really called for.

lesley the complacancy I see here on MN is very odd to me.

Posters seem to think that by dint of being middle class and British, their place in the world is assured. That their DC can expect in time to take up their place.

They seem to have spectacularly missed the huge changes in the world's economy let alone that of the UK. Competition for every penny is now global.

And they resist every opportunity to make themselves and their DC competitive and attractive to the globalized market. In many ways perhaps I should just shrug and be glad there will be less competition for my own DC who I am bringing up the polar opposite...but I'm not yet that selfish.

yes

I live in France - I don't know anyone who doesn't have enough space for their children. Our local housing estate is lovely - all the houses have small gardens and the people sit outside in them and laugh.

I don't live in Paris though. (Thank god!)

Wordfactory - okay that makes sense. I agree that lots of people don't seem to realise that the west and america are in decline and that things won't be the same in the future. We have actually just been through an extraordinary boom in living standards. I personally don't see it so much as complacency, as just not understanding international economics.

"Posters seem to think that by dint of being middle class and British, their place in the world is assured. That their DC can expect in time to take up their place."

I agree wholeheartedly wordfactory. It is astounding.

I am also particularly aghast at the nouveaux-pauvres posters who claim MCdom by virtue of having ancestors who said loo and napkin rather than toilet and serviette and sneer at hardworking "pushy" parents.

"And they resist every opportunity to make themselves and their DC competitive and attractive to the globalized market"

And there we have it. I have no argument with that - except that some have more opportunity than others.

Equality of opportunity - I believe in that. We don't have it in this country.

Beachcomber - I wonder how much you travel around to French cities? I have done so a lot and DP continues to do so (and I am quite often in tow) by virtue of working in retail and having all those shops (and potential shops) to visit.

There is HLM tokenism in centre of Neuilly, but it sure isn't representative of the whole...

I'm interested in this perceived 'resistance to opportunity' - what kind of thing are you thinking of?

lesley perhaps you're right and its not complacancy. But one would have to be blind or utterly stupid not to have noticed how things have changed. The endless harking back to ye olden days doesn't help either, as if we lived in golden times when men worked down a dangerous hole for a living, risking their lives and their health!

Bonsoir ah the nouveau pauvre, God love them. Now they don't have the house or the school fees, or even the pension, they look for ways to mark out their superiority. But you know the well is dry when you only have radio four and the word 'sofa' to fall back on...

litttlealbert I agree that everyone in the UK should have the same opportunities, but many of my immigrant friends would say that what is on offer to everyone here is still fabulous. Education, jobs and money are still for the taking. Far more so than in so mnay parts of the world.

But so mnay resist the means to take those opportunities. They want everything to be easy and risk free. Start a thread on homework for example and you'll have the brow beaters lining up to declare half an hours spellings as the end of childhood. Apparently certain children wither unless they come home from school and spend four hours on the playstaion dreaming and singing.

Ditto MFL, Ebac, competitive sports, exams, Shakespeare.

theoriginal I think there is lots of resistance.

A friend of mine was pissing her sides at the thought of a journey to school of half an hour being considered long. Where she's from the children walk miles!
The idea that parents would prefer a worse school with a shorter journey was inconceivable to her.

I think you'd also struggle to convince her that moving from family wasn't worth a better standard of living!

I dunno. I think we've beocme very spoiled. We want it all. And for a little bubble of boomsville we had it. But times have moved on and people seriously need to react.

React how, though?

I don't know many people who aren't prepared to put some effort in with homework, exams and so on. I don't know anyone who's opposed to competitive sports either. Maybe I'm still in a bubble of boomsville, I dunno. I think most people care a great deal - it's only on MN I've heard of people taking their children out during SATS or refusing work experience for older children, but I guess you get the extremes on a big site full of opinions.

Wordfactory at competitive sports, Shakespeare.

Yes, perhaps the appeal to heavy industry as a 'golden past' is sentimental. But then a town near us has grass growing between the paving slabs in the high street since the factories closed down.

This is what I mean by equality of opportunity - what are these people supposed to do? Get on their bikes and take family to London? How can they 'be competitive in a global market?'

No.

I hated her for what she did. Through and through.

But I further hated her because as the first woman PM she should have been a woman to be proud of.

But I agree about work experience, household chores etc. Children are expected to work - in the home or outside - and attend school, across the world, and there are studies which show it is very good for self respect and confidence for them to do this.

In answer to OP, I think she's hated for all the same reasons, and with a similar degree of passion, that Cameron is and will be. I think this is somewhat sharpened by a sense of disappointment that our first (and as yet, only) female PM was so utterly without heart or empathy, sometimes. I also think that some of the criticism and insult levied at her are indeed couched in misogyny, of which the left can be as guilty as the right, and that's the bit I think is a shame.

Well I've lived in Paris, Lyon et Montpellier. I currently work in an impoverished area with entirely social housing.

I'm not saying all HLM housing is nice - lots of it isn't, just like in the UK. You just seem to be painting a picture of France that isn't consistent with my experience of it. Parts of Paris and Marseille are pretty bad, but there is plenty of nice social housing too. I think the quota system helps because it spreads housing out. Anyway, all this is OT really.

I don't say everyone can gte on their bikes and head to London (htough I did!). As I have said, there are times when life conspires against us.

But middle class complacancy is a different animal entirely. It is born of entitlement. That one should be able to have x, y and z wihtout too much fuss. It was middle class feminisits of course who peddled the myth of having it all. Working class women knew that that was always a joke! They had always worked and brought up their families!

Perhaps this isn't a real problem in RL and MN attracts a certain type of poster.

I have already stated my utter distain for Thatcherism and all that it stood for. I am surprised, though, that anyone thinks the woman herself should have been any different 'just because she is a woman'. Why?