The6Bells

But hoping Thatcher dies in a horrific fire is OK by you? What a fucking cunt.

Hopefully your grannie died in just that manner, it's what people like you deserve. Assuming she wasnt't so ashamed to have you as a grandson she hadn't already slit her wrists.

And by that logic, you can judge Cameron's policies of today without reference to anything Gordon Brown did. In a word, nonsense.

You should never believe a word anyone says if they're the sort of person who can in all seriousness come up with crap like 'the Belgrano was not a threat' or 'the Belgrano was retreating'. These things are proveably false using both Argentine and British primary sources from the time, and has been backed up by serious military historians since. It's basically like trusting the word of someone who tells you the holocaust never happened, it really is that much of a massive distortion of basic historical fact.

Like Happy Face, if you're going to talk about another country, do some basic research first. Spain's economy was fucked by the trade union bound left, who'd been in power most of the time since the end of Franco and had ruled for 7 years until being kicked out with their worst ever election result in 2011.

That would be the same bloke who said he was going to reverse the austerity measures and go for a spend for growth strategy like the US? Did you even do the most basic of research before coming out with this bullshit?

A double-digit % rise in unemployment, taking it to levels not seen for 17 years. Violent union organised protests over the closure of a steel plant, the last major employer in a depressed area of the country Thatcher's Britain? Nope. France. 2013. Under a social democrat president. Who likes nothing more than to tax the rich to solve all the country's problems. So suck it up all you Thatcher haters (and that goes for all the scuzzy Scousers who might be browsing this week). You're gonna need a bigger boat. A whole lot bigger.

I think that's what probably suits you. Me, I prefer reality. Some loved her, some liked, some didn't care, some disliked, and some hated. But most respected her. She spurred a reaction more than her predecessors or successors, but that only goes to show she was getting shit done. The haters gonna hate, they're just never going to get people to believe they represent anywhere close to half the nation.

Or....they just didn't hate Thatcher as much as you think, or in the numbers you think. Only action would have proved your point, inaction proves nothing. Claiming that people who hated Thatcher would remotely care if the right wing press think they're scum is frankly just make believe bullshit. And there were plenty of things all these supposedly decent objectors could have done that wouldn't have made them look like 'scum' and thus fall into the evil press' trap, it's just inconvenient for bullshit peddlers like yourself that all the incidents of actual 'protest' in the sense of go out and acutally do or say something, have all been proper scummy.

I can hardly be gutted that something you didn't even know was going to happen, didn't happen, not least when you claim the reason it didn't happen is some Orwellian fantasy rather than anything you can actually prove (got any examples of people who are inhuman scum wrongly being labelled as such by the press?).

Well, it's gone from 'divided a nation' to 'not liked by large parts of the UK but not enough to do anything about it' in pretty short order, all apparently because we still live in a nation where police brutality is the norm and the press are simply an organ of state mind control, so yes, if it's between me and the people trying to shovel that crap, I'd say I am the one with reality on his side.

Some? Try many.

LOL. Surely it goes - kettle - set upon - beat up? In reality though as we all know if we're not being intentionally retarded, it goes kettle - wait - wait - release slowly - justify your actions to a judge because some of the wankers still think you violated their human rights, even though by now 'protestor' tactics have gone well past the point that even the ECJ wouldn't frown on the use of water cannon.

People predicted major protests. People hoped for major protests. They did not come to pass. The conclusions are obvious, the excuses feeble. Social media is irrelevant, all it tells us is that even when being coordinated and egged on, less then a stadium full of people were moved enough by Thatcher's time in office to spend 79p on a 'protest song'. In the context of a supposedly 'divided nation', that's pathetic.

One was a "lot worse" than the other? No, not even close. Let's try and say it with some actual sense of perspective - one involved implementing policies that favoured individualism over dependence on the state, the other involved brainwashing the masses that they were racially superior than the minitories who were to blame for all their ills and were thus rounded up and ghettoised, before eventually being gassed. And North Korea? One involved coppers hitting miners with wooden trunches, while they threw bricks at them, while the other involves suppressing protest without any violence at all - after all who needs violence when you know that as soon as you turn up to a protest, the best outcome is a life sentence in a labour camp. Your intent with these comparisons was obvious, but it backfired because not only were they utterly ridiculous, all it really showed was how ignorant you are of both what happened in terms of policy and protests, as well as your inability to see any of the other less, far less, ridiculous comparisons you could have made.

When did it suddenly become hard to get to London on a weekday? Even in Glasgow the 7.30 train gets you into central London by 1pm. That's clearly a non-starter of an excuse for the poor turnout. And when did all those potential Thatcher protesters suddenly find a conscience. Aren't they the same people who held street parties and bought that crappy single while she was being mourned? It's a bit hypocritical of anyone who did that to then suddenly find some moral fibre on the day of the funeral. That doesn't stand up either. And why would the majority of London be apathetic? Plenty of council estates in London. Plenty of deprived areas. Plenty of people on benefits. And I thought Brixton was one of the bigger 'street parties' too. It's not as if the Thatcher haters have ever claimed that the London working class wasn't just as mistreated by Thatcher as the provinces. Hard to see why London would be any different to the regions, if all this hate isn't just some massive overstatement of a bit of poor me crap over lost mines, shipyards and steelworks.

More ignorance from the haters. Do you even know which government it was who introduced the laws that stop police acting like a private army? Course you don't, you're too busy talking bollocks to learn about stuff like this - as recent protests showed, no matter how much you disrupt society or destroy property as part of a 'protest' these days, the worst you can expect is to be herded together without access to a toilet for a few hours. Oh the inhumanity. Your mates sound like pussies just making excuses to me, if they are indeed as vehement as they claim about their opposition to Thatcher and as active on other protests.

I don't recall you even asking it, but the simple answer for people like you is that, whether you realise it or not, this country's economy was certainly not in the same shit state as places like Germany (they were the people calling us the 'sick man of Europe', remember), and even if it had been, we most certainly did not have the same starting conditions with regard to things like union militancy and the total failure of political 'consensus' building, which as I'm sure you know (or perhaps not) were failures that predated Thatcher, having happened under both Heath and Callaghan. As for other countries completely rejecting her approach and still flourishing, like who? And please don't even waste your time if the answer is somewhere totally incomparable to the UK. I also thought she was a bastard too. But perhaps we just differ on what qualities are desirable in a leader who has to deal with warmongers, terrorists, fifth columnists and other threats, all while rescuing an economy that was in meltdown. If you want to live in a wanky country with wanky leaders and wanky socialist ideals that hold true only for as long as there's money in the bank, ask your Irish mate if he can put you up, or has he shown his true colours by making this place his home?

Ah, and to cap it all off today, to put the centrepiece on this nonsense that Thatcher 'divided the nation', we need to look no further than the trusty NUM for a window into the difference between historical reality, and socialist propaganda. As most will no doubt be aware, there was an event today to commemorate 20 years since Easington pit closed. They were at pains to say it wasn't a party to celebrate Thatcher's death. That was possibly for the media, but as it turned out, attendees confirmed that her name wasn't even mentioned inside the club during the event. Quite right too. Perhaps they, as historians have with unanimity confirmed, had with the benefit of hindsight realised that the closure of such pits was inevitable, a process started well before Thatcher for sound economic reasons (not, as someone laughingly claimed earlier, simply because they were all death traps, as if that was not also something to be alarmed about in a 1970s economy). Granted, there were some people there with witty messages on handmade placards and bed sheets outside, but I seriously doubt those people were part of the 'community' marking the closure of the pit in this event, rather than just more of the same who've 'protested' against Thatcher recently in other momentous ways, like downloading silly songs and 'partying' in the street in less numbers than would fill a single stadium. The fact there wasn't a grey haired weather worn face amongst them spoke volumes. Their unemployed miner dads can't all have died of a broken heart in the 80s, surely? Since a lot attended this event, obviously not. So, that's all in line with what's been seen across the rest of the country regarding the memory of Thatcher. Some blowhards, but a precious lack of historical reality, or even credence, in their number. But what's this? Who did we have on the news tonight? Someone from the NUM outside the club. At last, an opportunity for some real historical recollection drawn from the no doubt huge institutional memory of such an institution, from the days of the actual dispute. But no. Rather than treating us with anything historically interesting about the role of Easington pit, or even telling us anything about what role he even has today, or even introducing us to the old lady who was interviewed afterwards and was actually part of the strike as a tea lady in one of the soup kitchens. No, none of that from this guy. All he was interested in was just yapping his gums about how the funeral today was like an event you would see in North Korea, and claiming that there'd be not a single tear shed outside London today. Both claims which even the most ardent Thatcher hater should if they don't want to be seen as a total idiot, recognise as ludicrous. He came across as what he undoubtedly is. Bitter, delusional, irrelevant. Divided a nation indeed. More like saved the rest of us from having our lives influenced in any significant way any longer by scumbags like that. That's why Thatcher was a great leader. That's why the NUM were defeated. Throughly defeated. That's why old school socialism will never darken the doors of this country again. When people like him dies (to no great public mouring no doubt), it will die too. As she so rightly said, there was no alternative. But it's a free country, so you can download your songs, make your jokes, spread your lies, and yes, even cry your crocodile tears for a past that never even existed. But for the sake of your own dignity more than anything else, it would be better if you could just fucking deal with it in a way that doesn't make the rest of us embarassed to be British.

We're juding the popularity of historical political figures using internet forums and twitter now? Holy fuck.

You're thinking about my pyjamas? Whatever floats your boat...

You're a poet and you didn't know it.

And? Is there some kind of law against that? Have I broken the rules of the Social Democratic Repulic of Toontastic by focussing on only one thread?

It would seem so. PR didn't exactly catch the people's imagination, did it?

You might have better luck if you actually go to the football forum if that's what you're after. This is for "general chat", specifically, "Thatcher Dead".