The6Bells

A society that cared for each other? Listen to yourself for fucks sake. It's rose tinted bollocks. You're talking about the same society that saw looting of second world war bomb sites. Oh no, did your social commentators never teach you that part of our glorious history? I wonder why. As for Thatcher not caring...did she cut the NHS? Did she fuck. Did she actually make any welfare cuts? Did she fuck. She cared about people in genuine need, and she cared about people who cared enough about themselves to get ahead in life through their own hard work rather than relying on some outdated fantasy that the state owes you a living as well as a life. She didn't care about the people who tried to undermine this country's collective future out of their own selfish self-interest, dressed up as concern for society (aka, socialism). There is no "lots" about it, there is only some. And some is evidently not enough to change anything either then or now, or to even register as a notable protest, even when considering the vast majority of the supposed majority might be decent enough to respect a funeral (but not decent enough to condemn those that didn't, apparently).

Better than the alternatives, past or present.

Aside from the angle of comparing the impact of a charismatic leader on an underperforming entity, what's that got to do with the price of fish?

Says who? You? Who cares. Next you'll be claiming that the majority of the UK would rather have a republic (odd that - there were more 'protestors' at the Jubilee than at Thatchers funeral. And yet you can count the number of republicans in the UK on one hand. So, even taking into account that they might not all be disrespectful cunts, the anti-Thacther brigade simply didn't turn out today, suggesting that they simply don't exist in the numbers being claimed).

Is teaching kids about how Westminster works posh to you?

By the by, if anyone actually wants to know what it was actually like to live under a European right wing nationalist dictator in modern times, check out General Franco. Not 5 years before your dads were (allegedly) crying into their cornflakes about how they'd been given the shittty end of the stick by a 'fascist dictator' who 'divided a nation', an actual right wing fascist dictator was ending his 4th decade of being in power, having defeated the left in a civil war and took the concept of self interest at both home and abroad to epic levels. This is why, whether you like it or not, Thatcher is hailed as one of the great democratic leaders of modern times, while Franco is remembered simply as a fascist prick.

Bit of a daft thing to say about a country whose political system has been since its inception, all about the government and the opposition. She didn't divide and rule, she just took the fact that the way you get into power here is by appealing to more people than the opposition, to its logical conclusion. This coalition is what happens when you get weak leaders who try to please all of the people all of the time.

That's what I thought about your point here.

At the end of the day, if you booed or shouted at the funeral today, you're basically saying the Queen is a cunt, as she was effectively chief mourner today. Still, luckily enough for those people, this isn't North Korea or the modern day Nazi Germany, and they won't get spirited away from their beds tonight, never to be seen again. Mores the pity.

Actually it was Rayvin.

But not as equally as normal English language usage would have that mean, so it would seem. A couple of hundred protesters at a funeral, a few hundred pissheads in Glasgow etc, and just 50k downloading a 'protest song'. And hardly any of them old enough to have even been one of the people she 'divided'.

What's your point? It doesn't matter if ten thousand or ten million turned out (source?), if only a tiny percentage of those that did were 'protesters', then quite clearly anyone who claims she 'divided the country' failed at maths.

Quite. But what about someone who wasn't there, shows complete ignorance of historical facts, and compares Thatcher to Hitler or The Kims?

It's the end of the idea that Thatcher was not respected by the vast majority. There were no notable protests at the funeral. And you could fit all the people who hated Thatcher so much they went that extra mile and spent 79p on the Ding Dong song into St James Park, with room to spare. Especially as no doubt a large portion of those will have been pathetic enough to download it multiple times.

Pipe down you. I'm talking to the guy who might at least know a bit about what he's talking about, not the sort of pillock that thinks Thatcher's era was akin to Hitler or your average North Korean divine leader.

Good send off. Very respectful. Put the whole 'she divided a nation' canard into sharp perspective. Despite the fact that Thacther was rather ludicrously portrayed by one person in here as being of the same ilk as Hitler and the Kims (this being the guy who's "not interested" in parliamentary politics and wasn't even around during the Thatcher era), none of the rather sad band of protestors were executed or even detained without charge and sent to a labour camp. They were able to make their sad little point in their sad little way, whilst the vast majority stayed respectfully silent, or simply responded with clapping.

Got any proof of these rather wild claims?

Ah, I see where your confusion lies. I never claimed she improved everyone's lives at all. I'm not one of these idiots who is acting just as bad as the socialists and demanding you bow down to the greatest leader we ever had. I don't begrudge anyone their valid gripes. I wouldn't bat an eyelid to someone if they said I hat Thatcher because she did xyz, and xyz turned out to be remotely connected to historical reality. She couldn't help everyone, but then again, not everyone wants to be helped (or wants to help themselves). She is so maligned though because of the sheer impact she had on the country - her policies actually did something, so it's likely people remember. But let's face it, who's going to get their knickers in a twist if someone piped up in 20 years time and claimed John Major got 2% of people back into work when his actual record might have been 1?. Nobody has a clue about Callaghan and the huge number of mines he closed though. Ask yourself why there's been no uproar about that. Is it because it's not true? Because it is.

That's got to be the least incisive thing you've said in here. I preferred it when you were talking about the Illuminati.

Woah, calm down lad. I only mentioned the SNP for their political spectrum, not the independence issue. I'm not that interested in the Scottish question at all truth be told. I know they hated Thatcher, but i think, as someone on one of the early TV obituaries noted, that was as much down to their own misconceptions about her politics, than the actual politics. The last poll I saw though, support for independence was down to 30%, so I think it's a bit pointless even considering it as a possibility, let alone talking about what it means. A victory for devolution maybe? Well, Thacther didn't believe in that, but if so, Labour fucked their UK power base on that one too.

And if people really understood Thatcherism, they'd know it wasn't even really grounded in Conservative thinking of that time. These labels do change over time, some through power players like Thacther and the like, others through mass movement. It's a bit impertinent of a lizard fucker like yourself to assume this is all new to me though. I've only been talking about the average docker socialist here as that's the topic at hand. It's not news to me that Labour's got no working class front bencers, that was one of the themes of one of my very first posts. I know more than anyone here has even imagined I bet. I'd wager there's a few here who never knew Thatcher was refused an honorary degree by Oxford over her education policy. Not the sort of thing that happens to one of 'them'.

I can never hear the phrase social democrat without having a little chuckle remembering the SDP. They would be left of blair and brown in this era. You've got no home now, not Labour or the Lib Dems. What you need is an English version of the SNP. The English National Party. I think it's got legs.....

Is Ed Milliband soft left btw? He's soft that's for sure, but left? Not in Pre-Thatcher terms, not by a long chalk.

One of the commenters thinks that the servicemen who'll be involved are being taken away from their 'leave from Afghanistan'. This is the intellectual standard of most Thatcher haters, and no doubt 100% of the street partiers. Thick as fucking mince, never knowing a thing about the subject they profess to speak about, and more crucially, certain enough of it to make the sort of comparisons of Thatcher's era to some of the most vile dictators that ever lived. A 26 year old knobend on the radio today even claimed she was behind Iraq. And fucking repeated it even when told politely by the presenter that he's maybe got himself a little confused (it wasn't a mistake, he hadn't confused it for the Falklands for example). It's fucking planks like this that swallow the stuff about decimated industries and regurgitate it, like little Morrissey spawn. The way people go on, you'd think Thatcher was the sort to have proposed removing the vote from piss stains like this, yet quite the reverse.

On what scale? Pre-Thatcher or Post-Thatcher.