The6Bells

Fuck me. If you really believe what you just wrote, you must be a very very warped individual. Right wing I may be (depending on how relevant you think Old Labour is any more in the current spectrum), but I can guarantee I've never worn a beret in my life, military or otherwise (not even for France day at SJP).

LOL. So, it's not the fact that the govt. owes you a job, it's that it owes you an interesting job. Brilliant. Anyways, I find it hilarous that it sounds like at least two people on here work in the factory Thatcher brought to the region. Anymore want to fess up to being just a little bit hypocritical about all this 'she tuk urr jubs' nonsense?

I'm not Martin Guinness if that's what you're thinking.

Parky is clearly certifiable so I think ignoring him is the best for everyone. As for HF & Chez, which posts?

Martin McGuinness is condemning the people in Derry having a party to celebrate Maggie's death. You know you're a scumbag when this guy is taking the moral highground. Also quite funny to see him calling her a warmonger - she signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the early 80s, I suppose that had nothing to do with the fact he was running around Derry with a sub-machine gun in the early 70s. Scumbag.

Reality always is.

What have I ignored?

Would that be the billions Neil Kinnock was planning on pumping into the nationalised industries or implment a national minimum wage or any other amazingly transformational socialist policy? My arse it was. Like all Lanour governments it would have needed to largely stay there untouched, as a guarantee to the wider world that there would be at least something there to underwrite the country's debts once the wheels started to come off. If you want to consider the impact of Thatcher's reign in a serious manner, why not widen your perspective to the full 11 years?

Here's something good for all the people who think they know what Thatcher did or didn't do to industry etc etc blad di blah. Over the course of the 1970s, two Prime Ministers, Edward Heath and James Callaghan, had been broken by the trade unions, while a third, Harold Wilson, descended into paranoia. Foreign papers talked of Britain as the Sick Man of Europe. Callaghan himself told his Labour colleagues: "If I were a young man, I would emigrate." .... by the time she left office .... Taxes were lower, strikes were down, productivity growth was much improved and far from fleeing Britain, as they had once threatened to do, foreign investors were now queuing to get in - a trend symbolised above all by Nissan's groundbreaking investment in the North East of England. The real question, though, is whether this could realistically have been avoided. It is a myth that Thatcher single-handedly ended the era of full employment - in fact, unemployment had already hit 1.5 million under Callaghan.....In truth, Britain in the 1980s was always facing an immensely painful transition, partly because so many difficult decisions had been postponed for so long, but also because the stark reality of globalisation meant that major industries - notably carmaking, shipbuilding and coal-mining - were doomed even before she took power. - Dominic Sandbrook, the author of several history books about Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, including White Heat, State Of Emergency and most recently, Seasons In The Sun http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22076886

'capital controls' There were all sorts of utterly stupid and outmoded rules too, but people like to hide that behind labels like 'capital controls', which also describe the shit that's going on in Cyprus right now.

Her's my answers: Me. 3. (or 2. if you consider it was a product of privatisation) Dad 2. Grandad 2.

Here's a fun game people can play that might also inform people about their lives. If you are employed locally, figure out when the business that employs you was started, and post the number below that best fits: 1. Public sector 2. Pre-Thatcher industry (mining, steel works, etc) 3. Thatcher era industry (Nissan, etc) 4. Post-Thatcher industry (Call centre monkey?) 5. Self employed or (very) small business started before Thatcher 6. Self employed or (very) small business started during Thatcher 7. Self employed or (very) small business started after Thatcher 8. I don't work (dole, student etc) Once you've answered that, now do the same for your father, and maybe even your grandfather. Then we can see if we can draw any conclusions about whether Thatcherism was a good or a bad thing for the North East, based on real examples, rather than the usual socialist rhetoric, which as we all know, more often than not tends to be based on fantasy rather than reality.

Maybe the subject matter? Shall we talk about something else? Did you get your test results back?

Being buried on the 20th anniversary of the closure of Easington pit. Sticking it to the miners even in death.

That would be the same Thatcher who signed us up to the single market? That guided the economy and interest rates to the point where a Japanese company locating a factory here made sense because it allowed them to export to the EU. LOLwut? I think this is a brilliant insight into the socialist mind - nationalise all the industries, that way you don't have to worry about maintaining good trading relations with your neighbours or keeping the economy in good shape in order to attract foreign investment. Although I suppose when your own nationalised car industry can't even make cars at a cost and quality that anyone outside the UK would buy them, then I suppose the issue of trading relations does start to look a bit irrelevant (except of course, had Nissan put a factory on the contient and their ships were coming in rather than going out in that era, then they would have not only wiped out our own nationalised industry in a few years, they wouldn't have even employed anyone here either).

You'd sooner go down a mine? Am I really supposed to believe that? It's moot now anyway, the last deep mine just recently closed, funnily enough due to a fire. Still fancy that job? Nobody benefits from a downtrodden workforce. Just like nobody benefitted from closed shops, shoddy products, wildcat strikes or blackouts. Don't know what the Lords thing refers to, but the only ex union baron I've heard from today was a guy on Radio 5 who conceded that when he was in the union all he was basically doing was screwing his industry and acheiving nothing of note for his members in the process. While he still professed to not like Thatcher's policy, he conceded that what she did was necessary, and he went on to describe that he has since started his own multi million pound company employing a large workforce. He claims they're content, and given his background, you'd have to take him at his word, no?

The Queen is going to the funeral, something she's only ever previously done for Winston. Anyone wishing to protest should probably bear that in mind, the royal protection guys probably get a bit fidgety around people who look like they're about to throw a small round object.

Liberals don't do hate. It's just not their bag.

Hungary? I doubt it. What would a US home buyer need from Hungary that they couldn't but cheaper from a more developed country that had unleashed the potential of their banks to allow their industries to establish factories. A frozen horsemeat ghoulash makes a really shit housewarming present.

Firstly, check your facts. "stripping" is about as accurate in this context as claiming that ASDA merging with Somerfield changed the face of supermarkets overnight, destroying small shops at an instant. It's total bollocks. Second, and perhaps the reason why you appear to believe bollocks like this, I'm pretty sure there's a few local lads with jobs in the Nissan plant that opened after an agreement signed by Thatcher in 1984. So, whether they went to the 1990 garden festival or not, it's pretty obvious that by then they would have had enough money in their pockets to buy some petunias for their missus.

Let's have some fun dealing with the real reasons behind this hate fest for Thatcher now she's dead. Here's my list of top ten reasons why socialists hate Thatcher: 1. She defeated socialism as a political force It must really grate on socialists that as history shows, Thatcherism has killed socialism in Britian as a political force stone dead. These days, there is nobody who calls themselves a socialist who is paid any attention to at all by the general electorate. There are frankly more votes in bashing immigrants and hugging trees nowadays, than in old school socialism thinking like nationalisation and council housing. 2. She won 3 elections in a row Quite simply, that is a record of sustained electoral success that socialists can only dream of. And unlike many of the past Labour governments that lasted beyond one term, the relative lengths of terms of office also pale in comparison too. It cannot be anything but embarassing if you call yourself a true socialist, to look these facts in the face. 3. She was undefeated at the ballot box Related to point 2, but it's also incredibly annoying in its own right to socialists that, despite their warped historical view of her time in government, she was never defeated at the ballot box, unlike countless socialist numpties of various eras once the wheels had come off their administrations after barely half a decade at most. And if a plum like John Major could beat Kinnock, then it's pretty obvious Thatcher could have beaten him to, so that must sting a bit too. It also must be noted that she was never even defeated in a Tory leadership contest, she was basically ousted in a putsch. 4. She was a working class girl made good It cannot be stated enough how much it pisses off all the socialists to be reminded that no, they weren't crushed by one of the evil elite, the aristocrats, the punishers of the proles, they were defeated by someone with working class roots. They were defeated by someone who grew up over her dad's corner shop, and whose childhood experiences included the deprivations of World War II. So try as they might, they will never be able to claim the moral high ground over Thatcher based on any absurd notions of privelage and background, which are otherwise the cornerstones of their beliefs. She got where she was through hard work and dedication, and still ended up with 2 other professional qualifications in addition to all these plaudits for being such a great prime minister and world leader. 5. She went to a grammar school Socialists hate grammar schools, for obvious reasons. The very idea that their ultimate nemesis was a working class girl who was selected to go to a state funded school that allowed her to advance through society based on her talent and intelligence, really fucks with their heads. Socialists cannot conceive of any form of advancement that isn't simply based on ludicrous notions like length of service or blind equality. Even so, they all like to think they could make something of their lives if only they were given a chance, although obviously it boils their piss when it happens to someone like Thatcher, and they'll never admit that there was anything different between her potential and theirs. In the mind of a socialist, we're all potential world leaders. Which any psychologist will tell you is absolute bull crap. Most people just like to be sheep and look to others for leadership and betterment, which is why socialism exists at all, to be honest. 6. She was not a career politician or one of the political elite, yet she still succeeded in politics Thatcher was never a member of the elite political class, which socialists so often try to use an excuse for their failure to beat them in a system supposedly biased to the elite. She was viewed as an outsider, from her local association right up to Ted Heath, someone that would never get ahead because of her gender and background. She smashed right through those barriers in ways that boggle the minds of the average gutless socialist - by using her voice and her arguments as an individual with a mind and free will to change things off her own back. She gained the leadership of the party by appealing to the grass roots MPs, who saw that her message resonated with what the public felt about how the socialists had fucked the country and doing something about it would get the Tories back in power. She was a force of nature in the face of all the old school Tories who had served in Heath's cabinet, eventually succeeding in removing them. She succeeded in spite of the elite. Let's also remember that she was not even a career politician - before she became an MP she was already a chemist and while she was an MP she also became a barrister, in the belief she would never rise in the party high enough to consider it a long term thing. This pisses socialists off because they like to think that they hold the monopoly on having politicians that come from outside politics and would not necessarily stay if they acheived nothing (although as can be seen, that's basically what the old school socialists still do) 7. She was not a feminist This really messes with socialists heads. Thatcher was a women, and as such, she faced all the barriers that entailed in the 50s and 60s. Yet she got where she did out of a belief, and a proof, that she was the best person for the job. She didn't give a monkeys about her gender and didn't seek to use it to better herself in any way, and she even managed to succeed in doing what most socialists seem to find impossible, to be a working mother without depending on the state. This just crushes very large parts of their world view, so its unsurprisingly one of things they mention the least, not even to lie about it. Despite that, she was an early campaigner for better childcare in the welfare state. Some ideologue. 8. She was a patriot Thatcher was a patriot. She didn't pick and choose who she stood up to if they threatened the safety and security of the citizens of this country, whether they were communists, fascists, terrorists, or the militant thugs of the enemy within. She was upfront about the reason she joined politics, because she couldn't bear to see the people of Britain suffer under the auspices of socialism. The people. The citizens. Not this class or that class, but the people. That's why the people voted for her. Not the elite, not the middle class, but enough of the people to win an election in this country. Socialists hate patriotism, because it brings into sharp focus their lack of a belief that there is any concept of citizenship, or at least that it is not totally depreciated by their preferred breakdown of society into the haves (the enemey), and the have nots (the brothers, the comrades, the members, etc) 9. She helped defeat communism Most smart socialists have the sense to dismiss Soviet era communism for what it was, a brutal dictatorship. Still, it still rankles with many of them on at least some level that it was Thatcher who was seen by the proles in the USSR as the defender of their freedoms. 10. Arthur Scargill What more can you say? This man was a gift to Thatcher. Socialists seem to forget that Thatcher did compromise with the NUM initially. She did pragmetically avoid a strike in th early years. But like it or lump it, she was elected on a platform of freeing this country from the yoke of scumbags like Scargill. But he wanted a war, and so she obliged him as much and for as long as he wanted, until his ultimate defeat, bringing about the almost permanent erasure of unions as a force in Britain (luckily they can still bring the nations public services to their needs if their selfish needs aren't being met, in the true tradition of old school socialists). But in the round, in the wrapping up of this period of history, when even Neil Kinnock, the last real hope of a socialist prime minister in Britain, blames the intransigence and shortcomings of Scargill for the suffering and damage to communities caused by the miners strike, then I don't care what brand of socialism you ascribe to, you know you fucked up if you still think that idiot was right.

Um. Not Hungary I'm guessing. I know, Canada. So, anyway, what was the point again?

The self inflicted death of a terrorist doesn't strike me as a grave situation. Now, the oft forgotten death of 5 innocent people due to the attempted assssination by the IRA of Maggie when the subject of Sands comes up, now that's grave.

An oft quoted lie. History shows that she was pragmatic when necessary. Certainly more so than anyone who opposed her at the time, or any of these so called post war consensus leaders (unless you define making policy one year and ripping it up the next as pragmatic). She's only seen as an ideologue because she pushed it through, unlike other less sucessful political ideologies of any era.

Well, I think we all know what effect it has had on Britain, end yet nobody is proposing any major changes to the idea of free market banking. But I think it would be funnier for you to perhaps outline how the more regulated countries have weathered the storm. Let's put aside the obvious no brainers like Cuba. Let's have a discussion about what fun it is to live in, say, somewhere like Hungary? How did their antiquated banking system protect their citizens from the effects of the global financial crisis?