Margaret Thatcher dead at 87

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by JoeZhang, Apr 8, 2013.

  1. Relayer1

    Relayer1 Admiral Admiral

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    As far as I am concerned, 'uppity' and 'arsey' are pretty much interchangeable. Where does race come into it ?
     
  2. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    joe zhang: If it is a racial thing, then i apologize. never come across it used that way in this country and can only find that definition on urbandictionary and they aren't always the most reliable tool.

    I was just making a joke about people moaning about her while she kept winning elections. and don't say 'i have corrected your mistake' when all you did was point out a pedantic little technicality when the meaning was the same.

    and this has gone off topic.
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2013
  3. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    When someone white is telling a black person they are speaking above their station.
     
  4. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh come on bud, you expect poor MP's to pay out of their own pocket for stuff like this, they are already surviving on that breadline MP's wage of £65.000 a year and anything they can scrap from their second/ third £100,000 jobs sitting on boards here and there, and of course that little bit extra they can scrap from their pittance of a expense form.

    Come on, have a heart, poor wee buggers. :p
     
  5. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^ They can even claim to go back to their holiday afterwards :lol:

    junxon
    , don't stress, nobody thinks you are racist.
     
  6. PopBoy

    PopBoy Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    She was sadly intolerant of many minorities & would ensure the weakest (or poorest) in the country remained so through her policies (like the poll tax or foreign policy where she deemed Mandela a terrorist) but also via her moralistic legislation like the awful section 28 that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality in high schools and college.

    There is an interesting argument to be made about the modernization of Britain and its economy which will be debated till the cows come home. My eyes and eyes are open and ready to take on board it all. Whatever the political side of the fence. Some for, some against. But her treatment of minorities can never really be seen as anything but discrimination. She set out to make the lives of gay men and women difficult. And, section 28 of the Local Authority Act is testament to that.

    I will always listen to the arguments for and against her economical and personal beliefs but I can never really go beyond the passing of particular legislation that persecuted vulnerable minorities.
     
  7. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh that's good, god knows if anybody deserves a good holiday a few times a years and all those benifits,( oh that might have been a unintentional pun:lol:), it's those selfless hard working MP's.

    God bless them, one and all, right see you later, nurse says my internet time is up.:)
     
  8. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    More importantly, can you dodge the SAS? :lol:
     
  9. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No, you're still wrong. The majority of the UK neither voted for Margaret Thatcher nor the Conservative party during any of her three election victories. In 1979, the Conservatives won 43.9% of the vote while Labour and Liberals won a combined 50.7%. In 1983, the Conservatives won 42.4% while Labour and SDP/Lib won a combined 53%. In 1987, the Conservatives won 42.2% while Labour and SDP/Lib won a combined 53.4%.

    However, because of the unfairness of the way seats are won in the First Past the Post electoral system, the Conservatives won a majority in Parliament in all three elections, preventing the possibility of a Lib/Lab coalition to block Thatcher. This is the point that JoeZhang was making.
     
  10. Sam_I_Am

    Sam_I_Am Captain Captain

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    Why do you assume the Liberals would join a Labour coalition?

    I know that was the common presumption before the current Coalition but I am not sure why you think it was true then.

    This data suggests otherwise. It points to Liberals splitting almost equally in favouring Labour or the Tories if their party wasn't successful.
     
  11. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    Fair enough TheGodBen, but if he'd actually said anything like that then i probably wouldn't have got pissy, instead he just said 'you made a mistake' a few times.

    nevertheless those stats do support the general notion that lots of people voted conservative back then.

    anyways it was originally meant to be a throwaway joke about that fact a bunch of pages back. and i thought it mildly funny and a counterpoint to the numerous 'i'm glad she's dead' statements i've seen about :p
     
  12. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe they wouldn't have, I was just making it clear that the majority of voters voted for other parties, and that a fairer electoral system may have prevented a Thatcher government. At the very least, a Con/Lib coalition should have been more moderate than the Conservatives on their own. (Or maybe not, going off the current UK government.)

    Well, he did point out that she didn't win a majority due to the FPTP system, but it might not have been clear what he was trying to say unless you follow British politics and understand the bitterness that many British members here have over the failure to replace that system a few years back. ;) That's why I included the actual numbers, just to be completely clear.
     
  13. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    meh, could be worse, could have the american system. that looks very dodgy.

    i think i'll just leave with the following to sum up my opinion:

    Margaret Thatcher. She existed.
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2013
  14. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

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    I'm just trying to imagine David Steel working with Michael Foot?

    Horses for courses though, take 2005, Labour got less than 3% more of the popular vote than the Conservatives but because of the distribution of constituencies they ended up with almost 10% more seats. I still prefer the UK system to the US one, and I'm still sure I prefer it to AV. If you want a government to really change things (be it Conservatvie or Labour or even the Lib Dems) then they need to have the mandate to do so.
     
  15. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    As we type, I would think many people are trying to work out the best way to propel a paint-bomb over a distance - I would think the police will be looking closely for people lugging drainpipes on the day...
     
  16. stoneroses

    stoneroses Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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  17. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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  18. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    True, as you say any UK party does not need to win 50%+1 of the vote to form a government they just need to win 50%+1 of the seats.

    No matter which systesm is used first past the post, AV etc.. each have their pros and cons.
     
  19. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The Americans also use FPTP, but the problems with that electoral system are less pronounced there because they only have two major political parties, at least at the federal level. Although the 1992 Presidential election also shows the shortcomings of their system as Ross Perot won almost 20% of the popular vote yet achieved absolutely no electoral college votes.

    I reject the notion that you need single-party majority governments to change things, and I say that as someone who lives in a country that hasn't experienced such a thing in my lifetime. It's a threat perpetuated by large parties in the UK so as not to undermine their power. It requires more work and a willingness to compromise, but those aren't bad things to ask of people who control the destinies of millions of lives. If anything, Thatcher's ability to wreck the economies of whole regions of the UK so long as she maintained support among 42% of voters is the perfect example of the dangers of single-party rule in parliamentary systems.
     
  20. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I see the media(ITN news on this occasion), have been hounding Scargill in the hopes he goes off on some wild man rant about Thatchers passing or they catch him raising a glass and having a jig over it, and because he has not, he has, accorording to the media, "Gone to ground" as if he were some fugitive on the run, they spent almost 10 mins on this non story. :wtf:

    But all is not lost, they got Scargill's ex wife to say Thatcher was evil and she was glad she was dead, so it all worked out in the end for them. :rolleyes: