Iron Lady - what were they thinking?

[Alidar Jarok]

She fucked the country so hard we're still feeling the effects now, she won for various reasons. An uplift in popularity after the Falklands, she got a lot of women's votes for being a woman and people didn't trust the Labour party after the 70s. Much like Conservatives are in power now, and appear to have popularity because people don't trust lib dems or labour.

Love or hate her policies, you have to admit they were influential. They completely changed Labour's approach as well. People always accused Blair of being Thatcher-light. But the basic approach was to modify the most harmful effects of her policies, but to keep the basic ideas intact.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

She fucked the country so hard we're still feeling the effects now, she won for various reasons. An uplift in popularity after the Falklands, she got a lot of women's votes for being a woman and people didn't trust the Labour party after the 70s. Much like Conservatives are in power now, and appear to have popularity because people don't trust lib dems or labour.

Love or hate her policies, you have to admit they were influential. They completely changed Labour's approach as well. People always accused Blair of being Thatcher-light. But the basic approach was to modify the most harmful effects of her policies, but to keep the basic ideas intact.

Oh I don't deny that, and no doubt she will historically be seen as one of the more influential and prominent politicians of the 20th century, but I definitely think she did more harm than good.

 

[Australis]

I love Thatch

Suddenly MUCH is explained.

 

[Ghost Bones]

I love Thatch

Suddenly MUCH is explained.

Do elaborate, won't you?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I think Jennifer Saunders makes a better Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher than does Meryl Streep - and the movie is probably irredeemably dull without Al Pacino as Arthur Scargill.

 

[Deckerd]

You remind me a quote (possibly apocryphal) attributed to film critic Pauline Kael in the wake of some republican's landslide victory in the presidential election. She reportedly said that she couldn't believe he'd had won, since no one she knew had voted for him, forgetting that neighborhoods or regions often have a political character that differs from other places.

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words.

 

[Captain Shaw]

You remind me a quote (possibly apocryphal) attributed to film critic Pauline Kael in the wake of some republican's landslide victory in the presidential election. She reportedly said that she couldn't believe he'd had won, since no one she knew had voted for him, forgetting that neighborhoods or regions often have a political character that differs from other places.

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words.

Don't you have a Scottish Tory party, they must like her?

 

[Deckerd]

Ha ha. Guess how many Tories were voted in at the last election?

 

[the G-man]

You remind me a quote (possibly apocryphal) attributed to film critic Pauline Kael in the wake of some republican's landslide victory in the presidential election. She reportedly said that she couldn't believe he'd had won, since no one she knew had voted for him, forgetting that neighborhoods or regions often have a political character that differs from other places.

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. ....

Wow. I didn't realize the First Minister of Scotland posted here. Welcome to the boards, your honor.

 

[Deckerd]

Your sneering is worth naught unless you can find someone to prove me wrong.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Your sneering is worth naught unless you can find someone to prove me wrong.

If there was anything right with the world it wouldn't just be Scotland you were speaking for.

 

[captcalhoun]

there's more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs.

 

[Captaindemotion]

there's more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs.

And the pandas are breeding faster. Thankfully.

 

[the G-man]

If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words...Your sneering is worth naught unless you can find someone to prove me wrong.

(emphasis added)

Thirty seconds of googling later...

David Torrance, the author of We In Scotland - Thatcherism In A Cold Climate:

• ANY assessment of Margaret Thatcher’s Scottish legacy has to separate her personality from her achievements.
  
  Many loathed her 11 years in office, and thereafter her name has been used to terrify the gullible; to invoke a collective folk memory of wicked misdeeds both real and imagined.
  
  Very real was the recession that coincided with her first election victory in 1979.
  
  Also real was a period of high unemployment and genuine opposition to the central thrust of her political philosophy.
  
  Yet imagined was a figure who detested Scotland and sought to somehow “test” her unpopular policies upon the country.
  
  This gave rise to some potent mythology. Mrs Thatcher apparently closed Ravenscraig (which happened two years after she resigned), “experimented” with the poll tax (she was bounced into it by a panicked Scottish Office) and, most enduring of all, enjoyed no popular support in Scotland (for most of her premiership she had around 30 per cent of the vote and more than 20 MPs).
  
  That all of these myths took hold despite little basis in fact says more about the brilliant messaging of Mrs Thatcher’s political opponents than historical reality.
  
  Ironically, while lambasting her philosophy and policies, Thatcher’s critics gradually adapted to the new realities of the revolution she initiated and even adopted its rhetoric, including the SNP.
  
  Although Alex Salmond’s Freudian slip a few years ago, that Scots “didn’t mind the economic side [of Thatcherism] so much”, was swiftly repudiated, it betrayed the extent to which even the leader of a nationalist party had embraced the Thatcherite economic orthodoxy.
  
  Looking at Scotland in 2012, it’s clear key elements of the Thatcher revolution not only worked but also endure.
  
  Even in a recession, Scots no longer have to worry seriously about balance of payments deficits, or indeed pay and incomes policies, while crippling strikes are more or less a thing of the past.
  
  Thirty years ago, the British state still controlled wages, ran factories, collected rents, installed telephones and supplied electricity and gas in Scotland.
  
  Now all of these things are done – if they’re done at all – by the free market, and no one is suggesting that should change.
  
  Ironically, having succeeded in breaking up one consensus, that of the post-war era, Mrs Thatcher inadvertently gave rise to another.

Michael MacLennan:

• Oh, how we Scots love to hate her! Even if most appear to despise her so much that they can’t admit the enormous enjoyment that they get out of the whole deal. It’s strange – though unsurprising – to bear witness to the sheer amount of supposedly sensible types who won’t waste a single second to condemn any violent or bigoted infractions in the Old Firm rivalry, but who then don’t see any hypocrisy in gleefully discussing plans to hold “death parties” once an old lady suffering from dementia passes away....
  
  In fact, it’s her that we should thank for the increasingly likely prospect of an independent Scotland, as Maggie made it abundantly clear (through her actions) that we would be better off making our own decisions without others imposing their different preferences upon us. (Perhaps Alex Salmond can build a monument to her outside Holyrood when the time comes?)

That's two.

Now, I'm sure you are going to sniff and say, in a lovely brogue that doesn't translate to the written forum, "I didn't literally mean 'everybody'."

However, when you say you speak for an entire nation and demand I produce "one Scot" who approved of Mrs. Thatcher, that is precisely the response you invited.

Furthermore, and more to the point, I am simply noting that even a controversial or unpopular figure has some fans. It is the height of myopia, if not arrogance, for someone to fail to recognize that.

You really should be more careful to consider that not everyone views things exactly the way you do and, in fact, that a diversity of viewpoints is necessary to a healthy society.

 

[terranova]

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words.

Scotland isn't just the Central Belt, the part of the country I live in voted for Maggie's Tories twice (then switched to the Alliance), so I don't think you can speak for the entire country, the Republicans did more harm here as far as I remember.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

there's more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs.

Ok i just sprayed my tea all over the place.

 

[Australis]

I love Thatch

Suddenly MUCH is explained.

Do elaborate, won't you?

No no, thanks for the offer, but it doesn't need elaboration. I'll leave it there.

 

[Deckerd]

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words.

Scotland isn't just the Central Belt, the part of the country I live in voted for Maggie's Tories twice (then switched to the Alliance), so I don't think you can speak for the entire country, the Republicans did more harm here as far as I remember.

Since you stopped voting for her, I assume you came to the same conclusion everyone else had already achieved.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Yes but I'm speaking for an entire nation. If you can find one Scot who thinks she was good for our country I will quite happily eat my words.

Scotland isn't just the Central Belt, the part of the country I live in voted for Maggie's Tories twice (then switched to the Alliance), so I don't think you can speak for the entire country, the Republicans did more harm here as far as I remember.

Since you stopped voting for her, I assume you came to the same conclusion everyone else had already achieved.

Shame there are people who continue to vote Tory.

 

[Starkers]

She fucked the country so hard we're still feeling the effects now, she won for various reasons. An uplift in popularity after the Falklands, she got a lot of women's votes for being a woman and people didn't trust the Labour party after the 70s. Much like Conservatives are in power now, and appear to have popularity because people don't trust lib dems or labour.

Ah you mean where Britain went from the duldrums to the what the fifth or sixth richest country by the end of her tenure.

That isn't to say she didn't make any mistakes.

So lets examine prior to the conservatives coming to power in 79 it was a Labour Administration the country was in a mess. The Conservatives get elected partially because of the way Labour screwed up.

Lets see the country is a bit of mess (due in part to global events) but in part due to Labour so we have a conservative led Administration partly because of what occured during Labour's tenure.

So from History it almost appears as if Labour screws up the economy, and then the Conservatives are elected to rectify it (having to make unpopular decisions).

But give it a few years and we'll be sick of the Conservatives and vote in Labour then get sick of them and the cycle repeats. It seems as if all parties are as bad as each other.

I've believed for several years that that is the way of things, and that both sides of the coin are needed at one time or another.

Give me Maggie over Blair any day, not to say I believe in everything she did but people just get very blinkered towards her and can't bring themselves to accept there were any positives towards her time in power (and clearly there were). Britain was a bit of a joke prior to 1979, and by the time she left power we weren't anymore.

For all that she admired Reagan she wasn't afraid to disagree with him, and certainly wasn't the star struck poodle Blair was with Bush.

Manufacturing did get shafted, however it's fairly obvious a lot of this was already in the pipeline before '79, strike upon strike upon strike likely didn't help. But Thatcher didn't do anything to help did she?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8253169.stm


And of course she destroyed the British coal mining industry...or maybe not.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7952388.stm


I don't for one second imagine that everything she did is defensible, and I'm still not sure if I actually like her, but I respect her as a politician. Andrew Marr makes an interesting point by stressing that she genuinely did seem to believe that increasing home ownership/share ownership/borrowing for everyone would improve their lives, she just rather naively thought they'd be sensible about it.

I don't expect to change anyone's views, just think it's important to stress that some people have a view outside of the polarised extremes.

I probably won't go see the film, I think Cameron's right, it probably is too soon, besides I'm not sure I want to see a film about an old lady with dementia.