Thatcher dead

[pominoz]

Great post Rascal,

I left school in 85, no jobs, no way of learning a trade. I spent 12 months on a YTS course and was shipped out to a "small building firm" the type of small firm that Thatchers government encouraged on a YTS scheme created by Thatchers government. I was taught nothing and spent twelve months digging this builders foundations by hand on house extensions that he made a fortune building. I earnt £27.30 each week and the builder never gave me a penny. I was his slave for twelve months and he promised me a job at the end of my scheme and so I worked hard for him and never took a single day off, even working weekends unpaid to try and impress. At the end of my scheme he sent me back to my training centre and got a fresh new slave for twelve months.

This happened to thousands of young men like me and for that alone I will never forgive Thatcher. She did not give a shit for the youth and the YTS kept her jobless figures down to 3 million, when it should of been 5 million plus.

On the back of that thousands of fat bastard owning small businessmen made fortunes on the back of high margins at the time and free labour. These twats will still be in fantastic financial positions due to Thatchers free young labour scheme so no wonder she will have some support. Those same twats taking advantage of this free labour will have bought and paid for their houses with the fat cash they made and will live a very good life today.

It was unfair on the youth and I for one will never forget being an honest hard working slave for twelve months who was totally duped into thinking that if I worked hard I would be rewarded.

I will also never forget the fat bastard builder who had me digging footings, mixing concrete, carrying his bricks and even had me painting his bastard fence for two weeks when he had no other for me. He would have had Free Labour for at least ten years ( in today's terms saving him around £300k ) whilst telling me on a weekly basis, "well done lad, I'll take you on at the end of your scheme"

Ding Dong The Witch is Dead the fucking woman !!!!!!

The early 80s were a tough period for everyone coming out of School and College at that time, but there were qualifications, apprenticeships and trades leading to well paid and secure jobs.

e.g. A friend of mine left school at 16 and secured an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce in 1984.

He's still working for them at Derby.

Another friend got a Job at ICI in Alderley Edge as a Lab Technician.

There were, but they were very few and far between.
I know of only one of my school mates that scored an apprenticeship, to be fair he is doing really well and is now head of R&D in America for a multinational company.
The rest of us were left to rot.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

Why do people insist on implying that we lived in some sort of utopia before 1979, where we all had great jobs and life was just rosy? The truth is that we were completely skint as a country and unemployment was at then record levels. British Leyland had gone bust and been bailed out in 1975 and British Steel was already planning to reduce capacity. They had too many people producing too little steel at too high a cost in too many under-utilised plants. If anyone is to blame for the decline of the British Steel industry it's probably Churchill, who tore up plans to invest in and reform the industry during his tenure. Places like Corby & Consett are quick to blame Thatcher for their problems but the plans to close those steelworks were already in place before she came to power.

The only reason unemployment wasn't much higher was that public money (money we didn't have as the IMF were bailing us out at the time) was being pumped into loss-making and dying industries just to keep people in work. You can argue about the rights and wrongs of that but you can't argue that it couldn't have continued for very much longer. And one of the factors that required action to be taken sooner rather than later was the 1979 oil crisis following the Iranian revolution when production plummeted and prices more than doubled. I notice Labour apologists are quick to blame the global liquidity crisis for our current economic woes but blame Thatcher for those of the early 1980's, forgetting the constraints she was under.

The coal industry was also in decline and had been for 15 years by the time Thatcher came to power. Pits were being closed on a regular basis as demand declined. But even after the Miners' strike, we still produced 100m tons of coal a year. Whatever happened, that would have declined significantly as we moved away from dirty fuels like coal.

I'd certainly agree that the YTS scheme was a scandal and as a union rep in an engineering environment I railed against it as short-sighted. It offered false hope to people but was that much worse than the false hope offered by the previous government, which used public money to keep people in jobs that had no future?

These problems would have to have been faced and tackled sooner or later and it's certainly legitimate to question whether there was a better way to manage this process but you simply cannot question the need to take some action.

This, in a nutshell. The 1960's during Wilsons tenure was closing pits regularly, as they became more and more unprofitable, yet nobody at the time was howling about how much of a bastard the PM was. To balance the argument, the Tory PM Heath in the early 70's started printing money like confetti to try to assuage detractors who were pointing out the dire state of the economy, then we had the total and utter disaster of labours' Callaghan, when union power and demands bordered on insanity, resulting in the humiliating cap in hand visit to the IMF.
We were supporting monolithic, out of date industries with public money we didn't have, the IMF's predictable demand for 'Cuts' in return for funds (fast forward to today) demanded that something be done.
Nobody, on here, as yet, has offered up an alternative to what we should have done.

 

[jay_mcfc]

Estimated £ 10 mill plus for her funeral

I reckon this will go into the billions by the time it's over

 

[Bill Walker]

Estimated £ 10 mill plus for her funeral

suppose thats her fault as well..

 

[stonerblue]

1. She supported the retention of capital punishment
2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry
3. She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws
4. She abolished free milk for schoolchildren ("Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher")
5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)
6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration
7. She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)
8. She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million
9. She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands
10. The poll tax
11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad
12. She compared her "fight" against the miners to the Falklands War
13. She privatised state monopolies and created the corporate greed culture that we've been railing against for the last 5 years
14. She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS
15. She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits
16. She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA
17. She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control
18. Section 28
19. She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as "that grubby little terrorist"
20. She support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and sent the SAS to train their soldiers
21. She allowed the US to bomb Libya in 1986, against the wishes of more than 2/3 of the population
22. She opposed the reunification of Germany
23. She invented Quangos
24. She increased VAT from 8% to 17.5%
25. She had the lowest approval rating of any post-war Prime Minister
26. Her post-PM job? Consultant to Philip Morris tobacco at $250,000 a year, plus $50,000 per speech
27. The Al Yamamah contract
28. She opposed the indictment of Chile's General Pinochet
29. Social unrest under her leadership was higher than at any time since the General Strike
30. She presided over interest rates increasing to 15%
31. BSE
32. She presided over 2 million manufacturing job losses in the 79-81 recession
33. She opposed the inclusion of Eire in the Northern Ireland peace process
34. She supported sanctions-busting arms deals with South Africa
35. Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitkin
36. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher
37. Black Wednesday – Britain withdraws from the ERM and the pound is devalued. Cost to Britain - £3.5 billion; profit for George Soros - £1 billion
38. Poverty doubled while she opposed a minimum wage
39. She privatised public services, claiming at the time it would increase public ownership. Most are now owned either by foreign governments (EDF) or major investment houses. The profits don’t now accrue to the taxpayer, but to foreign or institutional shareholders.
40. She cut 75% of funding to museums, galleries and other sources of education
41. In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions
42. 21.9% inflation


For
The Miners
The Shipbuilders
The Steelworkers
The Old that Froze to Death
The Old that Couldn't Afford Food
For the Thousands Made Homeless

For
The North
The Disenfranchised Black Youth
The Lost Generation of Young
The Hillsborough families
The men dead in a conflict designed to win her an election
The men traumatised from the Falklands War
For Northern Ireland

For
my mam and dad
my Grandparents
my brother
every LGBT kid who committed suicide due to Section 28 in schools
The teachers
The victims of gaybashing which were never investigated due to pressure from her government
For the gay men stitched up and banged up for being gay

For
The women of Greenham Common who were beaten and had their kids forcibly taken into care for no reason
For the men and women assaulted in the Battle of the Beanfield
For the men and women consigned to the scrapheap
For the services that used to belong to all of us and now are badly run in the hands of the rich
For the country that used to stand for social justice and created the National Health Service
The mentally ill thrown out on the streets
The children abused in care homes and ignored or worse abused by some in her government

I will not celebrate the death of a woman who caused so much pain but i will protest loudly against her being given such a funeral paid for by the society she so despised.

All of that.

 

[Vinjay]

Estimated £ 10 mill plus for her funeral

suppose thats her fault as well..

On that subject apparently her will states (so apparently she accepted death like everyone else) that she didn't want a state funeral.

 

[Ronnie the Rep]

Why do people insist on implying that we lived in some sort of utopia before 1979, where we all had great jobs and life was just rosy? The truth is that we were completely skint as a country and unemployment was at then record levels. British Leyland had gone bust and been bailed out in 1975 and British Steel was already planning to reduce capacity. They had too many people producing too little steel at too high a cost in too many under-utilised plants. If anyone is to blame for the decline of the British Steel industry it's probably Churchill, who tore up plans to invest in and reform the industry during his tenure. Places like Corby & Consett are quick to blame Thatcher for their problems but the plans to close those steelworks were already in place before she came to power.

The only reason unemployment wasn't much higher was that public money (money we didn't have as the IMF were bailing us out at the time) was being pumped into loss-making and dying industries just to keep people in work. You can argue about the rights and wrongs of that but you can't argue that it couldn't have continued for very much longer. And one of the factors that required action to be taken sooner rather than later was the 1979 oil crisis following the Iranian revolution when production plummeted and prices more than doubled. I notice Labour apologists are quick to blame the global liquidity crisis for our current economic woes but blame Thatcher for those of the early 1980's, forgetting the constraints she was under.

The coal industry was also in decline and had been for 15 years by the time Thatcher came to power. Pits were being closed on a regular basis as demand declined. But even after the Miners' strike, we still produced 100m tons of coal a year. Whatever happened, that would have declined significantly as we moved away from dirty fuels like coal.

I'd certainly agree that the YTS scheme was a scandal and as a union rep in an engineering environment I railed against it as short-sighted. It offered false hope to people but was that much worse than the false hope offered by the previous government, which used public money to keep people in jobs that had no future?

These problems would have to have been faced and tackled sooner or later and it's certainly legitimate to question whether there was a better way to manage this process but you simply cannot question the need to take some action.

This, in a nutshell. The 1960's during Wilsons tenure was closing pits regularly, as they became more and more unprofitable, yet nobody at the time was howling about how much of a bastard the PM was. To balance the argument, the Tory PM Heath in the early 70's started printing money like confetti to try to assuage detractors who were pointing out the dire state of the economy, then we had the total and utter disaster of labours' Callaghan, when union power and demands bordered on insanity, resulting in the humiliating cap in hand visit to the IMF.
We were supporting monolithic, out of date industries with public money we didn't have, the IMF's predictable demand for 'Cuts' in return for funds (fast forward to today) demanded that something be done.
Nobody, on here, as yet, has offered up an alternative to what we should have done.

A lot of folk on here won't remember the union excesses that contributed to the downfall of things like our car industry, it's much easier to blame poor management and Mrs Thatcher's policies

 

[crystal_mais]

Why do people insist on implying that we lived in some sort of utopia before 1979, where we all had great jobs and life was just rosy? The truth is that we were completely skint as a country and unemployment was at then record levels. British Leyland had gone bust and been bailed out in 1975 and British Steel was already planning to reduce capacity. They had too many people producing too little steel at too high a cost in too many under-utilised plants. If anyone is to blame for the decline of the British Steel industry it's probably Churchill, who tore up plans to invest in and reform the industry during his tenure. Places like Corby & Consett are quick to blame Thatcher for their problems but the plans to close those steelworks were already in place before she came to power.

The only reason unemployment wasn't much higher was that public money (money we didn't have as the IMF were bailing us out at the time) was being pumped into loss-making and dying industries just to keep people in work. You can argue about the rights and wrongs of that but you can't argue that it couldn't have continued for very much longer. And one of the factors that required action to be taken sooner rather than later was the 1979 oil crisis following the Iranian revolution when production plummeted and prices more than doubled. I notice Labour apologists are quick to blame the global liquidity crisis for our current economic woes but blame Thatcher for those of the early 1980's, forgetting the constraints she was under.

The coal industry was also in decline and had been for 15 years by the time Thatcher came to power. Pits were being closed on a regular basis as demand declined. But even after the Miners' strike, we still produced 100m tons of coal a year. Whatever happened, that would have declined significantly as we moved away from dirty fuels like coal.

I'd certainly agree that the YTS scheme was a scandal and as a union rep in an engineering environment I railed against it as short-sighted. It offered false hope to people but was that much worse than the false hope offered by the previous government, which used public money to keep people in jobs that had no future?

These problems would have to have been faced and tackled sooner or later and it's certainly legitimate to question whether there was a better way to manage this process but you simply cannot question the need to take some action.

This, in a nutshell. The 1960's during Wilsons tenure was closing pits regularly, as they became more and more unprofitable, yet nobody at the time was howling about how much of a bastard the PM was. To balance the argument, the Tory PM Heath in the early 70's started printing money like confetti to try to assuage detractors who were pointing out the dire state of the economy, then we had the total and utter disaster of labours' Callaghan, when union power and demands bordered on insanity, resulting in the humiliating cap in hand visit to the IMF.
We were supporting monolithic, out of date industries with public money we didn't have, the IMF's predictable demand for 'Cuts' in return for funds (fast forward to today) demanded that something be done.
Nobody, on here, as yet, has offered up an alternative to what we should have done.

A lot of folk on here won't remember the union excesses that contributed to the downfall of things like our car industry, it's much easier to blame poor management and Mrs Thatcher's policies

She did very well with alot of things and fucked up with some. Public owned industries were on a decline and the tax burden was increasing.
Her vision was to offer opportunities for people to work hard and help shape their own futures

Unfortunately Manufacturing would have dies in this country due to companies sourcing cheaper products abroad.

We struggled during the Thatcher years and my family always voted Labour.

She should be commended for some of the stuff she did. My opinion is the public vilification and disrespect being shown is wrong.

 

[Dubai Blue]

Estimated £ 10 mill plus for her funeral

suppose thats her fault as well..

On that subject apparently her will states (so apparently she accepted death like everyone else) that she didn't want a state funeral.

Which makes the whole exercise even more disgraceful. Leave the politics out of it for a minute and we have an old woman who's dying wish was to be laid to rest in relative peace without a big public fuss being made. Yet her most fanatical supporters choose to completely ignore that and do the exact opposite. And they then have the gall to lambast others for being disrespectful. Fucking idiots.

 

[blueonblue]

So lets give a little detail to the usual drivel from the left


1. She supported the retention of capital punishment

She reflected the wishes of the people then (and now) on this, it this was put to a referendum it would be returned.

2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry

The clean air act killed coal mining, containers the dockers jobs, wage costs & working practices made British products far more expensive and poorer quality, an it was the British union members who bought the jap cars and imported goods NOT HER.

3. She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws

Given the number of single parents and problem kids today it looks like she was proved right by time and results

4. She abolished free milk for schoolchildren ("Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher")

Harold Wilson’s labour government removed free milk from all 11- to 18-year-olds in 1968, yet nobody vilified the then education secretary, Ted Short. Three years later the Heath administration took away milk from 7- to 11-year-olds in England, yet Margaret Thatcher was singled out for everlasting blame when she as Education Secretary removed free milk from primary schools in 1971............... "Labour milk snatcher"

5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)

Yes do indeed look at how that turned out, the turn around from near bankrupt to showing a surplus when labour came to power.

6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration

Care to look at how many union members marched in support of Enoch Powell, another one branded by the liars of the left as a racist (Try reading the so called Rivers of blood speech and find one racist thing in it). again she reflected the peoples concerns on immigration and time proves her right.


7. She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)

The country was bankrupt, the only way was to pay off debt to bring down interest rates on our loans was to sell things, I notice labour did not spend our money building new homes, preferring to do vital things like gay rights for hamsters and ethnic classes for parrots.

8. She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million

She walked into a British industry dead on its feet and totally unable to compete on price or quality thanks to high wage costs and antiquated work practices, the unions can take far more blame along with progress.

9. She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands

That being an unarmed ice survey ship, whos job was able to be done far better thanks to satellites, Argentina had been making noises for years and it was hardly credible it would invade, its also far more understandable than faking intelligence to drag the country into a war.

10. The poll tax

Not only not repealed by labour in the 13 years they held power, but the highest are mostly in labour controlled area`s

11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad

The clean air act forced through by the labour party nailed the coal industry, and back then it was far cheaper to buy coal from Poland and ship it in than buy it from here.

12. She compared her "fight" against the miners to the Falklands War

Maybe because she won both yet started neither.

By now you should have a flavor of just how twisted from the truth the lefties will go, I could carry on but its far more use telling you to look things up for yourself.

Maggie Thatcher was honest, did what needed to be done for the sake of the country rather than pander to populist nonsense, and rescued this country from the brink, anyone says different go look up the facts for yourself........then tell them they are idiots.