Conquer Club

jonesthecurl wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:

Mr Changsha wrote: I think the great majority of british people do respect her..and for the vocal minority who want to 'spit on her grave' I have only contempt.

Do you.
http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/wizard-of-oz-song-headed-for-top-40-following-margaret-thatchers-death-2151/

The Judy Garland version is now at no 10.

crispybits wrote:What I object to isn't people saying they disliked her or disagreed with her politics, but the absurd repainting of history to make everything her fault and to spread outright lies about her for political reasons. Criticise her for what she did, fine (but be prepared for a political debate from those that think differently, just as you would if you support her). Criticise her for things she either didn't do or didn't have any option but to do, not so good.

crispybits wrote:Yep - and I advocate honest constructive debate and conversation in those too, which is one of the reasons I despise the current crop of talking heads on both sides of the house here in the UK so much

crispybits wrote:That wouldn't be an American stereotyping Brits would it? Greekdog will not be happy, we're not allowed to comment on each other

crispybits wrote:You do know it was still snowing here about a week ago right? Bloomin global warming my ass!

ANTI-Thatcher sentiment has seen Ding Dong the Witch is Dead soar to No.27 in the UK iTunes chart this morning.

crispybits wrote:And that's fair (and indeed in line with what she stood for, having courage in your convictions and being free to express them)

What I object to isn't people saying they disliked her or disagreed with her politics, but the absurd repainting of history to make everything her fault and to spread outright lies about her for political reasons. Criticise her for what she did, fine (but be prepared for a political debate from those that think differently, just as you would if you support her). Criticise her for things she either didn't do or didn't have any option but to do, not so good.

Dan Hannan wrote:I’m not sure you can appreciate the magnitude of Margaret Thatcher’s achievement without some knowledge of the calamity that immediately preceded it. Most British people can no longer remember the Seventies. I am just fractionally above the national median age – born September 1971 – and my recollections are hazy. What I do recall, though, was the sense of despair. Again and again, I would hear adults casually say “Britain is finished”. Having spent my early years in Peru, where Britain was still looked up to as a serious country, I was shocked.

In fact, such sentiments were understandable. These were the years of the three-day week, of prices and incomes policies, of double-digit inflation, of constant strikes, of power cuts. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom had been outperformed by every European economy. “Britain is a tragedy – it has sunk to borrowing, begging, stealing until North Sea oil comes in,” said Henry Kissinger. The Wall Street Journal was blunter: “Goodbye, Great Britain: it was nice knowing you”.

Margaret Thatcher, almost alone, refused to accept the inevitability of decline. She was determined to turn the country around, and she succeeded. Inflation fell, strikes stopped, the latent enterprise of a free people was awakened. Having lagged behind for a generation, we outgrew every European country in the 1980s except Spain (which was bouncing back from an even lower place). As revenues flowed in, taxes were cut and debt was repaid, while public spending – contrary to almost universal belief – rose.

In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher showed the world that a great country doesn’t retreat forever. And, by ending the wretched policy of one-sided détente that had allowed the Soviets to march into Europe, Korea and Afghanistan, she set in train the events that would free hundreds of millions of people from what, in crude mathematical terms, must be reckoned the most murderous ideology humanity has known.

Like everyone else, I remember where I was when she resigned. It was the equivalent, for my generation of John F Kennedy being shot – an event which, curiously, also took place on 22 November. After three election victories, the Iron Lady was brought down by a collection of Euro-fanatical MPs – the “November Criminals” as one of my local party chairmen darkly calls them. It’s true that there were several factors in her unpopularity, above all the poll tax. Still, it can’t be repeated too often: the immediate cause of Margaret Thatcher’s toppling was that she opposed Britain’s membership of the euro. Who called that one right?

On any normal measure, she was a supremely successful politician. I'd go further and call her our most successful prime minister ever. Yet she drove many to a hatred so intense that, even on the day she died, a frail grandmother, the Internet was filled with venomous joy. (Have a look, if you have a strong stomach, at my favourited comments on Twitter, or at the #dingdongthewickedwitchisdead hashtag.)

Where does it come from, this inchoate loathing? Anti-Thatcherites tell you that it’s because she closed down the old industries. (She didn’t, of course: she simply stopped obliging everyone else to support them.) Yet it must surely be obvious by now that nothing would have kept the dockyards and coalmines and steel mills open. A similar process of de-industrialisation has unfolded in every other Western European country, and the only parties that still talk of “reviving our manufacturing base” are Respect, the Scottish Socialists and the BNP.

No, what Lefties (with honourable exceptions) find so hard to forgive is the lady’s very success: the fact that she rescued a country that they had dishonoured and impoverished; that she inherited a Britain that was sclerotic, indebted and declining and left it proud, wealthy and free; that she never lost an election to them. Their rage, in truth, can never be assuaged; for it is the rage of Caliban.

ooge wrote:Conservative in England to liberal for the USA

chang50 wrote:

ooge wrote:Conservative in England to liberal for the USA

It's hilarious to see conservatives in the US rush to praise Thatcher without realising she was no further to the right than Obama is now.

crispybits wrote:I've seen people blaming her for Hillsborough (not true),

for supporting fascist Pinochet while PM (not true on 2 counts),

for destroying the mining communities (only half true, and she had little option other than continuing to throw money at a failing industry),

for deregulating the banks (true, but nearly 20 years of mostly Labour government after her did nothing to reverse it before it actually caused problems, and then those problems started in the US not the UK),

for supporting apartheid (not true),

for invading Argentina (not true)

and for being the devil incarnate (not true, though I admit I have no proof )