Thetownend.com

Thatchers broken her arm.  I hope it's painful.  Terminal would be good.

i loathe what she did.but i am 100% convinced she did what she thought was best at the time.

Someones obviously having a lively weekend...or not.

Wishing pain on a frail old lady. Well done.

Im 100% with Trog,hope it really hurts.

for frail old lady, rwad witch

for rwad, read, read

Well that changes everything

Is it just her arm thats not made of Iron then ? ???

i thought love changes everything?

hope it really fucking hurts

Its funny how opinions change on Thatcher over the years. For a long time she was viewed highly, then it went down, then up and now its going down again.

Worth remembering that if it hadn't been for Thatcher destroying most of the power of unions, it would have been the entire country that was crippled by strike action this week rather than just London - as loads of others would have gone out "in sympathy".

great days

The state funeral she'll be no doubt given should be interesting.

rubbish!
she was despised by many and still is.
 she did a great job of destroying the coal industry when there is still plenty of the stuff still waiting to be used.

if people could be objective, they'd admit that she wasn't that bad, and anyoe in her situation would have probably ended up coming across badly. I love Thatcher. My old man however, will only ever vote Labour from now on, even now, because of the Thatcher years. He's annoyed that i would even consider voting Tory.

but when every other country's coal runs out we'll be the only people with any left and can rip them all off

The coal miners and their union are equally to blame for the destruction of the coal industry. The first two mines that were shut during the dispute were due to them being unsafe for the miners to return to, rather than them being uneconomic. The engineers that would have kept the mines safe weren't on strike, but the striking miners wouldn't let them enter the mines to do their job.

of course they were not equally to blame.why were they on strike in the first place?
thatchers government destroyed whole communities of mining towns and villages.many have not recovered still.
she flogged off the council houses,now we have a massive shortage of.
flogged publicly owned companies,destroyed the railways,etc,etc.
our country is still suffering from the bad she did,and labour have failed to sort that mess out.

Most of what you refer to as "the bas she did" was necessary to sort out the mess the previous Labour government and the trade unions had caused during the 1970's.

No one forced the miners to go out on strike. They thought they could hold the country to ransom, they couldn't and they paid the consequences. The effects wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad if they had just accepted the closures / job losses and moved on - which is something people have to do every single day of the week. Unless they're members of a militant trade union of course in which case they throw their toys out of the pram.

we are never going to agree jonny.on this anyway.
that said i dont wish maggie ill health

I'm with arriba on this one. Even if you agreed with what she did to the miners, the way she did it was despicable, unethical, and immoral. She caused a great amount of pain with her social re engineering.
I hate the witch like I've never hated a politician more in my life. I don't wish her harm though which is a lot better than she wished on the coal miners etc. 

I don't confess to know to much about the Iron Lady.

But I do know that by hook or by crook that she bought Britain out of a recession, if only Gordon had the bollocks that she did.

She is 100% responsible for the breakdown in society that we are suffering from now,in my opinion.When she dies I hope they will"Tramp The Dirt Down"

Gordon is no inspiration but he will also lead us out of a rescession, there are already signs of things changing and some dude who won the economist noble prize last year Paul Krugman said we have the best economy in europe at the moment.

Not sure about lead us out the rescession...

 :D True true what I meant more was he will be in charge when we leave recession.

i think we will come out of recession pretty quickly.i aint banging the labour drum as they have let us down.also i dont think brown can be blamed for us being in recession.

I totally agree that Thatcher could have handled it better. In her defence she knew that as soon as they announced the mine closures all hell was going to break loose and she had to take a tough stance, even so she went to far. Whilst its not justification, the miners themselves acted just as badly. Especially in the way they treated people the miners that didn't go on strike, they also killed a taxi driver who dared to drive a miner to work.

The dispute was as much about breaking the trade unions as it was the miners and whilst the way they did it wasn't nice, it worked and I think the country is better for it. Most people forget just how bad things were when she came to power and sorting the mess out was never going to be pretty or accepted by everyone.

Yes, Jonny the country is a shit load better for what Thatcher did. Greed is good - repeat it as a mantra. All the mess is sorted out. Its a pity she changed the social and moral fabric of this country for a long, long time.

No, no, we don't. However, some of us are in a position to remember what she was like in power.

doesnt state funeral = day off work?

A three day working week would probably be more apt  ;D

Can you legally picket a funeral ?

That was Heath. There's a lot of people who gained from Thatcher's reign: small businessmen, working class people who got the opportunity for the first time to own their own homes, police officers (shit loads of overtime) to name but three groups.

I didn't agree with a lot of what she did, but I'm not as blinkered as to think everything was rosy before she came on the scene, because it wasn't.

Krugman is a great economist, he's turned economic thinking on its head in recent times and completely challenged the way we approach certain issues. However, I think it's a bit early to get optimistic about our economy given the current weakness of the pound and the fact the the IMF have downgraded us. Things might START to get better soon but it'll take while for us to recover yet

Yeah I realised that as I was typing it, but thought it was still quite apt as the three day week was concerned with electricity production due to the effects of industrial action.

Surely an understatement!  She came to power off the back of a catastrophic period of Labour government under Callaghan.  The country was on its knees and, in time, she turned it around.

I'm no particular fan of Thatcher's, but neither do I think you can reduce an 11 year period in office in to black and white.  Some of what she did was good, and some was very bad.  The idea that she could remain in power for that long - and win 3 consecutive General Elections - without doing something right is preposterous.

I'm also more than a little sceptical of the simplistic view that one woman could cast a spell on a nation of 55 million people who then collectively abandon their social conscience for good.  Slightly patronising to the population of the UK as well.

i think you are pretty accurate there ardiles.but she would have lost a general election had it not been for the falklands war i reckon.

May be, may be not. But why did she win it after going to war ? Most Prime ministers have that type of crisis if they are in power for that long. She should be judged on how she handled it, not on the fact that it happened when she was PM.  If any one else had been in charge at the time the Argies would still be in the Falklands now.

I probably hate Brown as much as some on here hate Maggie Thatcher, but I wouldn't wish him pain or dead. Out of Office yes, dead no.

I'm sure Hitler thought the same

Maybe the government should have gassed the mines and saved themselves years of hassle.

Hardly preposterous. The numbers voting Tory were relatively low but remember her opposition - even without the agonies Labour was going through, the rise of the SDP meant the whole of the centre and left was split down the middle leaving room for a right-wing party.
Add to that the bribes which she gave to her voters - asset-stripping public bodies and selling them off to her voters, and selling off council houses at ridiculously low prices while banning local authorities from re-investing the income - it's not surprising she won, and Britain became a lot nastier, greedier and more selfish as a result.

Where do you get that from?

- Maggie got 43.9%, 42.4% and 42.2% of the vote in the elections she won.
- Labour have won the last three with 43.2%, 40.7% and 35.3%.

Plus there were a lot more votes in the Maggie elections.

The bribes comment is equally laughable, every government do it and Labour are a lot worse if anything.

how are they worse?

Theres arguments for and against both sides...before Maggie it was very tough for the working man to get his own house and easy credit...whether we like it or not the brits got a taste for the easy life for the twenty odd years us brits kept voting her in...her big legacy really was how she dealt with leaders from other countrys who tried to fuk us over..of course the miners hate her and its not suprising really...Blair was a similar figure...people forget he did alot to ease trouble in Ireland....i dont think we will ever have a leader we can look upon with pride...our country is not geared to praise people,we build em up then knock them down....now Brown is different because we didnt elect him...a few of his cronies did...he will probably go down in history as our worse ever PM.

With Thatcher the council house sell of and privatisation's (for example) were a fundamental part of her policies to reform the country rather than solely as vote winners. Sure a lot of people benefited and made money from them, but that wasn't their primary purpose.

With Labour pretty much everything has spin on it, though its difficult to tell how much of that is Labour and how much is the way politics has changed. They'll have big give aways in budgets before elections and whilst the Tories did the same its a lot more obvious with Labour and they spin it a lot more. Labour will often announce a give away in the following years budget and get to claim credit for it twice.

Labour will have plenty of vote winning stuff in next years budget with it falling just before the general election. Then the following year they'll take it all back with interest and totally shaft everyone - which whoever wins will have to do due to the state of public finances.