pap

Completely agree ( and I've read your post further down too ), but not for the same reasons. Back in the 80s, any attempt by Labour to do something radical ( ban nukes, for example ) was ridiculed by the right, and lapped up by the "I'm doing alright" middle classes. That last group has gotten considerably smaller.

Didn't at the time, but thanks for the recommendation.

Quiz on my face.

Might have something to do with the fact that he didn't use the police force as government stormtroopers, and boasted pretty much full employment at the time.

Here's one piece. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/20/rise-of-second-job

David Cameron said there would be no top down reorganisation of the NHS prior to getting elected, yet is doing it anyway. The likes of Labour and Liberal have historically supported students in opposition, but not in power. Thatcher said she was going to get Britain back to work. She had a funny way of going about it. My point? You don't get what you're promised.

It will go to plan. They just haven't told you the plan. If you haven't noticed, all this tub-thumping and demonisation of the poor business is about one thing only; keeping moronic victims distracted while more of the family silver is spirited out of the back door. You're not worried about the NHS, you're worried about the benefit culture and all these people having a rip-roaring (translation: hiding from loan sharks) time at the tax-payer's expense! See, if the plan is to get the NHS private without considering what comes afterward ( does this sound at all familiar? ), then everything is going swimmingly. It's a needless reorganisation - it will fail, on purpose - and the objective will be achieved. btw, they have never shirked from this plan. Even when they were having "conversations", they were fitting up big health to take over services.

Thatcher wouldn't have been a fan of all those Eastern Europeans you employ. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-accused-racist-views

It's still happening. My guess is that it'll be a tremendous f**k-up and the private sector will rush in and be depicted as saviours, just as planned

My collected thoughts (plus a point I nicked from here about Chavez) on the whole thing. Mostly the same crap as on here, but with a conclusion. http://frigsociety.com/2013/04/10/thatcher-the-lessons-not-yet-learned/

Yeah, without some sort of "Sour Mash" benchmark of what normal is, this comment is fairly meaningless. Normal to you might involve dressing up as a nun on Tuesdays.

Excellent piece, btf. I liked this bit in particular:-

Aren't you blaming your compatriots and your country for stuff RIGHT NOW? I disagree. From the get-go, central banks were a huge con. Recently, we've decided that the financial system was more important than democracy in places like Greece and Spain. Where do you think this money we're told we have to pay back is going?

This is brilliant stuff. Uber-blamer DPS moans about blame culture! There are all kinds of ways out; they're just not up for discussion. If we were able to rebuild Britain after the end of the Second World War, I fail to see why our present challenge - which, when you boil it down - is essentially never making any money again until we make major changes, is so difficult to overcome. FFS, if the boys who got back in '45 knew what a load of defeatist bastards it'd produce 70 years later - they might not have bothered. "There's no point lads. Despite us saving Europe, in about 70 years we're going to face an artificial financial crisis that we'll never recover from".

Blimey, DPS - you adding "lying" to your list of debating skills? My opinions on NI are on this thread (and others) for all to see. I'm not going to bore them through repetition for your benefit. As for my patriotism; it's there - but focused in the exact opposite way to yours. My patriotism rests with the country and its people, not the establishment that runs it. I'm a huge fan of fair play, politeness and our liberal tradition. You seem to be a fan of the "UK state". They'll be the ones that send our boys off to commit murder in our name. I prefer my focus.

This really does sound like a comment made by a defeatist loser with no faith in his countrymen, rather than the can-do attitude of an aspirational patriot.

DPS, with the greatest of respect, you need to start learning to pick and choose when supporting right wing dogma. You are picking the wrong horse on the nationalisation of utilities. A load of other stuff too, but let's leave that for now. What business in its right mind would sell a guaranteed money maker? That's what utility companies are. Completely captive audience. The outlay is huge, but it's something that an entity the size of a country can manage. Does make me laugh. For all the stick the French get, they've played their cards brilliantly on energy. We could have done too, but we failed. Now they have our cards too

The Reading vs Liverpool game is just f**king asking for trouble.

Lordy. How much of your life did you spend working that out? And why?

Our utility bills generated £1.6Bn in profit for the French state, trousers. Sleep tight!

Fk me. 10 million quid funeral. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-funeral-growing-anger-1821652 "Is there a Denny's near here?"

Ah yeah, a tanked-up SuperMikey no doubt part of the inspiration!

Super stuff, stug76. I'm sure it's a just a matter of time before someone picks this up and turns it into a screenplay.

Heh, I haven't seen any of them for ages.

You're right. We can go through each of Thatcher's big decisions. We probably should. The devil is in the details, as they say. You speak about the major philosophies being right. I really can't agree. What philosophies are we talking about, exactly? Private ownership of previously nationalised industries? Pickfords? Fine. Telecoms? Fine. Everything else, not really. Utility companies that hike their rates and generate profits for foreign sovereign states. Train companies that post above-inflation fare rises every year, yet aren't that interested in the non-profitable upkeep part. Perhaps you're not talking about private ownership, and are referring to the freedom of opportunity offered during the Thatcher years. That only really worked in the South. The North didn't do so well, and speaking as someone who arrived up here in '94, the difference in all the towns and cities here is incredible. Maybe it's the right to buy your own council house. I've written at length about how that was a bad deal for almost everyone in this country (except the lucky few that got the free money and the lucky landlords who now rent slums out). Perhaps it's individual freedom, not entirely attributable to MT but very much something that she promoted. Look where that's got us, in the "don't know your neighbours" / culture of entitlement 21st century. She did far more wrong than she did right, imo - and set in motion policies that have gotten worse over the years. Many people who were much older than I said we needed a tough Prime Minister at the time to deal with the Unions. That may have been true, but if she was truly as great a leader as people are making out, she'd have contrived a way to save the country without destroying half of it in the short-term, with the rest to follow in due course. I'm not just having a pop at MT; as you and others have pointed out, no subsequent PM has tried to rescind many of her policies - they've just made most of them worse. They all bear collective culpability for the cumulative sh!te this country found itself in, but it was Thatcher who started the asset-stripping. The f**kers have been at it ever since.