Why did everyone hate thatcher?

Agency_Scum":18ic619o said:

She sent our railways back further than Beeching's cuts, insisting the privatised British Rail be divided into an irreversible 96 independent companies.

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That was the act of a bunch of civil servants and lower-profile members of HMG. John Major set the wheels of rail privatisation in motion, and even then it wasn't carried out in the manner he wanted it to be done (i.e. essentially a reversion to the "Big Four" pre-nationalisation entities with no separate infrastructure company).

That said, Thatcher was not a very pro-rail PM*, a stance which put her very much at odds with BR chairman Sir Peter Parker.

David

*Then again, actively pro-railway politicians are like hens' teeth. I'm struggling to name one, other than ex-Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.

dbmtb":348ysrr0 said:

Is it just me or does anyone else have a suspicion that the whole waste-of-public-money-in-a-time-of-austerity funeral palaver is just a way of discrediting those who hated Thatcher by making them look like the Green Meanies when they start to complain about it? And really all it's really about is making "Call me Dave" and his inbred mates look less like bell-ends?

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err No! The fact is that lots of people did actually like Thacter and agreed with most of the things she did. Personally I would rather see tax payers money spent on a state funeral than sent abroad like a lot of money is.

She destroyed our manufacturing industry

She privatised state monopolies


She opposed anti apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela aa a terrorist

She opposed the indictment of General Pinochet

Black Wednesday

She forced local authorities to sell council homes but prevented them from using the money to build new social housing

3.6 million unemployment

She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falklands and worse...scrapped the only UK military presence on the island

She pioneered our special relationship with the usa

She supported the Khmer Rouge

Shall I go on?

Yeh...she was a great leader

Slow hand clap

As with most things in life people see things differently..I’m going to leave it at that

Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and polarising politic leader of the last century. This is an incomplete list of why many of us fall on the side that does not regard her with anything other than odium…

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

I dont get involved with Politics, along with Religion and Football - it causes too many arguments

Bring back Spitting Image i say

widowmaker":30frtpfw said:

I dont get involved with Politics, along with Religion and Football - it causes too many arguments

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Possibly best to avoid any threads concerning the Old Firm if ever one pops up, then - 3 for the price of 1 there....

David

I don't want to get too involved in this as I'm 33 and can only just about remember her leaving office as a ten year old, and am commenting on this thread's title.

Most of the people I have seen on facebook/tv/internet pages burning photos of Maggie and slagging her off are younger than me! Nowadays is it more to do with bands writing songs about her and it being fashionable to hate her as well as it's a whole lot more convenient when you have someone to blame? If she was so hated why was she repeatedly voted back in?

Have a look! http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/08/hundreds- ... r-3588431/

From what I can gather the UK was heading down the drain and she brought it back from the brink. Manufacturing? It was cheaper and arguably(!) better quality overseas (would you like Allegro sir? In Brown?) Coal? Cheaper overseas. In the late nineties I did a lot of work on the railways and spoke to someone who had worked for years as a British Rail supervisor, his description of a working day was hilarious - 4 hours work max, with the quality of work going down and down, but with cost over runs getting bigger and bigger. They needed to be privatised to come close to running in profit or even break even.

Like someone else mentioned, the first time I actually thought about voting was the Tony Bleuurgh 1997 election. What a legacy he has left! It seems if you want to change things you will always upset people, it's impossible not to.

Pyro Tim":2upv7uky said:

dan smith":2upv7uky said:

highlandsflyer":2upv7uky said:

No one can argue she did not hate the working class. She wanted to take Britain back to the days of serfs and brutal masters.

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What about the right to buy?

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And now the waiting lists as she sold off the social housing, and didn't replace it. Just like everything else she sold off for a one off profit. Instead of looking after us all, forever, which made the government money, not cost it, we now have companies taking profit, and the taxpayer subsidising them. She also changed the way politics are in this country. Instead of having a left, a right and a centre party, we have 3 right leaning parties.

She hated anyone that stood in the way of her, and her friends greed. She and her government encouraged greed, and the masses lapped it up. She used the press to reinforce her opinions, and we still have to put up with it today. Orwell got 1984 so right, in so many ways

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This.
Margaret Thatcher started the trend for mass privatisation which has led to the place we are in today, nearly everything has been privatised that can be, including most of the courts/prison service and the NHS, hell even IT within the Ministry of Defence!
And a lot of it (including that MoD IT) is foreign owned, meaning the profits they make, rather than being ploughed back in to our economy are just going abroad.
If we still had an economy based on mining and manufacturing we could be out of this recession by now, as it is we need to wait for the next Labour government to make some capital investment before we can start to see any green shoots.

As much as I don't like to speak ill of the dead, damn you Maggie, damn you to hell!

Oh, and I'm 34. Some may think I'm not old enough to have an opinion but being born in 1978 I have very strong memories of growing up with hate fuelled images filling the TV news every tea-time. Images of our Police being sent in to battle against the people will stick with me forever.