Finisterre said:
I did think that Finn!
Margaret Thatcher
- Thread starter ChrisC85
- Start date
I did think that Finn!
Carol M said:
I really like the NHS. There is something wonderful about looking after the health of all. I want to keep it. We should have a good chat about the problems and possible solutions sometime. I am not that hopeful for the Tory local commissioning model. - It would be nice to see more people being trained here in the UK. Our habit of sucking doctors from all over the world is anti social. Anyway. Another thread maybe?
Carol M said:Finisterre said:Maggie aside.TitanTim said:A complete misunderstanding of 60 years of Politics there lol
Tim.
I am curious to hear how you feel Attlee and the postwar government has been misrepresented?
X 2 I can't see any misrepresentations in those statements.
It does't give the true picture of successive labour Governments throwing money into unsustainable sectors virtually bankrupting the country, leaving the successive Tory Governments to wield the hatchet to get the country back on course. You can't blame MT for being cruel to be kind. We see it again currently.
Tim.
She did a lot of things that needed to be done. Unfortunately she also did some of them badly. I could list them but it wouldn't move the discussion forward much.
Personally I found her difficult to like. I didn't feel that she cared about the collateral damage. But then I lived in Sheffield and was unemployed for six or seven years, until the Enterprise Allowance scheme came in and I managed to make a few quid.
TBH the mid eighties weren't much fun in South Yorkshire.
Personally I found her difficult to like. I didn't feel that she cared about the collateral damage. But then I lived in Sheffield and was unemployed for six or seven years, until the Enterprise Allowance scheme came in and I managed to make a few quid.
TBH the mid eighties weren't much fun in South Yorkshire.
A
Anonymous
Guest
Well I for one hope that the 'Iron Lady' will 'Rust in P*ss', .... with an added splash of vitriol.
And as for a backlash over my comment, Bring it on William Hague'ette type Tory boys
But you won't change how I feel about her.
Now I'm off to book at room at the Ritz, I hear there is a vacancy..
And as for a backlash over my comment, Bring it on William Hague'ette type Tory boys
But you won't change how I feel about her.
Now I'm off to book at room at the Ritz, I hear there is a vacancy..
I agree it is in bad tast to celebrate her death but I am 60yrs old in October and have what I have in spite of Margaret Thatcher and her policys I well remember living through her time in power and she did nothing for the working man in my opinon others may disagree as is there right we live in a democracy thankfully but I will not miss her. :|
1postseller said:Well I for one hope that the 'Iron Lady' will 'Rust in P*ss', .... with an added splash of vitriol.
And as for a backlash over my comment, Bring it on William Hague'ette type Tory boys
But you won't change how I feel about her.
Now I'm off to book at room at the Ritz, I hear there is a vacancy..
Yes, we got your point earlier on, you don't like her, now if you don't have anything intelligent to add I suggest you pipe down.
buzyg said:
The UK needed serious restructuring and industrial investment after the war. Unfortunately the Americans dumped a lot of cheap cash into the Marshall Plan and we ended up paying at a higher rate. The loans were paid it off in full in 2006.
If dearest M hadn't flogged half the council houses we really would have seen the benefit.
EDIT simplistic but half true...The debt from the war was unavoidable, unless we wanted to speak German. *shrug* It has been argued that the IMF loan was partially a result of the lack of cash available to properly retool. It is difficult to know, if loans at slightly better rates had been available maybe the winter of discontent could have been avoided. There isn't much doubt that our leadership was pretty lacklustre during the 60s and 70s, though Wilson was possibly on the right track.
There is too much to get into a post and QT is on,
laters...
Well I was born 4 years after she stepped down and as far as i'm concerned, she was one of the dammed best Prime Ministers we have ever had, Churchill being the exception of course. She rescued this country from the depths of industrial focussing and modernised a nation that was resigning itself to slipping into decline as the unions increased their influence over government.
Naturally there are those who think she 'ruined' the country, usually followed by endless arguments surrounding milk and mining alongside the fact that I didn't experience any of her time in power, but her effects are everywhere.
She saved the country. Period.
Naturally there are those who think she 'ruined' the country, usually followed by endless arguments surrounding milk and mining alongside the fact that I didn't experience any of her time in power, but her effects are everywhere.
She saved the country. Period.
.KernowZed said:
straw man argument
Finisterre said:If dearest M hadn't flogged half the council houses we really would have seen the benefit.
I always saw the sell-off of council houses as a way of enticing many trade unionists who were council house tenants and who had been prepared to strike with no risk of being made homeless as tenants, an opportunity to own a house on the cheap. Once they had mortgages they could no longer strike and retain their homes if they couldn't pay their mortgages whilst on strike. We've never seen any significant strikes since this.
The rioting thats going on after her death has nothing/very little to do with her or what she did/stood for,imo...just an excuse for a bunch of idiots to riot(a large % of whom either werent born during the Thatcher yrs,or are probably foreigners/spongers who dont contribute anything useful to Society).
I personally think Maggie ruined British Industry/Steel,Coal etc and went too far privatising Utilities,etc,and didnt do Scotland any favours what so ever..treating us as 2nd class citizens,as well as a test bed for the Poll tax.
One good thing she did was allowing people to buy their council houses,tho even that got abused by many.
I personally think Maggie ruined British Industry/Steel,Coal etc and went too far privatising Utilities,etc,and didnt do Scotland any favours what so ever..treating us as 2nd class citizens,as well as a test bed for the Poll tax.
One good thing she did was allowing people to buy their council houses,tho even that got abused by many.
exdos - The law was changed to allow the sequestration of union assets and secret ballots introduced. I suspect the removal of power from bully boy union thugs made quite a difference. I am not convinced that housing pressures would block union action because repossession has always been a lengthy process. (I have some experience of the repossession system). Though I expect fear of homelessness makes many people think twice about striking.
Can you imagine going home to your wife, who is now as proud as Punch as the new owner of your former council house, after you've just spent a couple of years and all your disposable income, decorating the house from top to bottom, and telling her that your trade union wants you to go on strike for an indefinite period? The sequestration of trade union assets and the protracted period for repossession will be very far from her mind. The secret ballot just made it easy for a man to say "no" to striking.Finisterre said:
You've probably read "The Enemy Within" by Seamus Milne? If not, it's an interesting read. BTW my best mate as a teenager lived next door to Joe Gormley, so I've lived through the period and in one of the areas worst affected. My wife's father was a miner.
not read it. thanks for the suggestion. I have a similar background, uncles and grandparents all worked at Rossington pit. I don't doubt the motivation of holding onto your house is very strong. I was thinking that the voting was important.
should we do a poll
should we do a poll
Just one of those bad decisions ?
Tony Barrett (The Times) - Truth about Thatcher’s response to Hillsborough
Now is the time to reveal truth about Thatcher’s response to Hillsborough
As has been the case throughout their 24-year struggle for justice, the Hillsborough families and their supporters kept their dignity in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s death. “I don’t have any feelings about her either way,” was the diplomatic offering of Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son, James, was one of the 96 victims of British football’s worst disaster.
Margaret could have said many things. She could have been vindictive. She could even have welcomed Thatcher’s passing. But as a mother who knows only too well the pain and anguish of death, she also recognised that this was not the time for any of that. Instead, tact and diplomacy took precedence as her innermost thoughts remained private.
There was something else as well, though, an expression of frustration that Thatcher’s exact role in the cover-up that followed Hillsborough is still to be established. “We know she had sly meetings the evening of the disaster and the morning after at the ground and that is when the cover-up started,” Margaret said.
Sheila Coleman, of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC), went a step farther. “The HJC hope that now she is dead at least those who have protected her will do the decent thing and release all documentation in respect of the Hillsborough cover-up,” she said. “Thatcher was instrumental in the Hillsborough cover-up. We call on the Government to release all documentation about her involvement.”
For anyone tempted to suggest that such requests are ill timed or opportunistic, don’t. The Hillsborough families have waited far too long for full disclosure and those who were involved in what was described by Michael Mansfield QC as “the biggest cover-up in British legal history” are either dying off or reaching the stage of their lives when being held to account becomes increasingly unlikely. The justice clock is ticking. There is no more time to waste.
Even more pertinently, a fortnight before Thatcher’s death, John Glover, whose 20-year-old son Ian perished on the Leppings Lane death trap, passed away following a brave battle with cancer. Meanwhile, Anne Williams, who lost her 15-year-old son Kevin in the tragedy, is spending her remaining days in a hospice having had terminal bowel cancer diagnosed. The plights of John and Anne highlight exactly why time is of the essence where the full truth about Hillsborough is concerned.
That Thatcher’s involvement in the aftermath of Hillsborough remains clouded in mystery is wholly unsatisfactory and unacceptable. It had been hoped that the release of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report into the disaster last September would shed light on her activities but such optimism went unrewarded and the grey areas remain.
Twelve months earlier, the Information Commissioner had ruled that discussions involving Thatcher should be made public at the earliest possible opportunity. Crucially, though, details of the briefing given to her and Douglas Hurd, the then Home Secretary, on the morning after Hillsborough were not disclosed. It was also claimed that there was no documentation relating to her visit to the stadium the following day.
As such, there is still too much that we do not know about what the Prime Minister of the day thought and said about a tragedy that cost so many lives and changed the face of English football. In the absence of that information, it is inevitable that those affected by Hillsborough feel that the whole truth is yet to emerge even though so many steps have been taken towards that aim during the past year.
Equally inevitably, particularly given the extremes that instruments of the state went to in an attempt to subvert justice, the vacuum that has been created has led to conspiracy theories, the main one being that Thatcher’s role has been suppressed in order to protect her and the office that she served.
There will be those who believe that to be far-fetched. Those who don’t should consider this – one of the few things that we know for sure is that she succeeded in distorting her government’s response to the findings of the interim report into the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor out of a misplaced desire to protect South Yorkshire Police.
We know this because in a handwritten note in the margin of a civil servant’s memo informing her that Hurd planned to welcome Taylor’s findings, she wrote that this amounted to “a devastating criticism” of the police. “What do we mean by ‘welcoming the broad thrust of the report?’” she asked. “The broad thrust is devastating criticism of the police. Is that for us to welcome? Surely we welcome the thoroughness of the report and its recommendations – M.T.”
If a Primer Minister is ready, willing and able to go to such lengths to protect the state, then surely it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the very same state would go to the same lengths to protect her? It took 23 years for an establishment conspiracy to come to light so why would anyone believe it impossible for steps to have been taken to prevent the stench of the cover-up from infecting those at the very top?
We also know that in the aftermath of the disaster, two of Thatcher’s favourite attack dogs, Bernard Ingham (her press secretary) and Kelvin MacKenzie (her favourite newspaper editor, who this week described the former PM as “a revolutionary who made a fantastic difference to this country”) played crucial roles in warping the public’s perception of Hillsborough.
Under his infamous headline “The Truth”, MacKenzie ensured that The Sun’s coverage of the events at Hillsborough fitted in with the black propaganda that was spewing out of South Yorkshire Police. For his part, Ingham claimed the disaster had been caused by “a tanked-up mob” of Liverpool fans. He later admitted to having his opinions shaped by the same police officers who briefed Thatcher, including Peter Wright, the then chief constable of the police force.
The possibility remains that Thatcher never got her hands dirty; that she didn’t need to because her minions were doing the dirty work on her behalf. It seems highly unlikely, though, that one of the most powerful politicians of the last century limited her involvement to a scribbled note in the margin of a piece of foolscap.
This is why the time has come for the exact role that Thatcher played following Hillsborough to be made public. It is the very least that the Hillsborough families and their supporters deserve. On Monday, they will gather to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the disaster and they will do so in possession of most, but not all, of the truth about how their loved ones perished and how the state responded. That has to change.
“Somebody fed those lies, I think she was part of it and she knew about it,” Margaret Aspinall said. Given the instincts of the Hillsborough families have been proven to be right on every other issue relating to the disaster, it would be foolish in the extreme to dismiss the idea that they are wrong to suspect Margaret Thatcher.
Tony Barrett (The Times) - Truth about Thatcher’s response to Hillsborough
Now is the time to reveal truth about Thatcher’s response to Hillsborough
As has been the case throughout their 24-year struggle for justice, the Hillsborough families and their supporters kept their dignity in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s death. “I don’t have any feelings about her either way,” was the diplomatic offering of Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son, James, was one of the 96 victims of British football’s worst disaster.
Margaret could have said many things. She could have been vindictive. She could even have welcomed Thatcher’s passing. But as a mother who knows only too well the pain and anguish of death, she also recognised that this was not the time for any of that. Instead, tact and diplomacy took precedence as her innermost thoughts remained private.
There was something else as well, though, an expression of frustration that Thatcher’s exact role in the cover-up that followed Hillsborough is still to be established. “We know she had sly meetings the evening of the disaster and the morning after at the ground and that is when the cover-up started,” Margaret said.
Sheila Coleman, of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC), went a step farther. “The HJC hope that now she is dead at least those who have protected her will do the decent thing and release all documentation in respect of the Hillsborough cover-up,” she said. “Thatcher was instrumental in the Hillsborough cover-up. We call on the Government to release all documentation about her involvement.”
For anyone tempted to suggest that such requests are ill timed or opportunistic, don’t. The Hillsborough families have waited far too long for full disclosure and those who were involved in what was described by Michael Mansfield QC as “the biggest cover-up in British legal history” are either dying off or reaching the stage of their lives when being held to account becomes increasingly unlikely. The justice clock is ticking. There is no more time to waste.
Even more pertinently, a fortnight before Thatcher’s death, John Glover, whose 20-year-old son Ian perished on the Leppings Lane death trap, passed away following a brave battle with cancer. Meanwhile, Anne Williams, who lost her 15-year-old son Kevin in the tragedy, is spending her remaining days in a hospice having had terminal bowel cancer diagnosed. The plights of John and Anne highlight exactly why time is of the essence where the full truth about Hillsborough is concerned.
That Thatcher’s involvement in the aftermath of Hillsborough remains clouded in mystery is wholly unsatisfactory and unacceptable. It had been hoped that the release of the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report into the disaster last September would shed light on her activities but such optimism went unrewarded and the grey areas remain.
Twelve months earlier, the Information Commissioner had ruled that discussions involving Thatcher should be made public at the earliest possible opportunity. Crucially, though, details of the briefing given to her and Douglas Hurd, the then Home Secretary, on the morning after Hillsborough were not disclosed. It was also claimed that there was no documentation relating to her visit to the stadium the following day.
As such, there is still too much that we do not know about what the Prime Minister of the day thought and said about a tragedy that cost so many lives and changed the face of English football. In the absence of that information, it is inevitable that those affected by Hillsborough feel that the whole truth is yet to emerge even though so many steps have been taken towards that aim during the past year.
Equally inevitably, particularly given the extremes that instruments of the state went to in an attempt to subvert justice, the vacuum that has been created has led to conspiracy theories, the main one being that Thatcher’s role has been suppressed in order to protect her and the office that she served.
There will be those who believe that to be far-fetched. Those who don’t should consider this – one of the few things that we know for sure is that she succeeded in distorting her government’s response to the findings of the interim report into the disaster by Lord Justice Taylor out of a misplaced desire to protect South Yorkshire Police.
We know this because in a handwritten note in the margin of a civil servant’s memo informing her that Hurd planned to welcome Taylor’s findings, she wrote that this amounted to “a devastating criticism” of the police. “What do we mean by ‘welcoming the broad thrust of the report?’” she asked. “The broad thrust is devastating criticism of the police. Is that for us to welcome? Surely we welcome the thoroughness of the report and its recommendations – M.T.”
If a Primer Minister is ready, willing and able to go to such lengths to protect the state, then surely it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the very same state would go to the same lengths to protect her? It took 23 years for an establishment conspiracy to come to light so why would anyone believe it impossible for steps to have been taken to prevent the stench of the cover-up from infecting those at the very top?
We also know that in the aftermath of the disaster, two of Thatcher’s favourite attack dogs, Bernard Ingham (her press secretary) and Kelvin MacKenzie (her favourite newspaper editor, who this week described the former PM as “a revolutionary who made a fantastic difference to this country”) played crucial roles in warping the public’s perception of Hillsborough.
Under his infamous headline “The Truth”, MacKenzie ensured that The Sun’s coverage of the events at Hillsborough fitted in with the black propaganda that was spewing out of South Yorkshire Police. For his part, Ingham claimed the disaster had been caused by “a tanked-up mob” of Liverpool fans. He later admitted to having his opinions shaped by the same police officers who briefed Thatcher, including Peter Wright, the then chief constable of the police force.
The possibility remains that Thatcher never got her hands dirty; that she didn’t need to because her minions were doing the dirty work on her behalf. It seems highly unlikely, though, that one of the most powerful politicians of the last century limited her involvement to a scribbled note in the margin of a piece of foolscap.
This is why the time has come for the exact role that Thatcher played following Hillsborough to be made public. It is the very least that the Hillsborough families and their supporters deserve. On Monday, they will gather to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the disaster and they will do so in possession of most, but not all, of the truth about how their loved ones perished and how the state responded. That has to change.
“Somebody fed those lies, I think she was part of it and she knew about it,” Margaret Aspinall said. Given the instincts of the Hillsborough families have been proven to be right on every other issue relating to the disaster, it would be foolish in the extreme to dismiss the idea that they are wrong to suspect Margaret Thatcher.
I am sorry but I don't see the connection. MT was a vile woman and was certainly capable of covering up a truth or two if it suited her but I just don't buy her risking anything for SY police. The news management marginalia make sense and do not require reinterpretation. I think SY police ran the smear campaign to protect their own. :x