saltysam wrote:What's the view like from your soapbox? Haven't a clue how old you are but i remember her entire reign,one heartless self serving woman if i ever saw one.She divided families,destroyed entire communities,looked after the rich at the expense of the poor,kowtowed to dictators like Pinochet,was weak on South Africa when Apartheid was running wild due to her son's business interests out there, labelled Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" and close to the bone for me was complicit in the Hillsborough cover-up.i don't dance on anyone's grave but i certainly won't mourn her. 10 million of tax payers money on a ceremonial funeral akin to the QM & Diana? shocking
We'll leave the politics aside for a moment...
"
I don't dance on anyone's grave but I certainly won't mourn her."
...and that's the thing... no one is asking you to.
I have no problem that you disagree with Thatcher's politics - you gave several strong examples why. But to talk about 'dancing on someone's grave' (as that oaf George Galloway did) is grossly offensive and wholly unjustified. Should 'the left' mourn for Thatcher? No, why would they? She was anti everything they stood/stand for. But to disrespect someone in death is beneath contempt. Ed Milliband struck the right note by saying that whilst he disagreed with her politics he respected her achievements and recognised her as one of Britain's most important and formidable figures (Tony Blair said much the same on CNN). If you look at the people making the vile jokes and celebratory 'tweets' they tend to be the sort of arseholes that contribute nothing to this country but class hatred (and BTW I'm working class). You asked my age? I'm 33, so just old enough to remember Thatcher (I was one of those kids that watched the news... lol). But to flip that point over: How old were the 'students' popping champagne corks in Glasgow? Were they even born when she was in power? Doubtful. They grew up I'm sure on tales of the bogeywoman and her hatred of working class people (of which she was one herself).
Back to politics...
Thatcher's stance on Gen. Pinochet and Nelson Mandela was completely wrong. You'll get no argument form me on that. She took the wrong side. She fucked-up. Was this because she was a nasty person? Or a flawed person?
Hillsborough... "close to the bone"... did you lose someone? If so, I'm sorry. And if you were there, it must have been shocking and distressing for you. I take nothing away from the pain of your experience. Just want to make that clear. The extent of Thatcher's role in any 'cover-up' has yet to be proven beyond her reticence to condemn the police based on the Taylor report (and false evidence supplied to her from Yorkshire Police). If it can be proven that Thatcher knew exactly what had happened, knew who was to blame, and then was complicit in a government scale cover-up, you can be sure that my condemnation of her behaviour would stand alongside yours.
The slow death of working communities was badly handled - made a thousand times worse by the unions who tried to hold the government to ransom as they had done throughout the 1970s. That meant Thatcher focused on destroying the unions instead of helping the workers move forward. The pits had to close, but without the battle against the unions, the closure may have played out differently. Thatcher lacked compassion, no doubt. Cruel? I can understand that POV if you were on the receiving end of hardship. A combination of government failure to 'do the right thing' by workers and by workers themselves to accept the inevitable drew a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. The fatcat Union leaders made out quite nicely, thanks.
The 80s was for many a decade of aspiration - working class people owning property? Unheard of. Should social housing have been built to replenish lost properties? Yes. But successive governments have had 20 years to fix that. Did 13 years of Labour undo any of the perceived harm Thatcher did?
I was probably too young but I remember the Pinochet affair vaguely.
