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Northern Ireland26336 Posts
On April 09 2013 07:42 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 07:30 fire_brand wrote:On April 09 2013 02:21 mdb wrote:
I`m very surprised so many british people didnt like her. I`ve always thought that she was highly respected in UK. She was a polarizing figure to say the least. You either loved her or hated her. Her policies were about as far right as you can swing in a democracy and so people react to her according to their position on the political spectrum. Her personality was in line with her nickname, the Iron lady, hard and unsympathetic. It's not a surprise you're seeing people react to her death as dramatically as they are. Loved her or hated her is one of the phrases i keep hearing and to be honest i feel like it kind of trivializes the effect she had on people (not having a go at you but it has grated on me over the day). She either made your future bright and saved you from mediocrity or completely destroyed your community. I have lived in many places throughout England in the last 10 years: London, Leeds, York, Preston, Mansfield and Manchester. You can really see first hand the difference in the society and a huge part of this was Thatcher and her policies. This is not meant as praise or criticism of her, i'm just trying to convey the extraordinary transformative effect she had on England and what it meant to be from the north/south.
Well that's the crux of the matter for me. I find those who are pro-Thatcher, are those who aren't as directly affected by her. The policies they admire, are indeed ones that may have helped 'the country', but those on the anti-side more frequently are those whose very communities were destroyed, or the industries in which they earned their crust.
That is not to say either side is right or wrong, but the anti-Thatcher bloc are composed of more people who were directly (I'm referring to those who were alive/mature adults during the time primarily), and those who were pro-Thatcher liked her ideas on a moral/justice kind of level, but were less directly affected.
You see that in the media today, when people get up in arms about 'benefits spongers' on a purely moral outrage basis, when in reality it doesn't actually affect their day-to-day.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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A lot of band wagoning hate for Thatcher in here and from people who aren't even old enough to have experienced her time in power
Formulate your own opinions based on your own information before you start copying shit from twitter go ask your parents what it was like before you start joining the herd on leaving passive aggressive messages
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On April 09 2013 08:17 Denzil wrote:
A lot of band wagoning hate for Thatcher in here and from people who aren't even old enough to have experienced her time in power
Formulate your own opinions based on your own information before you start copying shit from twitter go ask your parents what it was like before you start joining the herd on leaving passive aggressive messages
Age isn't necessarily a good measure of whether someone will know anything about the politician in question in this instance. She is hated enough that it's not unlikely that anyone of a certain age with a knowledge of british politics will have had an opinion on her long before today.
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On April 09 2013 08:17 Denzil wrote:
A lot of band wagoning hate for Thatcher in here and from people who aren't even old enough to have experienced her time in power
Formulate your own opinions based on your own information before you start copying shit from twitter go ask your parents what it was like before you start joining the herd on leaving passive aggressive messages
I know little about UK politics in the 80s, but subjective experience is not the end all be all. Asking your parents about what it was like is inane. Obviously that depends on the parents, but I will learn nothing if I ask my parents what it was like under Reagan. They know nothing consequential about it.
Subjective experience can be a trap. People need to branch out more in general.
I know you are referring to knee-jerk people who know almost nothing about the subject, but I find your suggestion almost as silly.
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Really sad day! I heard it today on the radio driving home ;_; ! R.I.P
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I read about her in Adrian Mole
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On April 09 2013 08:34 Chytilova wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 08:17 Denzil wrote:
A lot of band wagoning hate for Thatcher in here and from people who aren't even old enough to have experienced her time in power
Formulate your own opinions based on your own information before you start copying shit from twitter go ask your parents what it was like before you start joining the herd on leaving passive aggressive messages I know little about UK politics in the 80s, but subjective experience is not the end all be all. Asking your parents about what it was like is inane. Obviously that depends on the parents, but I will learn nothing if I ask my parents what it was like under Reagan. They know nothing consequential about it. Subjective experience can be a trap. People need to branch out more in general. I know you are referring to knee-jerk people who know almost nothing about the subject, but I find your suggestion almost as silly.
At least you can both agree, that you should hear what your parents, who lived in that era, have to say. Not necessarily believe them, or trust their subjective experience, just listen to what they have to say. Maybe they remember a lot of news articles from back then on what effects the administration had on the nation, and they can share a lot of genuinely good knowledge and good sources with you, since they cared about being well educated back then (in theory). From that perspective Denzil is making a good common sense point. If someone's parents just give a lot of personal feelings based on her character then yeah, probably best not to judge her policies on that 
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OT: but you would trust Twitter over your parents? Really? smh @ this generation sometimes
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
or maybe people have read non-anecdotal sources.
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On April 09 2013 05:09 mdb wrote:
Why does Scotland hate her?
I may be wrong but I think Scotland were the first to get poll taxed. They were effectively the 'guinea pigs' for the whole scheme and despite the fact that it turned out a lot of Scots legitimately couldn't sustain such a tax rate, the Tories still forced it on them anyway.
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Northern Ireland26336 Posts
Scotland is rather unfriendly towards her party on the whole, which may be as a consequence of Thatcher, but probably reflects a bit more of a left-leaning political environment than elsewhere in the UK as well.
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This is a little unrelated, but I found this quote in an Aussie article more amusing than I should have.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-09/thatcher-divides-in-death-as-in--life/4617348
Many of those celebrating her passing marked their tweets with the hashtag #nowthatchersdead - causing panic among fans of the US singer Cher, as some took this to read: "Now that Cher's dead".
To be honest, I'm surprised that there are so many people openly celebrating her death. I was obviously never directly affected by her, being born late into her incumbency in a totally different country, but... I don't know... it seems like all the normal social limits have completely broken down.
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I don't profess to know much about Thatcher but I'm surprised by the level of hate she incurs.
She won three elections didn't she? Surely she must have had a large groundswell of support for what she was doing?
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Northern Ireland26336 Posts
Is Barack Obama popular among the Republican voting base in America?
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On April 09 2013 02:15 KwarK wrote:
Taken out of context as you would know if you'd looked into her history and politics at all before repeating such a often misquoted statement. It's simply not out of context. The context was her entire life in politics. That quote is almost the definition of what the woman stood for.
On April 09 2013 02:15 KwarK wrote:What it means is that saying that something is "society's problem" or an obligation of society doesn't mean anything because society isn't a real person who can come in and fix everything for us. It's made up of individual men and women. You should take your meaningless, superficial and ultimately idiotic critique back to youtube comments where they belong. A little thinking and a little literacy might lead a person to neo-liberal economics, the trickle-down theory, and Thatcher-Reagan economics. A moderate amount of both things almost inescapably leads to the conclusion that these things are abominations.
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On April 09 2013 14:02 RowdierBob wrote:
She won three elections didn't she? Surely she must have had a large groundswell of support for what she was doing? Hitler won an election. That's what propaganda can do.
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On April 09 2013 02:30 KwarK wrote:
When you go on the dole there is a family that might be scraping by that is being forced to add your expenses into their weekly budget because you are telling society that you cannot support yourself. Familiar talking point of non-thinkers, but here is the reality:
The whole point that the Left is making is that it doesn't NEED to be the case that in a first world, 21st century society we can't afford to provide a loaf of bread and glass of water without families feeling the burden.
In fact, Labour have recently put forward a policy by which everyone who's long-term unemployed is guaranteed a minimum wage job. How is it going to be funded? Not by taxing families who can hardly afford to support themselves, but by taxing bankers' bonuses.
You're taking a valid concern of minimum-wagers, amplifying it a thousandfold, and generalizing it to the entire socio-economic ladder and all income tiers. Even though, manifestly, people above a certain threshold of income are not going to be "scraping by" even if they're taxed for every penny above the threshold (which incidentally nobody has proposed).
Despite your scaremongering about the 70s, unemployment in that decade averaged around 2% compared with 9.1% under Thatcher. Crime was far higher in the 80s. The 70s had its strikes, but the 80s had its riots. You can produce figures about GDP growth being marginally higher in the 80s (while unemployment was through the roof). But the truth is that GDP is only a superficial measure of standard of living at best.
Her policies were the economic equivalent of a medieval quack doctor trepanning the patient to test out his pet theory on the four humours. The most drastic and extreme steps prosecuted in the most ruthless fashion by the doctor, even though he doesn't have any compelling evidence that his abstruse procedure is likely to improve the condition of the patient.
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On April 09 2013 15:01 Rossie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 14:02 RowdierBob wrote:
She won three elections didn't she? Surely she must have had a large groundswell of support for what she was doing? Hitler won an election. That's what propaganda can do.
More like propaganda can make you think that Hitler won an election. But it'd be ludicrous to claim that Hitler "won" an election by any democratic standard.
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EPT
