Margaret Thatcher dies at age 87 - Page 23

On April 10 2013 04:32 Rossie wrote:
No. That is exactly the definition given in the government document that I linked to.

There will always be a certain level of unemployment, even within a healthy economy, as people enter or re-enter the
labour force or move between jobs. This is known as ‘frictional unemployment’.

"The good" has proven a bum steer. Other European countries did not go down this path and they have fared much better than we have, despite not having anything close to the inherited and natural advantages of the UK.

"Reaganomics" might work passably well for the United States to some extent. It doesn't work for the UK. It probably won't even work for the US once the proceeds of the dot com revolution start to thin out.

On April 10 2013 04:52 oneofthem wrote:
let's be serious about falklands though. even if there were no brits on the island thatcher would have done the same thing, or a number of other less favorable permutations.

she's ideological and medieval

On April 10 2013 04:51 Shiragaku wrote:

I am not too familiar with the aftermath of the war except for the fact that Britain won, but I do not think I read any atrocities or war crimes committed by Britain during the war. But as for her other policies such as union busting and Pinochet, it is something I find to be completely despicable.

On April 10 2013 04:55 Shiragaku wrote:


Being a major critic of Thatcher, I would like to believe so but it did not happen so we cannot make a judgement. I personally believe that we can only criticize Thatcher's stance on the Falkland Islands if there was a movement for self-determination and she crushed it and made sure to keep the Falklands part of Britain.

EDIT - Post below, is it a war crime to route retreating enemy forces?

On April 10 2013 04:25 nunez wrote:
i think it would be argentinas right to reclaim the falklands. i need only to look at a map to see whose land that is. britain could boat the people who considered themselves more british than argentine back to britain. it would have cost less money and fewer lives would have been lost. a war is not justified unless all other options are depleted.

edit: i guess i should say, i am not sure it would have cost more money and i'm not sure it would have cost more lives.

On April 10 2013 04:56 Acritter wrote:

There was a mention earlier of a ship being sunk as it was retreating. I don't know a whole lot about it either, but on the surface it seems a little beyond the pale.

Margaret Thatcher forced François Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina's deadly French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.
Rendez-vous - the psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand, by Ali Magoudi, who met the late French president up to twice a week in secrecy at his Paris practice from 1982 to 1984, also reveals that Mr Mitterrand believed he would get his "revenge" by building a tunnel under the Channel which would forever destroy Britain's island status.

The book, to be published on Friday, is one of several on France's first Socialist president to mark the 10th anniversary of his death on January 8 1996. Despite a now tarnished reputation, he remains a source of fascination for the French in general and the left in particular. Rendez-vous provides revealing insights into the man's mysterious character, complicated past, paranoia and power complex, but nothing as titillating as his remarks on the former British prime minister.

"Excuse me. I had a difference to settle with the Iron Lady. That Thatcher, what an impossible woman!" the president said as he arrived, more than 45 minutes late, on May 7 1982. "With her four nuclear submarines in the south Atlantic, she's threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind." He reminded Mr Magoudi that on May 4 an Exocet missile had struck HMS Sheffield. "To make matters worse, it was fired from a Super-Etendard jet," he said. "All the matériel was French!"

In words that the psychoanalyst has sworn to the publisher, Meren Sell, are genuine, the president continued: "She's livid. She blames me personally for this new Trafalgar ... I was obliged to give in. She's got them now, the codes."

Mr Mitterrand - who once described Mrs Thatcher as "the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe" - went on: "One cannot win against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. Provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing! But it's a good job I gave way. Otherwise, I assure you, the Lady's metallic finger would have hit the button."

France, he insisted, would have the last word. "I'll build a tunnel under the Channel. I'll succeed where Napoleon III failed. And do you know why she'll accept my tunnel? I'll flatter her shopkeeper's spirit. I'll tell her it won't cost the Crown a penny."

In 1981 British and French leaders Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand agreed to set up a working group to look into a privately funded project, and in April 1985 promoters were formally invited to submit scheme proposals. Four submissions were shortlisted:

On April 10 2013 05:39 farvacola wrote:
Those graphs are woefully inadequate if you really hope for the average poster to "make up their own minds"; they do a poor job of tying any of the historic phenomena they describe to the policies of Thatcher, which is presumably a necessary component of an honest analysis of her place in history.

On April 10 2013 04:31 Shiragaku wrote:


What you are justifying is what some far-right Israeli politicians say about the Palestinians. Also, the island was uninhabited when it was first discovered by the Europeans.

I’m sure that British economists will be hashing this stuff over in the days ahead. For now, consider this a caution: if anyone tells you that Thatcher saved the British economy, you should ask why the results of that salvation took so very long to materialize.

On April 10 2013 04:37 Asymmetric wrote:


It seems to me like Denmark owns Norway.

You mind moving to Sweden for the sake of peace?

On April 10 2013 06:26 nunez wrote:


haha! i would mind a bit, but sweden is a nice country, and i prefer swedes slightly over danes.

i undestand your point, and there are cases where it is impossible to make such a distinction, but i did not think this was one of them. i don't think your analogy catches all the nuances of the issue. it's an island extremely far away with a couple of thousand inhabitants.

a better analogy with norway in it, ratio wise, would be that holland retakes jan mayen because there's a single hermit with dutch ancestry living there, and norway is establishing a military station on it.

On April 10 2013 06:17 oneofthem wrote:
nunez's approach is interesting to entertain as an idealization. let's all sit down at the table and divide out fair share according to who's closer and who 'needs' it more.

but if we are to go that far, might as well get rid of borders altogether.

On April 10 2013 06:36 nunez wrote:


yes, i realize it is not an effective solution to settle disputes. and it's not an approach i would generally follow. in this scenario i thought it wouldn't be oversimplifying too much.

now, looking back, covered in bile, i guess i was mistaken.

edit: my initial post was a reaction to calling the war justified. i'm not sure it was, my knee jerk reaction is to think that it was not justified, but unfortunate. a lot of people seem to think this opinion is garbage, or i am failing to communicate. both equally probable.