Margaret Thatcher, dead at 87.
- Thread starter Ceiling Cat
- Start date
True, at the same time that she was the longest serving British Prime Minister of the Twentieth Century is unarguable, likewise that she will be one of but a handful of commoners to be given a Ceremonial or State Funeral and one of only two Prime Ministers since 1900 to be be granted such.There's virtually no middle ground when it comes to opinions about Maggie Thatcher.
There's people in Britain who will be partying with their mates tonight and singing ding dong the witch is dead. Equally there'll be people crying in their beer convinced that she saved a moribund Britain that without her would have plummeted headlong into economic catastrophe
Yes she did, she was one of, but still a conservative political member.How was she a traditional conservative? LOL
She championed Neoliberalism.
she famously said: there is no such thing as society.She had many sayings.........."If you want something said, ask a man......if you want something done, ask a woman." lol
I just read this one and is pretty witty....."The trouble with you, John, is your spine does not reach your brain." Now that's ballsy considering she said it to a government official.
http://listverse.com/2007/12/21/top-25-quotes-of-margaret-thatcher/
I'm guessing, with great confidence, that you didn't read her book though and actually get the context of the quote.she famously said: there is no such thing as society.
A comment from a Woman’s Own interview in 1987 is often repeated, but rarely in context: ”There is no such thing as society”. Its relevance was made explicit with the publication of the second volume of Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography in 1993:
“they never quoted the rest. I went on to say: There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour. My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.“
http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/there-is-no-such-thing-as-society
On the French Revolution: “It resulted in a lot of headless corpses and a tyrant,”
"Human rights did not begin with the French Revolution...[they] really stem from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity...[we English] had 1688, our quiet revolution, where Parliament exerted its will over the King...it was not the sort of Revolution that France's was...'Liberty, equality, fraternity' — they forgot obligations and duties I think. And then of course the fraternity went missing for a long time."
"Human rights did not begin with the French Revolution...[they] really stem from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity...[we English] had 1688, our quiet revolution, where Parliament exerted its will over the King...it was not the sort of Revolution that France's was...'Liberty, equality, fraternity' — they forgot obligations and duties I think. And then of course the fraternity went missing for a long time."
Which is nothing but common sense.I'm guessing, with great confidence, that you didn't read her book though and actually get the context of the quote.
A comment from a Woman’s Own interview in 1987 is often repeated, but rarely in context: ”There is no such thing as society”. Its relevance was made explicit with the publication of the second volume of Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography in 1993:
“they never quoted the rest. I went on to say: There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour. My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.“
http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/there-is-no-such-thing-as-society
Building a society based on "everyone will be cool" is doomed to failure. All you really need is a few dicks to turn your society into garbage. Building your society based on "everyone's going to be a greedy asshole, but if you're cool then that makes things run better" means you'll have a society that will survive. You may not reach your theoretical maximum potential, but it'll actually work instead of being a corrupt disaster.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need..." sounds great, until you have to figure out how everyone's abilities are judged and how everyone's need is judged. Large scale stateless communism simply doesn't work: too many greedy people. State-enforced communism or socialism simply means you add multiple layers of bureaucracy that suck up productivity in return for some bullshit "fairness".
Yes, Thatcher broke the British unions. And Thatcher privatized many government-held industries. And in return, she created the Mondeo man, the very voters who would later put a Labour Party leader into Downing Street. A Labour Party leader whose policies were, let's be realistic, more like Thatcher's than Callaghan's. She recreated Britain from the miserable British Leyland factories whose workers spent more time standing around trash can fires on strike than on the factory floor and into the modern Britain that's one of the shining lights (such as it is) of Europe. And pathetic lib Brits today are trashing Thatcher for her policies that got them to where they are today. Typical ungrateful children.
Communist/socialist policies are great, as long as you think of yourself as an unproductive loser. As long as it's somebody else's fault that you're not farther ahead. And as long as there's someone out there that you can legislatively rob of the fruits of their labor.
She turned half of England into a wasteland because it had been propped up for too long under policies that would have doomed (and were dooming) Great Britain. The mines and factories of the North of England were dragging Great Britain into destitution under the medieval belief that you should do the job that your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather did, because that's the way God intended it. Instead, she forced Northerners to seek better and more modern employment instead of protecting industries in which Great Britain could no longer compete. Yes, it was painful. But it was the smart thing to do and she did it with courage and without hesitation.I have mixed feelings about her.
She was a true leader and a traditional conservative. Yes her economic policies were sound and London did benefit handsomely from them, but she turned half her nation into an economic wasteland. They will be partying in Newcastle tonight.
It's part of why I think President Obama's (theoretical) policy of pushing manufacturing in the US is simply stupid. Fine, support the manufacturing that makes sense in the US, but trying to restart the textile industry in the US, restarting large-scale manufacturing, etc., is just silly. Re-gear the nation for the post-industrial world, let Asia invest in the massive infrastructure of industrialization (and the US make money off of that by selling that infrastructure to Asia... or where do you think the prosperity of the 90s came from?) just before industrialization dies a long-delayed death, and be positioned for the next step while your global competitors are still taking the last step.
It's a gross over-simplification, but anyone who plays RTS games knows how it works. Against an AI or against a very green opponent, base building is the way to go. You build tough, layered defenses, invest resources in massive infrastructure, all for a small investment in flexible organic units. Advanced players go with a much higher percentage in those flexible organic units that allow a player to react to changing situations and to take advantage of them.
Big corporations are bad. They're inflexible. But government control is even worse. They're even more inflexible. Unions are bad. Unions, by definition, are against flexibility. A new piece of equipment that negates 3 union jobs and cuts the hours of the fourth? Evil. Never mind that it's what is best for the industry and society as a whole, and is in the long term interests of those 3 union laborers who'll get better jobs elsewhere if they are flexible enough to retool themselves.
Ask anyone who is a success what the most important point in their career was. For most, it's a "failure". It's getting fired from another job that they got comfortable with but they had outgrown. The trick is to 1.) Outgrow your old job, don't just sit there and suck up space, and 2.) Be ready for that next job that will challenge your growth.
Northerners got challenged by Thatcher's policies. Many of them are why Great Britain has done as well as it has for the last 30 years.
traditional conservatives are protectionists.Yes she did, she was one of, but still a conservative political member.
The state of the current economic climate in the world actually shows that inverted totalitarianism is the worst, meaning that when corporations control the government it becomes a state of Fascism which we are in right now. This is why labor, environmental, and social policies are shaped in favor of widening wealth inequality. It is a fact that the way the world is going right now cannot go on for too much longer if we are to sustain the resources that our species needs to survive.She turned half of England into a wasteland because it had been propped up for too long under policies that would have doomed (and were dooming) Great Britain. The mines and factories of the North of England were dragging Great Britain into destitution under the medieval belief that you should do the job that your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather did, because that's the way God intended it. Instead, she forced Northerners to seek better and more modern employment instead of protecting industries in which Great Britain could no longer compete. Yes, it was painful. But it was the smart thing to do and she did it with courage and without hesitation.
It's part of why I think President Obama's (theoretical) policy of pushing manufacturing in the US is simply stupid. Fine, support the manufacturing that makes sense in the US, but trying to restart the textile industry in the US, restarting large-scale manufacturing, etc., is just silly. Re-gear the nation for the post-industrial world, let Asia invest in the massive infrastructure of industrialization (and the US make money off of that by selling that infrastructure to Asia... or where do you think the prosperity of the 90s came from?) just before industrialization dies a long-delayed death, and be positioned for the next step while your global competitors are still taking the last step.
It's a gross over-simplification, but anyone who plays RTS games knows how it works. Against an AI or against a very green opponent, base building is the way to go. You build tough, layered defenses, invest resources in massive infrastructure, all for a small investment in flexible organic units. Advanced players go with a much higher percentage in those flexible organic units that allow a player to react to changing situations and to take advantage of them.
Big corporations are bad. They're inflexible. But government control is even worse. They're even more inflexible. Unions are bad. Unions, by definition, are against flexibility. A new piece of equipment that negates 3 union jobs and cuts the hours of the fourth? Evil. Never mind that it's what is best for the industry and society as a whole, and is in the long term interests of those 3 union laborers who'll get better jobs elsewhere if they are flexible enough to retool themselves.
Ask anyone who is a success what the most important point in their career was. For most, it's a "failure". It's getting fired from another job that they got comfortable with but they had outgrown. The trick is to 1.) Outgrow your old job, don't just sit there and suck up space, and 2.) Be ready for that next job that will challenge your growth.
Northerners got challenged by Thatcher's policies. Many of them are why Great Britain has done as well as it has for the last 30 years.
I'm not sure what you mean by stating that unions are against flexibility, but I've studied and researched unions. Their role is to protect the working class against the employers when class-warfare arises, and they are democratically elected organizations which is something big corporations fear
You sound like someone who has had a lot of privilege to grow and that is fine but you make it sound as though and under-class is not necessary, which does not make very much economic sense at all.
In the end, Thatcher let the criminal robber baron banksters take control of the country which is why they are slowly going through the shitter right now. She betrayed the working class with neo-liberalism. If Britain was so successful, then why are they still paying off such old debt which is getting deeper.
You beat me to it.My favorite quote: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
And it's the truth too.
True enough. We need more like her.She championed Neoliberalism.
It has been said that one of the best arguments against Communist theory are soldiers on a troopship. Everyone gets on the ship having just been paid so everyone is pretty much equal by rank (i.e. the perfect communist state), however after a week or so at sea playing cards some are even but most are much poorer and a few are very much richer.My favorite quote: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
Not one of her observations but given she is being buried at the Royal Hospital Chelsea (the Chelsea Pensioners) I’m sure if nothing else she was familiar with this through her husband.
what a pile of crapThe state of the current economic climate in the world actually shows that inverted totalitarianism is the worst, meaning that when corporations control the government it becomes a state of Fascism which we are in right now. This is why labor, environmental, and social policies are shaped in favor of widening wealth inequality. It is a fact that the way the world is going right now cannot go on for too much longer if we are to sustain the resources that our species needs to survive.
I'm not sure what you mean by stating that unions are against flexibility, but I've studied and researched unions. Their role is to protect the working class against the employers when class-warfare arises, and they are democratically elected organizations which is something big corporations fear
You sound like someone who has had a lot of privilege to grow and that is fine but you make it sound as though and under-class is not necessary, which does not make very much economic sense at all.
In the end, Thatcher let the criminal robber baron banksters take control of the country which is why they are slowly going through the shitter right now. She betrayed the working class with neo-liberalism. If Britain was so successful, then why are they still paying off such old debt which is getting deeper.
you may have studied unions, however it is pretty clear your conclusion was predetermined
I studied them too
there role is to extract as much as possible, without regard for the long term stability of the host
Hated and feared by unions, mark of a great prime minister. Rest in Peace. They broke the mould after they made her.
