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Watt
Stephenson
Brunel
Bell etc etc etc
And of course Ssssssshakespeare
I've never ever before realised just how tolerant England is. In England you can actually be your racial heritage- but for example, i feel like living here i can't be english, i have to be chinese or korean depending on who i am hanging out with. Fine i like experiencing new cultures, meeting new friends- but to be constantly told "you can't do that" "why?" "cos we're korean" bugs the HELL out of me. it's give and take- acceptance goes both ways!!
first woman PM ever and the best PM we've ever had. When i join Conservative Future, we will be remembered.
What history would that be? Unless you've got some evidence to the contrary she was certainly the first PM and the British people obviously thought she was good enough to elect three times. Personally I think Churchill as a wartime PM was our best Prime Minister (though his peacetime achievements weren't so good).
But from Wilson until Callaghan every UK Prime Minister was about managing decline. Thatcher reversed that. I think people forget how fractured and split the British were in the 70s and the left have invented a histroical myth of a Britain at ease with itself which was then destroyed by the sudden arrival of Thatcher. In the 1970s inflation was out of control and unemployment was going up - whilst it continued to do so under Thatcher she put in place the policies which would allow British firms to remain competitive and employ people. The policies before her had no such solution and if Labour had continued into the 80's it seems likely unemployment would have been as bad as it was under Thatcher, with the added problems of inflation, lower growth (and wages) and unions which felt that they were above the democratically elected Government.
On foreign policy she succesfully defended the Falkland and the wishes of its inhabitants by invasion by a fascist junta and was instrumental (with Reagan) in persuading Gorbachev to enter Glasnost. Nor was she simply a US puppet as is the other slur of the left - she broke with the US over Iran and encouraged economic relations with them, working on the theory that economic relations is a better way to change countries behaviours than trying to force them into a corner with sanctions. She followed the same line with South Africa - not because she supported Apartheid, but because she thought sanctions were ineffective (the running sore of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was also sorted out under her watch - leading to black majority rule - hardly evidence of the rabid racist some like to paint her as).
That's not to say she was totally flawless, but she was pretty succesful. And the ultimate arbiter of that must be the results - she won elections in 1979, 83 and 87. The only way the Labour Party was able to gain power was to except her legacy and move slightly more to the right.
Good things:
1. curbing union power (and then even this is debatable, for she went too far the other way living shit conditions for everyone)
2. winning a war
Bad things:
1. Destroyed entire industries
2. Introduced a despicable policy of greed and selfishness that has repercussions still today
3. Attempted to dehumanise and destroy society
4. Caused mass unemployement in some industries and promoted the creation of shit-paid McJobs
5. Saw an increase of children living under the poverty gap from 16% to 33%
6. Championed free market policies that eventually led to the privatisation of crucial public services with disastrous results for the country
7. Persecuted single mothers and the unemployed and cut welfare to appalling levels
8. Fucked up the poor to benefit the rich
9. Made alliances with brutal fascists, racists and dictators
Best PM since Churchill? Someone's having a laugh
:yuck:
And Thatcher often made clear her abhorence of apartheid. She also believed that sanctions didn't work and just hurt the poor, whilst making no difference to those who made the decisions (she was wrong on that as it happens, buts its a similar argument as used by the left for going against the much less harsh sanctions on Iraq).
And even if Thatcher spoke badly of the Apartheid, her dear husband had a rather more favourable view of the regime.
But even if we ignore her international record, other than the much trumpeted curbing of the unions she did a lot more damage than she did good to the people of Britain. I really don't understand what's to like or celebrate about the woman.
Thatcher did give some support to Pinochet, whilst working also to persaude him to give up power voluntarily - which in the end he did. Thatcher always had a soft spot for dictators who gave up power wiuthout bloody civil wars - its why she had a soft spot for Gorbachev as well.
And its frankly irrelevant what Denis Thatcher's views were (and they were much more complex than supporting apartheid for the sake of apartheid). Unless you're going to go back to the view some on the left tried to propogate when Thatcher first started to enter the public eye, that as woman she was just the tool of a manipulative husband behind the scenes. Which is a) slightly patronising b) wholly innaccurate
She did not back down to anyone, she did not water her plans, she was determined to see them through. She had Britains interests at heart. She is a credit to this country. She had reversed socialist policies that had left the country cripplied with mass unemployment, inflation and interest rates going bonkers. Yes things were not perfect in the 80's... but her policies took time to implement and see through, after 1992 is the time Thacthers policies were seen at their peak, employment rising, controlled inflation and interest rates. We were properous. New labour inherited this. Labour claim they are the champions on the economy... yet what exactly have they done? They've carried on persuing Thatcherite policies. None of it is real labour policy. Labour have Thatcher to thank and it's good to see Blair wants a state funeral for her.
Labour often go on about the state of the economy in the 80's... but come on then blair... what wpould he have done what was better? He was a member of the far left labour party in the 80's. The country didn't want left wing policies hence 18 years of conservative rule.
I think you want to be really careful about mentioning 'Conservative Party' and 'inflation and interest rates' in the same sentence...
. No. Not we. A very few were prosperous. The rest were fucked.
For starters they have got rid of the Tories' signature performance: boom and bust, incredibly high inflation and interest rates at 15%.
Labour have brought a sense stability and real prosperity the Tories could only dream of.
While I despise the europhile Ken Clarke the denial of his role in creating the economy that Gordon Brown has benefited from and taken the credit for is a classic and unfortunately successful instance of history being propagandistically rewritten. It's a distortion if anything equivalent to Stalin's infamous omission and literal photographic airbrushing of Trotsky from the history of the Russian revolution.
:thumb:
Irony.
The BBC, Channel 4, The independent, Private Eye etc.
The amazing countryside.
The tradition of freedom (the only country not to have armed police). Shame New Labour arseholes are destroying centuries of great work.
The mix of people and sub cultures.
The culture of oppourtunity, despite vestiges of elitism.
So many, many, many more things. Some things are annoying, but you'll forget all about them if you move away for a while!
Replace Thatcher with Hitler and the 80's with the 30's and Socialist with Liberal that still reads correctly.
Woo yay. You could even do it with Stalin and Russia... Blair and "New Labour" have run the economy entirley DIFFERENT to Thatcher which is why it works. She is the reason we don't have any Industry anymore. Think of Britain before she came in... big, strong, industrial heart of the world. We made everything! Huge ships...
Now, we make cock all. Thanks, Maggie!
The unions themselves wrecked a lot of industry, Communists like Derek Robinson (or 'Red Robbo') wrecked British Leyland for instance and Scargill destroyed the coal industry by his militancy.
Unfortunately the decline of industry was somewhat inevitable anyway - the unions helped accelerate its decline though. If you can make a better quality ship for half the cost in South Korea it's unavoidable that British ship making will decline. If we're using less coal and it's cheaper anyway to import coal rather than extract it from underneath the ground here mines will shut.
The Bank of England runs the economy. And it has been run the same since before labour came into power.
GDP in 1960 - 25,678,000,000
GDP in 2005 - 1,209,334,000,000
:chin:
Yes. The GDP is an exact mesure of British Industry, isn't it? You silly sod. :rolleyes:
One thing, you can't deny the huge unemployment under Thatcher and all the Industry we lost. So where exactally do you say all those Shipyards and Factories and Coal Mines went... if Thatcher didn't ruin them?
thatcher didnt ruin them. sharp appreciations in real exchange rates caused by exploiting the north sea oil meaned heavy industry became uneconomic. aka the "dutch disease".