Yestedray, Iain Dale asked "Where Were You When You Heard Margaret Thatcher Had Resigned?". I remember it well. I was in a GCSE PE lesson at the Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School.
Mrs Milner was taking the lesson and another teacher, I cannot remember who, came into the hall and said that Thatcher had resigned. There were cheers from much of the class and the teacher and I recall at the time wondering "why?".
21 comments:
"Wondering why/" is that why the cheers or why the resignation? One thing is for sure we've gone from OK under Thatcher to completely screwed under Brown and Labour.
The cheers
Because she was an evil cold-hearted bitch? Just a thought.
"OK under Thatcher"?
Ever been north of Watford, Oldrightie? Things were not "OK under Thatcher" in the post-industrial cities of the north and Scotland. Liverpool, for example, by the mid-80s was absolutely on its knees. And today under Labour? Thriving and vibrant. Come up and see for yourself.
Is it just me or has Dale finally plunged irretrievably into self-parody? His post on Thatcher's resignation can't have been serious, can it?
"Because she was an evil cold-hearted bitch? Just a thought."
I imagine such an objective and non-emotionally loaded analysis would go down well in an academic essay.
As ana asdie I do find it hilarious how hatred of Thatcher eclipses a realisation of how things in today's Britain that so many take for granted were because of her Government and also what a shithole pre Thatcher Britain was.
But I'm posting a comment on a blog, not writing an academic essay. So your point is?
By the way, if you were taking your GCSEs the year Thatcher resigned, how on earth would you know whether or not pre-Thatcher Britain was a 'shithole'?
"But I'm posting a comment on a blog, not writing an academic essay. So your point is?"
My point is that you are normally erudite and lucid and devoid of such emotionally charged analysis.
By the way, if you were taking your GCSEs the year Thatcher resigned, how on earth would you know whether or not pre-Thatcher Britain was a 'shithole'?
Well let's see. I have parents and grandparents and books that told me things such as the length of time it took to get a phoneline from BT and the fact you had to rent a handset off BT. That happened in early Thatcher's Britian before it was, quite rightly privatised. I;ve seen pictures of the dea not being buried. The economic "managed" decline of the nation is well documented in history as well.
Is that enough?
Flattery is an excellent tool in argumentation which you've used exquisitely here. So I'll give you the first point.
On the second, yes, of course you can talk to your elders and read about it. Have you ever read 'Never Again' by Peter Hennessey - a splendid account of a wonderful era in post-war but pre-Thatcher Britain. I think what you actually mean is that 1970s Britain was a 'shithole'. That may well be correct. My point is that for many people, 1980s Britain was even worse - don't you remember Tory ministers having to step over the homeless on the way to the opera?
err I step over the homeless on the way to the kebab shop.
I was alluding to a famous comment by one of Thatcher's ministers when asked about the growing problem of homelessness in London. His reply was something along the lines of 'aren't they the people you step over on the way to the opera'. Unwittingly, he captured the true spirit of Thatcherism in that 'joke'.
Without wishing to sound like a government propagandist, Labour's measures to tackle homelessness have actually been so successful that many homelessness charities have disappeared or been forced to merge because there just isn't the 'business' for them any more.
Homelessness versus joblessness?
Blimey, raising joblessness in a discussion of how great Thatcher was. Where do I begin? 4 million on the dole, endlessly fiddling the statistics, 'unemployment is a price worth paying', Tebbit and his bike...
You missed the point then which was about the fact over 5 million people in the UK are now not working and on nothing but benefits.
Yep, people under Thatcher went on the dole. Under this Goevrnment they get paid not to work by being put on other benefits instead.
That's the only reason 2immigration" is an issue. Too many Brits sitting on their arses who can work but wont.
Were did the 4 million come from btw?
"Too many Brits sitting on their arses who can work but wont."
Dear, oh dear. I won't dignify that with a response.
As for your other point about people being put on other benefits, that is true up to a point and the failure to do anything meaningful about this is a major failure particularly of the first two Blair governments. What it ignores though is the background of how employment patterns have changed in the meantime (e.g. so many more women in the formal labour market) - a key figure of comparison is therefore numbers of people in paid work, and on that front New Labour beats Thatcher hands down.
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"Where did the 4 million come from?" Ben Elton or maybe Wikipedia. I forget which.
"the failure to do anything meaningful about this is a major failure particularly of the first two Blair governments. "
They created it.
No, they didn't create it. It already existed to some extent. But I admit they made it much worse and then failed to sort it out.
While I can't remember where I was when Thatcher resigned, I can remember where I was when Geoffrey Howe made his resignation speech which led to Thatcher's departure.
I was in the car, and when the speech began decided I would re-tune to something more interesting after I had negotiated the junction I was approaching. By the time I was past the junction I had changed my mind.
The numbers on the dole never reached 4m. The peak was just short of 3.1m in 1986. Bad but at least get the figures right - they're on the ONS website.
But of course, the main reason it got that high was the need to correct the decades of ill-directed investment propping up dead industries.
If the steel industry, the mines, the shipyards, etc, had been allowed to decline naturally over the previous decades - rather than being propped up as massive state make-work schemes - then there wouldn't have been the sudden inflow of newly unemployed men with redundant and irrelevant skillsets.
If you want to compare unemployment statistics between Maggie's and New Lab's reign you must adjust for non-jobs and disability benefits which Labour use as a way of disguising the truth. There were no Street Football Coodinators in Maggie's time.
One of Maggies' many achievements was to take the unions down a peg, as they were running the country into the ground. Ford's at Dagenham used to have a strike if there wasn't enough sugar in the tea urn!
We could really do with another like her.
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