Hard News: Thatcher
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JacksonP, in reply to
Shipbuilding
Good call. Tearjerker that it is.
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Okay … five minute break.
If you can judge a person by the company they keep … Thatcher’s most important mentor, Keith Joseph.
A vile man who gave speeches about the working-class birth rate threatening “our human stock”. Who, in the wake of riots in Liverpool, proposed a “managed rundown” of Merseyside, on the basis that there was no point in trying to help such people. Who told West Indian immigrants to go back and grow bananas".
There’s a fascinating BBC doco called Tory Tory! Tory! about the development of Thatcherism. Some of those people were basically fascists.
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Reckon they should go with Ken Loach’s suggestion to privatise her funeral: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/lets_privatize_her_funeral_film_director_ken_loach_on_plans_for_thatchers
How should we honor her? Let’s privatize her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she would have wanted.
It’s not even disrespectful.
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Hebe, in reply to
I think I prefer discussion that has no name-calling, though
I think it's an age-and-place thing because usually I agree. Russell explains it well with his comment about the profound alienation and division Thatcher's government left behind.
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Danielle, in reply to
I think one of the things that enabled her to be so successful was that many on the left were more concerned with correct use of language than the physical actions of government.
If I ever manage to write a book about this endless, endless goddamned internet argument from which I can apparently never escape, it will be called: Identity Politics Ruined the Left! How These Dudes Know What's Really Important And The Rest of Us Should Just Shut Up.
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How about this crackly classic from one of Manchester's favorite sons Ewan MacColl (also father of the late and great Kirsty). Cuttingly brilliant and well worth the full listen...
"The Grocer" : -
Lilith __, in reply to
I think I prefer discussion that has no name-calling, though
I think it’s an age-and-place thing because usually I agree. Russell explains it well with his comment about the profound alienation and division Thatcher’s government left behind.
I totally agree that her legacy is toxic. I remember the breathtaking scariness of her regime. But I don’t think name-calling helps. Excoriating analysis of her words and actions, fine; personal insults, meh. It’s too easy and too unhelpful. IMO. :-)
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Paul Williams, in reply to
Good call. Tearjerker that it is.
+1. Its interesting reading what the likes of Costello and Loach say of her passing.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
That is ,for someone from the left, a fair summing up of the Lady
Some people seem to have forgotten what a basket case the UK was then
I am sure it could have been do better but it had to be donePerhaps that's a 20th Century lesson: don't allow your economy to degrade so terribly that it appears that extremists are the only people who can fix it.
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Mogwai's George Square Thatcher Death Party.(from 2011) has a title that sounds like word salad at first glance. Stonkin' song, though:
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Final word before I go and make TV ...
Blame must also accrue to the British Labour movement, whose disappearance down the Militant Tendency rabbit-hole played a great part in Thatcher winning successive elections.
They fell prey to the very divisions Thatcher looked to foster. You really had to despair of them at the time.
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Over at The Civilian, Libertarians unsure whether to care about death of Margaret Thatcher
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Hebe, in reply to
+1
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Sacha, in reply to
don't allow your economy to degrade so terribly that it appears that extremists are the only people who can fix it.
Relevant to the materialist-cultural tension in the left that Danielle alludes to above. Though gendering it, sheesh. :)
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Hebe, in reply to
Heh.
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As others have commented: One should only speak good of the dead. She is dead. Good.
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Whenever a big name like this passes, I get to wondering how exceptional they really were, or whether they were mostly a product of their times. In this case, I just don't know, but it seems to me that if it wasn't Thatcher it would have been someone else. Reagan was pulling the same crap in the US, and it's not like he was some genius. He also got put on a pedestal post-mortem. Monetarism was (and still is) a massive team effort, and the pedestalization is a form of auto-back patting. So powerful that in NZ it was a set of reforms initiated by the goddamned Labour Party.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
mostly a product of their times. Monetarism was (and still is) a massive team effort,
It’s easy to forget now how corrosive- and out-of-control- inflation was in the 70s. It was the biggest economic concern in developed/western economies. It was a major factor in triggering industrial action to make sure wages kept up, which also fueled inflation, etc.
Monetarism doesn’t have many nice features. Horrible effects, by and large, and it came with an evil set of justifications around private wealth, taxation, and markets that’s led to obscene concentrations of wealth, here and everywhere.
But it did contain inflation better than anything else that was tried. And that in great part explains the way it swept around the globe to become economic “orthodoxy”.
(Ok, what produces and/or controls inflation is contentious. But that's what the monetarists say, anyway :)) -
Angus Robertson, in reply to
As the pragmatism included the brain fart of floating the New Zealand dollar, yeah, if only there HAD been an alternative.
The main alternative is what just occurred in Cyprus, except more so.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
That is ,for someone from the left, a fair summing up of the Lady
Some people seem to have forgotten what a basket case the UK was then
I am sure it could have been do better but it had to be donePerhaps that’s a 20th Century lesson: don’t allow your economy to degrade so terribly that it appears that extremists are the only people who can fix it.
Also don't assume that because they created a solution that it was the only viable solution.
While it is true that some of the things disestablished by that govt were inefficient or just plain useless - the way they chose to do it was worse and what replaced some of those things was distinctly worse.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Would you ever use it to describe a man?
To be fair I have heard old very camp men sometimes described using that word. But yeah we even made a word expressly for this:
Twatcock FTW.
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Hebe,
Margaret Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, so this song was doubly pleasing back then
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Hebe, in reply to
Twatcock FTW.
What does that mean? I have seen it before on PAS.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
the British Labour movement, whose disappearance down the Militant Tendency rabbit-hole played a great part in Thatcher winning successive elections
The Militant Tendency never reached the leadership levels of Labour. The first election Thatcher won was of course lost by the (old right) Callaghan and subsequent elections saw Labour led by the fairly soft left Foot and Kinnock.
It was the right-wing media, led by Murdoch, that turned the moderate Kinnock into a demon baby-eater. That media was only willing to ease off on Labour when the latter had elected a leader who was about as leftist as George Bush *and* the Tories had become so risible that the right were going to get an alternate government if they liked it or not.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
Margaret Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist
Nelson Mandela was a Terrorist.
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