Thatcher has gone ...

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If a true account was made with both her direct and indirect actions in protecting the name and reputation of South Yorkshire Police while she was in office, when I would agree with your last comment Cornflake.

Tho the reality is this, we're still to this day unclear about her involvement with Orgreave and Hillsborough!

The problem with your logic here is that although Maggie the prime minister is (was) no longer in power, her protégé and ideological student Dave is.

Dave and his associates are using the Thatcher death to glorify her persona and add a façade of moral merit to the policies they are acting currently. By kicking up a stink, the anti thatcher demonstrators are preventing them from doing that, keeping the memories of her destructive policies vivid and ensuring that what she did to people isn't swept under the carpet by the nasty party.

we are clear about her role in Internment in Ulster, and her political romance with Pinochet.

lol crystal clear thomas81, I learn about economics from an Chilean political journalist who spoke out against Pinochet and had come over to the UK to save his live!

Which I guess is a valid spin on it. They are trying to use the death of a senile old woman to shore up support for their loathsome programme, attempting to rewrite history - it should never be forgotten that for much of the country outside the affluent south east her tenure was a disaster, not a blessing. I don't like it - I think its playground stuff personally. But when playground insults are all you have to throw in response to a £10 million propaganda campaign its a pretty sad state of affairs. She isn't Churchill.

Exactly. Thatcher's death changes little; the condems will still do everything next week they were doing the previous week. If you're going to burn effigies, make it Osborne, Cameron or IDS, since they're actually in power.

Yes, that's exactly it.
There is a nasty whiff of opportunism here, desperately trying to look like legitimate protest - but it looks to me like it's primarily an excuse for a punch-up and raising two fingers at "the establishment" by people who weren't there and are unlikely to be as affected as the people who were.
How valid and justifiable is this sorry exhibition, I wonder? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22146674

It's too late, 23 years after the event, to uncover old wounds that have healed and act as if they were still running sores. The whole work environment and what the UK does as a whole has changed massively; it's a different country, competing in a different world market - a different country not exclusively because of her and the simplistic argument along the lines of her having destroyed what was there previously - things have moved on way beyond those events and Thatcherism generally.


Precisely.
Like I said elsewhere, I don't remember a stampede to undo everything she'd implemented once she'd left office and while some of it was undoubtedly unpopular, I think there has been much more from others since then, and much of it as bad or worse.


Agreed, it pleases no-one. Seems to be a BBC speciality.
It still feels deeply distasteful to me, but maybe just playing that song in its allotted place with no introduction or comment would have been a better approach. A "let the thoughtless brats have their few seconds of fame" approach.

You summed up my thoughts in one sentence!



i suppose with the BBC it's a case of 'dammed if you do and dammed if you don't'. Had the BBC done that journalists would have the opportunity to bookmark them as 'the corporation that chose to play it in full'

If you think the wounds have healed and the country has moved on Cornflake, you're mistaken - a walk around Barnsley or Liverpool might be instructive, while the investment-rich South has been able to thrive little came in to take the place of the old industries elsewhere. Blair papered over the cracks with tax credits. The resentment and anger over her legacy are still very real in many parts of the country. A sticking plaster was applied before the recession but the damage was never really repaired, and her demise has brought a lot of bitterness back to the surface. Not really the same as healed. I still think the crowing is misplaced though for the reasons I outlined previously.

I think the bedroom tax is going to be 'Cameron's poll tax'.

Get ready for riots. Anyone old enough to remember the poll tax riots will remember how bad it was. I think people in the leafy south east are living in a bubble. They just don't get the extent of the resentment in the North.

So long as that little green tag sits under your name, you are held to a higher standard of behaviour. Like it or not, when you speak, you associated the Administration of this board with your form of speech.

I have no problem with the substance of your post. But I have a great deal of problem with a moderator setting the prcedent that "mindless little twats" is acceptable posting language that is consistent with the terms of service on this board.

I wish we could know for certain, but I doubt much more will be released until all those with a direct official involvement have died - and I won't be too surprised if what does eventually get revealed is shocking in the extreme.
What's become known seems to show her (unsurprisingly) in pretty much the position I would expect: trusting in law and order and supporting a strong belief that the police force are beyond reproach in their application of it - unfortunately, that's not always the case.
So... *shrugs*


There are probably many more cans of worms being hidden still - especially I think with Hillsborough. Too much sits unresolved.

Oh as well am an activist in Liverpool in the anti bedroom tax campaign.
A good number of the guys involved in the poll tax campaign are involved with this one.

Also Cornflake your BBC link has duff info about UK Uncut, UK Uncut weren't involved in the Trafalgar Square protests on Staurday. They were protesting outside of Lord Freud's home.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/u ... 71877.html

No, I don't mean that it should be introduced in a negative or disapproving tone. It should just be aired as the #2 track, devoid of context, as though it were any other song. Take the wind out of their sails.

The country has moved on. Pockets of it haven't.
After 23 years I don't think it's valid to blame that lack of movement on Thatcher. I'm not denying it exists or that it's acceptable, but there are more contemporaneous reasons for the lack of action.


Yes. Blair was rather good at papering over cracks. That, and grinning.

I think we're basically in agreement - what I put in quotes was my take on your "Take the wind out of their sails".