Margaret Thatcher has died

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I'm with Dox47 on this one. Dancing in the street for the death of a political foe who was out of power for over 22 years is....unusual...in a western society (there are cultures where it is more accepted). That said, considering how long it took to get her statue up in Parliment, and that people have already defaced it, I'm not surprised.

What was it about her that brought out this level of venom? She was more vocal about her views than most western politicians, maybe that's it.

The Community Charge was very unpopular amongst a lot of people, but that wasn't the major reason they got rid of her (although it was a factor). It was her anti-euro stance which really did for her.

Her success.

She would have been delighted with the level of pure hatred shown to her in death.

The official and public disposal of her corpse (funeral if you what to call it so) is on the 17th April, two days after the 24th anniversary of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster!!

what a waste!! she was only 87.
talk about being cut down in one's youth.

Well spare a thought for Jon-Paul Gilhooley please. He was 10 years old when died at Hillsborough!

For those of us who arn't UK-based, can you explain what Baronness Thatcher had to do with the tragic events at Hillsborough? I don't know much about it, and wikipedia is'nt the greatest source on this sort of issue, particularly right now.

She was the worst of democracy. She appealed to exactly who she needed to, the middle class voters in the south, and didn't care about the working classes or the future. She privatised large amounts of our economy, some of which was necessary (why the government was producing cars, I don't know) but some of which has been a total disaster- energy providers and trains being the prime examples.

She caused unemployment to soar, she raised interest rates so that businesses couldn't borrow, she shifted the tax burden onto the poor, and she led us into the Falklands War, causing the death of hundreds.

Sorry I'll try make it simple as I can tho it is a long and complex issue, the Hillsborough Independent Panel weren't given access to any government documents that Thatcher had a direct involvement with, so right now its unclear of her role in Hillsborough.

Reading this might bring you to speed with the issue
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... -33137951/

Thatcher's treatment of football fans in general was pretty shocking: http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/espnfcuni ... sd&cc=5739

That's as maybe, but there's no way in hell she would have won a fourth term, and the Poll Tax was undoubtedly the main reason for that. It was a piece of legislation that repelled even some of those who had previously been her most fervent supporters, such as owners of small businesses who now found themselves paying arbitrary and wildly varying taxation rates according to whichever bourough they had the good fortune, or misfortune, to be based in, rather than how much income they were generating.

I can vivdly remember going on the 1990 demonstration that the police turned into a riot and seeing a sizeable group of people grouped around a placard saying "Tories against the Poll Tax". That's why her party got rid of her - because she had become an electoral liability. There may indeed have been some opportunistic backstabbing involved, but she did many things to precipitate the situation by succumbing to the megalomaniacal sense of invincibility that tends to grip individuals who have had too much power for too long.

Even so, she showed it is possible to be P.M of Great Britain without being Neville Chamberlain.

ruveyn

She also proved that it is possible to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom whilst having only the most tenuous understanding of foreign policy.

Her one, single success was to get Gorbachev and Reagan into the same room. Otherwise, her foreign policy was a litany of failures (South Africa, German Unification), mediocrities (Joint Declaration on HK) and non-events.

Even the Falklands cannot be described as a foreign policy success. It was certainly domestically popular, trouncing the Argentinians did nothing to promote British interests outside of the islands themselves.

Further, she proved that it is possible to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom provided that you have bucketloads of cash coming in from North Sea oil and from a deregulated financial sector to buoy your otherwise imbalanced fiscal policy. Had it not been for these two revenue sources, her cure for Britain's ills might well have killed the patient before it recovered.

Clement Atlee, David Lloyd George, Harold Wilson, even Winston Churchill, all better PMs. Gordon Brown too, but he was after Thatcher so I guess you wouldn't count him.

AgentPalpatine wrote

It’s a given that if she had been Labour Party you wouldn't see this level of venom here. Just look at the people in this thread that are so opposed to her and that says it all.

The policies that made her particularly unpopular in Scotland were that she used us as "guinea pigs" by introducing the Poll Tax here 1 year earlier than the rest of the UK,she encouraged the closure of British Steel's massive Ravenscraig plant and of mining communities.
The abandoning of mining communities was among the things that also alienated her in other parts of the UK.

On the other hand she gave people the right to buy their council homes and was an important leader on the world stage.

Although I didn't agree with her ideology,I've no reason to think she was a bad person and she and her family deserve some respect.

As for people 'celebrating',in many cases they look like they are too young to even know who Mrs Thatcher was and for some it's any excuse to jump on a bandwagon and have a party. Not very dignified.