Anti-Thatcher protest leader made profit on right to buy

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Must... not... snigger.

OMg, so beause one of the guys against Tatcher was hypocritical, we can now go on to Sanctify her. awesome.

No-one's saying that, but watching the hypocrisy of the major leaders wanting to celebrate an old woman's death is quite delicious.

Let me get this straight; she is supposed to worship Thatcher because she was able to take advantage of one of her policies as others did? She becomes bonded in personal loyalty to her for eternity? What kind of stupidity is this?

I don't see this as hypocritical.

If government does something that I think is wrong, my belief that it is wrong doesn't change the fact that government has done it. And it doesn't diminish my responsibility to make the most prudent decisions for myself and for my family.

She had the means to buy her council flat. That makes her vastly more fortunate than the millions who could not afford to do so, despite the firesale prices. And she made the prudent decision to do so, and then then prudent decision to lock in her gains by selling later.

That does not mean for one moment that she is hypocritical in her belief that Thatcher's policies were not the best policy choices for the nation.

I think that my government's provision of a tax credit for purchase of public transit passes is profoundly stupid. But I still claim the costs of my public transit passes each year on my tax return. I'm not obliged to forego a couple of hundred dollars reduction in my taxes in order to maintain my belief that the reduction is stupid.

And though the scale is different, she is no different.

The point is that she is celebrating the death of a politician whose policies she personally benefitted very much from. I can't imagine a pre-Thatcher Tory or a non-reformist Labour Party bringing in the same changes.

The lack of gratitude is startling.

Every white American was massively better off because of slavery. That doesn't mean that white Americans around the time slavery was abolished couldn't curse the Democrats who wanted to maintain that advantage.

So the news story is "protester is not self-centred".

Gratitude?!?

Thank you for the laugh. Your comedy stylings are wonderful.

What we have here is the right wing 'great man' fallacy, or in this case, the 'great woman' fallacy.

The other issue is that beneath the surface, the 'right to buy' project was not an inherently progressive one. Sure, it enabled a minority of council tenants to get on the mortgage ladder but on the flip side It served to enable the better off, upper-working-class to purchase homes permanently, which would otherwise been in circulation for the use of poorer, more vulnerable people. In many ways, it only served to exacerbate the gentrification and housing shortage within British housing estates. The least well off owe Thatcher no 'gratitude'.

This thread make me think of this image that I saw on facebook earlier...