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[albitz]

I would actually possibly agree tbh.If I think back on past leaders and which one of them could have a chance of doing something about this shambles ,she would be the only one who might have a chance.Although it could be that the level of sophisticated skullduggery employed in politics these days could result in her being eaten alive. :-/

[Dishevelled Den]

I would say that a lot of these 'advisors' would go to the wall very quickly in such circumstances and there would be a wholesale emptying of Whitehall and its associated lackeys for seconds.

[Turk]

We could certainly do with a Maggie now.

Why? there are no mines left to close down.... mind you, 25 years later things are a lot cleaner up here, but communities have collapsed..... :-/

My home town had an NCB pit head just over a mile from the town centre. Yes, she messed up big time on the mines etc, but she got a lot of things right and had the "you want a fight, you got one !" when it was needed.   

[Dishevelled Den]

We could certainly do with a Maggie now.

Why? there are no mines left to close down.... mind you, 25 years later things are a lot cleaner up here, but communities have collapsed..... :-/

My home town had an NCB pit head just over a mile from the town centre. Yes, she messed up big time on the mines etc, but she got a lot of things right and had the "you want a fight, you got one !" when it was needed.   

....and that attitude is badly needed today.

[Nickbat]

You know, I always felt that the UK itself was in a safe pair of hands when Mrs T was in charge. Like her or loathe her, I believe that she was a true patriot (and I don't mean that in a particularly jingoistic sense, I mean she just had the UK interests at heart).

These days, the political class are only in it for the money and most of them have an eye towards a top job in Brussels/Strasbourg. Where's that social champion Kinnock now, I wonder?

Oh yes, I remember now. 

[Vamps]

We could certainly do with a Maggie now.

Why? there are no mines left to close down.... mind you, 25 years later things are a lot cleaner up here, but communities have collapsed..... :-/

My home town had an NCB pit head just over a mile from the town centre. Yes, she messed up big time on the mines etc, but she got a lot of things right and had the "you want a fight, you got one !" when it was needed.   

....and that attitude is badly needed today.

So who have we got that can do that??
I can see Labour getting in again, because I can't see any alternative

[Dishevelled Den]

You know, I always felt that the UK itself was in a safe pair of hands when Mrs T was in charge. Like her or loathe her, I believe that she was a true patriot (and I don't mean that in a particularly jingoistic sense, I mean she just had the UK interests at heart).

These days, the political class are only in it for the money and most of them have an eye towards a top job in Brussels/Strasbourg. Where's that social champion Kinnock now, I wonder?

Oh yes, I remember now. 

........one empty git if ever there was one!!

[Dishevelled Den]

So who have we got that can do that??
I can see Labour getting in again, because I can't see any alternative

....you may well ask M :-/ :-/

[Ken T]

You know, I always felt that the UK itself was in a safe pair of hands when Mrs T was in charge. Like her or loathe her, I believe that she was a true patriot (and I don't mean that in a particularly jingoistic sense, I mean she just had the UK interests at heart).

These days, the political class are only in it for the money and most of them have an eye towards a top job in Brussels/Strasbourg. Where's that social champion Kinnock now, I wonder?

Oh yes, I remember now. 

........one empty git if ever there was one!!

I don't know, he sounded as if he knew what to do, would have been interesting to see what he would have done.

Mind you as far as the current lot, I wouldn't trust any of them with a bag of Walkers finest.

Ken

[Banjax]

dear oh dear where do i start with Mrs T?

how about the wholesale breaking up and privatising of British Petroleum, British Aerospace, Britoil,British Telecom, the buses, British Gas, British Airways, British Steel, Regional Water Authorities, and the National Grid

for someone who was so fiercely patriotic she had a strange way of showing it - selling us down to river to foreign investors


how about the Falklands? an insignificant little backwater none of us had heard of until Argentina decided to reclaim it - indeed her government refused to grant full British citizenship to the islanders as late as 1981, giving Argentina a green light (an Argentina, incidentally, armed by Thatcher - she had a love of South American dictators when it suited...Pinochet, Galtieri) a war fought solely to bolster her polls and return her to power.

Did you love the 18% interest rate or the 3 million unemployed that it cost to recover?

Her support of apartheid in South Africa (Mandela was a terrorist, eh Maggie?)

Remember the Poll Tax?

The riots, the strikes?

yep - she was a great leader 

[albitz]

I must admit to being on the fence to a certain extent on this one.Despite all the things she did I would reluctantly choose her over any of her successors,but I think BJ has made some very relevant points about her,she was not imo the national saviour that she is often painted to be by the right these days.Oh for the days when (in real terms) Gas/electricity/phone calls cost a fraction of what they do now.These institutions were largely owned by foreign investors within a short time of being de- nationalised and she knew only too well that this would happen.
One episode which I thought was particularily disgraceful was the ruination of Sir Freddie Laker and his airline in order to allow BA to realise a higher price per share when it hit the stock market.
He had been championed by her as the epitomy of everything that was great about Britain and its entrepeunarial spirit,but when he was a large thorn in the side of BA,by taking its customers by offering a much more competitive service,he was called into his Bank for what he thought was a routine meeting and had the rug pulled from under him by calling in the loans to the business with immediate effect,thus wrecking what had been a perfectly viable busines.He said later that he was given a whisper that it had been done under pressure from the very top of the government.
I will always maintain that she didnt need to set British manufacturing industry into terminal decline in order to sort out the problem with the unions,she simply didnt care.
As for the Falklands,I think there was probably much more to that than meets the eye,but when it was over she went from the most unpopular PM in living memory to having an unassailable lead in the polls and seemed to have convinced herself that she had become possessed with the spirit of Churchill.By the end of her time in office she gave the impression of being so far out of touch with reality that she needed to be confined to a home for the bewildered.

[Dishevelled Den]

dear oh dear where do i start with Mrs T?

how about the wholesale breaking up and privatising of British Petroleum, British Aerospace, Britoil,British Telecom, the buses, British Gas, British Airways, British Steel, Regional Water Authorities, and the National Grid

for someone who was so fiercely patriotic she had a strange way of showing it - selling us down to river to foreign investors


how about the Falklands? an insignificant little backwater none of us had heard of until Argentina decided to reclaim it - indeed her government refused to grant full British citizenship to the islanders as late as 1981, giving Argentina a green light (an Argentina, incidentally, armed by Thatcher - she had a love of South American dictators when it suited...Pinochet, Galtieri) a war fought solely to bolster her polls and return her to power.

Did you love the 18% interest rate or the 3 million unemployed that it cost to recover?

Her support of apartheid in South Africa (Mandela was a terrorist, eh Maggie?)

Remember the Poll Tax?

The riots, the strikes?

yep - she was a great leader 

I'm glad you recognise that fact bj   8-) saved us at the time from degenerating into a third world quasi-communist state controlled by knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers steeped in restrictive practises so incestuous that the issue from those loins still pollute industrial society to this day

[feeutfo]

round and round and round we go. All comes back to the current situation. No good banging on about history. Having said that i am totally with BJ and his last post. And if staying on topic that sums her up for me. But i do also remember Previous Labour nightmare, black outs stick in my mind, what about the workers and all that.

Its here and now that matters. The options seem more limited to me than ever before....? Or not, you tell me? Who would you vote for now? This minute?

Oh and by the way, are we not heavily involved in a war or 2 as we speak? Well 1 now at least!

[Dishevelled Den]

round and round and round we go. All comes back to the current situation. No good banging on about history. Having said that i am totally with BJ and his last post. And if staying on topic that sums her up for me. But i do also remember Previous Labour nightmare, black outs stick in my mind, what about the workers and all that.

Its here and now that matters. The options seem more limited to me than ever before....? Or not, you tell me? Who would you vote for now? This minute?

Oh and by the way, are we not heavily involved in a war or 2 as we speak? Well 1 now at least!

...that fact should concern us greatly Chris

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

While Hitchens is a bit of a renegade and no lover of the Tory party as presently constituted I always enjoy his analysis.

To confine one's opinion on M T to this issue would be to do a disservice to a Premier who stirred the stodgy pot of British politics at a time when the country was left on its arse from yet another period of Liebour misrule.

Brussels was and always will be the bane of this nation and that sinister place has gained more control than is healthy over the fortunes of this nation.  The sad thing is that her government didn't poke sufficient fingers into the glaring optics of that malevolent place once and for all at the time.

I remember her with fondness and it's a pity that she was surrounded by quite a few gutless bastards who had no stomach for a fight.  She did go too far toward she end and when you make that number of enemies there's only one way to go.

Hitchins has his view, I have mine and it won't by swayed by his latest piece.

Written in your usual erudite way Zulu.............but sadly...........I have to disagree.
Thatcher was a poor PM .......and not a very pleasant person..(I prefer not to use the word "woman" with this individual....
In summary.......she was ......uncaring.......charmless.....and unkind....and as Albitz mentioned ......took great pleasure in destroying the trade unions.
We should not forget ..............that she was booted out by her own party in 1990...........as .......by then..... she had become completely detached from reality.