Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dies, aged 87.

[Wuvlycuddles]

She may have been evil, but she had a bigger sack than any pm since.

 

[NightmareExpress]

I'll have to give my condolences and respect for her achievements, because common knowledge dictates that all Tories go to hell and burn like they rightfully should.

She did some good things, she did some (or rather, a lot of) horrendously bad things.
At the very least, she provided a role model to women wishing to become more empowered. But is Grand Free Market Capitalist Fuhrer really a position that anyone should wish to obtain?

I'm not affected on an emotional level in the slightest by her passing. I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not even happy. I'll just say "Good riddance" and move on with my day and hope that those who had their lives/families put to ruination by her find some sort of solace in her death or even forgive her in time.

 

[Harrowdown]

Didn't like her politics, but I didn't even know the woman herself. Not about to celebrate the death of a frail old woman whose political days are long past.

 

[Rogue Trooper]

Well speaking as somebody from Northern Ireland. She signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement which helped pave the way towards the Good Friday agreement. Now for you guys that don?t know much about the politics of Northern Ireland, this was a major step towards bringing an end to the troubles. And without her I don?t think the troubles would have ended when they did.

 

[Darks63]

Ding dong the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Wicked Witch!

I realise that to people not familiar with British politics, some of these comments might seem a little crass. What you must realise is that while Thatcher was the first female PM, and therefore certainly something of a role model for women in male-dominated environments, she was also the single most wretched, miserly, pathologically lying sociopath of a PM that the country has seen. The entire reason why the north of England is now a comparative economic deadzone is because she quite happily destroyed entire communities and shut down entire industries.

She didn't just enact terrible, terrible policies like the Poll Tax. She did so with a psychotic, patronising glee, telling us that even if we didn't like it, we'd have to take it up the arse. "Yes the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it!"

She quite happily shat upon Scotland, Northern England and Wales simply in order to make things better for the Tory home counties in the South. Despite being the first female PM, she was everything that's wrong with the current political system, and embodied every single nasty quality that makes up the Conservative Party. She was a homophobe who banned the teaching or promotion in any way of homosexuality, she was a free-market capitalist to an insane degree, the reason why our railway networks are currently so fucked is because she decided to sell them off in the Eighties...

Suffice to say, round here we've been saying for a long time that the day Thatcher dies is the day we organise a street party. All due respect, blah blah blah, she was a terrible person who caused suffering and hardship for millions of people. If they even think of giving her a state funeral...

Well thanks for that now i know where the hate comes from. the only contemporary portrayal i've seen of her was Iron Lady and other than saying she talked to the ghost of her dead husband it didn't put her in too terrible of a light.

Somewhat off topic but isn't a little ironic that this comes only a few weeks after that falklands mod to spec ops or whatever that came out from Argentina?

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

When we all heard in school, my friends celebrated. I really disliked her and everything she did. I think She was a conservative extremist who cared nothing for the lower classes, and was happy to ruin lives. Can't deny she was an effective, strong woman, can't say I'm sorry she kicked it. I know the Irish hate her. It looks like the Scottih hate her, and the Welsh too. Much of England seems split, but the younger generation seem to hate her. She had a long life after all. My friend cracked a killer earlier. "they should play don't cry for me Argentina at her funeral"

 

[Zeldias]

Don't know much about Thatcher since I live in the US and haven't followed her (although I'll probably check it out). But someone compared her to Nelson Mandela and that's fucking hilarious in its absurdity.

 

[major_chaos]

Snip

Can you go into a bit more detail about these "horrible policies"? As an american I know almost nothing about the woman other than the fact that almost everyone seems to hate her with a fiery passion and I don't know why.

 

[Blunderboy]

As I said on Twitter and facebook earlier...

"I'm really too young to have a strong opinion about Thatcher, but she stole milk or something. Milk is just young cheese and I love cheese.

So to sum up, fuck that cheese stealing *****."

But in all seriousness, while I'm far from her biggest fan I'm not going to dance around and celebrate the death of another person, no matter how much of a twat they were. Maybe that's because I'm that bit too young to really remember that time.

 

[Apollo45]

Being American here and rather ignorant about Thatcher's specific policies, what I remember from vague references during History channel shows and whatnot was that she pulled the British economy out of a hole it had been in since WWII. Not here to debate effects or anything, just wondering if that's accurate or not?

As far as her death goes, doesn't really affect me, but I'm surprised to see so much celebrating over an old lady's death in general, although I suppose this is the internet.

 

[Frission]

I didn't like her, but celebrating her death is a bit of an ugly thing to do isn't it?

 

[Saviordd1]

Ding dong the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Wicked Witch!

I realise that to people not familiar with British politics, some of these comments might seem a little crass. What you must realise is that while Thatcher was the first female PM, and therefore certainly something of a role model for women in male-dominated environments, she was also the single most wretched, miserly, pathologically lying sociopath of a PM that the country has seen. The entire reason why the north of England is now a comparative economic deadzone is because she quite happily destroyed entire communities and shut down entire industries.

She didn't just enact terrible, terrible policies like the Poll Tax. She did so with a psychotic, patronising glee, telling us that even if we didn't like it, we'd have to take it up the arse. "Yes the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it!"

She quite happily shat upon Scotland, Northern England and Wales simply in order to make things better for the Tory home counties in the South. Despite being the first female PM, she was everything that's wrong with the current political system, and embodied every single nasty quality that makes up the Conservative Party. She was a homophobe who banned the teaching or promotion in any way of homosexuality, she was a free-market capitalist to an insane degree, the reason why our railway networks are currently so fucked is because she decided to sell them off in the Eighties...

Suffice to say, round here we've been saying for a long time that the day Thatcher dies is the day we organise a street party. All due respect, blah blah blah, she was a terrible person who caused suffering and hardship for millions of people. If they even think of giving her a state funeral...

Well that's probably the best explanation I've heard all day.

All day people have been cheering for this woman death and I had no idea why. I understood she was a conservative PM and that's about it.

Call me an ignorant American.

 

[Megalodon]

Snip

Can you go into a bit more detail about these "horrible policies"? As an american I know almost nothing about the woman other than the fact that almost everyone seems to hate her with a fiery passion and I don't know why.

One of the main beefs is the whole privitisation thing. She sold off damn near all of the nationalised industries (pretty much any utility company with British in the name). This had the result of giving monopoly-esque positions of power to private enterprise, hence why we get screwed with things like energy prices. The trains were sold off and have become a overly-expensive subsidised joke since, as was mentioned earlier in the thread. A lot of services were contracted out to the lowest bidder, such as hospital cleaners. I forget the exact details, but she made changes to the way dental colleges worked, which has had the knock on effect in the present day of NHS dentists being about as rarer than calm, reasoned debate on 4chan. Even "good" policies, like allowing people to buy council houses, aren't fantastic, that idea has been a major contributor to the lack of social housing in Britain today.

As well as general conservative things, tax cuts for the rich, punishing the poor. Turning the north into an economic wasteland following the dismantling of the manufacturing sector.

Then there was the Poll Tax, with much violence and rioting.

She also managed to polticise the police, which is a very bad thing.

 

[Megalodon]

Being American here and rather ignorant about Thatcher's specific policies, what I remember from vague references during History channel shows and whatnot was that she pulled the British economy out of a hole it had been in since WWII. Not here to debate effects or anything, just wondering if that's accurate or not?

As far as her death goes, doesn't really affect me, but I'm surprised to see so much celebrating over an old lady's death in general, although I suppose this is the internet.

Yes and no. Growth was better, but she maintined high unemployment for large stretches of her tenure, inflation was at pretty much the same level when she left as when she arrived. Also she entered office with the country in recession and it was also in recession when she left. Hardly the golden record that her admirers in the Tory Party claim.

 

[The White Hunter]

Suffice to say, round here we've been saying for a long time that the day Thatcher dies is the day we organise a street party. All due respect, blah blah blah, she was a terrible person who caused suffering and hardship for millions of people. If they even think of giving her a state funeral...

State funeral with military honours!

I'll say that honestly that all other things aside: The unions in the UK needing smacking into fucking place and they helped to destroy any industry we had in this country, Scargill has a lot to answer for too frankly. Oh and the Falklands are ours, but no PM was gonna stand by and let British territories be invaded.

It could be worse, your parents could worship her like some kind of saviour. The woman and her career leave me wondering how this country could have been with a bit less extremism.

 

[Berithil]

Huh... I knew she was disliked over there in Britain, but this amount of vitriol is actually quite surprising. People are acting like this is Hitler who just died. I'm American, so I really don't get it.

Of course, maybe I just don't like the thought of people celebrating someone's death. I didn't even celebrate when Bin Laden was killed. Relieved, maybe, but not out on the streets celebrating.

 

[KittensTiger]

The fact that she was female tends to somehow mask the fact that she her treatment of British mining communities wasn't a million miles away from Hitler's treatment of Jews. Had mass genocide been an option I dare say she would have strongly considered it, as she essentially "killed" many people anyway.

Oh for goodness sake. It's opinions like this that give the left in our country a bad name. You know when you read a news story of some far-right pundit in the US claiming Obama is a socialist/Marxist/communist-flavor-of-the-month? Well congratulations, you're now on the same level as them.

Disagree with your political opponents. Don't demonize them.

So politics in the UK is pretty much the same as in the US then. The left calls the right Hitler and the right calls the left Marx.

Here in the US the left/right reviles Reagan/Clinton while the right/left sanctifies him. They both did some pretty great things, but it's easier just to call the one you don't like Satan instead of objectively admitting they both did some good things and failed in some ways.

 

[Virgilthepagan]

Well first off rest in peace I suppose.
Being American I can't really comment on her role as a domestic leader, other than what I read about her. As a democratic socialist who spent a lot of time living in Germany? I can say good riddance.
Thatcher firmly wanted to keep Germany split rather than allowing it to reunify after the Cold War ended. The reasoning for it was straight out of 1946, and simply assumed that Germany would plunge the world into WWIII the instant they were reunited. Never mind all that had happened since. Her obsessive love for free market capitalism also gets under my skin, especially since so many post communist states would follow its example like some mad pied piper.

 

[Kinitawowi]

I was born in 1980 in an area that no government, Tory or Labour, has ever given the faintest shit about (north-west Norfolk); as such, I'm too young and too detached to feel the rage about her death. I mean, as a kid I was aware that we had a female Prime Minister, although as she was what I grew up with I wasn't even conscious about that being a particular Thing.

Point being, I really don't feel the all-out vitriol that some people seem desperate to spew in her direction, and instead see a lot of people angry at the death of somebody who stopped running the country twenty-three years and four Prime Ministers ago, while their own beloved Labour party ran the country for thirteen of those years and did precisely fuck all to reverse the ruination she supposedly wrought, and I can't help but think "dude, get over it".

 

[Colour Scientist]

I'm Irish so I'm obviously not her biggest fan.

I wouldn't really jump on the grave dancing band wagon though.