Off Topic The Politics Thread

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%
  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
Mate, I was on those terraces, singing that song.

I remember the Thatcher years well, and thinking at the time everything was all rosy - she looked after us in the south east of England. But once I moved away from London and saw the devastation her policies bought to the north of England and to Scotland I had to re-evaluate my ideas of her time in charge. Seeing communities ripped to shreds and discarded like old chip papers all over the UK, be it mining, ship building or other types of manufacturing, introducing the Poll Tax just in Scotland "as a trial" at the start, focussing solely on empowering the grip that London had on the country. She was a tyrant

It's funny how people's perspective of an 'era' can vary dependent upon timing and experience of that era. Thatcher was at one stage in dire trouble, by 1981 unemployment was over 3 million and her poll ratings were the worst of any PM in living memory. I lived in Brixton when the first riots erupted and the feeling in many 'poorer' areas of the country was desolation and despair. There was a song by Grandmaster Flash, 'The Message', that year that summed up perfectly how so many people felt at the time.

She got lucky, the Falklands War arrived as a distraction and following that promises of the 'right to buy' and the hopelessly led Labour Party with Michael Foot in charge gave her a landslide win and the rest is history as they say. Poll Tax, the miners strike and the most selfish decade we've ever had were her legacy ending in a bust following her boom that slaughtered many who were first time buyers. No surprise she is so reviled by so many 30 years later...
 
It's funny how people's perspective of an 'era' can vary dependent upon timing and experience of that era. Thatcher was at one stage in dire trouble, by 1981 unemployment was over 3 million and her poll ratings were the worst of any PM in living memory. I lived in Brixton when the first riots erupted and the feeling in many 'poorer' areas of the country was desolation and despair. There was a song by Grandmaster Flash, 'The Message', that year that summed up perfectly how so many people felt at the time.

She got lucky, the Falklands War arrived as a distraction and following that promises of the 'right to buy' and the hopelessly led Labour Party with Michael Foot in charge gave her a landslide win and the rest is history as they say. Poll Tax, the miners strike and the most selfish decade we've ever had were her legacy ending in a bust following her boom that slaughtered many who were first time buyers. No surprise she is so reviled by so many 30 years later...
You must have lived quite close to me? I used to go shopping every Saturday with my mum underneath the railway line in Brixton.
 
Do you reckon there will be the same sort of reaction when he dies?

In this country rather than Iraq.

I think there may be in Iraq. In the UK, there won't be the extremes of reaction as there was with Thatcher. Some regard her as a goddess, some the devil, most people who are knowledgeable and remember the UK as the sick man of Europe in the 70's, acknowledge that her premiership was a watershed, where the unions ceased to be so destructive and people could go out to work and make a good living for themselves and their families.

Blair has acknowledged that he benefited greatly from Thatcher's reforms. But she was divisive. She had the vision and strength of mind to make the difficult decision to close down the coal pits (and in hindsight, with the damage done by fossil fuels, who will say it was the wrong decision even if, at the time, it was done on economic grounds) but she should have done more to help the out of work miners retrain, to draw the mining villages towards the approaching C21st. There was a lot of animosity during the closures and Thatcher made no attempt at reconciliation later in her premiership.
 
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