Mrs Thatcher has died

[Suff]

Yet we are supposed to forget, or ignore, that those who claim to be the champions of the people, those who claim to stand for the workers and the poor did Not One Single Thing to counteract the terrible things. In fact in many places they made it worse.

Her legacy stands. The legacies of others, on the other hand, do not!

[Kaz]

I actually think the coverage has been quite balanced. On the BBC they have been interviewing a lot of ex miners this morning on the BBC and showing people celebrating in the streets, but they are also interviewing a lot of her old cabinet. Lots of postives and negatives being aired IMO

[TheOstrich]

I'm probably a bit biased, Kaz, but I thought the BBC were beginning to let their masks slip last night in the news ..... the reporting was slanted a bit negatively.

[Kaz]

That could well be Os as I didn't see it - but Breakfast seemed reasonably balanced to me

[Workingman]

I'm probably a bit biased, Kaz, but I thought the BBC were beginning to let their masks slip last night in the news ..... the reporting was slanted a bit negatively.

But BBC News 24 is back on form this morning, and the website is in disarray. Comments have been suspended on two articles, one a revisionist piece on Apartheid, and a one by Stephanie Flanders has been removed completely.

[Fugitive]

Margaret Thatcher said this in 1987. Still applies to now. Nothing has changed.

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.'
They're casting their problem on society.
And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.
It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.

People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

[Workingman]

There is an area roughly bounded by the M1, M18, A64 and A19 where just about every town and village relied upon mining - probably 80:20 between mining and farming - no industry. The area provided the power for the industries that once made Britain 'Great'.

Many pits existed to supply Ferrybridge, Eggborough and Drax - three of the UK's most important power stations. However, it was always accepted that due to the demise of shipbuilding, steel making and car production some of the pits would have to close. It was the swiftness and the methods used in the closures by Margaret Thatcher that will forever be remembered hereabouts.

...no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.
It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.

She (her government) created an employment desert in the pit lands, and in doing so stole from the people the ability to look after themselves and their neighbours.

[Suff]

Clearly no entrepreneurs in pit lands then?

It is the job of the government to create the environment for trade and industry to grow. It is up to people to make the economy work.

For too long the miners thought this did not apply to them. I'm not saying that she did not destroy jobs, but the miners did not help at all.

This country owes nobody a living, the unions forgot that.

It is always those looking for an excuse who blame others. Scargill sought a war and he lost. There are some who will never forget or forgive that loss. Rather than looking for the reason, they will blame instead.

[Fugitive]

Scargill's NUM and the strikes of 1972 and 1974 almost finished me and many others off financially meaning losing my business and my home as we struggled so hard to hang on to them through those disruptive times. Never mind, they brought down a Conservative government led by Heath giving us Labour with Wilson and then Callaghan and The Winter of Discontent in 1978. Eighteen years before the country elected another Labour government and then who did we get? Bliar for ten years! And then we got Brown!

Thank goodness for Thatcher and her government winning the war against the miners strike led again by Scargill in 1984. He declared war. He didn't care about his 'workers'. Thatcher was his nemesis.

I heard an item on Radio 4 this morning interviewing people in an historic, defunct mining village after pit closures where the miners who defied the strike and those who did strike still drink in different bar areas in the same village pub. After all these years?

[Suff]

Maggie was something they had never faced before. A PM who could plan and create contingency. She stockpiled coal, ran a programme of moving power stations to gas and ruthlessly removed the dependency on coal in the UK.

Scargill got everything he deserved in that one. No union and no single group of workers has the right, moral or otherwise, to blackmail the entire population of the UK.....

That is the true Thatcher legacy. Making the governments realise how the country is supposed to work.