Flags

[cruiser2]

Many councils, including my own are not going to fly the Union Jack at half mast on Wednesday as a token of respect.Typical Labour thinking. But when Brussels says jump, they are first in the race.

[Suff]

Well the EU is a pseudo communist organisation to which they can aspire to get rich in.....

Maggie was a rock solid Tory capitalist who had no truck with socialist weenies.

So they are showing their breeding.

Plus ça change....

[Kaz]

Not good, is it Cruiser?

[Workingman]

I cannot be bothered with any of it, sadly this is what the country has become.

I imagine that when the Reaper calls at the Blair household for Tone there will be more dancing in the streets, eulogies from his mates and a few Tory councils - if there are any left - which will not fly the flag at half-mast.

[KateLMead]

Outraged! as I am when I witness these foul mouthed apologies for human beings on the BBC being given air time. I have my flag flying in my garden and there it will remain. Could these revolutionary tactics be due to the Fat Cat Unions are losing their grip?

[shazsha]

[quote]I cannot be bothered with any of it{/quote}

That's the way I feel, WM. Let's face it, everyone of us knew that when Thatcher died there would be divided opinions. Some would say one of our greatest PMs ever had passed whilst others would take the opposite view.
I've kept out of the debates on here re her death because I know my viewpoint re Thatcher differs greatly from the one most of you share.

I can understand the vitriol shown by some regarding her-death doesn't make anyone a saint and,if you are of the anti camp(for want of a better phrase), then obviously you're not going to join in the flag at half mast, praise, etc., of the woman.

Councils are elected by the people and should represent our views...being frank, she was loathed and despised by a large part of the population and a lot of the voting public would be very angry with their councils if they were to join in honouring this woman.

I can honestly say I have not personally spoken to one person who was saddened to hear of her passing. Perhaps it's just the way we perceive things but Scotland certainly didn't seem to flourish under Thatcherism. I totally understand the viewpoint held by a lot of the anti camp and their views are as valid as the pro camp.

I haven't felt the urge to dance/party at the news of her death. I feel for her family and friends. I recognise her policies were good for some. I also recognise they were bad for some too.

My personal opinion is that the media have long awaited her death with anticipation. They know the divisive policies she had would also spill over at this time and would make great copy. Imo they've bigged(is that a word?) up the admiration and hate for this woman and will continue to do so until they cant squeeze any more from it. I've actually not read much at all re her death, funeral, people's reactions,etc because I could have predicted how the media would potray it all.

*Note for admin: Please award me a gold star for being non confrontational regarding this subject-you'll never understand what it took for me to stop myself from writing my inner thoughts here!*

[Rodo]

You speak well Shaz (as usual). However there has been such a lot of exaggeration as to the things she "destroyed" and "ruined". People are like sheep at times and make no effort to read about things as they really were.

I think a great many of the British public at present are just looking for someone to blame for the situation they find themselves in, whether that situation is due to government rulings or simply to their own fecklessness.

So many of the people involved in the riots/parties were not even born at the time of her "reign" and will no doubt have no real clue as to how things were.

Some of the things she did were not good, but she also did some things which were good for the country. Whatever the balance of these things, she still deserves respect. I would feel like dancing when Arthur Scargill and his ilk die, and also when Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and their cronies die, but I won't go out on the streets and I won't create mayhem. I will give them the respect due to the dead whatever their persuasion, whatever the pluses and minuses of their time in office.

[cromwell]

The last anti-Thatcher 'party' in London was a flop. The organisers said thousands were going to turn up and in the end it was only 200. But I got the feeling that the papers were trying to build it up (and the trouble up too) just to keep the story going.
MT finished off the coal industry, just about. From when I was a boy going to school round here to what it is now - the change is hard to describe.
But the comedian Mark Steel went up to Corby, the ex-steel town in Northants, to do a show. He wrote a column in the 'I' paper about it. Basically he was expecting a big reaction to Thatcher dying and he didn't get it.
'Didn't get it' is about right. He shouldn't have been surprised by the muted reaction. The steelworkers lost just as the miners lost, but they lost 20 - 30 years since. Celebrating? What's to celebrate? Digging up the past and re-opening old wounds is too painful for a lot of people, so they don't do it.
It's noticable that most of the people ranting and raving about MT are people in the south of England who were barely affected by her, and students who weren't even born when she was elected. Those who were affected the least are the ones who are shouting the most.
Nowt so funny as folk, as they say.

[Kaz]

Very true Cromwell xx

[Suff]

Shaz, the Tories lost my vote for a decade in Scotland. But, note, not because of Maggie but because of Major. At least Maggie said what she meant and meant what she said. It was Major who, when challenged about promises to motorway the A1 to Edinburgh and electrify the East Coast to Aberdeen, replied "we didn't promise anything we just said we might". We're not stupid but, apparently, Major was.

It was Major who started spending the money Maggie used to get the country out of the mess it was is. It was Major who started the VAT stealth taxes to hide his spending. Whilst Maggie did harmonise VAT and raise it a lot, that was an EU directive which was "beneficial" to her. What she didn't do was to blow all that money trying to buy votes. Maggie didn't buy votes, you either wanted what she wanted or went elsewhere. Notably she never lost an election as the leader of the Tory party.

I was happy to pay the community charge. Many Scots weren't. But 99.999999999% of those who were unhappy about it, paid no rates. So what does that say about their "social conscience" for the services they used?

Granted Maggie's policies caused a sea change in the Scottish businesses and the employment. As it did in Lincolnshire where I was born. However, now, Scotland is the largest PC Electronics manufacturer in the EU, way larger than Siemens... That was a result of Maggie's Policies. The fact that Scotland has a large and, still, thriving banking and electronics industry is due to Maggie's policies.

On the flip side, I worked with an ex miner in the early 90's. He told me that the Scots were totally pragmatic about the strike. They rotated safety and maintenance work around the workers so that families had some income coming in every month. Then the crazies came up from the south and ranted and raved about Scabs who were taking money whilst their brothers starved. These crazies came from Yorkshire pits, not from pits which ran out under estuaries and the sea. The NUM idiots forced all workers out and the pits flooded. Permanently. Jobs lost, communities destroyed. Maggie's doing? Not a bit of it.

As for the Scottish steel industry? What they asked for was nothing more or less than state aid to keep wages high. Did anyone think Maggie was going to go for that? Britain had the most advanced steel industry in the world producing the highest quality steel for applications such as space, weapons and advanced engineering. But the unions wanted so much money, pensions and "terms" that Britain would have to sell at a loss to sell on the world market. The end was inevitable.

Everywhere in Britain you see two sides of the coin. Those who opposed Maggie and were bitter and twisted and refused to take advantage of the changes that she made of the country are still destroyed today. Those who didn't oppose Maggie, embraced change, revitalised their regions and moved with the country, became the haves and the flyers. You only have to look at the Rosyth sub refitting contract, given to Devonport because the Conservatives had no votes in Scotland. Babcock now owns the Devonport operations and the refitting eventually came back to Rosyth. That is what Maggie's Britain is about. Embracing change and making benefit from the change.

Most importantly, as I see it, those who fought Maggie and paid the price were ring-fenced by Blair, thrown money and convinced to vote for him. But he never did one single thing to make their lot better. Why not? Because he could always rely on the Maggie hate vote. Make their lot better and they might even vote on his performance and that might not be so good the next time round.

I don't watch the press on this because I made my mind up a long time ago. I'm one of those who embraced Maggie's changes. I was unemployed with the other 50.5% in FIFE. I used college and ET to change my life, I got ahead. I moved with the work and paid the price in my life. The rest took drugs and threw darts at Maggie's picture. Still, today, FIFE is second only to Edinburgh in the EU, for drugs abuse.....

Would I fly my council's flag at half mast? You're damned right I would and any of my voters who didn't like it could come and debate it with me in public.....