BBC reporting that former PM Margaret Thatcher has died this morning from a stroke.
Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died at 87 following a stroke, her spokesman has said.
Lord Bell said: “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.”
Baroness Thatcher was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990.
Talk amongst yourselves.
[UPDATE] I had forgotten about Thatcher’s treatment of Nelson Mandela.The Conservative prime minister had dismissed the ANC as “a typical terrorist organisation” and refused to back sanctions against the apartheid government, pursuing instead a policy of “constructive engagement”. South Africa was then seen as a vital ally in stemming communist expansion.
He outlived her, though.
c u n d gulag
DING-DONG, THE WITC…
What?
Too soon?
Chris
“I have never wished anyone dead, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
That is all.
c u n d gulag
Cup O’ Schmoe is going to be even more insufferable for the next few days.
Glad I no longer watch him.
Pinkamena Panic
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Schlemizel
Hopefully she and St. Ronnie can pick out pineapples for each other for all eternity.
@Chris:
hear hear!
R-Jud
@c u n d gulag: Nah, that’s what the entire UK half of my Facebook feed is saying. (The US half is all, “Oh, how sad, end of an era,” and similar cluelessness.)
Warren Terra
Castlereigh comes to mind. An awful lot of ex-miners would queue a long time for the privilege.
So, will she get the Ronald Reagan treatment, by which I mean the four or five days when the top-of-the-hour news headlines were led by “Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead”?
raven
@c u n d gulag: They moved MSNBC to digital so I only get it on my main TV and I caught about 2 minutes. You are right on target.
Baud
Don’t really care, to be honest. She’s been out of power for 23 years, so her death isn’t going to change anything in the real world.
handsmile
I know what Elvis Costello will be doing today – and I wish I could be there to join with him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t4-zDem1Sk
One of the great malefactors of my lifetime has finally died. A day to rejoice!
Warren Terra
Oh, and I can’t figure out if I’m desperately looking forward to Friday’s Radio 4 News Quiz and what Jeremy Hardy will say about her, or dreading it because he’ll be muzzled. Or maybe fearing he won’t be muzzled, and will be fired.
Southern Beale
And the media is already rewriting history in order to heap superlatives on her. Nicholas Kristof, just now on Twitter: “1st generation of women political leaders are often tough conservatives like Thatcher, but they open the way for others” — forgetting all of the women who came before Thatcher.
Same as it ever was.
brettvk
Palin will be on Fox any moment to reminisce about the long conversations she and the Baroness had during the 2008 campaign.
Chickamin Slam
One of my first TV memories is seeing Prime Minister Thatcher and President Reagan dancing. They later hugged as I recall and at the time, being a kid and all, I thought they were husband and wife.
schrodinger's cat
How is our Sully doing and what color is the banner of his blog.
Warren Terra
cute:
scuffletuffle
@c u n d gulag: Hahahahaha… that was my response, too!
schrodinger's cat
@Southern Beale: Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, I guess they don’t matter. Don’t know much about Meir but Gandhi was no angel but neither was she economically conservative.
Schlemizel
In honor of her nations greatest export:
She’s passed on! This
parrotPM is no more! She has ceased to be! She’s expired and gone to meet her maker! She’s a stiff! Bereft of life, she rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed her to the perch she’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Her metabolic processes are now history! She’s off the twig! She’s kicked the bucket, She’s shuffled off her mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROTPM!!Is it safe to say the whole “speak no ill of the dead” bullshit we had to put up with when Dimbart croaked is being ignored for this one?
Pinkamena Panic
@Baud: Yes, but her continued existence took resources from the more deserving. Plus she outlived a whole hell of a lot of good people.
Pinkamena Panic
@Schlemizel: Oh no, we’ll have to hear plenty about it in due time.
LanceThruster
Time once again for the MSM to use this as an excuse to fellate the corpse of St. Reagan.
Schlemizel
@schrodinger’s cat:
Its times like these I regret being a sensitive, caring, liberal attuned to the exclusionary language of our past – I really have a good line about a queen and an ex-PM that I have to stifle.
sparky
I wanted to share this and discovered this. Seems there’re a lot of happy people today.
Southern Beale
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not to mention all of the British women who came before her, the Pankhurst ladies, anyone?
Baud
@Pinkamena Panic:
That type of thing does seem to occur too often, doesn’t it?
Warren Terra
@Southern Beale:
To be fair, Britain does have a long tradition of conservative woman political leaders – Boudicca, Elizabeth, Victoria …
Zandar
@Schlemizel:
Yeah, I learned my lesson there. No good deed goes unpunished, so have at it.
Schlemizel
@Pinkamena Panic:
I figure as much
Let me state up front I am deeply shamed and remorseful for taking a small bit of pleasure from the thought that there is one less evil person alive at this moment.
Those feelings are tempered by the fact that she is more than adequately replaced by equally evil beings who should know they will be remembered for exactly what they are when their time comes. If you want people to morn your passing act in a way that your passing will make the world a sadder place not a better one.
AxelFoley
@sparky:
LOL, damn.
askew
@Baud:
That sums up my feelings as well.
Since this is an open thread, Team Hillary is reunited. James Carville is pushing the It’s her turn and Inevitable messages. And Harold Ickes has signed on to advise Hillary PAC.
Good to know that Team Hillary has learned absolutely nothing from their loss in 2008. Can’t wait to see how this plays with Democratic primary voters in 2016.
priscianus jr
You know, I didn’t exactly expect to find a Margaret Thatcher fan club here on Balloon Juice, but the intensity and consistency of the response is bracing.
I didn’t like her either. No, let me rephrase that. I really didn’t like her.
I can’t wait for Peggy Noonan to take up her pen for the eulogy.
c u n d gulag
@raven:
Saweet Jayzoos H. Keerist, he’ll be slobbering and drooling over her for the next month, at least.
Mika needs to take her toned arms, and manicured hands, form a fist, draw back, and punch him right in his f*cking nuts.
KrisWV
@schrodinger’s cat: Golda Meir was Prime MInister in Israel as a leader of Alignment , a coalition of the Labor Party and further-left Mapam party. As far from Thatcher’s economic policies as possible.
Southern Beale
Who will be the first media nincompoop to claim Hillary Clinton follows in Thatcher’s footsteps?
Cassidy
@priscianus jr:
The first day is always a little jarring. You get used to it.
@Southern Beale: Candy Crowley.
handsmile
@sparky:
Related to the sentiments of those links, this Guardian article from December 2011: “Privatizing Margaret Thatcher’s funeral would be a fitting tribute to her legacy”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/22/privatising-thatchers-funeral-fitting-tribute-legacy
(For the next several days, the Guardian will be even more essential than usual simply as an antidote to the overwhelming bathos and outright lies).
Yes, there are many, many happy people today!
Ash
So… who will be the one that draws the British version of Tim Kreider’s Reagan cartoon?
mai naem
@Warren Terra: This was no freudian slip. She’d been ill for a while. I bet it was planned.
I was going to post a “My daddy said not to post anything negative about somebody who just died so I want.” but seriously fuck Maggie Thatcher. I lived in the UK during part of her reign. Pompous beeyotch. She ruined the public transport system in the UK. The IRA prisoners hunger strike. The union busting. Fuck her. And my sister who still lives in the UK said that Thatcher is incredibly unpopular in the UK and my sis is a Tory BTW. And, oh yeah, Joe Scarbo does not know shit. Just shut your gob Joe.
Poopyman
@Zandar up top:
I got nuthin to say, following my mother’s advice. (For once.)
dmsilev
@Chris:
“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
jurassicpork
I’m launching a new cartoon series that may or may not remind you of a defunct one.
KDUN
@handsmile: ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news. Mission accomplished, Mr. McManus.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Nary a peep yet, but you can bet the post will be epic. And not in a good way.
schrodinger's cat
On a much shallower note, what is with that hair helmet?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Chickamin Slam:
Thanks to your comment I now have a (deeply satisfying) mental image of Thatcher and Reagan locked together in an endless marathon dance a la “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”.
Alex S.
Without her, Great Britain would not be that brimming centre of economic vitality that it is today… oh wait…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
hmm how about “a great American man died in Margot Thacher”? Is that appropriate?
I’ve been watching a lot of BBC stuff on you tube and I noticed the BBC just loathes her. It is amazing to an American to see a former conservative national leader not endlessly ass kissed by MSM outlet.
Cassidy
@jurassicpork: Let’s see…ripping off other people’s ideas. Check. Completely not funny dialogue reminiscent of what Conservatives consider humor. Check. Way too wordy firebagger bullshit. Check
I would have given you credit for being able to condense stupid down into a few panels, but you couldn’t pull that off. But at least you’re not whoring for money this time, so I guess that’s progress.
Warning to all: Don’t follow the link. It’s neither funny, fresh, or original.
Davis X. Machina
There’s speculation on my soccer (football) board about whether Thatcher gets a state funeral, or whether the Tory government pays for the ceremony by slapping a lot of sponsors’ logos on the coffin. The television audience will be enormous, so there are lots of eyeballs to sell.
She’s a very divisive figure — the mods are going crazy putting out brush fires, and trying to divert chat back to the promotion push.
Keith G
She was a dynamic leader and a groundbreaking woman and she was often wrong. And yet, her wrongness was abetted in part by liberal opposition who could not get their act together nor create a proactive, results oriented narrative that provided solutions during some very troubled times.
Groups of people who feel “up against it” want clear instructions combined with simple and emphatic leadership. That may be unfortunate, but it is true nonetheless.
Shalimar
For all the misery and suffering she caused, at least she wasn’t as evil as son Mark.
Baud
@Keith G:
I agree with this. Same could be said for Reagan.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Cassidy:
I think most of us who know the diarist’s firebagger bona fides (“I’m voting for Jill Stein and oh yeah, can you spare me a few hundred bucks?”) know better than to click thru.
But yeah, a constant reminder of our resident blog whorer never hurts.
He pulls the same shit over at Teh Orange on C&J. I’d hide the comment if it weren’t against the rules and in poor form for C&J. Of course being a firebagger is poor form there as well. Oh wait, no it isn’t, they control the Wrecks List.
Anya
I watched the Meryl Streep movie about her life which was a very sympathetic depiction. It reminds us though of the obstacles she had to over come as a woman to get where she got.
Irving
She was suffering from acute dementia before she died – she could not remember that her husband had died. I’m glad she’s dead too, but because it’s a mercy for her and her family, not for anything she did decades ago.
Cassidy
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Yeah, but I figure everyone has a talent in something and maybe the guy could produce a funny strip od some sort. Nope. He/ Firebaggers can’t get past that narcissitic belief that they are just so much more
whiteright and everyone else is sheeple and blah, blah, blah.SiubhanDuinne
Most of them just wanting to make sure she’s really dead.
Schlemizel
@Anya:
And yet she was incapable of sympathy, understanding or assistance for others who were struggling to overcome life’s obstacles. I believe the term ‘sociopath’ is close enough
Woodrowfan
@c u n d gulag:
No,no it’s not.
YellowJournalism
Ebert did it. The director of The Brown Bunny better watch out!
AxelFoley
@SiubhanDuinne:
HAHAHA, you guys are on a roll today.
schrodinger's cat
@Irving: We are still reaping the poisoned fruits of the economic policies she and Reagan advocated all those years ago.
rikyrah
thanks for the reminder, Zander
Bruuuuce
Her policies and politics will not be missed by any person with a heart. She herself might be, though not by me because I never met her. Given a chance to do so, I think I’d have passed; she seemed to me to be a right bitch.
peach flavored shampoo
I’m too young to understand all this vitriol. What did she do that was so evil (and thus deserve this level of scorn)?
aimai
@Davis X. Machina:
Really, you think the “television audience will be enormous?” Something like this is manufactured at great cost or it doesn’t happen. I don’t think there’s the mass, world wide demand for a state funeral for thatcher that there was for, say, a royal wedding. Most people will either turn off the tv in disgust or watch five second in a news clilp before returning to their own lives. This is defintionally one of those things that only pundits and rich people with an axe to grind will give a flying fuck about. No doubt some rich libertarian will donate the money to have a splashy funeral, but real, grassroots interest? This will probably be the first modern political funeral in which they have to hire the mourners and mutes to make a good show.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cassidy: There’s a link?
Mmm, pie.
boatboy_srq
@c u n d gulag: If Thatcher was the WWE, does that make Palin the WWW?
“That was her sister, the Witch of the East. This the Witch of the West, and she’s far worse than the other one was!”
@Warren Terra: Yes, and Anne, and Charlotte, and Mary. There’s a goodly range to choose from, and there are saints and demons alike.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: She was either loved or loathed. More of the latter than the former, I expect, but there was no middle ground. The loathing would be greater if there were more survivors: between the Falklands War and HIV the casualties were significant.
Ash
A few reason’s why Thatcher was evil: She championed a poll tax, schoolkids used to get free milk until she ended that policy, she was pro-apartheid and considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist.
Chris
@Shalimar:
I know nothing about that guy except that he tried to reenact a Frederick Forsyth novel with a somewhat less happy ending by financing a coup in West Africa. (Which failed, I believe). Which doesn’t give me a very high opinion of him.
@Anya:
I wished they’d spent more time in that movie showing her time in office and all the policies she supported and somewhat less on her personal life. Felt the same way about the J. Edgar movie that came out.
Keith G
@Baud: I was thinking of the ol guy as I typed.
My beloved liberals often have the predicament of creating solutions to problems which are spot on in the long run, but contain some near term ugliness. Conservatives often get away with just saying “cut taxes” or “drop a bomb” or “throw them in jail”. Of course, aside form being internally inconsistent, their solutions sound satisfying but usually just create more and costlier problems.
As imperfect as he was, that was part of the genius of Bill Clinton. When he was on his game and not, say, on an intern, he did the messaging thing better than most non-conservatives have managed.
Davis X. Machina
@aimai: Those who watch, will watch compulsively. There’s a hard core of Brits, maybe 30-35%, who think she hung the moon, and a lot of them are OAP, with the time to watch.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@peach flavored shampoo:
A perspective from Britian:
http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=150369015
Ash Can
Her mind had already long since deteriorated to the point where she could do no more damage to Britain or to the world, so this is just the other shoe falling. It’s a shame for those who will miss her, however many of them there may be.
Legalize
… and I won’t forget to put roses on your grave.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@peach flavored shampoo: Go to http://www.facebook.com/bbcnews. You’ll find all the information you’d ever need to understand why she was so loathed. Not informative, but a representative sample of the feeling there: “I hope BBC news pushes this as a real ‘bring the country together’ moment like the jubilee and gives extensive rolling news coverage to the street parties.”
Joey Maloney
@c u n d gulag: DING-DONG, THE WITC…
The top comment on this video on YouTube right now is “Like if you’re here because Thatcher”.
Chris
@peach flavored shampoo:
She, along with Reagan and others, was part of the conservative wave of leaders of the late seventies and early eighties whose policies were based on rolling back the achivements in social justice of the previous few decades and bringing back laissez-faire economics with a vengeance. Deregulation, privatization, union busting, cutting up the safety net, that was all them. And via institutions like the World Bank and IMF they were able to spread that gospel to pretty much the entire world, turning it into the conventional wisdom it is today.
So yeah, as far as I’m concerned she’s part of a club that richly deserves a hot fireplace in Tartarus.
Cassidy
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: No pie at work. :(
Robert Sneddon
@mai naem: IRA prisoners hunger strike? Convicted mass murderers, bombers and torturers ordered to starve themselves to death in prison for political reasons under threats their families would be targeted and you blame that on Thatcher? Weird. American, are you?
As for the rest of it, she waded through shit back then so we don’t have to wade through it now, a bit like Lyndon Johnston did in the 60s in the US with Civil Rights. She was hated by the political left and the political right in the UK because she hadn’t gone to the right schools and didn’t know the right people, she wasn’t one of Us to the Us. Compared to the perfumed princes that followed her (Blair, for God’s sake!) and the numbnuts that preceded her (Michael Foot and his son and appointed heir Paul) she stands out as a beacon of genius.
Voltaire’s quip springs to mind – “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.”
Her enemies included General Galtieri and the murderous Argentinian junta, King Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, much of the Conservative Party and most of her Cabinet (“What about the vegetables? They’ll have what I’m having.”) and she defeated them all.
I lived through her reign as PM and I hated her guts but I’d have hated the surgeon that cut my leg off to save my life for the same reasons.
Joey Maloney
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That was Nelson Rockefeller, and a completely different woman entirely.
Ash Can
@Robert Sneddon: In all seriousness, what good did she do? And making the rich richer doesn’t count.
liberal
@Warren Terra:
LOL.
aimai
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, I don’t doubt that her death and a chance to reflect on Britain’s glory days will be a huge draw and temptation for a local British audience, but not a worldwide one. So speaking from a purely british/gb perspective I can see that they will probably pull out all the stops. But aside from right wing cable news in this country I doubt anyone else is going to care. Its just too long ago (from an American perspective which, of course, stops about ten years before each individual speaker’s personal time line for maturity).
Omnes Omnibus
Since the “Tramp the Dirt Down” link has already bee posted, I will just say that Thatcher is one of the few exceptions to my general “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” policy. She, IMO even more than Reagan, was the driving force in a movement on the Anglo-American political right toward a view that there is no such thing as common welfare. The “no such thing as society” comes to mind. Much that is pernicious in our current political environment traces back to her and her kind.
liberal
@Ash Can:
Well, IIRC the Falklands thing really did lead to the demise of the Argentine junta, but OTOH it’s not like that’s why she did it.
Citizen_X
@Southern Beale:
I’m gonna go with “E: All of them, Katie.”
beergoggles
The part I like most about evil people is their deaths.
Remember Section 28 Maggie? We’ve grown up enough to now piss on your grave.
Tony J
Smashing news, a day long awaited and fondly recieved.
Word is that Cameron was planning to declare a national day of mourning, until his advisors pointed out that roughly 65% of the country would probably use their day off work to travel down to London and piss on her grave.
Here’s hoping that her return to the pit that spawned her triggers a national conversation about her policies, their legacy, and how they continue to shaft Britain good and hard under our current Government.
Chris
@Robert Sneddon:
Yeah, from what little I know of her background, she actually reminds me of Barry Goldwater more than Reagan. An extremely right wing figure who had to fight her way tooth and nail into the country club establishment (with more success than Goldwater) and whose resentment for it resonated with a lot of people.
There’s probably a Nixon comparison to be drawn too, even if he wasn’t a right wing ideologue.
Nickws
@Robert Sneddon:
Er, and what was the Thatch’s equivalent to ending Jim Crow and enacting the Voter Rights Act? Perhaps breaking the NUM, because Scargill was a crap demagogue leader who was stupid enough to call a strike without first going through the proper union processes, that’s her version of expanding democratic access, is that it?
Step away from the crackpipe, man.
(This is why you never go the full Hitch Contrariantard, folks!)
schrodinger's cat
I don’t know that much about her apart from her economic policies, I was far too young to follow politics when she was in office. Was she pretty much the British Reagan?
Emma
@Robert Sneddon: So how are you enjoying the rule of your betters? Because she was the grandmother of the disaster you have today.
EDIT: Mind you, I am not celebrating her death. She had a terrible last years, and it was a mercy to her family and friends that she passed.
geg6
@handsmile:
THIS.
Just posted that song on my FB page. I expect a lot of idiots will not understand and think I’m praising the witch.
Odie Hugh Manatee
May she rust to pieces, I mean rest in peace.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Maude
Nelson Mandela is still alive.
Elizabelle
Nothing on Sully’s blog yet. Nothing on Thatcher, anyway. He has:
An Army of Deserters
Does CPR work? (Chillingly appropriate)
A nest of mummified rats (seriously)
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/
gogol's wife
I’m a bit surprised by all the people saying they know nothing about her because they were too young. I was too young to know much about Hitler or Napoleon, since they died long before I was born. There is such a thing as history . . . .
Chris
@liberal:
Yeah. I’m on Thatcher’s side when it comes to the Falklands War; but I also think it would’ve been fucking nice if people like her hadn’t fought tooth and nail to establish and sustain regimes like that all over the world in the first place.
@Tony J:
As others have already said, it’s a very pleasant surprise for me as a Yank to see how many Brits hate her stinking guts and say so. I remember Reagan’s funeral a decade earlier; you’d think he was a god on earth for all the hushed reverence the country displayed towards him.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: I know the outline but not the gory details and don’t understand the nitty gritty of UK politics.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Sentimental Americans are sentimental, the Brits not so much.
Warren Terra
@Chris:
Much more Nixon than Goldwater, but neither really covers it. Nixon, after all, craved recognition and approbation, and so exulted in the toadying of Kissinger and others; Thatcher seemed to simply place everyone else beneath concern, or beneath contempt.
Mike in NC
Just turned on the TV. Cue a week of right wing rending of garments and lots of references to Saint Ronnie.
Chris
@geg6:
I am “liking” all the comments of my conservative friends about her RIP. Waiting to see if any of them picks up on the fact that the reason I’m liking them is because she’s dead…
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Diana.
lojasmo
@sparky:
I LOLed.
Glad she’s gone.
Citizen_X
She famously said, “There’s no such thing as society.” So in a way, one is being true to her legacy when one says, “To hell with her. I’m glad she’s dead.” After all, we don’t owe each other anything, not even simple human decency, right, Maggie?
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Exception that proves the rule.
El Cid
When you go back to the 1980s, it’s hard to not find conservatives (and a few bold centrists, etc.) being quoted about how Mandela was a terrorist and Communist.
It was one of their ’80s fashions.
lojasmo
@jurassicpork:
The last panel was okay. I’ll send you some paypal.
No, I won’t.
liberal
@Chris:
Of course, I totally agree.
I could be mistaken, but IIRC Reagan’s “popularity” is highly exaggerated (meaning, if you look at actual polling data). What’s not in doubt is the press worshipped that scumbag.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cassidy: Every time I give in to checking B-J on my tablet or my phone, I’m quickly reminded why I don’t. Gotta have my pie.
ObOn Topic: My FB friends are mostly US and mostly “Whatever else she was, she was a woman who made it in a man’s world.” I’m seriously considering posting the Ding Dong video.
Anya
@gogol’s wife: she was not that far gone to be studied in history.
Robert Sneddon
@Nickws: Postal ballots for strikes were her creation. If a union wants to call a strike today they have to ballot their members by post. The result is fewer strikes generally since factory-gate meetings and show of hands don’t count any more (the leaders on the platform would do the counting by eye and make the numbers up to suit what they wanted). It also means that when a ballot result comes in with a large majority in favour of a strike then it gives the union more leverage at the negotiating table since they’ve got hard numbers on their support, not something that was true before.
She also put a bullet through the head of a few shambling zombie publicly-owned industries, like British Steel which employed 100,000 people to make steel at twice the cost it could be sold for in obsolete foundries that couldn’t be closed due to social pressures since they were the only mass employer in their area (see Corby or Ravenscraig for examples). At the same time “third world” countries like Malaysia were making steel in modern computer-controlled steel plants run by a handful of shirt-sleeved engineers in airconditioned control rooms, British steelworkers were shovelling oresands into open-hearth furnaces built in the 1920s. British Steel was costing the UK a billion pounds a year in subsidies at that time (about USD 10 billion in today’s money) and no better future in sight. It would have been cheaper to shut all the plants and just pay everyone their usual wage to stay at home.
Omnes Omnibus
@Robert Sneddon:
Wasn’t she at Oxford not too much later than as Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey, and Ted Heath? None of them were public school boys. Of course, they read PPE, not chemistry.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
IIRC, pretty much. I’m sure we all could take a refresher course by looking at her Wikipedia page, but I gotta get back to work…
Chris
@liberal:
I think a good chunk of the Reagan myth came after his death, first with the “he won the Cold War” drumbeat they started doing in the nineties, then as he sank into dementia you could no longer denounce him without being a monster attacking a helpless old man. (His funeral sealed the deal).
But I do believe polls still show a lot of popularity for the guy. Even if a lot of it is a result of that myth.
Tony J
@Chris:
Yeah, there’s not much of a middle ground in Britain when it comes to Thatcher. FWIW I put a lot of that down to the fact that she ‘won’ her war. She atomised British society, elevated the greedy and the grasping, smashed the very idea of a united Working Class, broke the Labour Party, etc, etc, on and on, shifting the very foundations of British culture a mile to the Right in the process.
People looking around at most of the things that have gone wrong in Britain over the last thirty years can trace them to Thatcherism’s victory, and that’s bound to put you on some kind of shit-list.
liberal
@Robert Sneddon:
Fair enough, but AFAICT her policies lead to their replacement by a bloated FIRE sector in Britain that does nothing but extract economic rents.
To the extent they’re sucking the blood out of foreigners, and some of the resulting loot trickles down, it’s good for Britain, but it’s overall appalling.
Maude
@gogol’s wife:
The Guardian has a ton of information about her and her policies. It’s easy to find out about her.
Cassidy
Fixed.
liberal
@Chris:
I agree that he’s far more popular than he “should” be.
What I mean is that if you look at the poll numbers, he’s not nearly as popular as the press claims he is (which is somewhere just below Jesus H. Christ).
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus: Healey read Greats, too IIRC. Double first.
Mandalay
@Chris:
You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait until Tony Blair dies. They’ll have to give him an anonymous grave.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: She was less sunny than Reagan.
in the 80s, John Mortimer (of Rumpole fame) did a set of interviews in the Sunday Times that really amount to character sketches. His interview with R. A. Butler (one of those almost prime ministers) began with this:
Thatcher was the leader and epitome of that new Tory.
maurinsky
Reagan was pretty damn popular in the early 80s. Lots of Democrats voted for him against Carter. My father and mother both hated Reagan.
Robert Sneddon
@liberal: The US is following the UK down the path of exhausting its mineral resources and having to find something else to make money out of. The UK started first with the Industrial Revolution, digging up coal and iron ore and turning it into wealth but that was pretty much all gone by the 1960s along with Empire. North Sea oil gave us a further wealth boost starting in the 1970s but that’s mostly gone too now.
What have we got other than FIRE that we can do better than, say, China or Singapore? Manufacturing, design, engineering, knowledge, they’re all location-agnostic with only the price-per-unit differentiating where something will be made internationally and where the wealth will end up. That means a race to the bottom for wages and conditions, other than in weapons design and manufacture which is constrained by national security considerations. The alternative is a hive of Metropolis-like slave labour in all but name and frankly robots can do a better job than most slaves; even Foxconn in China is planning to fire a million low-paid workers making Apple fondleslabs and replace them with robots as they’re cheaper.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Tony J:
I worked with many British citizens in the late 80’s and early 90’s (high tech engineering types) and not a single one had a nice thing to say about Thatcher.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: Yeah, Healey was Greats not “Modern Greats.” My bad.
geg6
@Robert Sneddon:
Huh. All my British cousins are on my FB page dancing jigs over this. And that’s not even from my Irish side of the family. Haven’t heard from that contingent yet, but they’re probably too drunk from celebrating to post.
Yeah, ol’ Maggie, she was a great civil rights leader who wanted nothing more than to help others.
Fuck that old bitch. Fuck her and fuck her senile old buddy, too. Another grave I’ll be happy to piss on.
Certified Mutant Enemy
So when will black velvet paintings of Reagan welcoming Thatcher into heaven start showing up?
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: She does sport a pinched look in most of her photos, while Reagan is always smiling in his photos.
Yutsano
@Certified Mutant Enemy: I have an answer to this, but it might bring forth a troll.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Ha!
Cassidy
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
it won’t take our pedophile and unconscious rape loving troll that long.
@Yutsano: Let’s be real, It’s coming anyway.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Good. My only regret about her death is it didn’t happen in 1975.
lojasmo
@Yutsano:
Can you point me to the thread where Cole bought a painting from that fuckwit? It seems too good to be true. (send it by FB if you’re scared to link it here)
Edited for punctuation.
dance around in your bones
I was out of the country, but I seem to remember Reagan’s corpse being dragged all over the country from one funeral to another.
I also love the idea of privatizing Maggie’s funeral and the plastering of the logos on the coffin. Hey, they do it with Nascar drivers who are still alive!
Surreal American
I’ll say this much in her defense: Galtieri was a dick.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Not that I was overly fond of either side during the whole Falkland/Malvinas Islands misadventure.
Chris
@Tony J:
The exact same thing can be done for Reagan in America, but a lot less people do it.
Question – was there any equivalent in Britain for the American “Southern Strategy,” of easing the blow of laissez-faire economics by using identity politics to scapegoat racial minorities and other “undesirables?” If not, that might be part of the reason the British see her legacy more clearly. If so, I got nothing.
Cassidy
@lojasmo: Search the site for “grateful dead”.
liberal
@Robert Sneddon:
You entirely miss the point. FIRE, at least in terms of its growth potential, doesn’t produce a damn thing. (Meaning, some basic FIRE services are necessary, but all the expansion we’ve seen since the Reagan era is just legalized theft, at least in terms of aggregate numbers.)
Mandalay
@Robert Sneddon:
I have never understood how the American media consistently looked the other way whenever IRA committed their umpteen acts of violence against innocent people.
Not that the British government doesn’t still have a lot to answer for, but the IRA just seemed to get a free pass for their noble brand of “freedom fighting” when the reality was their tactics at times were no different to those of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Fred
They say if you can’t say something nice you shouldn’t say anything.
I got nuthin’.
scav
@Warren Terra: Damn! The Now Show just ended their run, so we might get the other one — not quite as pointy, The news Quiz. I’l hoping for Scheduled shedule disruption and a Mitch Benn eulogy, plus.
ETA, yes, jeremy might help, but I do love Tns crew slightly more.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@geg6: Out of respect for others buried in the same location, they really should run in a sewer line to her gravesite and mount a urinal directly over it. I think it would get a lot of use.
Jay C
I think It’s more a case of “it was made clear to the Press that they HAD to worship the scumbag if they wanted to keep their jobs”
Tony J
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
I can well believe it, and yet she and her Party, while widely loathed, were still winning elections in the late ’80s and early ’90s. ‘Hippy-punching’ wasn’t just an American sport, even back then.
Mandalay
@Surreal American:
It’s ironic that Thatcher’s greatest achievement was to bring democracy to Argentina.
Not that she gave a flying fuck about democracy or Argentina, but it is still an achievement.
Cacti
The fact that she was outlived by Nelson Mandela shows that once in a while, there is some justice in this world.
Ash Can
@Robert Sneddon:
That race has already started. In fact, it started a long time ago — with the deregulation, union-busting, and safety-net cutting of Reagan and Thatcher.
Robert Sneddon
@Mandalay: For one thing the IRA had a good propaganda organisation; it made sure the weepy third-generation Americans in Boston who believed themselves to be Oirish funnelling untraceable money into Noraid never found out they were Marxist-Leninists at their core (see, for example, the IRA’s dalliance with Qadaffi in the 80s and their more recent association with the Shining Path Maoist loons in South America). BTW the IRA is still in business, planting bombs and carrying out punishment beatings on locals who don’t show the Dons sufficient respect.
There’s also the deal that to most Americans “terrorism” didn’t exist until 09/11/2001 when it sprang full-fledged into existence. Until then they were freedom-fighters like Nelson Mandela, head of Spear of the Nation which was planting bombs and carrying out punishment killings and beatings to blacks who didn’t toe the line.
PurpleGirl
@Robert Sneddon: Except that the rulers don’t want to pay people to stay home. They see the closing of plants and letting go of workers as savings and more profit for them. The workers are then on their own to find a way to live. (For example, current American policy toward the long-term unemployed.)
liberal
@Ash Can:
I agree, but it looks like our interlocutor thinks—incorrectly—that the race to the bottom is an inevitable result of industrial organization, instead of being a (purposefully) engineered byproduct of changes in political economy.
liberal
@Robert Sneddon:
How dare people use violence as a tool for political ends?
Cacti
@Robert Sneddon:
Thatcher apologist is apartheid apologist.
What a surprise.
eyelessgame
The air of this planet is a shared, public resource. I am certain Margaret Thatcher is pleased that she need no longer partake in such a distastefully socialist enterprise, and – to my astonishment – I conclude she and I have at least one preference in common.
Cacti
@liberal:
Maggie didn’t think much of “constructive engagement” when it came to the Falklands.
Penus
Any other football (British version) fans on here? It took two decades for the truth about the Hillsborough tragedy to emerge, and she played a huge part in that cover-up (and threw in a healthy dose of victim-blaming to boot).
Mandalay
I don’t agree with much of what you are saying, but you said a mouthful right there.
liberal
@Cacti:
Great riposte.
liberal
@Cacti:
Heh.
madsjw
Let’s not forget her staunch support of Pinochet.
truthiness
Don’t fret, it is just the passing of a bodily shell…
Her brain had died decades ago.
Cassidy
@Robert Sneddon:
And there is your tell. Everyone has one.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Goes to show that even the most powerful and accomplished* can have fuck-ups as offspring.
* I loathed her, but she was a historical figure, if saved by the stupidity of Argentine generals.
gene108
@Keith G:
As good as Clinton was at “feeling your pain”, he couldn’t get ahead of the right-wing backlash that his 1992 victory created.
He had the potential to change Americans views on government from “government is the problem” to government can work efficiently to help people like you.
He just couldn’t overcome the right-wing media and their MSM lapdogs.
geg6
@Robert Sneddon:
If I believed in ghosts (which I don’t), I’d like to think that of Bobby Sands is having a good day. And I’ll bet Gerard Sands is having a laugh and pint in celebration today.
AxelFoley
@Robert Sneddon:
They always out themselves, don’t they?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Sorry, Thatcher completely fucked up on Northern Ireland. She personally loathed the IRA because of their assassination of her friend and mentor, Airey Neave, but she made a massive miscalculation on the Hunger Strike.
Labour had a very effective Northern Ireland Secretary, Roy Mason, who to this day the IRA loathe because, in the words of Martin McGuinness “He beat the shit out of us”. The IRA were close to military defeat.
Instead, Thatcher used Northern Ireland as a Siberia to send the Tory Wet dissidents in her party to run, and then dug in her heels on symbolic items in the treatment of prisoners. Hence the hunger strike, which she mishandled incredibly.
The result – a resurgent IRA politically and militarily, and the IRA’s political wing becoming the dominant nationalist party. Hence McGuiness, former Chief of Staff of the IRA, becoming Deputy First Minister when the peace deal eventually was cut.
She set peace in Northern Ireland back fifteen years.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
I suppose you could be more wrong, but it is hard to imagine how. Argentina’s military junta was given every opportunity to withdraw its invading forces without any loss of life.
But don’t let the facts get in your way.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Is Blair hated more than Thatcher? I’m surprised.
Chris
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Now I know where Bush got his inspiration for the Iraq War!
liberal
@Mandalay:
That entirely misses the point.
Either you’re a pacifist—meaning, violence is absolutely never justified—or you’re not.
In Sneddon’s case, unless he’s a pacifist—which my Bayesian prior says is very unlikely—he’s a hypocrite.
Chris
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Blair led his country into Iraq, cementing its international reputation as America’s obedient poodle against the loud wishes of the majority of Britishers. I’m not at all surprised that that would provoke a lot of hate.
aimai
@Mandalay:
But look at this:
She could only be described as being anti junta when the wind was in the nor-nor east. The rest of the time she was happy to profiteer off them and support them.
Robert Sneddon
@AxelFoley: So who was in charge of the armed struggle in apartheid South Africa? Mandela changed in jail, becoming a statesman as he grew older and wiser but he started in the 60s believing that bombing and killing would achieve his aims. As with most liberation struggles familial and clan bonds formed leading to his (ex)-wife’s rise to power as an enforcer in places like Soweto in the 1980s. Look up the term “necklacing” if you have the stomach for it and remember this was the “good guys” carrying out these punishments.
I’m not sure McGuinness and his Loyalist opposites/allies in Northern Ireland have gone as far down the road of non-violence as Mandela has; the bombs keep getting planted, the mortars made ready to launch but it seems there are more folks willing to inform on the activists so they tend to get intercepted more than they used to. Extortion in the name of the Cause is still the norm, the enforcers still keep order in the housing schemes and the beatings and “exclusions” continue.
Mandalay
@liberal:
Bullshit. A poster stated Maggie didn’t think much of “constructive engagement” when it came to the Falklands, yet it is a matter of fact and record that Argentina was given every opportunity to withdraw from the Falklands within the framework of International Law and the U.N.
I don’t care for Thatcher at all, but the notion that Britain just attacked Argentine forces without first attempting a peaceful negotiated resolution through “constructive engagement” is a massive lie.
Robert Sneddon
@aimai: Arms exports were and are still a major part of the British economy. For a small country we’re quite good at churning out stuff to kill people with and with our links to the old Empire and the resulting Commonwealth we’ve got a leg up on most outsiders in many areas. I did say earlier that weapons are still a core manufacturing area in most countries for security purposes, not totally outsourced. This has changed in the UK a lot since Maggie’s time though with more and more procurement being done via international collaborations — indeed sections of our new QE-class aircraft carriers are delivered to the assembly yards on a Chinese-built barge.
gene108
@gogol’s wife:
There’s one thing to read about something in a text book and know that on Sept 1, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland.
There’s another aspect to your personal history, if you were living in Poland or Germany on September 1, 1939.
I was six years old, when Reagan took office and 14 when he left office. I don’t have a strong opinion of the guy.
The long run impact of his economic policies seem to be ending badly, but he’s mighty popular with a lot of folks* and changed the political dynamics of this country, so he must’ve tapped into something very strong in the American psyche to discount him as being a total failure.
*I know there’s a liberal temptation to label conservatives as “stupid”, but there are plenty of successful engineers, laywers, doctors, accountants, etc., who are big Reagan supporters, so labeling them as “stupid”, in the any sense, isn’t the right way to figure out how to flip the attitudes of these groups of people to rally to your cause.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108:
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
– John Stuart Mill
Helmut Monotreme
Whether or not Reagan or Thatcher are failures entirely depends on which criteria you use. If you approve of union busting and privatization, and supporting loathsome dictators in the name of anti communism, they were a roaring success. If you approve of taking care of the most vulnerable portions of the population, international peace or taking care of the environment, they were dismal failures. Given that a significant fraction of both the US and the UK are more interested at winning at all costs than they are in justice or integrity, or even just maintaining the national infrastructure so that poor people aren’t starving in the unmaintained streets, there will always be people who cheer the legacy of those greedy, bloodthirsty, creeps.
liberal
@Mandalay:
You’re still completely missing the point.
The fact is that Thatcher did indeed resort to violence to resolve a political difference with Argentina.
Now, of course, many might think that her resort to violence was justified. That’s fine; I myself don’t disagree. But the fact that the Argentines didn’t voluntarily withdraw doesn’t mean that Thatcher didn’t resort to violence.
In what sense was Mandela’s resort to violence also not justified (albeit for different reasons, of course)?
Mandalay
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Far more…22% of the electorate think he should face a war crimes tribunal. That won’t happen, but it should.
gene108
@Chris:
The problem with popularity polls, with regards to Reagan, is despite questions about his policies in 1988 – which lead to Bush, Sr.’s “thousand points of light” and Dukakis having a very early and considerable lead on Bush, Sr. after the conventions (i.e. government can’t just exist to shovel money to the rich/people who lived through the New Deal were still significant and trusted government) – his margins of victory in 1980 and 1984 were historic; he did appeal to people.
@liberal:
I think what gets ignored is the impact of a dedicated right-wing media in the 1980’s that the MSM still hasn’t figured out isn’t objective.
You had the McLaughlin Group on PBS, Washington Times, American Spectator, etc. to polish Reagan’s actions, while President and to polish his legacy, once he left office.
They kept reminding all of Reagan’s supporters about all awesomeness that was Reagan and squashing any historical evidence that comes out showing failures of Reagan’s policies/Presidency, to the point that Reagan has essential been deified for many Americans.
liberal
@gene108:
OK. Can I instead label them as “selfish”?
Furthermore, they’re either hypocrites or not very understanding of the way the State hands them very valuable rent-collection privileges (in the case of e.g. doctors and lawyers) or direct handouts (cf engineers and military spending).
Finally, while many of the groups you list might have IQs in the triple digits, that leaves a lot of room for stupidity.
liberal
@gene108:
Your analysis is premised on the notion that the media isn’t right-wing.
Have you ever read small-town newpapers? Or are you acquainted with the history of the media in the US?
The MSM itself has long been right-wing. Not as right-wing as the folks you’re alluding to, but quite sufficient to make them enamored of St. Ronnie.
ETA: you’re quite right that some of his polling undoubtably reflects some effort engineered by the groups you describe.
Mandalay
@liberal:
Not at all. I was responding to post #161 which stated that “Maggie didn’t think much of “constructive engagement” when it came to the Falklands.”.
That statement is patently false, and I provided a link to prove it.
You obviously were unaware of the facts, and I understand you feel the need to move the goalposts and change the subject, but don’t.
If you want to challenge my claims that there definitely was “constructive engagement” in resolving the invasion of the Falklands, and post #161 is false, then let’s hear it.
Otherwise STFU.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus:
We could also cite things like the Salem Hypothesis, as long as we’re straying from questions of self-interest I alluded to in my last comment on this.
liberal
@gene108:
Huh? He got 50.8% of the vote in 1980. Given everything else going on, that’s not that impressive.
As for 1984, GDP growth was really, really high in a way that would be extremely favorable to his election.
Librarian
@Mandalay: As I remember, most of the negotiating was done by SOS Al Haig, who flew several times between London and Buenos Aires unsuccessfully trying to come to a settlement before the British fleet reached the Falklands.
Robert Sneddon
@liberal: Why did Spear of the Nation put burning car tyres around the necks of the folks who didn’t support them enthusiastically enough? I don’t think Maggie did that to the troops sent to Argentina, even the ones (a few) who refused to go.
It’s the greatest problem most freedom-fighting/terrorist groups like Abu Nidal’s organisation, Al-Queda, the Viet Cong, Spear of the Nation, the Cosa Nostra etc. face, the infiltrator or the bought informer, the traitor to the Cause. Family and blood can usually be trusted so clannishness develops, in-laws are promoted to outrank the common herd who have to be kept in line with ferocious discipline to prevent defections and keep the contributions coming. If the organisation survives more than a generation or two then family control gets fossilised like the Mafia in Sicily and later the US or the Afghani Northern Alliance (our gallant friends, fighting against the equally feudal Taliban who are our hated foes or is that the other way around? Which century is this?) Same old same old, see the barons of Olde England and how they brought down the monarchy to establish their hereditary right to rule in the Magna Carta.
liberal
@Mandalay:
Depends on how you define “constructive engagement.”
The undisputed fact is that Thatcher resorted to violence to resolve the issue, which is Cacti’s point, AFAICT.
If you want to tailor your comments to the most narrow and literal construction of others’ comments, and completely ignore the thread comment history (in particular, Sneddon’s apparent and likely selective disapproval of the resort to violence), be my guest.
liberal
@Robert Sneddon:
OK, I had various hypotheses about where you’re coming from. One was “arrogant prick who thinks he’s oh so smart that he can do better.”
Check.
liberal
@Robert Sneddon:
Right. The political circumstances faced by people fighting apartheid and Margaret Thatcher do indeed merit such facile comparisons.
Pretty much closes the case for the argument “Robert Sneddon, someone who thinks he’s very bright but clearly doesn’t think very deeply.”
Say, you wouldn’t happen to be an engineer who believes in creationism, would you?
stinger
@Cassidy: I never do.
stinger
@schrodinger’s cat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands
Mandalay
@liberal:
No. Cacti’s point was: Maggie didn’t think much of “constructive engagement” when it came to the Falklands. Yet the evidence shows that assertion is false.
Few are aware that at the time Thatcher was under intense pressure in Britain, especially from some within her own party, precisely because she WAS trying to resolve the issue through engagement rather than raining bombs on Buenos Aires.
I do. If someone makes an assertion that is blatantly false then I will call them on it.
Robert Sneddon
@Librarian: Wasn’t going to happen. The murderous junta led by Galtieri couldn’t back down and leave what the world regarded as British territory and, well, Maggie wasn’t in the mood to be conciliatory after what had been an outright military invasion. The US dithered instead of coming down hard and fast on the side of the UK and a fight was inevitable. The result was not really in doubt either, just the butcher’s bill. It might, and there is a lot of debate about this, have been avoided if the US had gotten off the fence earlier and loaned us a carrier — the Argentinians believed that if we lost one or both of our smaller carriers then it would swing the tide in their favour. Attacking an American carrier would have been suicidal to them and with that expression of support on our side they would have known they couldn’t win, and a shooting war could have been prevented. Maybe.
There’s an alternate history waiting to be written where Prime Minister Foot dithers and decades later the mass graves of the British folks who were killed out of hand by the junta on the Falklands are unearthed to much hand-wringing by assorted pundits who declare that standing up to the Generals would have been better than Foot’s appeasement.
Mandalay
@Robert Sneddon:
This is true. Nobody does scathing better than the British…
pseudonymous in nc
Tramp the dirt down.
geg6
@Robert Sneddon:
Go fuck yourself, dude. The Irish have had every reason history can provide to kill Brits. They still do, but still Northern Ireland is still the shithole the British created and maintained through blood, starvation, and out and out bigotry, quite unlike the Irish Republic, which has had its economic woes but is paradise compared to the North.
It kills me to see fucking Brits whining and crying over how “bloodthirsty” the IRA was. But the British Empire never did anything near as nasty as bombing a few civilians, right?
Get a fucking clue.
kb
@boatboy_srq:
Eh? Thatchers government probably responded best to AIDS out of all the western governments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15886670
As for the falklands, well the deaths had more to do with argentina invading.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Irving: in all seriousness, I think her learning anew every morning that her hub was dead was the universe meting out justice for the tens of thousands of children who got to wake up every morning wondering if their parents would come back to them. She’s a war criminal. Fuck her.
Robert Sneddon
@geg6: The Irish have been killing Irish folks, mostly, all through the Troubles and before (Irish Civil War, see). That’s not including the punishment beatings, the maimings, the extortion and thuggish abuse of their respective communities which are still going on today. They’ve been doing this kind of shit for three hundred years and more and it’s all Cromwell’s fault and they’ll go on doing it for the next three hundred years because, well, they were forced to do it by that bastard Lord Protector, see?
As for the Irish Republic being a paradise on Earth I point you at the Magdalene Laundry system, government-licenced chattel slavery by the all-powerful Catholic Church that persisted until the 1990s. There’s the draconian abortion law (another product of the Catholic Church) that in one case prevented a 13-year-old from leaving the country to get her incestuous rape-pregnancy terminated in Liverpool, that licentious English hellhole where (whisper it!) condoms can be purchased without a doctor’s prescription!. There’s the rampant corruption (Ben there, Dunn that, bought the Taioseach), the child abuse scandals (another product of the Catholic Church’s domination of a nominally democratic country) and the financial malpractice that blew the economy into smithereens when the housing bubble burst.
Calouste
@geg6:
Just a small datapoint: Ireland still has a smaller population than it did it 1841, before the Famine.
Robert Sneddon
@Calouste: Like the Scots the road to prosperity in Ireland has historically led over a border to another nation like England[1] or further abroad to a country like America or Australia. The Scottish population has been level at about 4.5 to 5 million for the last century and more thanks to emigration, not due to murthering English hordes coming over the border and stealing our potatoes.
[1] Irish folks resident in Britain don’t need any sort of green card to live here or permit to work, never have done even before the EU. They can vote in all elections for local, national and European parliaments for the ward in which they live if they are on the Register of Voters even though they are not citizens of the United Kingdom. They do have to pay taxes and such though and are entitled to healthcare etc. like any regular citizens. Conversely anyone with an Irish grandparent can claim Irish citizenship and an Irish passport (and qualify to play for Ireland in international competitions too) which can help with things like the US “green card” lottery.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Can you back up the assertion you’re making about the bombs being planted by McGuinness’s side? I f**king loathe the Provos, but they’re a disciplined bunch. Or are you thinking of the CIRA and I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Real IRA?
The UDA and UVF have more discipline problems, but they always had.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Yes, but Blair didn’t triple unemployment or cause the radical upheavals to British society that Thatcher did. Blair was able to step down without being forced out, like Thatcher was. And I haven’t yet heard a song talking about “Tramp the Dirt Down”, like Costello did for MT.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I’m sorry, dude, but the Famine killed a million people, and because 90% of those died of diseases like typhus spread through the workhouses, it was largely an avoidable tragedy. The Poor Laws, and the free-market attitude of Treveylan and Russell’s in rescinding of famine relief in corn imports that had been in place under Peel, worsened what started as a natural disaster.
Treveylan believed the famine was the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson”.
It was attitudes like that that made the separation of Ireland and the UK a later reality.
Robert Sneddon
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: I think McGuinness would rather his wild men didn’t do the mortars and bombs thing but the last time his heavies had to go out and slot a bunch of the stroppier Boyos after the Armistice because they refused to follow orders to stop their attacks it was rather frowned upon by the old guard in Republican circles and he’s far enough out of the trenches these days I doubt he could actually get them to stop now. The various new IRAs popping up here and there are all run by ex-Provos, some of them released from life sentences under the terms of the Sunningdale Agreement who are happy to be out but don’t feel themselves bound by an agreement pols like McGuinness signed on to.
The UDA and UVF don’t usually plant big bombs, they tend to target cars and such with small blast bombs and they definitely don’t have a mortar manufacturing capability.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21651900
“Dissident republicans” my arse. Note also that the van was stopped as part of an “intelligence-led operation” i.e. the terrorists were dobbed in to the police, probably by other Provos.
Mandalay
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Not really. At best it’s a distinction without a difference. Blair was forced to step down, and if he had not done so voluntarily he would have been publicly fired by his own party.
Thatcher was presented with the same option but she was a honey badger, didn’t give a shit, and chose to fight on and lose publicly.
Note the final sentence below when Blair announced that he was stepping down…
Blair didn’t jump. He was pushed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6238194.stm
Robert Sneddon
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: The same famine killed millions more on the Continent, and Britain nearly starved too. There was another famine in the Scottish Highlands nearly a century earlier but it doesn’t get the press the Irish one did, possibly because the Scots don’t whine quite as much as the Irish do.
I’ve tried to find out how exactly the British government could have alleviated the famine in Ireland — the logistics of moving a lot of grain and other foodstuffs across the Irish Sea and distributing it throughout Ireland at short notice would have been a formidable task. There was one small railway in Ireland at the time, no more than 6 miles long and the roads, especially into the rural hinterland were piss-poor as one might expect. A typical cargo sailing ship of the time (no steam ships) could carry a few hundred tonnes of grain at a time and would be loaded and unloaded by hand. Even if what excess food was available was easily got to the English shipping ports then actually doing something about the famine would have been a Herculean task. It’s simplistic with modern transport and hindsight to think it could be achieved without problems; I’m not so sure. It would have required a conscious decision to do something very early in the crisis and that was unlikely.
Xecky Gilchrist
Lord Bell said: “It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning.”
Does this mean they wish she’d died violently?
Cacti
@Mandalay:
Do tell which 20th century principle of international law was used to justify British possession of the Falklands.
Cacti
@Robert Sneddon:
This world you speak of…
Other than Pinochet’s Chile, which nations of South America supported British claims over the Falklands?
JGabriel
The only thing I have to say about Margaret Thatcher’s death is that I have the deepest sympathy for Annette Funicello’s family.
.
Robert Sneddon
@Cacti: The world (and especially the US) has recognised the continuous inhabitation of the islands by Britons since before the nation of Argentina existed. The Argentinians disagree.
The Argentinian government is making rumbling noises again at the moment as they’re running into financial problems at home and they need a distraction but their military is even more decrepit than it was back in the 80s since no-one will extend them any more credit and besides a functioning military is an open invitation to another military coup.
Cacti
@Robert Sneddon:
Your grasp of history is as tenuous as your definition of “the world”.
The Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata declared independence from Spain on July 9, 1816. The current constitution was ratified in 1853, but the first use of the “Argentine Republic” was found in the constitution of 1826.
PeakVT
@Cacti: Who cares what South American countries have or haven’t recognized. The Falklands have been under continuous control of the Brits since 1833 and the residents have declared their desire to for it to remain a British territory. The British made the first recorded visit to the islands (the Portuguese probably discovered them first but there’s no record of who or when, and Portugal made no claim to them), there was no native population, and the Brits contested control between discovery and 1833. The Brits have by far the best claim to the territory.
Robert Sneddon
@Cacti: The 1826 constitution of what country? Britain’s unbroken run of possession and control started in 1834. That’s after the proto-Argentinians abandoned the islands in 1811 (and Britain abandoned them in 1774 after inhabiting them for a time along with South Georgia and a couple of other wet rocks in the locality). The main claim seems to be based on the idea that the Argentinians are the sole heirs of the Spanish empire in the southern seas, a rather vague basis to claim anything given the rest of the territory once owned by the Spaniards which they don’t seem keen on pressing a claim on (places like, say, Brazil).
The Antarctica thing is much more interesting — the Falklands are the reason the UK claims a slice of the Antarctican pie. The Chileans have their own slice as Tierra del Fuego faces the Last Continent but poor old Argentina doesn’t have anything that allows them any sort of a claim on all those untouched natural resources.
There’s more fun in the Atlantic with wet rocks, namely Rockall which is variously claimed by the UK (as in we’ve landed troops there), Iceland, Denmark, Ireland and Greenpeace (and I may be missing a few others).
Ruckus
@jurassicpork:
Checks in the mail!
Sucker.
Ruckus
If all these conservative
“leaders”assholes keep kicking the bucket I’m going to have to start drinking beer so I have enough piss.And also to celebrate.
Cacti
@PeakVT:
Did they recently become excluded from “the world”?
I was just wondering, as Robert Sneddon, when not informing us on the villainy of Nelson Mandella, declared rather conclusively that “the world” recognized British claims to a colonial outpost on the opposite hemisphere.
I found that a curious position, when the nations of the continent closest to it recognized nothing of the kind, except of course for Thatcher’s BFF Pinochet.
I’m guessing “the world” in this case = Europe + USA
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I’ve tried to find out how exactly the British government could have alleviated the famine in Ireland — the logistics of moving a lot of grain and other foodstuffs across the Irish Sea and distributing it throughout Ireland at short notice would have been a formidable task.”
Peel managed it prior to the Whigs taking over – the impact in 1847 was far higher than in 1845 and 1846 with “Peel’s brimstone”. Also, as 90% of the deaths were due to disease, largely spread through the workhouses, not displacing tenants from their land would have reduced the deaths from disease due to lice as a typhus vector, or cholera and dysentery from overcrowded workhouses. Public works were cut back in part due to Whig policy, which meant less purchasing power for farm laborers, replacing them with soup kitchens. There were 3 million getting fed by soup kitchens, albeit inadequately, at their peak in 1847 before Russell scrapped them in September 1847, putting the burden on local Poor Law Unions. Which were going bankrupt. These problems could have been mitigated by policy, or at least the avoidance of bad policy, by Trevylan or Russell.
Post Amartaya Sen, we know that famines largely do their damage through inaffordability of food rather than an absolute shortage. 1847 is maybe an exception – there was an absolute shortness of food – but Whig policy worsened the situation. And there was a surplus of food after 1852, but famine-related deaths dragged on into 1852.
Also, there were distinct differences regionally – the impact of the famine was far less in Ulster where descents of Scots planters, held more tenant rights in the “Ulster custom”.
You’re entirely too glib on this topic.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Absolutely bullshit. The worst hit was Belgium, which had maybe 50,000 deaths, one-twentieth that of Ireland. Maybe it was all the Irish whining which caused them to die, I guess.
Jebediah
@Ruckus:
Yup.
And there are plenty of beer connoisseurs here who, I am sure, could recommend the correct beer for each dead bastard.
bjacques
Maggie Thatcher turned Britain from an economy of industry which made stuff and provided jobs, however imperfectly, into an economy of services, which produce crappy jobs that can be easily offshored, and of rent-seeking, which does nothing but extract value, often by offshoring those jobs.
Thatcher is dead, but Thatcherism is alive and well. Its political success spooked New Labourites so much that they turned their party into a cargo cult. By imitating their opponent’s policies, they attracted the cargo, and now the UK have no real political alternative.
Nor was there any mention on the BBC last night about Thatcher taking her inspiration from her best buddy Augusto Pinochet and his Chicago Boys.
Terrible woman, rotten spawn.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I see. So you weren’t able to back up your claims, and the fact that the Provos are shopping the CIRA and RIRA to the PSNI isn’t inflecting your views.
Also, I remember mortars being found in loyalist caches during one of the UVF/UDA feuds around 2000.