Thatcher dead

[Kelvin]

lol. That was on MTW the other night.

He is wrong on one point. Maggie won't get a 21 gun salute. It'll be 19. Only the monarch gets the full 21.

[David]

Hi,

I'm not a political person or a lover of Mrs Thatcher, but as an older citizen I do remember being made to go on stike for a 30% pay rise in the mid 70's. And yes we were made to go on strike, opposing the union at that time was not an option if you wanted to keep your job.

I too remember being made to go on strike - I had just started a new job and was still to sign up to the union (no choice in the matter) but crossing a picket line in those days wasn't possible. High inflation, rubbish piled high on the streets, power cuts all made it a grim time. It is difficult to understand how far we have come and it was the votes of ordinary people that said enough was enough, not Maggie, she was just happened to be the best option at the time, - and she didn't mind a fight.

[Titanium S1 111S (gla)]

I think it is interesting to point out that although Mrs T is always held up as the scourge of the working class that she was also the scourge of the professional classes. Until the early 80s those in my profession and certain others including architecture and accountancy were protected from the (vulgar) free market by scale fees. Solicitors were required to charge a percentage of transaction value for purchase and sale of property and being blunt about it they made a killing while doing relatively little work.

Since scale fees have been abolished, we operate in a competitive environment and fees have come down enormously. While it is still possible to make a good living one has to work extremely hard to do so.

Not looking for or expecting sympathy, just pointing out that Mrs T introduced the “free market” to lots of different industries not just the nationalised ones which are remembered.

[tut]

He did control his women Kelv, but as they have stated he made them have a baby every year, and as the piece of scum that he was was servicing more than one at a time, his average would have been higher than one.

The connection between the benefit system and the killings was that those six children died from him trying to prove that they were not fit to live with their mother who was getting the benefits, so he tried to set her up for the fire, rescue the kids, become a hero, and get them back again along with the benefits. The bone of contention is the view that those children would be alive today if he had not had that incentive, which is true, but that does not mean that any other families would take an action like that, regardless of them having children for the same reason.

Hopefully he was one of an evil two off. Did you see him at the karaoke night a few days after they died with the other evil thing?

tut

[martins]

'Oooooh Thats a Bingo'

Whether you loathed or loved Maggie the facts remain.

The UK is a democracy. We voted her in for the three terms.

She was not a despot dictator as some would have us believe (it should be noted that Mr Sheridan was on TV last night spouting off again. Why the media even give a liar-and that is a fact not a fanciful statement-air time is beyond me).

In the UK we are all free. Many in the world are not.

If you do not like the system here in the UK move to another country in Europe or the world in general that better suits your ideals. Better still if you really do not like the way the country is/was run, become a politician and do your bit to fix it!

The woman is dead and deserves some respect.

A final thought. . If given the choice between Maggie and Arthur Scargill who would you choose to resurect at a dinner party

M

[BigD]

Went to see him in Glasgow recently and wish I hadn't. Bitter and angry is all that came accross. Not funny anymore.

This is a very difficult area and I am as opposed to benefit scroungers as anyone else, but should children be allowed to starve because their parents are irresponsible?

If one takes an evolutionist approach the answer would be yes but I doubt that would prove acceptable to the majority.

Personally, I favor non cash benefits in these circumstances. Why not deal with the very worst offenders by giving food, cloths, energy rather than drinking/cigarette tokens?

Does that suggestion make me sound like Mrs T?

I agree on the giving food rather than money in benefits, why not give them tokens that can only be spent on certain goods to avoid them spending it on booze, fags, ipads, 50" TV's etc?

Maggie got alot right and some things wrong as do all leaders. The poll tax was a fair tax as far as I could see at the time. It meant that households with many inhabitants paid their fair share to the local authority to reflect the fact that they use more of the local authority services than households with fewer inhabitants. Made sense to me and I was a student at the time.

[PhilA]

poll tax is fairer, unless you live in a house with lots of folk with income and suddenly you are paying alot more.
people hate change for the worse. it takes a certain kind of group of people to become the problem.

with regards the benefits... was some clip on recently where they were talking to someone on benefits.
they asked them what they thought of the fact that they got as much, or sometimes more money, than people who work. Answer: its our choice of way of life.
Then when asked why they spend it on Sky, cigs and booze - "i was brought up to spend my benefit on what I choose".

There is the problem. Solve it with vouchers - i recon youll get a black market on the go.

[robin]

Agreed vouchers won't work.

I'm not sure why we care what people on benefits spend their money on ... after all we don't care what people on low (earned) incomes spend their money on?

Bad parents are bad parents, whether or not they are in work (assuming we're still talking about whether or not parents feed their children and motivate them to do something other than be on benefits).

If there is a benefits culture issue, then bad parenting must be at the root of it.

Eliminate bad parents and in just 10-20 years the problem would be gone.

I'll leave the Daily Mail readers to propose solutions to eliminating bad parenting ...

Cheers,
Robin

[mckeann]

I went clay pidgeon shooting at the weekend. I had a semi decent aim

[H8OAG]

As Maggie once said..............The trouble with socialism is that you will soon run out of other people's money

[graeme]

I don't read the Daily Mail, but bad parenting simply results from having kids you didn't really want. Stop incentivising people to have kids they don't want.

You know what happened when abortion was legalised in the US? 15 years later there was a massive (like ~40-50% IIRC) drop in serious crime and huge improvements in school stats etc. Wht does this have to do with benefits? Incentives. The incentive to abort before legalisation was outweighed by the risk of the crime of doing so. Afterwards, easy choice, so fewer unwanted children were born.

Compare to our "free council house and weekly cheque for all teen mothers" promise. It's easier to get a house and an income if you have kids, whether you want them or not.

For as long as there is a financial (or other) incentive to have children, the problem will exist. All we have to do is make having children much harder to do than NOT having them. 15 years later, problem solved. Right now, the easiest way to move out of your bad parents' home is to get your own home by having kids and repeating the cycle. Stop that, and watch the birth-rate in zero-income families drop off a cliff.

Is it a right to have a child you can't support? What about the child's right to be supported?

How long can you stay in government after taking away free council housing for unemployed teen parents? Who's going to do that and survive the sh*t-storm? (Democracy failing yet again...)

Until then, benefit payments are little more than an appeasement; we rid ourselves of the requirement to actually help people by buying them off. Benefit payments are the guilt-free solution to a problem we don't actually want to solve.

[tut]

China has the right idea, no more than two, and even then only to vetted couples that would be allowed to join a Forum such as ours.

tut

[tut]

tut

[pete]

Oh this isn't fair. I'm currently on South Uist reading this on my phone.

Typing replies to all the Thatcherites just isn't the same on a touch screen.

Mark Steel says it here better than I ever could.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 68785.html


One thing for Tut, manufacturing was moved overseas because it was cheaper? Most folk on here have German cars...

[tut]

Cos they were not born as I was at the start of WW11 Pete.

As a Pilot, my number one motto was "Beware the Hun in the Sun"

So I have always bought British cars.

tut