I tweeted about it and was subsequently told off for just calling her 'Thatcher' as apparently it was 'disrespectful' ..... DISRESPECTFUL? I tweeted back that I had no respect for her whilst she was alive so why should I now?
I never like to hear anyone has died nor do I ever wish anyone to die but I also do not pretend upon hearing about death that I liked or respected them when I did not.
I was brought up throughout Thatcherite Britain and I watched everyone around me struggle from my Dad to his friends, to my local economy and the country itself.
It was very like how I feel about things at the moment. The rich are thriving and those desperate and in need struggle more and more each day.
Services and benefits being cut, prices rising, being penalised for being a single parent, disabled, having an extra bedroom (even if you need one for your children to be allowed to visit) services on local and national scales and business dying.
I don't know a huge deal about politics but I do know what is morally right and this government [just as her's] does not seem to.
I watched privatisation in the 80's pick apart household companies that it was supposed to be helping. During the recession in the early 80s the Tories had begun to propose privatisation as a healing remedy, The thought was that privatisation would make the large utility companies more efficient and productive therefore making Britain more competitive in relation to its rivals in Europe. So this period saw the government sell off Jaguar, BT, what was left of Cable & Wireless and British Aerospace, Britoil and British Gas for starters then on to Steel and British Petroleum; overall I think it was 42 companies! So the Thatcher administration had decided to focus on privatising the main utilities this country had.
I read a piece on Thatcherite Britain and whether anything she did actually helped the economy at all by Dr Middleton from Bristol he insists the 1980s fail badly in equality of income and the stability of the economy itself.
Coddled by tax cuts and soaring house prices, high earners controlled an ever-widening share of national income. ( sound familiar?)
And boom-and-bust policies, he insists, "were a macroeconomic disaster."
"They took a stable economy and turned it into an unstable one."
What she did to the utilities I worry that Cameron will do to public services, NHS via Virgin or Apple? Who knows ... Scares the crap out of me.
With her seeing the back of the unions and belittling the common working man, who does speak for us anymore? In the work place we are on our own which was one of the goals - to stop the workforce demanding pay increases etc making business far more alluring to investors.
I don't remember much about the 80s being fun, except maybe the fashion - even the charts were full of anti Thatcher music. Bands singing about disillusionment and the stresses of living under such a right wing leadership. Everything was depressing.
War, poverty and oppression; that is what I remember of her and not much else!
I remember watching the Miners riots and grown men crying and screaming to save their jobs/areas/ communities and getting nowhere.
The best thing about her? Her Spitting Image puppet which made me laugh far more than anything she ever did.
Wish they would come back - would love to see what the show would do to Cameron and Clegg!
AND she took away my milk and MY dentist! So no, sorry not crying over any spilt or stolen milk.....
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