I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but some of the postings on here are ridiculous.
The country was a basket case in 1979 when she came into power because of the stranglehold of 4 or 5 unions with the NUM being the main culprit.
Bodies were left unburied in Liverpool, whose council was even considering taking the bodies out to sea to dispose of them. Rubbish piled high in the streets. Red Robbo the union convenor at British Leyland, practically singlehandedly destroyed the British car industry. We couldn't even sell our products to Russia because of the quality. The miners were led by Arthur Scargill who refused to ballot his members, and was not interested in concilliation, but was determined to bring the elected government down, like he had done previously, but the fact was he was so stupid that he took his men out in the middle of summer when there were mountains of coal stocks.
I find it interesting that those who experienced the miners strike on here seem to have conveniently forgotten that Labour closed twice as many mines during the Premierships of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, then Thatcher did, and also that Labour were in power from 1997 to 2010 and throughout their time in office made no attempt to either reverse the closures, or expanding the coal industryby opening new mines. The simple fact is that nearly every mine was subsidised by our taxes, and could not complete with open cast coal from Australia.
Labour could have brought new industries to the affected areas if they really cared, in reality they did sod all for the mining and ex mining communities, and one of the last things they did in power in 2010 was to standby whilst the Steel blast furnace at Redcar closed, for which they paid the price by losing the seat in 2010.
And where is the class warrrior Arthur Scargill today, still living in the Barnsley area and currently taking the near bankrupt NUM to court to force them to maintain his right to grace and favour rights to an apartment they pay for, but can't afford in London. A true comrade, champagne and all.
Thatcher did some stupid things, but she also did a lot of things that were necessary to save our country from economic meltdown, and I have no doubt you will find on Wednesday that the vast majority of the public think that, and will give her a respectful send off.
On my occasional visits here I am amazed at what appears to be a community that certainly amongst the ones who post seem to be composed exclusively of lefties, who quote the Mirror and the Gruniad as impartial sources.
What the left want whether it be complaining about the cost of the Queen Mothers funeral, or the cost of celebrating the Queens jubilee, or complaining about the cost of this funeral, is not what the people want, who are socially conservative, patriotic and royalist. In effect many of you are sitting on the wrong side of the fence with regard to the British public, which begs the question what on earth are you doing here when presumably you could be much happier in a true socialist republic like North Korea.
