Margaret Thatcher dead...

My next door neighbour is Mr Average. Thanks to his considerable increase in disposable income under Thatcher, he can afford to paint his house any colour he wants.

 

The comments on this gruesome, spiteful, hating American puppet are based on experience, kid. Your bilge is the religion, as you know: culled out of the air, to suit your economic interests at the costs of the rest of the world.

 

He'll be out of work next week, as a result of her machinations, and he'll not only be deprived of help - he'll be spat at by the naziMail drunks, as you know. Don't you buggers feel any shame, ever?

 

By failing to present any facts whatsoever to support your position, or even attempting to refute any of the facts presented, and instead resorting to cheap personal insults, you are not demonstrating anything at all with regard to Thatcher or her policies - expect that you cannot form a rational argument against them. What you are doing is baring your own character.

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Everything bad that happens in the future is Thatcher's fault....

Let's all rage together....

 

Well, she destroyed the UK, which is something, but I grieve for the British people living in England, as you bullies take over and spite them.

 

Nope, the UK is still here.

Next....

 

For the moment. Your tories will soon see it off however.

 

What a typically political answer. Nothing what so ever to do with my point.

Thatcher painted us Grey actually, not even Magnolia. She was and she opened the door wide open for all the rest of Mediocrity to rule over 'the beauty'.

 

New Labour is no better.

I think our only choices, as far as voting is concerned, are as many Independents as possible. Fragment them as they have fragmented us. And see what we can glue back together from the broken pieces.

 

I don't share your negative outlook on life.

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I don't share your negative outlook on life.

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I don't know who your next door neighbour is...

Thatcher painted us red white and blue, and enabled us to be able to afford the paint.

 

Yet another excellent piece by the journalists at medialens:

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/729-thatcher.html

Part 1

The late American historian Howard Zinn wrote:

'The truth is so often the reverse of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it.' (The Zinn Reader - Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.400)

What, for example, is the truth of the apparently intense 'mainstream' political and media dislike of dictators?

On the face of it, the loathing is visceral, absolute – newspapers are crammed with denunciations of the crimes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the like. The sensitivity is so acute that dissidents who compare these horrors with the West's own crimes are reflexively accused of apologising for tyranny. Forget actions in support, journalists are outraged even by words that might be interpreted as expressing sympathy or support.

Readers will doubtless recall the media bile that greeted then Labour MP George Galloway after he told Saddam Hussein in 1994:

'Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.'

Galloway claimed his intention had been to salute the 'Iraqi people'.

The press has never forgiven or forgotten these words. Our search of the Lexis media database (April 17, 2013) found 204 UK national newspaper articles containing the terms 'Galloway', 'Saddam' and 'indefatigability'.

Last year, for example, the Independent reminded readers that 'signs that Galloway's views stretched the bounds of public acceptability' had long been evident; for example, 'he was memorably saluting the "indefatigability" of Saddam Hussein, long after the Kuwait invasion'. (Rob Marchant, 'Is anyone in Britain still listening to George Galloway's Respect Party? And should they be?,' The Independent, November 9, 2012)

The Guardian also commented last year:

'Indefatigability was just a word with too many syllables until [Galloway] shamelessly rolled it out for the cameras in 1994. Of course the absurdity of the occasion - obeisance to Saddam Hussein - instantly gave the word itself a new meaning.' (Leading article, 'In praise of... indefatigability,' The Guardian, April 5, 2012)

However foolish, Galloway's comments were just that - comments, words. With this example in mind, it is interesting to compare how political and media commentators have responded to the words and deeds of Margaret Thatcher who died on April 8.

Barack Obama declared Thatcher 'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty'.

George HW Bush described her as 'one of the 20th century's fiercest advocates of freedom', whose 'principles in the end helped shape a better, freer world'.

The Economist agreed, praising Thatcher for 'her willingness to stand up to tyranny'.

The Telegraph's Defence Editor, Con 'Con' Coughlin, opined:

'Mrs Thatcher's uncompromising approach to dealing with the world's dictators, from Argentina's General Galtieri to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, derived from her deep admiration of Churchill.'

According to Charles Powell in the Telegraph, Thatcher was driven by 'a determination to change the world for the better, a quality which she shared with President Reagan, probably the most important strand in their relationship.'

This was admirable indeed, Powell noted, although it 'involved being horrid to foreigners from time to time'. Well, nobody's perfect.

Perhaps inspired by such comments, a letter published in the Birmingham Mail responded to Galloway's ugly 'May she burn in the hellfires' reaction to Thatcher's death:

'That's a bit rich coming from the Cuban cigar-smoking MP (what a sick joke calling his party "Respect") who praised that tyrant Saddam Hussein for his "courage, strength and... indefatigability" and yet dishonours a British Prime Minister in the most disgraceful terms.' (Letters, Birmingham Mail, April 13, 2013)

The letter might itself be deemed 'a bit rich' in light of Thatcher's actual record.

Halabja – Twenty-Five Years Later
Coincidentally, the month prior to Thatcher's death marked the 25th anniversary of Iraq's March 16, 1988 gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. It has been estimated that between 3,200-5,000 civilians died as part of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign.

The Halabja atrocity was mentioned frequently in 2002-2003 as Western politics and media propagandised for war on Iraq, ostensibly in response to the 'threat' of weapons of mass destruction. The Lexis database finds (April 17, 2013) no less than 1,227 UK national newspaper articles mentioning Halabja. As we discussed in 2003, the media mostly managed to miss the damning details. By way of a rare exception, Dilip Hiro wrote in the Guardian:

'The images of men, woman and children, frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington... nstead of pressuring him [Saddam] to reverse his stand, or face a ban on the sale of American military equipment and advanced technology to Iraq by the revival of the Senate's bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz chose to say only that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey and "other sources" (which remained obscure) pointed towards Iraqi use of chemical agents. These two elements did not constitute "conclusive" evidence.

'This was the verdict of Shultz's British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe [Thatcher's foreign secretary]: "If conclusive evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled out." As neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further move to get at the truth, Iraq went unpunished.' (Hiro, 'When US turned a blind eye to poison gas,' The Observer, September 1, 2002)

Five months after Halabja, Howe noted in a secret report that 'opportunities for sales of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq will be considerable'. In October 1989, foreign office minister William Waldegrave wrote of Iraq: 'I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed' and that 'the priority of Iraq in our policy should be very high'. (Quoted, Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, Vintage, 2003, p.37)

Also in the immediate aftermath of Halabja, the US approved the export of virus cultures and a $1 billion contract to design and build a petrochemical plant that the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas. Profits were the bottom line. Indeed 'so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan', Hiro noted, 'that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory'.

Walter Lang, a former senior US defence intelligence officer commented:

'The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern.' (Patrick E. Tyler, 'Officers say US aided Iraq in war despite use of gas,' New York Times, August 18, 2002)

In a little over a week after Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006, Halabja was mentioned 74 times in the US press and 29 times in the UK press. It was deemed a defining example of his criminality. In the week since Thatcher died, Halabja has not been mentioned in the UK press.

In 2003, the Guardian described 'the Thatcher government's duplicitous record' on Iraq:

'For more than a decade, yellowing paper files in a government store have hidden the story of the way £1bn of Whitehall money was thrown away in propping up Saddam Hussein's regime and doing favours for arms firms.

'It took place when many in both the British and US administrations were covertly on President Saddam's side.'

A leaked prime-ministerial brief recommended that the best way to avoid public outrage but still profit from Iraq was to sell only non-lethal equipment but to 'define this narrowly':

'"Contracts worth over £150m have been concluded [with Iraq] in the last six months including one for £34m (for armoured recovery vehicles through Jordan)," writes Thomas Trenchard, a junior minister, in a secret letter to Mrs Thatcher in March 1981.

'The letter also says that a meeting with Saddam Hussein "represents a significant step forward in establishing a working relationship with Iraq which... should produce both political and major commercial benefits".

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Yet another excellent piece by the journalists at medialens:

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/729-thatcher.html

Part 1

The late American historian Howard Zinn wrote:

'The truth is so often the reverse of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it.' (The Zinn Reader - Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.400)

What, for example, is the truth of the apparently intense 'mainstream' political and media dislike of dictators?

On the face of it, the loathing is visceral, absolute – newspapers are crammed with denunciations of the crimes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the like. The sensitivity is so acute that dissidents who compare these horrors with the West's own crimes are reflexively accused of apologising for tyranny. Forget actions in support, journalists are outraged even by words that might be interpreted as expressing sympathy or support.

Readers will doubtless recall the media bile that greeted then Labour MP George Galloway after he told Saddam Hussein in 1994:

'Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.'

Galloway claimed his intention had been to salute the 'Iraqi people'.

The press has never forgiven or forgotten these words. Our search of the Lexis media database (April 17, 2013) found 204 UK national newspaper articles containing the terms 'Galloway', 'Saddam' and 'indefatigability'.

Last year, for example, the Independent reminded readers that 'signs that Galloway's views stretched the bounds of public acceptability' had long been evident; for example, 'he was memorably saluting the "indefatigability" of Saddam Hussein, long after the Kuwait invasion'. (Rob Marchant, 'Is anyone in Britain still listening to George Galloway's Respect Party? And should they be?,' The Independent, November 9, 2012)

The Guardian also commented last year:

'Indefatigability was just a word with too many syllables until [Galloway] shamelessly rolled it out for the cameras in 1994. Of course the absurdity of the occasion - obeisance to Saddam Hussein - instantly gave the word itself a new meaning.' (Leading article, 'In praise of... indefatigability,' The Guardian, April 5, 2012)

However foolish, Galloway's comments were just that - comments, words. With this example in mind, it is interesting to compare how political and media commentators have responded to the words and deeds of Margaret Thatcher who died on April 8.

Barack Obama declared Thatcher 'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty'.

George HW Bush described her as 'one of the 20th century's fiercest advocates of freedom', whose 'principles in the end helped shape a better, freer world'.

The Economist agreed, praising Thatcher for 'her willingness to stand up to tyranny'.

The Telegraph's Defence Editor, Con 'Con' Coughlin, opined:

'Mrs Thatcher's uncompromising approach to dealing with the world's dictators, from Argentina's General Galtieri to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, derived from her deep admiration of Churchill.'

According to Charles Powell in the Telegraph, Thatcher was driven by 'a determination to change the world for the better, a quality which she shared with President Reagan, probably the most important strand in their relationship.'

This was admirable indeed, Powell noted, although it 'involved being horrid to foreigners from time to time'. Well, nobody's perfect.

Perhaps inspired by such comments, a letter published in the Birmingham Mail responded to Galloway's ugly 'May she burn in the hellfires' reaction to Thatcher's death:

'That's a bit rich coming from the Cuban cigar-smoking MP (what a sick joke calling his party "Respect") who praised that tyrant Saddam Hussein for his "courage, strength and... indefatigability" and yet dishonours a British Prime Minister in the most disgraceful terms.' (Letters, Birmingham Mail, April 13, 2013)

The letter might itself be deemed 'a bit rich' in light of Thatcher's actual record.

Halabja – Twenty-Five Years Later
Coincidentally, the month prior to Thatcher's death marked the 25th anniversary of Iraq's March 16, 1988 gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. It has been estimated that between 3,200-5,000 civilians died as part of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign.

The Halabja atrocity was mentioned frequently in 2002-2003 as Western politics and media propagandised for war on Iraq, ostensibly in response to the 'threat' of weapons of mass destruction. The Lexis database finds (April 17, 2013) no less than 1,227 UK national newspaper articles mentioning Halabja. As we discussed in 2003, the media mostly managed to miss the damning details. By way of a rare exception, Dilip Hiro wrote in the Guardian:

'The images of men, woman and children, frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media, shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington... nstead of pressuring him [Saddam] to reverse his stand, or face a ban on the sale of American military equipment and advanced technology to Iraq by the revival of the Senate's bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz chose to say only that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey and "other sources" (which remained obscure) pointed towards Iraqi use of chemical agents. These two elements did not constitute "conclusive" evidence.

'This was the verdict of Shultz's British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe [Thatcher's foreign secretary]: "If conclusive evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled out." As neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further move to get at the truth, Iraq went unpunished.' (Hiro, 'When US turned a blind eye to poison gas,' The Observer, September 1, 2002)

Five months after Halabja, Howe noted in a secret report that 'opportunities for sales of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq will be considerable'. In October 1989, foreign office minister William Waldegrave wrote of Iraq: 'I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed' and that 'the priority of Iraq in our policy should be very high'. (Quoted, Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, Vintage, 2003, p.37)

Also in the immediate aftermath of Halabja, the US approved the export of virus cultures and a $1 billion contract to design and build a petrochemical plant that the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas. Profits were the bottom line. Indeed 'so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan', Hiro noted, 'that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory'.

Walter Lang, a former senior US defence intelligence officer commented:

'The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern.' (Patrick E. Tyler, 'Officers say US aided Iraq in war despite use of gas,' New York Times, August 18, 2002)

In a little over a week after Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006, Halabja was mentioned 74 times in the US press and 29 times in the UK press. It was deemed a defining example of his criminality. In the week since Thatcher died, Halabja has not been mentioned in the UK press.

In 2003, the Guardian described 'the Thatcher government's duplicitous record' on Iraq:

'For more than a decade, yellowing paper files in a government store have hidden the story of the way £1bn of Whitehall money was thrown away in propping up Saddam Hussein's regime and doing favours for arms firms.

'It took place when many in both the British and US administrations were covertly on President Saddam's side.'

A leaked prime-ministerial brief recommended that the best way to avoid public outrage but still profit from Iraq was to sell only non-lethal equipment but to 'define this narrowly':

'"Contracts worth over £150m have been concluded [with Iraq] in the last six months including one for £34m (for armoured recovery vehicles through Jordan)," writes Thomas Trenchard, a junior minister, in a secret letter to Mrs Thatcher in March 1981.

'The letter also says that a meeting with Saddam Hussein "represents a significant step forward in establishing a working relationship with Iraq which... should produce both political and major commercial benefits".

 

Metophorically my Neighbour is the British


So now Thatcher has usurped James the VI of Scotland/ I of The United Kingdom has she ? Mmmmm you and she both would wish our History to be wiped clean as beginning with Thatcher.

'There is no such thing as society' or history according to you.

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Metophorically my Neighbour is the British


So now Thatcher has usurped James the VI of Scotland/ I of The United Kingdom has she ? Mmmmm you and she both would wish our History to be wiped clean as beginning with Thatcher.

'There is no such thing as society' or history according to you.

 

Well. inevitably, I favour a new Labour Party (i.e. the opposite of the Tory 'New Labour') but I do see what you mean,and sympathise.

 

Any country without a 'Left' is in deep trouble, for without it there is no peoples voice in Parliament. We have no 'Left' and we have no hope of one emerging from out of what is now sitting in Parliament, at least not as yet. So by 2015 the only possible orthodox way of protest that I see is to fragment that which has established it's self so solidly, both sides of the House.

'They' have none so we the people need a bit of fore thought and farsightedness. If it is a mess with a houseful of Independents, fine, so what? They all make a mess anyway.

Belgium lived with out a Gov for a couple of years recently. The wheels kept on turning

 

Dusty, your position is for you to take, however, I have to say I had far more respect for you before you nailed your colours to this particular mast.

 

Have you ever heard the term ''strawman argument''?

In my first post in this thread I listed a bunch of stuff Thatcher did that I disagree with.

I suggest you try using a narrower brush.

 

Well like I said, I am only defending the facts.

I respect people who accept facts, whether they like them or not, more than I respect those who ignore them when they don't fit in with preconceived notions.

The former is being honest, while the latter is being less than entirely honest, and I believe honesty is the best policy.

 

You are a Tory.

That much is evident.

I would guess you are around the same age, or a bit older than me.

You sound like you are still a Tory.

How you can support such a nefarious and odious party, call yourself an anti Zionist, and sport that avatar is beyond me.

 

The first thing I was told when I took my degree was that you can make statistics say anything. The picture is very different from your naive Toryism. Seriously most of what you say just sounds like Tory slogans. Having bought spin does not impress me at all, particularly when, in the end, it will hurt you and yours.

 

Even if I won 40million on the rollover, put all of it on the Grand National at 66/1, and won that as well, I would never vote for the filthy Tories, nor actually would I vote for any of the establishment parties, but esp not them.

 

You suggested she gave us the Union Jack did you not ? What else could you have meant by the Red White and Blue ? Well I hate to break it to you 'Lady' but it has been around since the 17th Century and since I think Thatcher was a traitor, I take exception to your insinuation that it was Thatcher, a Politician, who gave it to us. and so not, after all, James Ist.

Or did you perhaps mean it meant nothing before her time ?

 

You don't understand what I am saying. You want to put forward the notion that the majority of people were better off under Thatcher based on income. I am saying that you are not considering that a significant part of the population became unemployed and had their incomes drop significantly under Thatcher. This is evidenced by the increase in the percentage of the population living under 60 per cent of the median income. In other words, even if the majority saw an increase in income, it came at the expense of a significant portion of the population becoming unemployed and/or seeing their income drop significantly. That you either or not acknowledging, ignoring, or don't seem to think matters.

The bubble had been forming for some time when in burst towards the end of 1989. That's the way things like this develop.

I am saying than income inequality is growing in China. There is an income growing gap between people working in urban areas where the so called benefits of globalization are taking place, and the rural population.

Perhaps you did not look carefully at the article that contains that graph. There were a couple of points that the author was making. Before referring to the graph, he makes the point that the way the government has calculated the poverty level for the graph, is suspect. He says this because they calculated the poverty level back in the 70s based on a particular calorie level intake. However, to calculate the poverty level in subsequent years, instead of recalculating that value, the merely adjusted it based on the amount the consumer price index moved. Then he goes on to say that even if you accept the statistics as they are, something very interesting can be seen. If you look at the period from 1973 to 1987 the percentage falls faster, than from 1987 to 2004, which is when the growth took place. So poverty was actually decreasing faster before the growth due to foreign investment, than during it. This begs the question, did the growth actually slow the rate in the reduction of poverty? That's what the graph was about.

 

LOL!

Again you don't understand. They were trying to limit the rate of money growth. To say that they overshot their targets means that money grew faster than what they wanted it to.

 

I've probably voted Conservative most often, although I have also voted Labour. I can't even remember who I voted for last time around, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't either of them. It might have been SNP come to think of it. If Labour comes up with a policy for public banking in time for the next election, as some folk are urging them to do, and which I also consider to be a major issue, then I may well vote for them next time.

It's you who labeled me as an anti-Zionist, I never called myself any such thing. Anyway, you and I both agree with Thatcher on the West Bank settlements. At least we all have that in common.

I picked my avatar when I believed Scotland would be better off as an independent country, although now I'm not so sure. If it entails full membership of the EU and using their currency, then I would rather be ruled by elected politicians in London than un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels. They replaced the elected PM of Italy with an un-elected eurocrat, and now they've stolen peoples' life savings from their bank accounts in Cyprus. It would be like living under a blatantly corrupt and authoritarian dictatorship. Like the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England has a mandate to keep unemployment as well as inflation down, whereas the European central bank only has a mandate to keep inflation down. So no surprise that nothing is being done about the high unemployment in countries like Greece. If the eventual aim of the EU is to have a United States of Europe, as I suspect it is, then in due course we wouldn't be an independent country anyway. More devolution might be best for the short term, IMO. So my avatar now serves to ward off the Europeans, rather than the English.

To be clear on my position on Israel, as far as I'm concerned Israel has as much right to exist as any other country does, including of course Palestine. But as it's also my opinion that Israel has no right to refuse to recognise the rights of the Palestinian refugees, and if they were all to return to Israel there would be no more Israel, I suppose that might make me an ''anti-Zionist'' in some peoples' books. I'm sure we would agree on more specifics than we would disagree on, WRT Israel.

But I consider such labels to be divisive, so I don't think of other people in such terms. I prefer think of us all as human beings, who are bound to agree on some matters, and disagree on others.

Dusty

 

Coming from the person who wouldn't even acknowledge, never mind agree with the statistics in an article that you yourself posted a link to, that's an amusing post.