Margaret Thatcher is dead

[Cleopatra]

Well Carole called us today to invite us to attend the funeral but unfortunately we had to decline the invitation because I am not well enough to travel the distance back to the UK right now.

[wolfie]

Well Carole called us today to invite us to attend the funeral .

Carole?

[Eagle]

She is Marke's twin sister.

[asperity]

Coal, of which this country produces not a bucket any more.

I think you will find that the British coal mining industry isn't dead yet:

 

http://www.ukcoal.com/about-us/at-a-glance/overview-aag

[Robbo]

Harry said it exactly as it happened!. I was a shop steward for a short time back in 1967,

Would that be in ICI alg?

 

For all the so called militancy of the Unions I can't recall one strike in ICI............... could be wrong.

[wolfie]

Carol Thatcher has issued the following statement:

"We have become an orphan".

[wolfie]

I think you will find that the British coal mining industry isn't dead yet:

 

http://www.ukcoal.com/about-us/at-a-glance/overview-aag

To think it lasted longer than Maggie

[boris1066]

 - as she said "there's no such thing as society". 

If you insist on abusing the words of  Mrs. Thatcher I wish you would at least use the complete quote which has been abreviated by the Left for their own  dark use over the years since first quoted  in 1987 which have not got quite the same connotation that you are implying.

 

"They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." 

 

What I find  most disturbing about the exultant rubishing of Margaret Thatcher is the lack of respect for death. The old adage de mortuis nil nisi bonum-'Of the dead say nothing but good'- used to be inscribed in to our psyche.

[observer]

She was disrespected in life by a significant number of folk, so why the difference, now she's dead? Didn't notice any caution about respecting the dead in the case of Saville, or indeed Guy Fawkes every 5th Nov. The full quote is as bad if not worse - "and people must look after themselves first", put simply every man for himself - but some can't afford to or through disability, unable to.

[wolfie]

So let''s get the quote right then "there's no such thing as society" there that's better.

[asperity]

But if you don't look after yourself (in other words expect the state to nanny you through life) how can you look after others? I don't think it's selfish to want to take care of yourself as long as you also take time and effort to aid your neighbours as necessary.

[fugtifino]

On the Jeremy Vine show (BBC R2, no radical agenda stuff) a few days ago, one of the callers (an old boy, in his 70s, quite plummy) worked for a charity in a Welsh mining area.

 

He was sent to distribute food parcels to the families of striking miners.

 

The parcels were confiscated by the Met police (he was very specific about this, it wasn't the local plod), who were told they could distribute it amongst themselves.

 

That's the kind of vindictiveness that some people might find hard to forgive.

[Egbert]

Fugs

 

Even if that little gem is true (which I doubt), it is unlikely to have been ordered by Maggie.

Fact is, I lived in the North throughout the Thatcher years and was never aware of any vindictiveness from No 10 affecting my life. I was not (and am still not) particularly wealthy, so I came from that section of the community which, according to the oafs who now rejoicing at Maggie's death, who should have suffered. But I didn't suffer in any way.

However, I DO remember my left being seriously affected by the activities of the NUM ;prior to the Thatcher years. In those days I used to regularly drive passed a power station that was being picketed by miners. What impressed me was that these poor, downtrodden men were each driving to the picket line in their own car, not even car-sharing. The lines of shiny cars parked along the road were miles long.

Maggie was right to crush the unions, and in particular the NUM and the print unions. They were undemocratic bodies, dominated by militants. I notice that no Labour government since has thought fit to remove the restrictions on union activity that Maggie introduced. Thank God there are some Labour people with sense!

[wolfie]

Fugs

 

Even if that little gem is true

I can assure you that it is true, it was common practice

 

The Tory government of the evil one mobilised the entire strength of the state to crush the National Union of Mineworkers. Paramilitary riot police placed mining communities under total siege. The welfare state was manipulated to starve miners back to work. A scab workforce was organised to break the strike, and billions were spent to keep the power stations running without coal. The full weight of the courts was used to sequestrate the funds of the miners' union and break its resolve.

 

But here's 2 quotes from a right winger in a right wing newspaper.

 

"At least the old nationalised industries actually dug coal, forged steel and built ships. And at least the old industries provided proper jobs for men, and allowed them to support their families."

 

"Had she been as great as she is held to be, we would not be in the terrible mess we are now in, deindustrialised, drugged en masse by dope and antidepressants, demoralised, de-Christianised, bankrupted by deregulated spivs, our criminal justice system an even bigger joke than our State schools and 80 per cent of our laws made abroad".

 

Considering what she did to the Steel industry I am surprised she found a bucket to kick.

 

[harry hayes]

If hearsay (metropolitan police) is allowed, let's just say that nastiness wasn't one-sided.  My first, and second hand, knowledge of the NUM flying pickets would make the met look like saints.  Joe Gormly was a person to do business with - Arthur Scargill wouldn't "compromise with capitalism".

 

Who closed most of the pits down, was it Maggie, or Labour and Wilson.?

 

Happy days

[wolfie]

Who closed most of the pits down, was it Maggie, or Labour and Wilson.?

You ask the question because you have read the answer (clutching of straws) . But if anyone knows anything about mining they would know that pits are constantly being closed and new ones opened. It's one thing to close a pit because of geological or safety or 'end of useful life' reasons it's another (totally wrong) reason to close it out of spite or to win a 'war'.

[fugtifino]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/12/big-six-energy-firms-accused-profiteering

 

Thanks Maggie!

 

 

Oh, and this:

 

http://www.counseling-office.com/surveys/test_psychopathy.phtml

[harry hayes]

Well yes I know the answer.  Too many things are allowed to pass into myths such as Mrs T decimated the mining industry; could live on £53 a week; no such thing as society.

all quoted repeatedly out of context to prove a case.

 

Fairness seems to have gone by the board in so many aspects of life these days (I sound as old as I feel).

 

Happy days

[wolfie]

So the evil one didn't decimate the mining industry  

 

as for quotes out of context, I repeat her quote for clarity "there's no such thing as society"

[observer]

I'm sure one side can boost her memory with expensive State Funerals and the Memorials - which are frankly more about boosting the kudos of the current Tory Gov. Whilst the other side will keep her infamy alive every 5th Nov, thus giving Guy a rest.

[harry hayes]

Wolfie,

 

You know and i know that it was taken from the whole, so as to make it look that she was being heartless, when what she was saying what  still makes sense today.

 

Happy days

[Bazj]

Remember David Wilkie?

 

He was the taxi driver murdered by two striking miners who dropped a concrete post on his car because he was taking a miner to work in a pit in South Wales with a Police Escort.... Tell his kids the miners were really nice hard done to chaps; or even the one who was born two months after he was killed... I'm sure they will have a different opinion

 

[Lt Kije]

Remember Orgreave, Where the Police charged the Miners with their Horses, And then lied and said the miners charged them first, Backed up by the BBC, It took years for the BBC to apologise, and as far as I know the police never have!!!!

 

 The day the UK Police Force became an instrument of Politics instead of Law

[wolfie]

Wolfie,

 

You know and i know that it was taken from the whole, so as to make it look that she was being heartless, when what she was saying what  still makes sense today.

 

Happy days

6 picketers died also  and three children who were picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. RIP

 

Harry, no one needs to make the evil one look heartless, she manages that herself. Don't forget that it was her government that supplied Saddam (her friend) with sodium cyanide and sodium sulphide for use in chemical weapons, together with suits for protection of troops involved in chemical or biological attacks. Also supplied were plutonium, zirconium, thorium oxide and gas spectrometers — all essential for making nuclear bombs. None of this trade was interrupted by the September 1988 massacre of more than 5000 Kurdish civilians in Halabjah and Ekmala by Saddam's airforce using nerve gas,

[Freeborn John]

During the miners strike I worked at a company which ran trucks in and out of power stations, since they didn't carry coal there was an agreement between the unions whereby the vehicles could cross the picket lines freely, the pickets just let them through with a thumbs up and the drivers usually dropped a few quid in the welfare bucket on the way out.

A driver came back from a trip to Bold power station one day white as a sheet, he told us how one of the pickets had gone up to his cab to give him a leaflet and a police officer had run up and split the strikers head open with his truncheon, when the driver protested he was told he'd get the same if he didn't shut up and move the truck, and the copper put a dent in the drivers door to prove it.

So yes, it did go on.