[slackline]

Apartheid has been mentioned in many of the pieces I've read, but that was the first mention of homophobia I've come across in this context.

[Johnny Brown]

It's the economy, stupid.

Very interesting.

Bit more thinking and reading for me then, since I thought something completely different.

This is the most balanced review I've read so far:

New Yorker: for and against thatcherism

(Comments are well worth reading too. Not noticed such a high standard on a Uk paper)

[mrjonathanr]

Good find, thanks.

[tomtom]

Nice article JB - though does not seem to take into account how the UK had all that income from N.Sea Oil that Germany didnt... but a good read - thanks.

In a tutorial today - I was chatting to a bunch of second years for ten min or so about Thatcher - mostly they were indifferent, their main points were about how daft it was for 20yr old protesters to be celebrating her death in the street (a fair point) and why the populus should be paying for the funeral etc..

I rambled on a bit about being a teenager during the thatcher years and the miners strike etc.. about dividing the country, north south split etc.. then recounting witnessing the poll tax riots - I then talked about how many people I knew wished (at the time) that she had died in the Brighton bombing (many many did IIRC..)... I then stopped and looked - and they were all looking quite aghast at me!

I'll get me donkey jacket...

[Johnny Brown]

does not seem to take into account how the UK had all that income from N.Sea Oil

Addressed in the comments I think - as is the bald assertion early on that Cameron et al dare not touch the NHS...

[Pantontino]

JB, that is a good article, and I realise it is focussed upon her economic legacy, but on the charge sheet against her I would put the creation of an entrenched criminal underclass.

She turned her back on many people in the north, leaving communities jobless and desolate. Into that vacuum walked heroin and later crack (maybe she was proud of the entrepeneurial spirit shown by the dealers and gangsters?). The damage that caused to those communities and the individuals caught up in it is immense, but worst of all that criminal underclass has remained entrenched.

Thatcher always talked about looking after "our people" and built her policies to favour that select part of society - I wonder what those same people thought when their nice house got burgled by a desperate smackhead on an acquisitional rampage? (Actually, I can well imagine what they thought.)

[Johnny Brown]

Sure. I didn't post it in her defence; whatever pigeonhole folk may now have placed me in...

[johnx2]

some data - main impact was on manufacturing, strikes and unemploment...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts

...and a picture from today, just before the sexy dancing penguins did their tap number down the aisle.  I'm afraid my personal reaction to these people tends to the visceral and instinctive.




(So no, not rational - like some people's reactions I never understood to Cherie Blair.)