So Thatcher had a lot more evil in her than the infamous poll tax...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's not surprising that there are vast segments of the British population eagerly awaiting this horrible woman's death.

Oh don't be ridiculous.

He's not being even slightly ridiculous; large segments of the British population do indeed eagerly await the death of this horrible woman.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyways, I'm amused (and vaguely horrified, though certainly not even mildly surprised) to note that Keith Joseph's creepy enthusiasm for eugenics didn't stop in the mid 1970s.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No one is calling for her to be shot; no one (well, except the Provos) wanted that in the 1980s either. It's just that a lot of people will be satisfied at her passing. I suppose that might come across as a little ugly (and if I'm being honest it sort of is) but you have to understand that it is a reaction to something that was also rather ugly.

She defined large sections of British society as enemies - personal enemies - and shaped policies accordingly. If you do that, then you don't get to expect those same people to show even a basic level of respect. The political is personal sometimes...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

but people should have a bit more compassion.

Yes, Thatcher's lack of compassion was an awful thing. Led directly to the wrecking of countless lives.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyways, other things uncovered after their three-decade burial include this and this. As is often the way, nothing ought to be a surprise, as such.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is this the mirror image of the Chavez thread?  It's ok to be "satisfied" with the death of a politician if you disagree with them....except when it's not.

It is not a question of 'disagreement'. To repeat, Thatcher defined large sections of British society as her personal enemies and shaped government policy accordingly. Worse, she didn't even bother to disguise that fact. This is not something that normally happens in democracies. Normal rules of behavior don't exactly apply. Again, I don't deny that it's ugly, but British politics in the 1980s was ugly, and its legacy is ugly. There's no point in pretending otherwise; it never comes across as anything other than false.

Feel free to feel as disgusted as you feel, just don't pretend that this is a 'normal' situation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We're all shaped by things that happened when we were children. I'm tempted to think that the first ten, maybe twelve, of someone's life is the most important in shaping who (and what) they are. My Grandad always had a special loathing for Churchill because of the return to the Gold Standard in 1925 and the resulting impoverishment of most of the Durham coalfield, his family included; he was very young at the time.

Anyway, emotional reactions to things we don't personally remember are also quite common and don't have all that much to do with how close the event was to the present; the same teenagers who have very fixed opinions of Thatcher and Thatcherism probably draw a blank at a photo of John Major. I suspect that the intensity of feeling about Thatcher will start to die down after she's dead.