Opinion of Margaret Thatcher

[Ban my account ffs!]

HP for her politics... but she is still the epitome of Englishness personality-wise.  For some reason, I just liked her personally.  

But I think much of her foreign policy was very misguided... saying things like "I like Germany so much I think there should be two of them" when Germany was in the process of reuniting.  Her community charge was an absolute disaster and her contempt for the poor and hard working was unforgivable...

But that English coldness was kind of charming in a way.

[Antonio the Sixth]

OK, let's agree to disagree there - again, it's not like Argentina was going to be able to keep the Falklands anyway, and might easily be driven to effectively abandon the island with a few minimal concessions, so it's not like there would actually be any displaced person.

[Leftbehind]

FF regarding Falklands

Her attitude in that war was exactly the same, and had the same motivations, as the Argentine junta. She was just more successful at their game.

Can you please elaborate?

"Acting tough" in order to impress her population, regain popularity at a time of massive opposition, and retain power. At the cost of human lives.

Don't you mean, "showing backbone", when a military dictatorship invades sovereign British territory?

Yes, Argentina took the first step, but Thatcher needlessly escalated the conflict to make it a full fledged war.

She did what it took to win, you mean.

Negotiations could easily have settled the issue without having to spill blood over a useless and almost empty little f**king island.

I'm sure the British citizens resident on the Falklands don't think it's an 'almost empty little f**king island'. How silly.

I'd rather have 2000 people displaced than 1000 people killed. How silly.

Well that's a very French attitude. If I may say so myself.

The Chagossians would disagree.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Love her, FF in every way.

[All Along The Watchtower]

HP.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Sure, she did a good job taking back the Falklands. There are plenty of better things to criticize her for.

[Lumine]

Thatcher is great example on how politicians can do both great things and bad things, so I don't think you can call her evil or good while being objective. That said, my opinion is FF.

[You kip if you want to...]

HP for her politics... but she is still the epitome of Englishness personality-wise.  For some reason, I just liked her personally.  

Is she our stereotype abroad? I didn't know this.

Oh... God...

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Yes, Argentina took the first step, but Thatcher needlessly escalated the conflict to make it a full fledged war.

Do you seriously think Argentina would have left the Falklands without a war or do you think that the freedom of a few thousand people wasn't worth a war?  The first means you are hopelessly naïve and the second makes you an HP.

Negotiations could easily have settled the issue without having to spill blood over a useless and almost empty little f**king island.

Judging by this reply, it sadly looks like the latter, but I'll continue to hope for the former since I like you.

I'd rather have 2000 people displaced than 1000 people killed. How silly.

Oh well.  I'll still like you even tho you are an HP on this issue.

OK, let's agree to disagree there - again, it's not like Argentina was going to be able to keep the Falklands anyway, and might easily be driven to effectively abandon the island with a few minimal concessions, so it's not like there would actually be any displaced person.

Good.  It looks like my earlier hopes that you are merely naïve on this issue have some substance to them.  There was zero chance that Argentina would have peacefully returned the Falklands to the Falklanders.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Love her, FF in every way.

[Old Man Svensson]

HP, but I won't go around preaching it like it's my religion.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

De-industrialization was probably inevitable, but she made it much harsher than it had to be. Her governments treatment of the miners were a disgrace.

In an interview about a decade or so before he died, Michael Foot (who, for those that don't know, represented a mining area in South Wales when he was Labour leader) made the point that the really awful legacy of the Thatcher government in the coalfields wasn't the loss of mining jobs as such (which he thought was bad but - on some scale at least - basically inevitable), but the fact that absolutely nothing was done to replace the damage done by the loss of jobs in the coal industry.

One detail that I bang on about a lot (because it's important and because most people aren't aware of it) is that some of the places that suffered the most when Thatcher's policies wrt the pound and so on rendered British manufacturing horrifically vulnerable to imports (resulting in job losses on a scale - and at a speed - that's still hard to properly comprehend) in the early 1980s were actually old mining areas where manufacturing jobs had been created in the 60s and 70s to replace jobs lost in the coal industry as a result of the NCB's rationalisation programme in the 1960s. The other types of manufacturing area to really, really, really suffer then were those dependent on the steel industry - which in the longer run extended to what was left of shipbuilding - and inner city areas, in which there was still generally a lot of manufacturing employment up to about 1980 or so. Of course deindustrialisation in many of these places started before the 1980s, but the scale and speed of things increased greatly and, taking us back to Foot, nothing was done (nothing serious anyway) to repair the damage.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I do wonder, in a manner both sly and trollish perhaps, whether the media have remembered who one of Thatcher's bestest buddies in the world of Light Entertainment was?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The only way Argentina could've been forced out of the Falklands without military force is if it was shunned internationally which obviously wasn't happening in South America and even Reagan wasn't willing to cut off US aid. Plus their defeat there toppled the nasty Argentine military junta which makes it impossible to complain about in hindsight. The only real controversy there would be the sinking of the Belgrano, but that's not really something Thatcher had any direct control over, and it's kind of unfair to criticize her specifically for the war when any PM would've done the same thing. If Argentina had invaded four years earlier would Callaghan had done nothing?

There's plenty of valid points of attack against Thatcher, especially in foreign policy, but this isn't one of them.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I do wonder, in a manner both sly and trollish perhaps, whether the media have remembered who one of Thatcher's bestest buddies in the world of Light Entertainment was?

Not to mention the future King George VII...

[Goldwater]

FF.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

FF HP, she's one of the Cold War Enders.

How anyone can see the end of the Cold War as a positive is beyond me.  You realize, people, that with the death of Communism, there isn't even any need of pretense about what your masters are doing to you.

But still, with the USSR gone, there are little to no communist countries (4).

And of course you probably think Gorbachev, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II were HPs too.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Mixed on her personally, but I lean HP.

[TDAS04]

Enabler of South African apartheid, Pinochet, and Pol Pot. 

[morgieb]

Lean HP but did have a non-deniable influence on her country and RIP.

[Marokai Backbeat]

About as bad as a democratically-elected politician can be.

[Hash]

Generally not a huge fan of apartheid supporters.

[Supersonic]

About as bad as a democratically-elected politician can be.

Like this guy:

[Leftbehind]

Yeah, electoral observers would have something to say out that comparison I imagine.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

FF, she's one of the Cold War Enders.

"Reagan and Thatcher ended communism" is a myth.