Margaret Thatcher The Iron Lady

[surfergirl]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/margaret-thatcher

I thought she had passed away a while ago.

But only tonight, She was 87yrs Amazing Lady.

She is the only PM. I know to take her own Ironing board to her residents. She didn't believe the tax payers should pay for her bills.

[retroHelen]

It was an interesting time during her Premiership. She consolidated the Anglo-American alliance with Mr Reagan. Then they went on to sue for an end to the Cold War with Mr Gorbachev - "A man with whom I can do business" she said of him.

During her term the Western World's people started to become richer by living in debt and bosses giving themselves titles and blatantly drawing larger than necessary wages from companies because that way of living was encouraged - which has come back to haunt us now someone is expected to pay for the previous excesses and heavily indebted industries have been dissolved and unemployment has risen.

Also during that era people became more aware of the effect that humans were having on the environment by their greedy commerce and there was a backlash against the Mutual Assured Destruction of the Nuclear Armament Race. Droughts and starvation rampaged around parts of Africa. We also began to see the results of living a hedonistic lifestyle as AIDS and other STDs spread alarmingly. However, in the UK, being judgemental about people's promiscuous lifestyles was not allowed and giving out free contraception and restricting who could donate blood became the only answer the government here could come up with to slow the rates of HIV.

My Uncle was the manager of 'Maggy Thatcher's Farm' - the nickname for the Polaris/Trident/Astute Nuclear Submarine program at Barrow. She also used him to help close various coal-mines and steel industries where the Unions were striking and causing her problems. This drastic measure to 'break the power of the unions' sent whole areas of England and Wales into decline, so she polarises people they either love or hate her depending on how she impacted on their lives - same went for my Uncle!

[Shawnster]

Mags!

[Dustparticle]

I remember her in 1980's. Reagan help her with Falkland Islands War. Some wonder why go war over islands? Answer: OIL!

[Myree]

Oil seems to be the popular reason for modern warfare.

I'm turned off by those rejoicing over her death.

[Mei]

I'm turned off by those rejoicing over her death.

Exactly, Sister Fiona. Many people are finding it necessary to criticize her political policies and her character but no one can read her heart other than Jehovah.

[retroHelen]

Yes, there have been street parties organised to celebrate her death. People shown dancing on newspapers depicting pictures of her. People, even people of authority, coming on TV saying that they hated her and good riddance.

Ex-opposition party Prime Minister Mr Blair (for the Labour Party) commented to the effect that it shows that vast swathes of mankind do not have respect dignity nor Christian values any more. He did not agree with her policies and had to deal with the aftermath of her actions when he and his party was voted into power after the Conservatives, but he would not dream of behaving in such a way over anyone's death.

[retroHelen]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/looters-arrested-at-street-party-in-brixton-to-celebrate-death-of-margaret-thatcher-8565270.html

[Bec C]

She was a wicked person, I'm finding it very hard to stay quiet in these convos around. She and her government have no time for working class people and I for one am not sad she's gone. The parties are happening where she destroyed peoples lives the most. I knew her death would be controversial, as was her life.

I'm not saying anymore as it won't be very christian and I'll be dissappointed with myself

[retroHelen]

I'm turned off by those rejoicing over her death.

Exactly, Sister Fiona. Many people are finding it necessary to criticize her political policies and her character but no one can read her heart other than Jehovah.

I agree. My grandfather started the Unions in our area and his son turned against Dad's family and with Mrs Thatcher sought to crush them, but I would not judge anyone as wicked. More coal mines closed under opposition Prime minister Harold Wilson in the 1960's than under Mrs Thatcher.

Mr Kinnock - her opposition leader was asked who destroyed the mines/unions and even he - of the party funded by Unions - said that it was the rabid hatred of Conservatism that meant that socialist Union leaders were calling strikes just to undermine the government and that Mr Arthur Scargill of the Miner's Union destroyed the mineworkers jobs. I lived through that time and where I worked the union man called us all out on strike regularly asking for a massive 20% pay rise. He thought it was an impossible thing to ask for, but he was rattling the government because he was a Trotsky-ite type of Communist. He didn't care about the hardship of myself and fellow workers, called out without money to pay bills and mortgages and leaving work that piled up that we had to catch up with on return.

I got stomach ulcers and I don't blame Thatcher for stalling in bowing to the OTT demands of the Union. In the end we did get 20%, but lost a lot of staff to pay for it and I had to do the job of 3 people from then on, on the higher wage - I could not manage that workload and in the end had to resign on sick.

I'm no fan of Thatcher - she privatised a lot of industries and her cronies all got themselves onto these new privatised executive boards on big wages - the start of obvious corporate greed, but she did win 3 elections because the majority believed that she was doing right for the Country. The previous government to her was crumbling with unburied bodies, rubbish in the streets, electricity cuts, food shortages in the shops because of endless strikes, so she had to do something to stop the Unions crippling the country. The previous government had done nothing to tackle foreign monetary policy and the country was being controlled by the International Monetary Fund. The country was threatened by the Cold War and the Nuclear Arms race needed tackling and previous governments had done little regarding the country's alliances or negotiations. Her policies were called 'necessary difficult medicine' that many agreed had to be taken, so they voted for her.

It's different today, because the economic situation is being kept going by greedy bankers and bosses and ordinary people are having to pay by austere measures. Much of the industry is no longer here because of greedy bosses, many from abroad,once it was privatised, asset stripped, sold it off, pocketed the results and closed it down.

[Lin ASL Ebron]

Thank you for sharing your experience. Satan uses politics to keep people divided. In all human run societies there must be "winners and "losers", and the "losers" are told to choke it down "for the good of the country". It always makes me think back to what Samuel tried to explain to the Israelites when they insisted on a human king. Samuel told them that human rule would be very oppressive and they would lose control over their possessions, but they didn't want to hear that, so Jehovah gave them what they asked for, but He also told them:

"And YOU will certainly cry out in that day by reason of YOUR king, whom YOU have chosen for yourselves, but Jehovah will not answer YOU in that day."

It's amazing to watch politics because, especially now, it doesn't seem to matter where you live, people are really fed up with their "current" governments, but they still believe "if we could just vote the right man/woman into office, THEN everything will be fine". And that actually means, "then I'll get to be one of the winners and someone else can be a loser". So they don't really care about good government. If they're getting some of the things they want, they don't much care that others are suffering to provide what they're getting. That's why citizens in the richer nations haven't really cared about what happened to people in "third world" countries. They liked their leaders telling them "we're better than they are" or "they're not like us, so therefore we need to go over there and help them so they can be more like us and if they don't like it, we'll bomb them into Democracy", because everyone knows it has nothing to do with the natural resources in those place.

Even the way Europe is portrayed in the U.S. main stream media, "it's over there", in Greece, Spain, Cyprus. And it's prefaced with some how the citizens have brought hardship on themselves or they're lazy and didn't really work and got all this free stuff (living wage, free healthcare, etc.) and now they're just mad because they have to pay for it. And that allows people here to not see or understand that their politicians, bankers and multi-national corporations are doing the same things here in America, but calling it something other than austerity.

The propaganda is staggering. And if you just take their word for it and don't look/read anything else, it sounds like it makes sense, truly demon inspired expressions.

It's hard for people to acknowledge that a lot of those policies that were implemented in the 60s, 70s and 80s on "third world" countries are now being imposed in the richer nations. Some see it, after they've suffered and taken a look around at what has actually been done rather than just what our local and cable news channels feed us as "news".

And despite it all, they still don't want to hear anything about God's Kingdom. The Good News is truly veiled to those who are not willing to acknowledge Jehovah as the Only True God and the true position and purpose of Jesus' sacrifice.

So, they get the only natural outcome of putting their trust in earthling man/woman and the sons/daughters of nobles.

The Sacred Secret is truly Good News!

Agape'

Lin

[retroHelen]

Her official funeral is tomorrow and many people have come on the media to say they will be disrupting the procession to the church with protests and placard waving and shouting.

Some say they will be there protesting against Iraq, (which happened after she was retired from politics), because the previous Prime Minister Mr Blair will be at the funeral. People no longer respect time place and dignity and feel they 'have the right' to vent their anger about anything no matter what is going on around them. There have been enough protests and anti-Thatcher hate parties in the streets of many places since her death was announced. When they showed some protest gatherings on TV they found most of the people in the protest weren't even born when Mrs Thatcher was in power - they just wanted to hijack the event to enjoy ranting rioting and vandalizing while any protest was going on! It just makes this country look full of angry bad-mannered people to the World.

One Liverpool resident even shouted that he was rioting because he blamed Mrs Thatcher for the 'Hillsborough Disaster'! This had nothing to do with her. It was when hundreds of football supporters crowded into a football ground and the Police did not control this and many poor people were trampled to death.