Thatcher - Evidence Suggests She Was Thick As Shite

[semper occultus]

...you're yet to explain where Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle & George W. sit in this cognitive hierarchy...

[Feilan]

whether or not there were vodkas and shakespeare renditions present and instigating in the genesis of this thread - i am glad it happened.

It's just refreshing in the most literal sense to go anywhere these days and enjoy good rhetoric on the topic of the Iron(y) Lady who pondered and implemented such quaint neo-feudal notions as a poll tax aka a tax paid by citizens to the state for the privilege of drawing breath with its permission and according to its benefit. By 'good' I obviously mean perspectives in accord with mine own, natch...



I recall that era of evildoers and the particular dominance of a triumvirate of WTFness - The Thatcher, the Raygun and the Mulroney of the Gucci shoes. I got through junior high, high school and beyond while they were busy delivering someone's lines and the world started burning in earnest.

It was not a happy time. The music had died the day before. A notable swath of people had been putting tremendous energy into educating themselves and others about the kind of shit really going on for years and had got roughly nowhere with it. Slavery's proponents never gave up; they adapted ...

I'd just sort of adjusted (not really) to the notion that everybody who was anybody was stockpiling nuclear weapons and had been since before I was born when this reality tunnel pressed on me to contemplate how sex would henceforth forever be deadly in a whole new horrible way.

People wore bad things. Women dressed for the office wearing shoulder pads. Jesus.

So much of what so-called responsible adults were conspiring to get on with struck me not only cruel but mindLESS, at the very least one or the other. "Hello, world. Oh...this is what we're doing? WTF?...o_O."

We were posted to a place in Berkshire in 1980 for 11 months. Classmates at the school I was sent to taught me a song about Maggot Thatcher. It was a ring-around-the-rosie kind of children's taunt song, and I don't remember the words. The evidence was ever abundant about any and every one of these hacks. Judging by the persistent, seemingly unconscious force of all of us little people playing along, too many of whom yearn to walk among the overlords and will settle for applauding and sanctioning their every move to tighten the shackles - the beat goes on.

Heartless stupidity is the new black. It also seems to be a prerequisite for access to first class seating options. In order for some rancid, nasty chucklehead at some helm somewhere to order a bombing, some other more numerous cadre of vicious fucks have to invest a lot of effort into designing new weapons and weaponizing new technologies. Why and how does a person find themselves working on the assembly line of a weapons manufacturer?

Who are these, we - people? The hydra has many eyes and hands.

M-hm. I ramble because I'm stoned - please excuse an admittedly anecdotal tangent bringing little or no particular meat/TVP to this otherwise nourishing soup.

[StarmanSkye]

Heyia Feilan -- That REALLY rocks! Your free-thinking reflection is very, very righteous & insightful, from the deep-heart-gritty, not flighty at all.
Thanks for sharing it!

That is a kick, about how people who ought to know better, buy-into the bullshit and line-up to build the weapons that support the feudal system which enslaves & degrades them.

It is the crowning achievement of contributory idiocy which Reagan, Thatcher & Mulrooney were in the vanguard promoting -- and has since been developed into an institutionalized corporate/police state techno-art & science franchise being exported worldwide.

[justdrew]

Born poor? Bad luck, you have won last prize in the lottery of life
The rise of individualism and the celebration of the private over the public is undermining the strength of our social institutions
by Will Hutton | The Observer, Saturday 14 July 2012

The economic and social crises are merging. The protracted "contained" depression is making life ever harder and disillusioning for those, and their children, trapped at the bottom – while making those at the top ever more robust about looking after themselves and their own. A mean world growing still meaner fosters division and mutual suspicion.

In the US, Robert Putnam, the pioneering social scientist whose book Bowling Alone set out an electrifying account of a new American loneliness, has been revealing the results of another round of social research. Class is becoming ever more important as a determinant of outcomes in American life; it now trumps race, he argues, and the differences can be observed very early on in the children of different classes.

In particular the middle class of whatever ethnic background is spending more on what Putnam calls its children's "enrichment activities" so important for psychological wellbeing and character building; in fact they are spending 11 times more than those at the bottom. In 1972, working-class children from the bottom quartile of earners were just as likely to participate in a wide range of sporting and cultural events as children from the top quartile. No more. A chasm has opened, claims Putnam. Whether it is captaining a school sports team, winning an internship or being read to at night the middle-class child's chances are at least two times better.

As a result, the arteries in American society are hardening. Social mobility is in decline, but, worse, the general drop in trust observable in all social classes is most marked among the poorest third of Americans. Nor should it be any surprise that they are "cynical and even paranoid", writes Putnam: it is a rational response to their situation. Every institution that might be expected to alleviate their plight – family, school, voluntary organisations and church – has become dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, the rich, dealing themselves out of society's institutions into ever stronger and sealed ghettoes of their own, become ever more ignorant of the world around them even while they ensure their off-spring scoop life's prizes.

There are parallels in Britain. The rise of rightwing individualism and an accompanying celebration of the private and distrust of the public, is undermining the diversity and strength of our social institutions. The much vaunted flexible labour market – code for a world in which its principle institution, the trade union, is enfeebled and workers are treated as commodities – is a mortal threat to the cohesion of the working-class family and its chances of being a platform for aspiration and mobility. It is not just lack of money that undermines parents' capacity to support enrichment activities; they can't spend time with their children because of the irregular and anti-social hours they are forced to work.

The stress makes holding marriages together harder, reinforced by a cultural disposition that marital relationships occupy the same disposable space as junk food or contemporary job contracts. Single parent families are disproportionately high among the poorest, with all the implications for children. Company heads relegate stewarding their employees far below the achievement of their personal bonus; this was exemplified last week by the crisis at G4S. The conservative wisdom of the age is that "efficiency" results from just such a nexus. By contrast, the truth is that organisations – whether delivering Olympic security or long- run innovation – need to husband and nurture their staff.

Last but not least, there is the education system. Private schools are much more important in Britain and America than in Canada and Australia; unsurprisingly it follows, as the Carnegie Corporation/Sutton Trust recent social mobility summit found, that social mobility is much lower in Britain and America. The privately educated, the quintessential expression of enrichment activity, not only dominate the upper echelons of British society, so do their children. Private schools play a pivotal role in repressing mobility; however good state schools become, private schools' well-understood job is to stay a step ahead and deliver economic and social advantage.

Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, charged by the prime minister with trying to persuade private schools to sponsor academies, acknowledged in these pages that most governing bodies did not want to bond with state schools. Parents would object. He found it demoralising and frustrating – worrying proof that independent schools had begun to lose their sense of moral vision.

The moral decline of private schools that Mr Seldon describes is the mirror image of the moral decline of much of our business and financial elite with similar origins: that the pursuit of individual advantage trumps obligations to others and the upholding of what society holds in common. Taxes are what little people pay. State schools are for hoi poloi, not us. Companies are only legal constructs to be bought and sold as casino chips — not social institutions that co-create wealth in a complex, iterative relationship with the society around them. Banks can lend indiscriminately, secure that losses will be socialised and gains privatised. Trade unions only inhibit the autonomy of management and qualify shareholder rights.

Yet it is this bad capitalism – and the socially immobile society that accompanies it – that has brought the British economy to its knees. A regular visitor to No 10 tells me wryly that the reason the government has lost the competence gene is that almost everyone he meets is an ex-public school boy like him. There is too little social diversity and knowledge of broader Britain: they are locked in bad capitalism along with the social constructs and attitudes that created it. They cannot know what to do because the correct policies go against their every Tory instinct.

Yet against the Tory grain, reality will out. Under Lib Dem pressure the coalition is creating a social mobility commission. Tax evasion has become socially toxic. There are moves to reform finance. There is a growing recognition that government has to play a catalytic role shaping a better capitalism – to the growing dismay of the Conservative right.

In this debate Thatcherite Toryism has nothing to offer. A socially mobile, economically dynamic country will spring from different philosophic and political roots – more liberal, more Whiggish and more social democratic. Thatcherite Toryism, with nothing to offer the country but euroscepticism and jingoism, is about to enter a period of long decline. The open question is whether Labour can articulate what needs to be done – and build the broad based coalition to do it. It is the conundrum on which the future of British politics – and the future of our children – hangs.

[MinM]

Guys, did I come in here a week or so ago and start raving about Margaret Thatch.... aw hell naw!

I kind of apologise for this thread. It was not well-planned, and none of the points I meant to make in it were made in it by me (thankfully Brekin did it all for me though, more or less, with a single quote... and Nordic too in his post).

I apologise to blankly for going all portentuous Shakespearian on him/her in my last reply there. It was the result of having a bottle of vodka and watching that new version of Richard II that was on BBC 2 recently not long before signing in to RI. My reply to blankly was kind of still spun by the fantastic dialogue and acting from that brilliant production even hours later when i was pished as a newt and destined for bed.

Anyways, this thread had a not-very-good and ill-judged OP - it was mostly just an excuse to post the short Alan Budd interview about there being "people behind the people who..." - but I'm grateful that you guys were able to take it and make something pretty decent out of it.

The central point stands. She wasn't all that bright, much like Reagan, and "many dark actors" were hugely empowered by the lack of brain-power or political/economic knowledge amongst the leadership of the time. This doesn't excuse Thatcher's persisting belief that General Pinochet was wonderful, or Reagan's obvious knowledge of Iran-Contra, but it does explain it a bit. Obviously it is ongoing.

With nothing really to base it on but a gut-feeling I have always suspected that the Falklands War and the Grenada Invasion were calculated to get the West back into it's Empire groove. Similar to what happens in College Football when schools schedule early season patsies or cupcakes in order to work out the kinks and gain a good solid footing and some confidence moving forward.

Of course there were covert wars and the Cold War continuing unabated through that period but nothing really to hang their hats on as far as hot wars go. The one glitch in my gut-feeling is that it seems that those were just a few of the handful of times that Reagan and Thatcher were at odds with each other.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33996

[blankly]

Didn't she get her ideas from her hairdresser?

[Twyla LaSarc]

For some reason, that pic reminds me of this song...

[OuishAgain]

With nothing really to base it on but a gut-feeling I have always suspected that the Falklands War and the Grenada Invasion were calculated to get the West back into it's Empire groove. Similar to what happens in College Football when schools schedule early season patsies or cupcakes in order to work out the kinks and gain a good solid footing and some confidence moving forward.

Yes. In the U.S. the war on Granada was openly celebrated at the time for curing the "Vietnam Syndrome," the lingering skepticism and hostility to military intervention that followed 1975. Granada introduced the government's new formula for selling war domestically: a volunteer army and total control of media coverage.

[MinM]

With nothing really to base it on but a gut-feeling I have always suspected that the Falklands War and the Grenada Invasion were calculated to get the West back into it's Empire groove. Similar to what happens in College Football when schools schedule early season patsies or cupcakes in order to work out the kinks and gain a good solid footing and some confidence moving forward.

Yes. In the U.S. the war on Granada was openly celebrated at the time for curing the "Vietnam Syndrome," the lingering skepticism and hostility to military intervention that followed 1975. Granada introduced the government's new formula for selling war domestically: a volunteer army and total control of media coverage.

Looks like ftf has been thinking about Grenada too...

‏@firetomfriedman: Hi smart people. Do any of you know anything more about the complete 180 these American med students in Grenada made?

‏@firetomfriedman: Surely some of you know the sordid details of Operation Flip Med Students In Grenada.

[MinM]

@Telegraph: Revealed: Why Margaret Thatcher fell out with the Queen