Anytime I hear doubts cast as to the wisdom of America electing a woman head of state, I immediately point to this great lady.
-Dan
Posted on 10/14/2005 2:07:28 PM PDT by FairOpinion
As the search for their fourth leader in five years gathered pace, the Conservatives last night broke off from scheming behind the scenes to seek solace in the memory of past glories when they gathered to celebrate Baroness Thatcher's 80th birthday.
The Queen and Tony Blair were among 670 people invited to a lavish reception in central London where the guest list included scores of disciples of the "Iron Lady" as well as a smattering of foes.
Alongside the roster of current and past Tory grandees and the great and the good from industry, acad-emia and the civil service, the guest list certainly had a whiff of 1980s revivalism ab-out it. Among those invited were Rupert Murdoch, whose papers often acted as the tribunes of the Thatcher era; Joan Collins, veteran of big-shouldered soap opera appearances; and Sir Jimmy Young, the broadcaster.
Michael Howard, the outgoing Tory party head, lead the birthday greetings yesterday, saying: "What Churchill did in wartime, Margaret Thatcher did in peacetime. Her political will and her iron courage saw off threats to our way of life that Britain faced in 1979."
She and Ronald Reagan were great friends and together they won the Cold War.
THATCHER -- I hate it when I misspell something important, in post 1, yet!
Happy Birthday Margaret Thatcher! Wish there were more leaders like you!
Ditto!
Happy B-day Margaret Thatcher, one of the titans of the 20th century. I recall her standing ramrod-straight through Reagan's funeral. Their like will not come again, I am afraid, for a very, very long time.
The government had taken all the famous British car marques—Austin, Morris, Rover, Jaguar, Triumph—and merged them into one. That’s right: the government made your car. Or, rather, a man called Red Robbo did, when he was in the mood, which wasn’t terribly often. He was the local union man at the Leyland plant in Birmingham, though he seemed to spend more time outside the gate, picketing. In Britain union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. In the seventies if you opened The Times (when the print tin ions weren’t on strike) or watched the BBC news (when the miners weren’t on strike and the government hadn’t ordered the TV to close down mid-evening to conserve electricity), it was a parade of eminences from strange, unlovely acronyms such as ASLEF and SOGAT and NATSOPA and NACODS being received by the prime minister as if they were heads of state, which in a sense they were. Britain’s system of government in the seventies was summed up in the phrase “beer and sandwiches at Number Ten”—which meant the union leaders showing up at Downing Street to discuss what it would take to persuade them not to go on strike, and being plied with the afore mentioned refreshments by a prime minister reduced to the proprietor of a seedy pub, with the cabinet as his bar maids. The beer and sandwiches went only so far, and would usually be followed a day or two later by chaotic scenes on the evening news of big, burly blokes striking for their right to continue enjoying the soft, pampering workweek of the more effete Ottoman sultans....
The non-crisis of the regime began in an attempt to control the endless ping pong of runaway inflation and runaway pay increases to keep up with it. The government proposed a live per cent limit on raises, with penalties for companies that flouted the limit. This sounded a bit low to the Labour Party’s union allies, and the car workers decided that the very proposal was worth striking over. When Ford’s UK subsidiary settled with a 15 percent increase, Callaghan attempted to impose penalties on the company; but Parliament declined to support him, and the unions set out to teach him a lesson. The municipal manual workers demanded a 40 percent wage increase and then struck. The truck drivers went on strike for a more modest 30 percent. The garbage collectors followed, and in parts of the country the gravediggers.
In January of 1979 the prime minister left for a summit in Guadeloupe, and on the news bulletins scenes from the coldest British winter in sixteen years, with the streets full of trash and the dead unburied, alternated with footage from the Caribbean of a relaxed Callaghan in open-necked shirt, working on his tan with the other colossi of the age—Jimmy Carter, Valéry Ciscaid d’Estaing, and Helmut Schmidt. To his shivering citizenry, Sunny Jim was spending too much time sunning himself. When he landed at Heathrow, he was besieged by the press and grumbled back, “I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos”—which The Sun’s man so lethally distilled. Callaghan had a point: the “mounting chaos” of the so-called Winter of Discontent was, in truth, only a slightly more extreme version of business as usual.
Mrs. Thatcher quite simply saved her nation. The only reason Tony Blair can distribute the wealth less meanly is because Margaret Thatcher gave him some wealth to distribute. It's a Thatcher/Reagan world now, from Washington to London to Tallinn to Warsaw. Not too many people have changed the world decisively for the better, but she did.
Easily the best, albeit taped, eulogy given too.
Yes it was. May God bless her and comfort her as she watches her countrymen undo so much of the prosperity and national strength she made possible for them.
A testiment to her love for our President Reagan that she made the trip across the pond against her doctor's wishes.
(Are you a lurker here? I won't tell if you FreepMail me. And I know your Doctor says you shouldn't speak, but couldn't you write once in a while, maybe even here at FR? )
ML/NJ
" The government had taken all the famous British car marques—Austin, Morris, Rover, Jaguar, Triumph—and merged them into one. "
Left out MG ...I bought a new Triumph TR-7 in 1977 ...Great concept ( first wedge shaped car ) , crap car . Nothing but problems from day 2 ...British Leyland was a bad joke . They were on strike more than at work .
It's interesting that you post this comment to me.
I had a 1970 MGB, which I sold about 10 years ago. I loved the car like the expensive mistress I've never had.
ML/NJ
" I had a 1970 MGB, which I sold about 10 years ago. I loved the car like the expensive mistress I've never had. "
After the Triumph TR-7 disaster , I bought a used 1977 MGB . Fun car when all was working , which wasn't as often as I would have liked . But I knew about the idiosyncracies of Lucas electronics , etc...before purchasing the car . No power , but a lot of fun to drive and the body style is a classic . Sold it about 7 years ago .
Happy 80th birthday, Mrs. Thatcher.
May God bless the United States of America with the likes of you in our first woman president!
Maggie Thatcher is one of the most incredible people in modern history.
When you remember how bad things were in 1979, it makes you wonder how we ever survived.
-Dan
And she is still "the best man in Europe"!
And she is still "the best man in Europe"!
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