President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Modern era
conservative heroes. We'll not soon see their like again.
Posted on 10/03/2010 3:44:37 PM PDT by naturalman1975
Famous people can be a terrible disappointment when you meet them face to face. I had the opposite experience with Margaret Thatcher.
Watching her from a distance in the early Eighties and seeing the impact of what she did, I thought she was loathsome.
Later on, as political correspondent for the Daily Mirror, I met her in person and was disconcerted to find that she could be very pleasant and a stimulating conversationalist.
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It was one of Thatcher's strengths that she did not restrict herself to dealing with the papers civil servants gave her. Everybody and everything was her business, including a notorious murder case in the North of England.
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If Thatcher had not intervened, and the hunt had still been concentrated around Sunderland, perhaps Sutcliffe would have talked his way out of trouble again. As it is, he has been in prison or mental institutions for almost 30 years, and was told by a High Court judge in July that he will never be let loose.
Margaret Thatcher is a divisive figure and, in my view, she was a bad Prime Minister. Yet she is an extraordinary person, the like of whom we may not see again. One of the most remarkable aspects of her intervention in the Sutcliffe murders is that she did not feel the need to leak the story to a sympathetic newspaper. That is not an omission that Tony Blair or David Cameron would have made.
It is not generally in the nature of politicians to do good in secret, but Thatcher saw a problem, used her high office to force through a solution and, when it was done, forgot about it. That is greatly to her credit.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I have a lot of respect for her.
Of course one has to respect her. I can only imagine a couple of the N ways she could eviscerate the Obamaloon were she still to be PM.
She’ll have to be dead for a few years before her mental capacity reduces to that of the Dung-Beetle-in-Chief.
The only reason Thatcher was only the second greatest British PM of the 20th Century is that Churchill had the title locked down.
Hah ! The former political correspondent of the socialist Daily Mirror. No wonder he didn't like Thatcher she actually fixed the economy that the Unions and other socialists had ruined.
“Labour Isn’t Working”
Hear, hear.
bump
Under Thatcher Britain regained some their lost glory, improved their military and financial strength, fought a war to retain their territory and protect the rights of their citizens.
Britain has been in a slow death spiral since her ouster.
she “fixed” the economy by destroying the countries manufacturing base as paybacks to the unions. Asset stripped the nationalized industries and gave them away for a song, stirred up a R.E. bubble that burst even more spectacularly the our current one. And yes I lived there when it was happening. the unions and labour govs screwed things pretty badly in the 60s & 70s but she didn’t do anything to help the country in the long term. she’s like sherif arpaio, people who don’t have to live under their regimes think they’re great, but they’re not
I for one appreciate your first-hand ground’s-eye view about PM Thatcher. However, have there been any insider accounts of her administration that might reflect more credit than you are giving her?
'Regimes'? I'm from Phx. and have to say, you picked a poor comparison with Sheriff Arpaio. I wish more were like him.
That is so true. Both of them were extremely important for Britain's survival--but, no one, had such an incredible history and had accomplished so much as Churchill--no one. (And that loser in the White House didn't deserve to have his statue).
If Britain could only find someone as wise and talented again to save them and Europe. They need so much help.
How very interesting. It's so useful to be set right on these things.
There are however a couple of things I feel I need to point out: The assertion that there was asset stripping going on is difficult to reconcile with the fact that in 1980 33 nationalized companys were costing the government a net of 483 million pounds a year by 1987 the net cash flows to the government were 8.37 billion pounds. British Steel alone in 1979 was losing one billion pounds annually. British Leyland the nationalized car company consistently lost money and market share to Ford, GM and the Japanese motor car companies. Taxes paid by these companies increased from 182 million pounds in 1982 to 2.75 billion pounds by 1993. The coal industry in the UK went from employing 220,000 men in 1979 to approximately 78,000 with only a very slight drop in production. The fact of the matter is that manufacturing the UK was grossly over-manned and successive governments had been impotent against the Socialist/Stalinist leadership of the Unions. Harold Macmillan the disgraceful old Conservative Prime Minister made the same point about "selling the family silver" - some family silver more like the family plutonium See here
From 1979 thru 1990 Manufacturing productivity gains in the UK outstripped almost all other developed economies. See here
"didn't do anything to help the country in the long term" Hah. While overall manufacturing output did drop in the 1980's by the end of the decade it had rebounded and Manufacturing output/person hour has continued a steep upward trend See here
In the nineteen sixties and seventies Britain had the justified nomenclate of " The Sick Man of Europe" ten years later it was generally acknowledged to be an economic powerhouse. Between 1979 and 1992 the average real income in Britain rose by 37%. It became the second largest producer and exporter of services (the "knowledge" industries). Corporation tax was reduced from 53% to 35%. From 1974 onwards the top rate of income tax was 83% rising to 98% in some cases. She cut the top rate of inccome tax to 40% and the basic rate from 30 to 20% unleashing a wave of entreprenurial activity. At the same time inflation had risen to annual rate of 27% - helping to account for the "housing Bubble" ( Incidentally the value of housing in the UK has risen much faster in the UK than the US between 1979 and the present day even after the so called bubble burst) If there is any criticism to be levelled at Thatcher it is that she did not reform the Legislative and Legal Systems in the UK. The idea that a hereditary and appointed upper chamber in the parliament was still in existence in 1990 is deplorable.
I've never lived under Joe Arpaio's "regime" but from what I've read he enforces the law in the most efficient way possible. As a taxpayer I find that an admirable trait and it was certainly one that Thatcher displayed.
Oh incidentally did I mention that I was born and brought up in the UK ? Lived there in the 50's, 60's and 70's. Did business there from the 1960's to the present.
I’ve lived in PHX for the last 19 years, I’m not drinking the arpaio koolaid
you had different experiences than I did. I lived in the Midlands and North east
President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Modern era
conservative heroes. We'll not soon see their like again.
*ping*
SIGH... such special times those were.
She certainly made errors, but I think you are being harsh.
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