Blair rules out a state funeral for Thatcher

well I was VP Welfare in the union at the time, so I did see the hardship - we had a hardship fund (VP Welfare and the chaplains had to decide who got the dosh)
so maybe i did see a different picture from you
specially some of single mothers and such

not sure, do you even get single mothers at university these days?

Topsy,

When are we talking about mate...I am very confused...since the direct grant was replaced with the equivalent in loans...

Did these people take out the loans or refuse to?

I was there as well and didn't see hardship - I saw adjustment as we had to get use to the idea that the grant wasn't free money any more... Granted things have progessively got worse but it was hardly on Maggies watch...

Edited:
We had single parents and lots of poor people at my Poly...maybe it was because you were stuck out in the sticks in Wales!!!

no they are too busy in their free houses, free cars and playing with their unearned money.

don't be such an idiot, canaryman
i already answered the question over half an hour ago

or did you get so carried away with the opportunity to resort to playground jibes that you neglected to actually read the thread?

@ stanford - the ball started rolling on thatcher's watch. i did say that the students thing wasn't only down to thatcher, in fact I debated with myself about whether to put that point in my post. when I was at uni you still got grants. i've lost touch tbh on how exactly things have developed in the meantime, no doubt some younger peeps can enlighten me

*sits back in arthritis-friendly armchair*

Agree with Wee Mun - ultimately under Maggie's rule the UK came out of its trough and became a player once more.

The Germans unfortunately only have Angie and I very much doubt she's going to ask them to get on their bike!

Why is it always GOOD & HONEST working class people... Are you saying everyone else isn't... or is it just a chip on the shoulder and feel you need to put some political spin on the working class... ?

Remember the 1979 conservative ad "Labour isn´t working - 1 million unemployed" - how many were unemployed when Maggie had finished???

Aye, maybe I chuck the "good honest" cliché thing in too much from time to time. Nobody's perfect

what the fuck was good an honest about being exploited and working your arse off in a heavy industry where threat of death and injury were a constant problem. talk to a few coal miners and some do actualy admit it was a shit job, 8 hours a day in boiling temperatures, with a noise level to go with it. threat of flooding explosions and cave ins and if you survived until retirement you'd die of black lung. at least their sons can get themselves moe healthier jobs.

Thanks for the clarification...

It's loads worse now...they get the loans but the terms are more or less like commercial loans i.e. higher interest rate, not so generous deferrment terms and they are expected to pay 1k to 3k in tuition fees. My little sister will come out with about 19k in debt.

Did you go to some of the NUS conferences? It was a very charged time with the Conservatives students going to the far right and the leftwing of the NUS infiltrated from hard left groups like the Troks and co. Granted Conservatives Student were thin on the ground at the Conferences but it was hilarious watching those middle class Communist and Socialist workers and hard lefties getting their nickers in a twist about this and that...

Stanford
Hi all I was working class and wasn't good neither honest...

labour play this fantastic game with the numbers of putting people into shit jobs that up till then hadnt been classed as proper jobs. therefore only a rebranding of job titles and what actually classes as a job makes labour out to be this "party for the people"

Its takes time to run up a huge balance of payments deficit and unfortunately Germans are less prone to running up huge debts to buy crap over priced products. I am sure given the right sort of Thatcher style kick Munich will start to be a proper one not a toy one.

@standford - yeah, i used to really enjoy the conferences, they were a good laugh
Steven Twigg was around then (he was VP Education, I think), and that Lembit Opek bloke who's a libdem mp nowadays - he always was a bit of a nutjob
i never made a speech, though, i was always too shy

Sorry Nick, but the state that Labour left the country in 1979 meant that the workforce could not be sustained. Hyper inflation is a far worse beast than unemployment. Maybe not to your honest working class man in the street, but to the country AS A WHOLE.

Not a playground jibe, you just do not seem to have a narrow view and poor interpretation of past events.

It was an interesting post but I assume that you are joking about giving the IRA prisoners political status?

Give a playground point of view and you will receive a playground jibe!

The reason the UK is in its present economic situation is down to Thatcher. The reason the current govt has so much money to spend is down to Thatcher. You dont like it but unfortunately it is a fact no matter how you present it.

You hold Germany as a great example of nice unions?! If you had been watching over the past few years, a lot of German jobs are going abroad (despite the protests), the UK got rid of all the industry that it knew it would not be able to compete in years ago. Thatcher and mob knew that we would not be able to compete with the far east and she was right. The Germans want a more flexible and mobile economy, akin to the one in the UK (at least that is what their economists have said) so Tebbit was also correct to tell people to get on their bikes as the Germans are now copying it.

I remember the dark days before Thatcher. Strikes, Strikes and more strikes, we were a mess, a big mess. A derisory amount of inward foreign investment, our best people left for, well, anywhere. We had gone to the dogs. Thatcher sorted it out.

Yeah man, don't worry, just rewrite what I have already wrote

I typed the events as I remember them, canaryman.
It can come as no surprise to either of us, surely, that we remember them differently.
I remember the dark days of 1979, as well - the darkest day of all being May 4th

Yes, I was serious about Long Kesh.

Sorry I was just posting from experiences. You are obviously well educated and have studied your history

Wow...I was going to ask you about a few of the names...I saw Steven Twigg speak at the conference...
It is interesting to see some of the political junkies come thru and become MPs and stuff but ultimately it is sad as some of these full time Political junkies were a bit weird in my humble opinion... They'd do student politics and then after Uni go and work for an MP and then do some lobbying or policy work in Central Office or Millbank and then time to get themselves a seat...

Bad side of politics in my book...

I was there just before the first gulf war and the conference was interrupted constantly with protests to STOP THE WAR FOR OIL...

I am sorry that you are serious about Long Kesh. One of my relatives was blown apart whilst drinking a pint by one those bastards. Left a family and they buried the bit of him they could identify with lead weights in the coffin. Personally I feel sad that they gave up their hunger strike, it was a sure-fire way of getting rid of them.

I'm sorry about your relative

the people in Long Kesh were political prisoners and should have been given that status. IMO.

well nobody else seemed to twig but I liked this

There were definitely positives and negatives. For some of the negatives (student loans instead of grants and privatisation) I wonder if it would have been inevitable and its just that Britain did it first. Seems to be happening in most countries these days.

Its a shame such rampant consumerism seemed to come into fashion then

"thats 'cos we've got loooooaaaaadsa moooonnneeeyyyyyy!"
god the mig eighties were good.

And what would Ben fucking Elton have done for a career without Thatcher and a li'l bit of politics for you there ladies and gentleman. Risible little cunt!

loadsamoney was harry enfield, wasn't it?
or did ben elton start it?
i lose track...

i think the link was comedians, Topsy. BE made his whole career based on hating Thatcher, that's all.

yea same as that old slapper Diana.

Thanks for your sympathy. Do not try and tell his wife and children that the bastards that blew him up whilst he was enjoying his weekly pint that the they were acting politically. They murdered him, pure and simple, he did not stand a chance.

Topsy don't celebrate. Somehow that's as brash as tzhe Thatcher era. Just pause quietly and think of the social damage she wrought on our motherland.

You might like to add the Al Yamama contract. Steeped in dirty money and at 60 bn pounds the biggest defence contract in history,, second only to the US in size. Designed to keep Saudi Arabia out of deep shit. Think Mark Thatcher.

What about the social disintegration that's happened since Thatcher? The ASBOs, the public drunkenness, the knifings, the drugs. She did too much too soon and Britain is now beginning to pay a serious price.

Perhaps that's why you now live in Germany...?

Well I'm all for celebrating when the evil one passes away. It seems to me most people who thought she was alright come from the more affluent parts of the UK which weren't quite affected in the same way as Southern Wales, Northern England etc. I'm alright Jack attitude. She got rid of all our industry and started wars with people light years away to win an Election. The unemployment figures for places like Barnsley and Southern Wales may well now be down in single figures, but there is at least twice as many on "sickness benefits" etc, the true unemployment figures are much higher. I think when she dies, she should be shipped up north to our (I'm Lancastrian) mates across the Pennines and let them decide what to do with the beast. Infact I'd like to take this opportunity to blame her for every that has been bad for the UK for the past 20 odd years and the fact that Preston North End have not played top flight Footy for the past 1000 years.

@ kirk26

actually, there is one bloke from Yorkshire on here (naming no names, but he knows who he is) who is a big fan of Thatcher
i simply cannot fathom it myself

Was not much moaning from the North when the jobs were up there was the?
She is a heroine for what she achieved for our country.
Celebrating her death is both infantile and shows a lack of understanding for what she achieved. Britain is now reaping the benefits of her and her partys foresight (whilst Germany, France and Spain are shipping their convential industries abroad, she did it 15/20 years ago)
Preston are a rubbish football team and the town is a dump. Everyone knows Macclesfield is the centre of the earth (my best mate is from there and told me so, so it must be true). I also know a girl their that did dressage at a high level and part of her job was washing the horses "family jewels". Very pretty but felt a little inadequate with her

Funny we've (PNE) finished above Norwich City the last couple of seasons and will do again this season. In response to the town is a dump. Firstly Preston is a city and not a town. Secondly Preston has got some of the most beautiful Mosques and Hindu Tempels in the North of England, we even have a couple of Churches and a fish and chip shop for the white minorites. Thirdly I'm hard because I was brought up in a rough northern City (not town), and you're a girlie, boy kissing shandy drinker because you were brought up in Warwick and Great Yarmouth playing Polo with people called Roger and Edward. It really is as simple as that.

Could do with a slash now like. Is it dead yet?

Oh and before you say I'm making childish comments, don't forget you talked about a Horses love length.

We have a castle (in which both the leaders of the war of the roses were imprisoned). I ended up in a police station near Macclesfield (in my younger days). What I said about the lady that did "dressage" is true!

I used to go for nights out in Lowestoft (that was invaded by brawling, drunken north-sea fishermen on a regular basis which makes me considerably "arder" than you.) I drink bitter (heavy), I do know a chap called Roger and one called Rupert.

Norwich City FC are rubbish (I should know I have supported them for over 30 years! but we did beat Bayern Munich in Munich in, I think, 1724 ad) but Preston are rubbish and boring plus the closest to European competition they have been is a night out in Blackburn.

http://www.knowhere.co.uk/3566_goingout.html

Enjoy

right so for drinks when the witch is dead we have me, Topsy and Monkstown, Kirk26, care to join us?

Count me in big scouse bird.

Yup i'll have some of that too

www.maggiethatcher.com

I'm up for a drink! as long as it's a wee carton of milk with a blue straw!!

Idiot. I live here because my wife is German and her job brought her here. We got on our bikes and went where opportunity beckoned. It was an easy decision due to the present the government turning Great Britain into a cess-pool.
You are correct, drugs, knifings and you forgot gun-crime, are all on the up under the present government. Do not forget rape, robbery with violence and now terrorism are all up under the present government. Not pretty reading but unfortunately, Blair, Prescott, Mandleson and mob have helped it happen.

I can only assume that you live in Germany in order to escape what the current government have created and for that, I cannot criticise you.

That all depends which figures you're looking at. Official police statistics show a rise in reported violent crime, but the British Crime Survey shows a fall.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the rise in official police statistics is due to improved effectiveness of policing under a Labour government.

It would not be unreasonable to say that as certain crimes are no longer automatically prosecutable, say "shoplifting" whereby the police will just give a caution, affect the statics in so much as they should get the crime rate down. Add in the massive fall of aforementioned and to still get a rise in crime demonstrates how effective the policing is. Add in the increase in violent crime and you will see the overall picture.

Dont forget what Jack Straw said too!

you were talking about an increase in violent crime, so I'm not sure why you're now chucking in a red herring about shoplifting

in any case, both official police figures and the British Crime Survey figures look at reported crime, whether they end up prosecuting anyone or not

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/198604.stm

btw, how old are all of these people?

Wee mun?

Schotte?

And if things are so right in the UK, why aren't you back there now in your twilight years enjoying the glorious attributes of the society you praise so much?

My theory: Health care is WAY better in Deutschland.

I'm right, aren't I?

It's all about the friends you keep!!!

That assumes certain people have friends, but that seems a stretch. A big stretch.

Take a look at violent crime. It is up, no matter which way you look at it. Tough on Crime, Tough on the causes of crime...Blair. Oh well, it sounded good and I am sure that some people that voted that lot believed it. Personally, I did not

Tomasino. Health care over here is crap.
1. The doctor, upon seeing you are private, wants to give you spritzer and some weird but useless Homeopathy tablets
2. He knows the homeopathy tablets do not work so you will have to go back and pay again, plus have yet another spritzer
3. Make an appointment for 10 and then turn up at 10 to be asked if you mind coming back in 2 hours!! Explain you are private, they apologise, see you immediately and offer a spritzer.
4. The vet I use over here is better than any of the doctors that I have seen.
5. You can tell them you are an auslander, you do not accept homeopathy, tell them what you want and if you dont get it you will go elsewhere and they will prescribe it immediately
6. Healthcare is ok over here as long as you a private

What a crappy drink with white wine, soda water and ice has to do with healthcare is totally beyond me. Probably marginally better than Babycham but it is a close call