She died of a stroke this morning:
Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died “peacefully” at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke while staying at the Ritz hotel in central London.
…She will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.
The ceremony, with full military honours, will take place at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral.
While there will be much talk about ‘breaking glass ceilings’ when Hillary Clinton runs for office it was Thatcher who broke that ceiling long ago. She would of hated anyone to bring that up tho because she understood real leaders inspire people, whether they are female or male. No one celebrates her because of her gender, they celebrate her because she lead with conviction, because she made hard decisions at a time in British history where no one would.
It was a nation transfixed by a refusal to make hard choices. Abroad, it was caught up in uncertainly among the Commonwealth, NATO, and Europe, a trio endorsed by Churchill but also increasingly out of date. At home, it was trying to have it all — low unemployment, low inflation, steadily rising government spending, and centrally directed industry — and getting none of it. Above all, it was an era of a tired consensus, of politics without conviction and, by 1979, without much hope.
Thatcher proved the truth of Reagan’s quip that people who talk about America’s problems are really just talking about their own. What Britain needed was a leader with firm convictions who took decisions, and stuck to them. As she put it in 1980, she was “not for turning.” Her record of courage was remarkable — from demanding the retaking of the Falklands in 1982, to surviving an IRA bomb attack in 1984, and to recognizing Gorbachev as a man with whom “we can do business together.” It was precisely her willingness to stand up to Britain’s flabby vested interests that made her controversial. For a nation that too often believed society was a synonym for government, this was a radical challenge, and marked the moment when the Left assumed its current place as a defender of an unsustainable status quo.
Strangely, it was the flabbiest of the interests, the European Union, that ultimately brought her down, the Conservative party then being populated largely by pro-Europeans.
And that European Union is a complete failure, as she knew it would be.
She fought alongside Reagan against communism and was in power when the Berlin Wall came down. She was a staunch ally with Israel:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu mourned the death Monday of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, referring to her as “a true friend of the Jewish People and Israel.”
“She was truly a great leader, a woman of principle, of determination, of conviction, of strength; a woman of greatness,” he stated.
…UK Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks responded to the former British leader’s death stating that, “She was loved and admired by many in the Jewish community who will miss her deeply.”
Rabbi Sacks, who met Thatcher when she was a local MP attested to the “personal imprint” she left on British life, “Baroness Thatcher was a giant who had a transformative impact on Britain,” he said.
Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) statement upon her passing says it all I think:
“The Iron Lady’s legacy of unflinching boldness in confronting economic doldrums at home and pervasive communism abroad stands as a gold standard for all elected leaders seeking the political courage to make difficult decisions.”
Sadly, while Thatcher and Reagan were successful in fighting against Communism and for a few decades were successful in bringing individual freedom to both our countries we have since slid back into a socialism. But for a few decades she brought her country out of that hideous policy:
The Iron Lady reversed decades of statist policies that had turned Britain into the sick man of Europe. And in the process, Thatcherism provided inspiration for the burgeoning free-market revolution in America, as well. She privatized. She cut taxes. She busted unions. As economist Scott Sumner has noted, “Britain had lagged other European economies for decades, growing far more slowly than most economies on the continent. Thatcher’s reforms were among the most comprehensive in the world.”
We can only hope the next Reagan and the next Thatcher is out there to lead us out of the doldrums both of our countries find ourself in.
Rest in peace Margaret Thatcher
See author page
RIP i wish not the most vile and horrible women ever. This pile of shit sold the UK down the river, so no rip rot in hell
It is wonderful how people observing events from a distance feel empowered to make evaluations of those events. As someone who survived the “Thatcher Years” I would like to say we did not experience her years of rule in quite the same way you seem to think we should have. It was her period as Prime Minister that was characterised as the “I am all right Jack, screw you” period in Britain. She caused irreversible damage to the industrial fabric of Britain – she made the poor poorer and the rich richer (which I suppose is what the Americans relate to). I celebrate her death as the end of a terrible, destructive, self-important woman the world would have been better off without. It was such a shame the Briton bombings didn’t get her.
@Rono: @Mark:
I noticed that neither one of you discussed the deplorable condition Great Britian was in prior to Thatcher. Even the New York Times (quite liberal back then) wrote “Goodby Great Britian. We knew you well.”
You blame Thatcher for an aready dying industrial complex. Just as the Socialists here in the U.S. blame Republicans for “off-shoring” although your nation had started “off-shoring” long before Thatcher took control.
Dance on her grave, if you will (which shows the morals of the left), but England would only be a memory had it not been for the Iron Lady.
@retire05: I take your not a UK national so you nothing of the Thatcher years, looking from outside in is just a fairy tale, all the crap by the press. She destroyed our country, and we are still paying with crap we have now..You made read about how it was but you never lived it.
@Rono:
Let me explain to you one very important fact: I find you despicable. You socialist UKers can’t even wait until the lady is in the ground to start your vitriol. I would think that George Galloway is your hero.
Your nation is going down the tubes. You have massive in-migration that is going to change the fact of GB forever, if you are not careful. Bobbies running from Muslim mobs is not my idea of the way to run a nation. You have slipped into the very socialism you fought for decades. You have families living on the dole (as we do) that do so only because the hated 1% fund them. Perhaps that IS what you want for your nation, but not what I want for mine.
Thatcher was a great woman. She stood up to Labor when it needed to be slapped down. She realized the threat that Russia presented and took a stand against it.
With the passing of Thatcher I can only say “Hail and farewell, Great Britian. We knew ye well.”
@retire05: Fascinating that you claim that our nation is going down the tubes, when America is so far down the tubes you don’t even see the tubes anymore. You live in a police state and claim you are the land of the free. More than half the county speaks Spanish as first language. You have no rights, no liberty and no freedom of speech and you preach at the free world like anybody cares. What a shame!
Hey Curt… whomever that Rono cat is, he needs to go. Disliking someone is one thing, coming into your house specifically to shit on the floor is another thing entirely.
Thatcher was no consensus builder; she was divisive. She set out to crush unions, privatize, undercut the social safety net (where she could), and push free-market policies that led to the deregulatory nightmares of the future. (Just watch Billy Elliot—or listen to the Clash.) She joined with Reagan in support of torturers and human rights abusers around the globe, as long as these folks were opposed to the Soviets. She called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” and would not join the worldwide crusade against the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. (In 2006, Conservative Party leader David Cameron felt obliged to disown Thatcher’s and his party’s previous opposition to Mandela and his African National Congress.) She supported Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Her war in the Falklands struck many as an orchestrated stunt, not an act of necessity—though some have seen that military action as a noble blow against Argentina’s fascist junta (which the Reagan administration was supporting).
Some information
“Her economic policies were harsh. She pushed the so-called poll tax—a tax to fund local government—that resulted in shifting the tax burden from the well-to-do toward lower-income Brits. This tax provoked riots—literally—and was so unpopular that her successor, John Major, replaced it. And as Bruce Bartlett, an economist who served in the Reagan administration noted two years ago, Thatcher shifted the overall tax burden from top to bottom. She cut the top personal income tax rate from 83 percent to 60 percent, but raised the lowest rate from 25 percent to 30 percent. To pay for her tax cuts, she nearly doubled the value-added tax from 8 percent to 15 percent. (Some American conservative economists howled about this.) As Bartlett put it, “Thatcher’s fiscal accomplishments were much more modest than many of today’s Republicans think.”
More…
As education secretary—prior to becoming prime minister—she cut school milk for elementary school children and won her first nickname, “Thatcher the milk snatcher.”
She pushed “a high-risk, deregulated market-orientated system in which the poverty gap widened rapidly and ‘loadsamoney’ rewards at the top rocketed in ways frowned upon in Europe and Japan. With ‘big bang’ deregulation…in 1986 paralleling developments in Ronald Reagan’s United States, the path was open to the financial crisis that engulfed Anglo-Saxon capitalism in 2007.”
She defeated the unions—especially the miners, in a series of challenges. But most deep-mine pits in England ended up closing.
She brooked little criticism. She sacked party members who questioned her divisive practices: “‘Is he one of us?’ became a stock Thatcher question, asked of impartial civil servants and even would-be bishops.”
Her political career essentially ended when her own Cabinet told her that due to the unpopularity of her policies she should step down and allow another Conservative Party member to lead their party.
@Scott in Oklahoma: I agree….and he’s gone to never be heard from again on these pages. Insulting to humankind that guy was.
@Mark, thank you for expressing your opinion in a reasonable and articulate manner, I wasn’t following politics much during her time as PM, in fact I don’t follow much about what goes on in England as we have enough to worry about here. That said, if Rono is the example of British people who didn’t like Thatcher, I wouldn’t give his opinion one second of consideration since he is too busy foaming at the mouth to present an articulate argument.
As for your post #8, I’m not sure what you base those opinions on, as there are very large portions of this nation that don’t fit into your “profile” of the US. Are we in danger of going there? Yes, no doubt; but we aren’t there yet.
@Curt: Thanks Curt… for a minute there I was thinking I was “back on the street”… 🙂 Be safe my friend.
@Scott in Oklahoma:
Obviously, English is NOT Rono’s first language. Maybe he’s one of those
MuslimsAsians that are lving off the British dole.@Mark:
Which doesn’t change the fact that I live in the nation that bailed your limmie fat out of the fire in WWII. You Labor Party types are pathetic. Just as the Democrats are here. You seem to think that if you pander to the Socialists in your midst, you will be the last one the alligator eats. And our cops, unlike UK bobbies, don’t run from rioting Muslim gangs.
Lol, yeah, go ask the Irish about Twatcher.
Martin isn’t doing anything but speaking the truth and would know more about her impact than any American who hasn’t studied her policies, nor lived in Great Britain.
Millions of people in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales (and in South Africa and Cambodia and Chile) will be celebrating tonight. She took on the working class and destroyed them. Her policies as well as Reagan’s set the 30 year decline in the US and UK.
What the GOP won’t admit about Thatcher:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/margaret-thatcher-conservative-taxes-budget_n_3037728.html?utm_hp_ref=business
@John:
From your link (which is more a hit piece on Republicans than informative about Thatcher):
But wait, John, didn’t your Democrat golden boy, Bill Clinton, sign cuts to the welfare state? And why should governments own the means of production, i.e. industries? Or do you subscribe to Marxism?
Thatcher pulled a failing nation out of its financial crisis. For that, I can promise you, she will get no credit from you progressives who think you should be able to suckle at the teat of the taxpayer no matter the mistakes you make.
Free icecream for everyone, right, John?
OH my, THOSE UNION GUYS, are the same everywhere,
be it in ENGLAND IRELAND OR AMERICA,
it’s like a disease they cannot heal from, if they are defeated,
specially by a WOMAN with guts to stand up and take their negative power away from them,
they riot like never seen and yelled and destroyed anything on their way,
they hit the LAW OFFICERS, injured them, like runaway mad animals,
you needed that IRON LADY TO BEAT YOU AND TEACH YOU A LESSON OF LIFE
AMONG OTHER CITIZENS, you like to show off well your work was lousy done,
and that was your downfall, that’s where you should have show off, by doing a good job,
not for the UNIONS BOSS, BUT FOR THE ONE WHO PAY YOUR EARNINGS,
if you cannot find a job and do it excellent, without the UNION breathing in your neck ,
it show that you are nothing but a coward,
just coming here and give your spit against the WOMAN who had more guts than you
which you needed to join a mob to tell your point,
now look at yourself
@retire05: Make it soft ice cream. Maggie as a chemist was part of a food manufacturing company that softened ice cream with harmless ingredients and compressed air. This extremely popular treat could be dispensed from a refrigerator tap. The lefties will now vilify soft ice cream.
“real leaders inspire people, whether they are female or male. No one celebrates her because of her gender, they celebrate her because she lead with conviction, because she made hard decisions at a time in British history where no one would.”
RIP Margaret Thatcher….
—————————————————–
The Liberals are all the same everywhere…they are weak, whiny parasites…
FAITH7
yes I should have said it too,
bye
oil guy from Alberta
hi, nice to hear from you,
that soft icecream is my favorite with fruits,
I have to right it on my next list
bye
Checking in on the international MSM, it never ceases to amaze how much ignorance wedges itself comfortably into the minds of so many human beings allowed to vote – and it settles in to rot their semi-functioning brain-cells for the long-term. Everywhere today across much of the world, we are treated to revisionist history presenting counterfeit accounts of Margaret Thatcher.
We can start with reminding these hatefully blind writers that when the Iron Lady became Prime Minister, the IMF had put the once Great Britain in the dog-pound, and imposed onerous restrictions on its cash movement. Britain was sinking and drowning, heading into a depression which would have decimated the working class. You can’t change the facts. She took very difficult and hard measures to single-handedly save her Nation. As a result, few liked her within her borders, but she salvaged their scrawny asses from the scrapheap of history. She was strong, she kicked ass, and she got it done. Even her own party betrayed her. They didn’t deserve her.
America could now do well to find such a fearless leader.
Liberals [from all over ] are just ignorant… and bloody selfish…they are, miserable, and vile…
I mean just read the first post…
@retire05 – Amen to all!
Let’s also acknowledge something powerfully compelling about this great Lady, and rather unique in this age of milquetoast leadership and imperious arrogance – Margaret Thatcher sincerely loved her country above all.
James Raider
yes, she could not miss even just for that love of COUNTRY,
it bring the brave out to do the outmost for the love of MOTHER ENGLAND,I bet the song was written
in that time,
there’ll always be an ENGLAND, la la lala la la,
here’s to you MARGARET THATCHER, you succeded
bye
Under Margaret Thatcher, tax rates in the UK were never as low as they presently are in the U.S. under Barack Obama. If every ambition of Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act were realized, the U.S. healthcare system would still be nowhere near as socialistic as the UK’s health care system remained under Margaret Thatcher. Under Margaret Thatcher, disability entitlement was greatly expanded in the UK. As here, accusations were made that she was concealing the true extent of unemployment by expanding the disability rolls.
Present day far-right conservatives here in the United States profess admiration for Margaret Thatcher largely because of how they imagine her government to have been, much in the same way that they profess admiration for how they imagine the Ronald Reagan years to have been. They don’t seem to pay much attention to the actual details. Reagan, for example, found the proposition that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than wages or other income objectionable. Top tax rates during most of the years of his administration were significantly higher than they are now.
Compared with current day U.S. politicians on the far right—that is, republicans who currently dominate their party at state and national levels—both Reagan and Thatcher were positively moderate.
When the propaganda media has little positive, but a lot of negative to say about someone, you know that person is a fighting force for freedom. The propaganda media hated Reagan and Thatcher. That means the two of them were on the right track.
I agree that I hope the next Ronald Reagan or Margret Thatcher will appear for our next presidential election, but they won’t be a republican or a democrat. The two parties have merged into one party, and are going too far socialist. We need someone who actually wants to put the country first.
Smorgasbord
yes, I also like your last four words for election time,
that is: PUT THE COUNTRY FIRST
and IT”S not being done now, and far from it.
right after the 2012 ELECTION
OBAMA couldn’t wait to send some millions to EGYPT,
where he should have been in a hurry to put those money in jobs for the AMERICANS,
he lost his priority big time,
was he re-elect by the ARAB SPRING LEAGUE and their money?
@Rono: You are a vile POS, and have not the wit to speak, so I say, “Down, cur- on your belly, and stay there until I say otherwise.”
Margret Thatcher, like Reagan, was a true Conservative, and I for one, do mourn her passing- I recall a quote that applies today-“Socialism is fine, until you run out of other people’s money.”
@Mark: Wow- both you and Rono seem to have “issues” with reality- I have probably lived longer than the both of you, and I feel my perspective is perhaps a bit clearer than yours, or perhaps you are both just clueless asshats that no argument could persuade, because you are busy living off the govt. tit.
@ilovebeeswarzone: #29
His priority from the beginning has been to bring America down.
@Blake: Rono got kicked the curb by the owner of this fine establishment, that’s why he cannot speak… and that’s a very good thing… 🙂
@ILOVEBEESWARZONE: #29
Oh geez, show me some proof of this or go back to watching Glenn Beck.
John
KERRY went and brought the millions to MORSI
and plane. it was repeated live, watch FOX NEWS,
they are number one,
HEY,
I like GLEN BECK too, HE DOESN’T LIE.
Scott in Oklahoma
hi,
yes, that was a good thing, that guy must have been waiting like a mad dog
all his life to finally come here to say his comment, as she had just died a few days ago,
he was the first to talk, and we spoiled his fun,
@Rono: Oh we know quite a bit. It’s scum like you that drove a once strong nation to it’s knees. Thatcher saved your scummy arse, and now you dance on her grave. I know this, she had more gravitas than the likes of you you puny little gnat.
Please regular readers, forgive me my venom for worms like this, you know I don’t usually speak this way, but This scum isn’t good enough to wipe her bumm, and he knocks her. Knocking would be fine if it wasn’t for the out right lies from the same people that ran Churchill out of office and elected a Russian mole. I some times wonder where they come from these people that fell for” peace in our time”
oil guy from Alberta
hi,
hope you are okay there,
from what I read, it’s not a good place to swim
with the fridge and cars floating around the bow river,
take care. let us know how you are doing.
best to you