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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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 Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:59 pm Post subject: New book on Margaret Thatcher, by Claire Berlinski |
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Well, it's quite new. I'm about half way through, and chapters five, six and seven are real page-turning stuff. Anyway, whether you're a socialist, or whether you hate socialism, the following excerpt (from chapter six, Coal and Iron) shows how socialists at the extreme end really think.
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The brutality of Thatcher's response to Arthur Scargill can be put in proper context only if we appreciate that Scargill was, in fact, committed to bringing about a communist revolution in Britain.
Two years after Thatcher came to power, Scargill was elected President of National Union of Miners.
I wanted very much to meet Mr Scargill. I wrote to him to ask whether he might permit me to get his side of the story. I received a reply from a woman named Linda Sheridan. Scargill was, she wrote, "quite adamant that he does not wish to discuss Thatcher or the miner's strike with you, or any journalist for that matter". When I entered Sheridan's name into Google, I discovered that she represents the Socialist Labour Party in central Scotland. The party, which Scargill now heads, aims "to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist system".
I wasn't deterred. I wrote back, saying I thought it important to represent his point of view accurately, and I couldn't do that unless he spoke to me directly. Would she please ask him to reconsider?
Her reply:
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Dear Claire,
.....Please understand that Margaret Thatcher is hated by many of us here.
....The saying is that when Thatcher goes (dies), she is going to a place where there is a lot of coal, hot coal, and when she does go, we'll all be down at the pub raising our glasses. I'm sorry but that's how it is.
Best regards,
Linda |
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Seem like nice, regular folks, eh? How much do you want a bet that these same people also "raised their glasses" on the afternoon of September 11th 2001?
But hey, Miss Socialist here is nowhere near done. Oh no. Can you believe it gets much better?
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| I wrote again. Was she quite certain Mr Scargill didn't fancy meeting me? |
Amongst her reply:
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| ......Thatcher is far from well now which is not surprising. When one lives one's life on a narrow path, without compassion and understanding for the deeper issues in life, when temporal power is taken away, one invariably falls into a spiritual abyss of self-doubt and loneliness..... |
There's an interesting definition of Alzheimers I've never heard before. And also no shortage of "compassion and understanding for the deeper issues in life" in the above comment, you'll notice.
Anyway, Linda goes on.....
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| Some people call it Karma. As you give so you receive |
I know many socialists (including my parents) and I realize they're not all nutcases like this. Far from it. However, many socialists are motivated by the most vile, most base, most violent, most obscene and most contemptible instincts of man, as the above clearly demonstrates.
Last edited by Sergio Stefanuto on Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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patongpanda
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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Thousands of well-wishers are waiting outside Mrs Thatcher's hospital.
They are all wishing she would fall down one.
<rimshot> |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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| I like Maggie |
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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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| It's funny(sad?) how you can so thoroughly lose the ideological debate, yet still cling to debunked notions. We can never really move on unless we stop trying to gain privileges for our own special interest group and do what is best for all of society. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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She's back:
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| As many as 350,000 public sector jobs could be lost over the next five years, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is warning. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8102121.stm
That's a lot of parasites that have to find real jobs. With their work ethic destroyed, it's going to be a hard battle.
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| However, many socialists are motivated by the most vile, most base, most violent, most obscene and most contemptible instincts of man, as the above clearly demonstrates. |
Most are just peasants following the leader. I reckon 80-90% of humans stick with the team of their father. But the leader is always a power hungry, hate filled ideologue. |
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patongpanda
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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Sergio Stefanuto, are you really British?
Apart from your suspiciously Argentinian name, would any Britisher really be surprised by the amount of hatred for Thatcher?
Rusty wrote:
It's funny(sad?) how you can so thoroughly lose the ideological debate, yet still cling to debunked notions. We can never really move on unless we stop trying to gain privileges for our own special interest group and do what is best for all of society.
Are you talking about Thatcher or Scargill? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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| patongpanda wrote: |
Sergio Stefanuto, are you really British?
Apart from your suspiciously Argentinian name, would any Britisher really be surprised by the amount of hatred for Thatcher?
Rusty wrote:
It's funny(sad?) how you can so thoroughly lose the ideological debate, yet still cling to debunked notions. We can never really move on unless we stop trying to gain privileges for our own special interest group and do what is best for all of society.
Are you talking about Thatcher or Scargill? |
From what I gather of Sergio, he was born in the North but raised in the South. I was born and raised in the North and I have always found that generally, those in the South have a very different view of Thatcher to most Northerners. The Southeners actually did quite well under her, while the industrial North became a wasteland, with so many young unemployed left rotting on the scrapheap. People who had worked hard all their lives suddenly found themselves living in poverty, including many of those who had traditionally supported the Conservatives, like small business owners. Scargill was a c*** but so was Thatcher, and between the two of them they f***ed up great swathes of the North, including the mining town (and surrounding mining towns/villages) where I lived, to such an extent that those communities, more than 20 years later, have still not recovered. That goes for as towns and cities that relied on industry as well. The wealth is concentrated in the South, mostly around London. The miners stike was a royal f*** up, and I shall never have any love for either of those c***s. Friends of my mothers are still suffering the consequences of Thatcher's reign - they are her collatoral damage. Some of the silly c***s had even voted for her! Were I was brought up is now one of the poorest areas in Europe.
In the aftermath of the miners' strike, the national coal board cleaned up its act, and actually got a rather efficient industry together, and we were producing coal far more economically then most (nearly all?) other Western nations. What did the conservatives do? They deliberately worked to destroy the industry, closing down viable mines - even the tradionally rightwing media was aghast - they felt it was done out of pettiness, and so there was an outcry against the government even by their staunch media allies. To no avail.
The Thatcherites gutted the North and divided a nation. They were a f***ing disgrace and only a spoiled little Southern boy would worship them so lovingly. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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Claire Berlinski states on p148.....
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| The average real income of British families rose 37% from 1979 to 1992. The income of the richest tenth rose 61%; the income of the poorest tenth decreased by 18%. Although Britain as a whole obviously became more affluent, the poorest fifth profited not one bit from Thatcherism |
And she also notes.....
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| ....no economic policy can be reckoned a wholesale success if the poor become poorer during a time of massive economic expansion |
But finally.....
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| How do we know Thatcher's policies are responsible for this, rather than the politicies of her successors? The answer is simple: her successors continued her policies |
This is a great, superb book and I urge people to challenge their entrenched beliefs and read it. Berlinski is a brilliant writer as well (and quite attractive) |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
But finally.....
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| How do we know Thatcher's policies are responsible for this, rather than the politicies of her successors? The answer is simple: her successors continued her policies |
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This is the sort of fallacious reasoning that you claim to abhor.
Her successors continued her policies --> Therefore these policies must have been the very same that they (as her predecessors) already had in place.
What nonsense, man!
Here is a counterexample to show you the error of your reasoning:
The Tories opposed the national health system in days of yore. But once it was implemented (by Labour) they upheld it. This did not mean that there had been a NHS under the Tories all along! It merely meant the Tories understood that this was a new political reality.
Likewise, New Labour knew they had to ape the Tories to appear electable, and indeed, it was only after Murdoch took a shine to Blair, and felt he wouldn't meddle too much with Thatcher's legacy, that the Tory press started to endorse 'New Labour.' |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:00 pm Post subject: |
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What I really dislike about Thatcherism, is that it put an end to social mobility. I'm not sure New Tories..er sorry...New Labour have done much to redress this either. Bunch of c***s, the lot of 'em!
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And every study has found one thing: social mobility collapsed under Margaret Thatcher. As a massive recent London School of Economics study showed once again, in the 1980s and 1990s we became a country where if you were born rich, you stayed rich, and if you were born poor, you stayed poor.
This shouldn�t have been a surprise. Every country that adopts a low-tax, low-investment model sees the same. The evidence shows only countries that tax the wealthy and use the cash to lift up the rest � like Sweden � consistently achieve the dream of allowing anyone with talent to make it.
So thanks to her policies, a whole generation of poor and lower middle class children remained stuck, unable to achieve their potential. Look at the new generation of rising Tory candidates and MPs and you see this failure of social mobility writ large. They are overwhelmingly the children of the wealthy, educated at the most expensive schools. Everybody else is stuck, unable to get up and out. |
From Thirty years on, Thatcherism is bankrupt . Yes, I know you think Hari is a vile abhorant leftist c*** - and I am too lazy/busy to google more sources - but the statement in blue is hard to dispute if you've ever read the research on that stuff.
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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Haha...just enjoying some more of what Hari has to say about old Thatch:
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How about Thatcher�s support for freedom? This is a leader who called Nelson Mandela a �terrorist� and vandalised all attempts to place sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, while her husband cheerfully referred to black Africans as �coons.� This is a leader who called the self-described �fascist� General August Pinochet �a great man�, after he toppled an elected leader in a violent coup and rounded up thousands of dissidents to torture to death.
This is a leader who upheld a system of Protestant supremacism in Northern Ireland, while the police force there conspired with criminal gangs to murder Catholics. This is a leader who at the height of the AIDS crisis criminalized any mention of homosexuality in our schools. Freedom?
What about the idea that her economic model �saved� us? Thatcher wanted to build a �night watchman state�, where the government stopped anyone invading the country or your home, but otherwise stood inert and passive. She saw regulation as �red tape�, and boasted of building a �bonfire� of it. And what happened? Her apostles took this to its logical conclusion, building a �shadow� banking system free of all government interference. If she had been right, it would now be the self-regulating engine of the global economy, pulling us all to a better world.
It didn�t quite turn out that way. As John Campbell, her best biographer, has written, the tragedy of Margaret Thatcher is that she sincerely believed rolling back the state would create a generation like her father, a moral, self-reliant grocer. Instead, it created a wave of businessmen like her son, a parasitic amoral crook. |
Mahaha! But I shouldn't be laughing because really, it's a bloody tragedy. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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Ah...more tears...
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But oddly, the party that has found it hardest to get out of Thatcher�s shadow is Labour. They drank so deeply of Thatcherism after the collective trauma of 1992 that they have become tarred with its worst failings.
As Labour now collapses into a mess of fratricidal sound-bites, it would do well to pause and remember a slap-in-the-face fact. Contrary to the ahistorical waffle pumped out over the past week, Margaret Thatcher never won over a majority of the British people. At every single election where she was leader, 56 percent of the British people voted for parties committed to higher taxes and higher public spending. She won because the centre-left majority was divided and at war with itself � and because of our lousy electoral system.
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Yes, New Labour, a bunch of Tories in Labour clothing. And the British electoral system ---> SHITE! |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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I love England. I would love to return there. I would love to raise my kids there. But I can't, Sergio. I just don't know how I can survive there and keep my head above water. I have 2 kids now, and my husband is not an investment banker. I really don't know how I can earn the kind of cash I need to keep my family in reasonable comfort and in a way that is advantageous to my children's future. One parent is dead and the other has little in the way of capital, and doesn't own a property in the UK. Without that base, I'm f***ed. I've wondered so many times how I can go back and live there now I have kids, and everytime I think of it, I realise I would be condemning my kids to a life of 'have notism' and 'chavism' by doing so.
Thatcherism has made me an economic exile of my own homeland. If I had never left, and had married there, and married a lawyer or a banker, I would have been all right. But instead, I didn't marry for advantage (despite several good chances) because I was never very materialistic and prized experience and adventure above home comforts and economic security. But not being materialistically minded in post-Thatcherite Britain, can eventually condemn you to the economic scrapheap (not necessarily talking about the single and childless who don't have the burden of having to fund a property big enough for a family, or feed and clothes little dependent people). I didn't realise that until it was too late. 2 kids later, I don't see how I can ever re-establish myself in my own country. And that's f***ed.
I seriously think about emigrating to Sweden. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:35 pm Post subject: Re: New book on Margaret Thatcher, by Claire Berlinski |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| I know many socialists (including my parents) and I realize they're not all nutcases like this. Far from it. However, many socialists are motivated by the most vile, most base, most violent, most obscene and most contemptible instincts of man, as the above clearly demonstrates. |
Yes, people with strong convictions can often be nasty as a result of those convictions. That's true whether they're proponents of Socialism or Capitalism, so I'm curious as to why you specifically use this decidedly human behavior trait to attack proponents of Socialism specifically. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| It is very difficult to gauge the success and/or failure or a single government or idea. Too many variables. I'm sympathetic to both sides, but ultimately, we don't really know what has gone wrong in the west (and these problems are across the west) since the late 60's. |
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