R.I.P. Margaret Thatcher age 87

Ah...can certainly see why UK is justified in drilling for oil off Argentine coast. Claims to the Malvinas, first named by the Spanish, have been disputed since discovery by British, French, Spanish and Argentina.

You are right that it is all about commercial interest and nothing about the islanders.

Oil was not an issue in 1970 though it is today.

Thatcher was just trying to hold on to the Empire and nothing like ginning up a war to distract people from the Putinesque selling off of nationalized industry and loss of jobs than a good little war.

 

We, UK and US alike, drive Japanese hybrids due to polices of Thatcher and Reagan. Smart government industrial policy produced the Prius while the government run by auto and oil corporations killed such development in US and UK. We need to drive Prius (global warming, oil wars) due to pro-oil energy and environmental policies of Thatcher and Reagan.

History will not and has not been kind to Thatcher and Reagan.[/quote]

Here in Australia we are also still suffering Thatcher/Reaganomics.
Just one case.

Our governments of both persuasions are fond of "private /public partnerships" for building infrastructure. As a consequence our governments are being ripped off as our infrastructure projects run overtime and over-cost. Yes this happens with government projects all over the world, but here we are paying commercial rates of interest for this privilege because private cannot borrow money as cheaply as AAA rated Government.

Inevitably the tax payer foots the bill.

There are many who regret Margaret didn't die 60 years earlier.

 

I'd highly recommend it.

Harrogate's nice, though. My sister used to live there, before she moved back to the right side of the Pennines.

True on all counts. But I think it's worth bearing in mind that while Tebbit and Heseltine might try to lay claim to the title, I'd say that Britain's biggest Thatcherite was Blair. What Britain appears to have now (and Sydney has it as well, after Howard), is a market where first-time homebuyers have no chance, unless they get a lot of help from their parents. I'm not sure that that's worked out terribly well.

Indeed. I listen to Radio 4 online quite a lot. Someone said that if the Argentinians thought that any island off the coast of a larger country was automatically that country's territory, they should go to Dublin and see how much support they'd get there for that policy.

The other thing that annoys me quite intensely about the Falklands is all the talk - and both Thatcher and Blair were very guilty of this - about the "special relationship" between the US and UK at a national level, and between Thatcher and Reagan, and Blair and Bush. This relationship was very special when the US wanted us to join its offensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it somehow disappeared when we would have quite liked some help in a defensive war in the Falklands. That, it turns out, was our problem, and nothing to do with Reagan or America.

 

I have very little sympathy for Thatcher.

And the war did her a lot of good. Without the war, I don't think she'd have been reelected in 83.

But she didn't start the war.

 

I'd been laughing at the British public-private partnership on the new high-speed railway - 20 years for a 300km railway, which compares quite badly to China's State-owned railway network building 25,000km in ten years (if I remember correctly). But I'm not laughing at Britain after the Australian high-speed railway plans announced last night. A line from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne might be completed in ..... 45 years! Brilliant. Hooray for public-private partnerships!

 

The dispute over the Malivas, those "Spanish" islands Britain took over during one of the Franco-British wars was a long standing one.

The Argentines forced it a bit by occupying them but Thatcher made it a war for Queen and Empire and commercial interests to be named later.

It was a war of purely political calculation for Thatcher.

 

Sounds like the islands are starting to get stage center again

 

Same place different name

 

I couldn't believe my ears. An infrastructure project like this would circulate a huge amount of money through the economy if it were a five year project. 45 years? They'll still only be talking about it in 45 years.

 

I appreciate all the posts GrumpieCabbie had on life in the UK in the 70's....both in people on his side of the pond expressing they had enough of socialism (and unlike the US, it really was) and to illustrate how much has changed the last three or so decades.

In the early 80's, the West needed to wean it's self from socialistic-leaning governments. Nations all over the industrial world (exception: France) went right. It was a good thing.

The last 15 or so years, it's gone too far resulting in the stock market crash in 2008 and some of the problems now. I view Reaganomics/Thatcherism like a Linux operating system - keep the supervision lean but you NEED some of it, hence some of today's problems.

 

Sorry Al Gore, guess who spoke about Climate Change first?

Speech at 2nd World Climate Conference | Margaret Thatcher Foundation

...found it on the World Wide Web invented by....Al Gore Tim-Berners Lee

 

It's astounding. And the study talks about the high-speed rail competing with planes when it starts operating in 2058 (which is when it'll happen, obviously, because we're great at completing tasks on schedule and at completing "studies" before we do the job). They seem to have forgotten that by then it'll be competing with teleporting.

 

Indeed. People like Thatcher and Reagan - and their successors - have always had a touching faith in the incredible powers of The Invisible Hand Of The Free Market.

 

Haang on!! If we have teleporting, why do we need planes and trains?

 

Amazing how much the free market costs...

 

I know that none of you here are going to believe me, but I met Margaret Thatcher in 1987, when she and her husband visited Offutt Air Force base in Sarpy County Nebraska for a meeting with then President Regan. That was during the COLD WAR and the Strategic Air Command still flew regular flights with hydrogen bombs. She flew in after midnight on her private plane with her entourage. At that time, I was a government employee.

 

That's very cool. Did you get to talk to her? What was she like?

I haven't actually met her. But I saw her once in Taipei airport. Her visit delayed my flight. Grrr...... even when she was out of power and we were 6,000 miles from Britain, she managed to make things difficult.


...


Anyway, I'll take your crazed world leader experience and raise you. I once saw Kim Jong-il during his visit to Southern China. It was very weird.

Also, I once had to stop a former Australian Prime Minister from groping my colleague.

 

Precisely.

I actually think geological process are likely to bring Brisbane and Melbourne within walking distance of each other before they get round to building this railway line.

 

Unfortunately, I had no time to talk to her or her husband. I was there to clear her through Immigration. At that time, I worked for the US Department of Justice.

It would have been interesting, if I had.