I got a well paid job, got married and bought a house during the Thatcher years Bruce, what’s not to like?
My parents were able to buy their own house too after living 25 years in a council house.
It might sound selfish, but me and my family did very well during the Thatcher years so I will always look on them fondly.
Thatcher realised the mistake of joining the EU (common market) she eventually could see where it was going and she was not wrong was she.
She was a proud Brit and advocated ‘Buy British’ the MP’s who were on the gravy train could see their demise and so stabbed her in the back…Bs’tards…
The best paid job I ever got was in 1998 under Blair. Do I give him credit for that? Nope. If you remember under Thatcher unemployment reached a record high - so do you not give a thought to the millions who lost their job under Thatcher?
The best property I ever bought was in 2005, also during Blair as PM. But that was done to me being in a good job and doing it well. The worst property buying decision I made was in 1989, under Thatcher. Do I blame her for that property rapidly being in negative equity. Yes I do.
You know, that was half of a good policy, so we almost agree. I helped my mother in law buy her council house of 30 years. But it came with a disastrous other half - which was stopping councils building replacement housing for the properties they sold. This has led directly to the housing problems in the UK today. Typical Thatcher, screw up one of her very few good policies and as result, screw up the country.
But overall, simply applying personal experience and ignoring what the wider picture was is not the way to determine if something is actually good or bad for the UK. All it says is “worked for me”.
Britain was broken before Thatcher came to power. Remember the winter of discontent? Derek Robinson (Red Robbo) and his ilk had brought the country to a standstill. People seem to forget the mess the country was in when she came to power.
Lincolnshire
Please get your facts right. It was the unions constantly demanding more money that finished our car industry. Same with the steel industry -coal mining- railways -shipping, I could go on and on.
What they forgot it was the companies they worked for that paid their wages not ther unions. Everywhere unions were there was industrial unrest. This is what unions do ruin everything and put people out of work. The Communist ideal, everyone is the same apart from those that rule.
Since The ?.
It wasn’t done for the benefit of the UK.
It was for a Territory within “The Commonwealth of Nations”.
Invaded by the Argentine. As a distraction of Discontent within. Similar to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Coincidently. With significantly more Success. Orchestrated by MT.
She was an evil evil witch…
she had a backbone not like todays wimp who is not even fit to mop floors
WITCHES.
“Unlike” Historical, Malevolent Stereotypes.
MODERN Witches.
Use Rituals. > [ Heroic Tasks]
Action.To heal, > [Resolve]
Connect with nature, > [As Is/Should Be]
Or Advocate for Social Justice.> [Stability]
With the support. Of A Dreadnought.!!
You are going on and on about something I’ve not mentioned. I made no claim about the destruction of these industries. Why are you claiming I did?
But now that you mention it, perhaps we all need a little reminder. Thatcher and her government did look back on the problems of the early 70’s and how Heath was defeated by the unions. And the unions were aggressive - inside the building in central London that used to be home to the steel industries representative & negotiating body there is a very strong steel door. Its there to stop rampaging union members from assaulting the offices above. Certainly the car industry had its union mobsters intent on socialist revolution.
But. Thatcher went in with an aim to neuter the unions completely. Not to change them or work with them or simply contain them. But destroy them. She made sure coal was well stockpiled, and the police well incentivised and then picked a fight with Scargill. And worse, she looked at services and the financial sector as the solution - no more big industry with its associated big union memberships.
Again she did half a job. She made sure UK manufacturing was diminished. But she failed to make sure the UK workforce was well adapted the high tech, services focused, finance sector dependent future. No investment in needed education and training.
Look across at how Europe handled its union problem. France has three large car manufacturers. Germany is the automoitive powerhouse.
Nope. Thatcher was good at fighting and destroying. Useless at building a way forward. Anyone who moans about the lack of large scale manufacturing in the UK needs to look at Thatcher’s legacy. She decided that taking away the jobs that had unions was the route to negating the problem unions and problem union leaders. That was not the only option available.
I must admit I find calling a female Prime Minister “a witch” rather offensive, you may not like her philosophy/ideology (and I certainly don’t) but that is just sexist name calling.
While Thatcher was busily ripping apart the fabric of British society in order to destroy the British union movement, in Australia the Labor Hawke/Keating government achieved exactly the same thing with The Accord which not only removed rampant inflation but improved the living conditions and wages for all Australian workers and changed the economy for the better. The Accord was an agreement between the government and the unions for wage restraint over many years.
By the end of the Accord union membership was decimated, achieving what Thatcher never achieved through peaceful agreement and nation building. Why would anybody need to join a union when the Industrial Relations system was designed to give a worker a fair go?

The Accord laid the foundation for Australia’s economic prosperity with no recession for over 30 years.
Our guy made many visits to “Transport House” for negotiations, good job he did, meant more time in the pub with the birds for the sideline commentators ![]()
it’s a military base.
While there were many aspects of her financial policies that inevitably led to disaster in later years (in particular the housing bubble), I am disappointed with the shallow analysis in the you tube clip. I guess the in-depth reality of her liberation of finances, and throwing caution to the wind approach is incompatible with the short attention required for doom-scrolling. Easier to just pick on the stuff people like to see. In terms of the last two points made, I don’t see any correlation between Thatcher and repression of LGBT or any racist agenda. If anything the country became more open minded and inclusive during her leadership, although she is not to be credited for that, it just happened as an evolution of culture and particularly following the spread of AIDS & subsequent campaigning by high profile celebrities & Princess Diana. If anything Thatcher’s policies led to more inclusivity as her championing of European unity and globalism led to more people crossing the border in the UK.
Of course, was there ever any doubt?
A different Britain after Thatcher, and not a better one.
All politicians are self-serving parasites, that has become obvious over the last fifty years, they probably were before, but I was too young to notice.
The rot in British politics started when Edward Heath signed away the UK to Europe and continued through successive PM’s. It’s taken a long time for the EU to grind us down, but slowly and surely industry disappeared and the countries ability to look after itself.
If anyone is to blame it was Blair who took us into an illegal war and sent all our young people to university instead of sending them to work at 16 making us short of all the trades we now find ourselves struggling to locate. This produced a wave of hard working Polish to come and fill the gaps, not only that, but waves of others also came to take on the roles that British workers should have been trained to do. Blair, in a statement made the other day did actually say that there should have been more apprentices and less academics.
Harold Wilson (Labour) actually closed more pits and destroyed more communities than Thatcher ever did, it just came to a head in Margarets tenure.
She also realised the mistake of joining the EEC in her later years.
Just remember that no politician will ever produce a 100% record of satisfying all the people all of the time, you just have to choose who you think has got the most right answers.
The British manufacturing industry was in decline for decades because the Empire created complacency. We looked at the steel industry in a recent thread and if you look at the history it was pretty much always in trouble. Nothing to do with which party was in power and more about head buried in the sand, stuffed-shirt management.
I think there’s a difference between calling a PM or someone in a position of power a witch with next to no quantifiable reason, than calling one an evil witch if they have done evil things that have negatively impacted a large number of people. She would be described as evil by a large number of people because of the lives she wrecked or hardship she caused (there were actual riots in the streets because of her) or even for the country she destroyed. We literally have shit in our rivers because of her.
Having said that, calling her an evil witch was trying to keep things family friendly. I’d much rather call her a B, or the C word (<<even though I hate that word!). That’s how much I despise her, anyone like her, and anyone who helped her do evil things. She was evil to the core and deserves to rot in hell, if there is one. Pretty sure if people knew where her grave was or it wasn’t guarded there would be a large number of people who would go spit or defecate on it, or even dig up her bones and treat them with the same contempt she treated people in this country ![]()
You’re right there. Love her or hate her there hasn’t been a Prime Minister since to match her for backbone and determination, or in some eyes …autocratic.