[mr angry manchester]

Dead right. In the real world, a lot of people (myself included) remember the 70s with great affection, but thought the 80s were fucking awful.

I has this argument a few months back on the off topic section of a classic car forum I go on. To make the point I used a second hand car analogy. Britain in the 70s, before Thatcher, was a car that looks a bit shabby, the paintwork is a bit faded and it needs a bit of work on the interior, BUT its an honest motor, its sound, no rot and mechanically its good. A good basis to work on and with a small amount of easy work, you will end up with something really good.

Thatcher's 80s model is a complete rot box that some bodger has tarted up with filler and given a quick spray job on so it looks, superficially, shiny. Underneath the paint is a litany of problems a mile long and it would need a huge amount of work to put right

[Andy McDandy]

I was born in 1977 so my memories of that decade are very few - images and impressions maybe.

As for the eighties, I think we're fed a certain image through the usual nostalgia-fests. New romantics, girls in ra-ra skirts, Sloanes, Lacoste shirts. It's like assuming "The Business" starring Danny Dyer was a documentary. What I do remember was the sense that this was bad, that the boom was happening to just a small band of people in the south-east. I remember the time we went to visit my uncle and aunt in Middlesbrough and the drive north. There it was, that thing. "The North" - it felt like we were entering a foreign country. I remember the election of 1987, perhaps the first one I was old enough to really take an interest in. The feeling seemed to be that there was the government and then the opposition, and the government was just too big to beat. But you carried on anyway, like the rebels in Star Wars. Oh, such naivete! I remember the IRA bombs and the way they were reported. Every night there seemed to be reports of shootings in Belfast or a bombing, but we just carried on. There was none of this heavy-handedness or hysteria we get today every time some dumb 13 year old kid clicks on an iffy link or some loudmouth Imam sounds off on something they know nothing about. And if they did, it wasn't on Newsnight, but on trash like Central Weekend or the James Whale show where they belonged. Far right groups were treated with the contempt they deserved, mainly because we stored up our real fear for the worst one of all - the pigs! (satire).

There were some good things, some bad things. One common theme was that we were losing control of the country - not to "the immigrants", but to the Japanese, the Australians and the Yanks. Funny, that.

[The Red Arrow]

The eighties are summed up for me by far too many people not getting the joke and actually identifying with Del Boy and Arthur Daley, as even bigger and more repellent spivs sold off the nation's assets, utilities and housing stock.

[mr angry manchester]

In the same way that racists laughed WITH Alf Garnett and Eddie Booth rather than at them

[Cyclist]

Tom Richmond: Orgreave memo shows need for truth about a dark hour for a divided nation

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opi ... z48KaNpxLQ

Interesting reading

[Abernathy]

You know that fucking cock-eyed idea that the Tories had a couple of years back to build some sort of Thatcher Memorial Library?

Like those old stories of celeb deaths that take people in, the story, from 2013, has popped up on Facebook again and some folk are getting their grundies in a fankle about it. Mostly because they think that Cameron will use some public money towards the cost of building the edifice.

Am I right in thinking that the proposed memorial would be entirely privately funded? Surely Cameron could never get away with using public cash for a memorial to that toxic old witch?

I find the whole notion repugnant, but if Thatch's acolytes want to erect a 50 foot statue of her paid for by JC Bamforth, fine. Just as long as there's no public money involved. And it's on Pitcairn Island.

[bluebellnutter]

It's the Americanisation of politics again

[Cyclist]

...

I find the whole notion repugnant, but if Thatch's acolytes want to erect a 50 foot statue of her paid for by JC Bamforth, fine. Just as long as there's no public money involved. And it's on Pitcairn Island.

What has Fletcher Christian ever done to you?

[Andy McDandy]

I could say something about both Thatcher and the governors of Pitcairn both turning a blind eye to institutionalised child abuse...

[Cyclist]

Surprise surprise...

Margaret Thatcher held secret Saudi arms talks, archives show

Margaret Thatcher held secret talks with Saudi rulers in 1985, leading up to the UK's largest arms deal, newly released official documents show.
The then prime minister met King Fahd five months before the first instalment of the £40bn Al-Yamamah deal was agreed to sell Tornados and other aircraft.
At the time, officials said the meeting focused on peace in the Middle East.
But Foreign Office papers indicate the visit was actually intended to "smoke out" the Saudis over arms contracts.
Newly declassified documents from the mid-1980s give a fresh insight into the Thatcher government's immense efforts to sell British Tornados and other aircraft to Saudi Arabia...

...The stopover in Saudi Arabia to see King Fahd, following an official visit to South East Asia, was later explained publicly as an opportunity to discuss recent developments in efforts to find peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But a briefing document from the Foreign Office to Downing Street stressed the real priority.
"To date, we only have Prince Bandar's word for it that the king has decided to buy Tornado," it said.
"We need to get this made more precise and more explicit.
"Tackling the king in person is probably the only way of smoking the Saudis out."
It seems the meeting between the king and the prime minister was successful.
The official record makes no mention of Tornados or an arms deal, but in her thank-you letter the following day, Mrs Thatcher wrote: "I was glad that we were able to discuss a further matter privately over lunch.
"I look forward to receiving your majesty's personal envoy soon, in order that we may conclude this matter successfully."
Five months later, in September 1985, the UK and Saudi defence ministers signed a memorandum of understanding in London for 72 Tornados, 30 Hawk training aircraft and a whole range of weapons, radar, and spares as well as a pilot-training programme.
It was the first instalment of the massive Al-Yamamah deal that remains so controversial more than 30 years later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37167251

Explained publicly as a discussion about Middle-Eastern peace, while actually being about selling the machineries of death to a corrupt regime.

How very Thatcher.

[Andy McDandy]

Mark Thomas pointed out (when he wrote "As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela") that whenever you go on, say, the Whine show to discuss arms deals, you get a sudden barrage of very angry, very lucid callers, not your average phone in types, trotting out a few well-rehearsed lines:

1. It's good for the economy.
2. If we didn't, someone else would.
3. We can't judge foreign regimes by our own standards (from people who would normally be howling down any idea of moral relativism!).

He also pointed out that the likes of BAE Systems are owned not by massive hedge funds but by a great many ordinary, dull, suburban small shareholders. Go to their AGM, he says, and it resembles a home counties neighbourhood resident's committee. But basically the general message is that "we can't stop foreigners killing each other, so we may as well make a few quid out of it instead". Very Thatcherite indeed.

[mr angry manchester]

God, I just cant get over how much I hate that bitch Thatcher. I hope she dies again.

Seriously, she is the reason why I have always voted Labour (apart from 2010!) If it hadn't been for her I would have been a floating voter, but my intense hatred for her shifted me to the left. I think another thing about the cunt was that she was just so horrible, unlikeable and obnoxious personally. This seemed to amplify the nasty nature of her policies

[D.C. Harrison]

Mark Thomas pointed out (when he wrote "As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela") that whenever you go on, say, the Whine show to discuss arms deals, you get a sudden barrage of very angry, very lucid callers, not your average phone in types, trotting out a few well-rehearsed lines:

1. It's good for the economy.
2. If we didn't, someone else would.
3. We can't judge foreign regimes by our own standards (from people who would normally be howling down any idea of moral relativism!).

4. Yeah, but your man Blair sent British TROOPS out there to invade the place! You're telling me that's better? Eh? Eh? Typical of the hypocritical left!

[Philip Marlow]

She may be dead, but she's still a winner.

Thatcher snatches win from Cameron in vote on century's worst PM

Historical writers deliver poll verdict that the notorious scourge of ‘society’ did more damage to Britain than the recently departed bringer of Brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/ ... ?CMP=fb_gu

And although I've never heard of her, I did like this, quoted from a writer called Emma Darwin.

She destroyed too many good things in society, and created too many bad ones, then left a social and moral vacuum in which the selfishly rich and unimaginatively fortunate could too easily destroy still more of what they don’t need and can’t see that everyone else does need

'Unimaginatively fortunate.' That's very, very good isn't it?

[bluebellnutter]

That poll reckons Gordon Brown is a worse PM than Anthony "Suez" Eden.

Hmm.