The handbag in No10

Brown’s portrait will no doubt include a douchbag.

on Brown, “We’re not sure if he’s good or not, but we hate him.”

on Cast Iron Dave, “We’re sure he’s no good, but we prefer him to Brown.”

on anyone else, “We’re not sure if they’re good or not, but we’ll have them.”

on the EU, “we’re not sure if its good or not, lets have a public debate?!?!?!?!?!?”

Isn’t it just like New Labour to throw out anything red?

At last, a real politician, Lady Margaret Thatcher, crosses the threshold of Downing street once again!.
More the pity she is no longer able to return as prime minister!!!

I DON’T SUPPOSE THAT
it will be long before we get Dopey Davey Dee along to make one of his usual snide and boorish remarks. He just cannot help himself where Maggie is concerned, unless, of course, his masters insist on it.

Mickypee on Nov 23rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm

Oh yes, but I am so happy that this event will realy pi-ss him off.

Lady Margaret Thatcher The best prime minister we have ever had.The others are not fit to clean her boots if only she was able to run for paliment again.

When I think of how much she had to do battle with her own party as well as the Opposition, and the country, I’m amused at how most people are wise AFTER the event, yet few possess courage and composure in the heat of the moment, much less set out a strategic vision rather than mere, transient tribal politics.

I see Harriet Harman is lambasted for making the most of her portfolio, yet what does anyone expect of an ambitious politician? Should she be sidelined by the grey men, sit quietly, do little? Instead, she builds a power base, biding her time,just as another young aspiring PM once did…

I dislike the political class, but I respect competence. We’ll be seeing another handbag in No. 10 as PM or Leader of the Opposition, I suspect.

Comparing Margaret Thatcher with Harriet Harman? Comparing principles, vision, hard work and talent with misused inherited wealth?
The mind boggles.

Brown stated: “We admire your determination, resolution and courage.”

Such a pity that he has reduced this country to a far worse financial situation to the one she inherited from Labour in 1979. The real worry is that we don’t seem to have a politician anywhere near to approaching her ability to put things right.

confused,
I’m not comparing their backgrounds, nor character. I’m noting their combative approach in politics, and preference for strategy over tactics.
Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter, the chemist, the married mother-of-two set her mind and heart on a political career…to win, not just exist.

Harriet Harman…well, the biog is a modern version, in my opinion. She’s in it to win it, unlike most of the Westminister village idiots.

By the way, her excellent private school education and comfortable upbringing does not exclude her from anything, in my opinion. I suggest Margaret Thatcher would probably admire the young Harriet’s gumption, even though she would reject Labour’s politics.

Respect among generations is a good thing, I think.

What did she ever actually do? Well, she gave Britain the Single European Act, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Exchange Rate Mechanism. She gave Britain the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. And she gave Britain the destruction of patriarchal authority within working-class families and communities through the destruction of that authority’s economic basis in the stockades of working-class male employment.

Thereby, the middle classes were transformed from people like her father into people like her son. She told us that “there is no such thing as society”, in which case there cannot be any such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation. Correspondingly, she mis-defined liberty as the “freedom” to behave in absolutely any way that one saw fit. All in all, she turned Britain into the country that Marxists had always said it was, even though, before her, it never actually had been.

Specifically, she sold off national assets at obscenely undervalued prices, while subjecting the rest of the public sector (fully forty per cent of the economy) to an unprecedented level of central government dirigisme. She presided over the rise of Political Correctness. That most 1980s of phenomena was so much of a piece with that decade’s massively increased welfare dependency and its general moral chaos. Both were fully sponsored by the government, and especially by the Prime Minister, of the day.

Hers was the war against the unions, which cannot have had anything to do with monetarism, since the unions have never controlled the money supply. Hers was the refusal to privatise the Post Office, thank goodness, but against all her stated principles.

Hers were the continuing public subsidies to fee-paying schools, to agriculture, to nuclear power, and to mortgage-holders. Without those public subsidies, the fourth would hardly have existed, and the other three (then as now) would not have existed at all. So much for “You can’t buck the market”. You can now, as you could then, and as she did then.

The issue is not whether fee-paying schools, agriculture, nuclear power or mortgage-holding is a good or a bad thing in itself. The issue is whether “Thatcherism” was compatible with their continuation by means of “market-bucking” public subsidies. It simply was not, as it simply is not.

Hers was the ludicrous pretence to have brought down the Soviet Union merely because she happened to be in office when that Union happened to collapse, as it would have done anyway, in accordance with the predictions of (among other people) Enoch Powell.

But she did make a difference internationally where it was possible to do so, by providing aid and succour to Pinochet’s Chile and to apartheid South Africa. I condemn the former as I condemn Fidel Castro, and I condemn the latter as I condemn Robert Mugabe (or Ian Smith, for that matter). No doubt you do, too. But she did not then, and she does not now.

Speaking of Mugabe, it was she who refused to recognise the Muzorewa government, holding out for the Soviet-backed Nkomo as if he would have been any better than the Chinese-backed Mugabe.

And hers was what amounted to the open invitation to Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, followed by the (starved) Royal Navy’s having to behave as if the hopelessly out-of-her-depth Prime Minister did not exist, a sort of coup without which those Islands would be Argentine to this day.

Get over her.

Also, confused.
I don’t want to argue with you, and accept that MT and HH are very different in many ways, however, it occurs to me on reflection that the two women do share another very important personality trait: empathy for those beyond their own natural ‘political tribe’.

Empathy and a willingness to act on it for the sake of others is something that is sorely lacking among our modern political class of pampered pets, gifting themselves inflation busting pay, perks, and index linked pensions far in excess of 95% of the population.

HH can learn a lot from MT if she wants to win the hearts and minds of this beleaguered, betrayed nation which is now merely the biggest island under the rule of the EUSSR.

Did she not also pay for a new bathroom, plug and all, in No 10, without recourse to public funds?

David,
Britain was on its knees, bankrupt in 1979, needed the biggest sovereign bail out ever in its application to the IMF which asked and received extra money from the US.
I understand your anger. Believe me, I do.
However, as needs must. Britain is now running the biggest peactime deficit and debt, and it went into the recession with the worst public (government) and private finance in the Western world. It’s called a ’structural deficit’.

David,
As needs must. I saw your comment on another thread, and thought: good man.
Politics as usual is so old-hat 20th century.
In this 21st century, the political economy will determine what happens, not the ‘political class’ of overpaid egotists.

Watch out for the bond vigilantes: they are circling like sharks, now that Stalinist Brown has bled the UK to death.

“Comparing Margaret Thatcher with Harriet Harman?”

Friday Night Smackdown:

The handbag in #10 versus the douchebag in #2

enasharples,
More thought, less invective might assist your family in Britain…a country mired in misery because it chose politics-lite…and went shopping, and soccer instead of taking personal responsibility.
Easy for shoppers and soccer thugs to blame politics, bankers, employers, neighbours…have I left anything out?

“Britain was on its knees, bankrupt in 1979″

Really? Then where was the Tory landslide in 1979? If there had been an even swing across the country, then she wouldn’t have got in at all. The combined votes for Labour and a party of old Callaghan hands were higher than the Tory vote both in 1983 and in 1987.

“application to the IMF”

Calling on an insurance policy because the thing insured against had happened. No shame whatever in that.

“went shopping, and soccer instead of taking personal responsibility”

Her legacy.

“have I left anything out?” cyndi

Yes, jumping to conclusions. I’m in Nevada.

enasharples,
‘douchbag 2′ was the hint that you had left your family in Britain.
So was ‘Friday night smackdown’.
I wonder what you are doing to defend the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence against banksters…or will you be telling Americans how uncouth they are?
I was born and raised in Connecticut, lived decades in England; it’s an ancient family thing. Never leave family undefended.

David,
You write and think like an academic. Care to tell all that to the people most suffering from 12 years of New Labour: those who live with betrayal on the streets strewn with litter, drunk louts, drug dens, casual violence, benefit thieves, teen pregnancies, domestic violence, young male suicide et cetera…all of which has risen under this Labour government. Fact.

Do not lecture me about the past. It’s irrelevant. Labour betrayed labour. Fixate on Thatcher if YOU must. The people have been most poisoned by Labour betraying labour since the gap between rich and poor has widened under its 12 years in power.

Get honest or get lost. The political class and its apologists are most hated by most people in this country. Fix it or f off.

“enasharples,
‘douchbag 2′ was the hint that you had left your family in Britain.
So was ‘Friday night smackdown’.
I wonder what…”

Tell you what, you mind your family’s business and keep your nose out mine.

The wolves are howling – the full moon is not due until Dec 2nd. DL in what passes for normal mode, and cyndi pretending to be civil. I guess they represent the Moseley and Mandy wings of “The Pahty”, as Blair calls it.

Must break the Blessed Margaret’s heart having to shake hands with the village idiot!!

Nice to see they wheeled out Peter Carrington, now there was a Foreign Secretary, decorated soldier respected diplomat etc etc. Do a comparison on Wikipedia between Peter Carrington and the current encumbent, i do not there has ever been such a drop in standards.

barry,
Well, I did try … and failed

enasharples,
With a name like that I guess you’ll push your nose into anyone’s family, ala Coronation Street.
I guess you’ve spent so long in Nevada that you forgot we dislike smart alecs this side of the pond
I will keep my ‘nose’ out of your family’s business…whatever that is.
Nighty night, Nevada.

So good to see Lady Thatcher in the doorway of Number 10 again – so sad that she can no longer wield the sword to defend Britain.

Good for Gordon Brown for his part in this – the portrait is well up to the ‘usual standards’ of Richard Stone, but the main description, by Lady “T” herself was “I like it” – so everything is hunckydory then

“Veritas nunquam perit.”

( Truth never dies .)

I almost said that Churchill was the best PM – then thought about it a little longer – ni – I’ll go for Margaret Thatcher.

Lindsay – which planet are/were you on?

SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC,
But it occurred to me that it is highly unlike Dopey Davey to miss an opportunity such as this to pour bile and scorn on Maggie. Could it be that, given his avowed shame of being English and his hate of England, that his recent absence from these blogs and the recent events in Ireland are connected? Just a thought.

Brown stated: “We admire your determination, resolution and courage.”

I wonder what a future PM will say to Gordon Brown. “We admire your indecision, breaking of Manifesto Commitments and bullying?”

I had the good fortune to ‘come of age’ during the Thatcher years and I am so very thankful for that.

I left school and walked straight into a job (out of a choice of several) as one did in those days and blossomed professionally and personally. Everything was all right as long as Mrs. T was there, Boudicca with a handbag, putting the country first. When she left No. 10 (left with her head held high, not clinging on with all their might a la Blair and Brown) it was the beginning of the end for England.

Grey Major, Shiny (the sort of shininess that soon wears off leaving cheap plastic underneath) Tony and Grimy Brown. Everything has gone to S**t.

Thank you Mrs. T, you did a great job.

Hope it is not like the picture of Dorian Grey,only in reverse.the picture gets younger ,but the person gets older.