Margaret Thatcher

The first woman prime minister in the UnitedKingdom. Her right wing agenda changed the face of British politics. Her ToryParty ran Britain for nearly 20 years. They all but destroyed the unions, cut high rates of tax, cut spending on public services. They cut research on alternative energy sources and instead invested in nuclear power and pumping north sea oil out of the ground as fast as they could. She also waged war against Argentina in the 1982 FalklandsConflict. She left in her wake a country increasingly divided between rich and poor; cities whose streets now have numerous beggars - often young homeless people.

We have been left with possibly the worst health service, public transport system, education system in Western Europe. The manufacturing sector has been decimated, and job insecurity is now seen as normal by most people. There are now far more low-paid and part-time jobs, and more poverty. And lots more rich people. The LabourParty which took over in 1997 has adopted many of her policies so has perpetuated the Thatcher experiment. Perhaps people could list here good things that she achieved. I can't think of any. [You mean like cutting income tax, curbing the unions, and winning a war]

Right now (5 Dec 2001) Britain has the strongest economy of any country in Europe, with the possible exception of Monaco and its ilk. I suspect that Thatcher brings out the same polarizing feelings in the UK that Reagan does in the US. The initial comments seem to support that. I noticed that unions have been both "destroyed" and "curbed" for example. The point about low taxes is that the Tories cut income tax, but introduced a series of indirect taxes instead. They put up VAT and introduced PollTax?, which meant that the tax burden was higher on people on low income than high income groups. It is partly this that has increased the discrepancy between rich and poor. Tax cuts rarely occur in isolation.

The above is a lot of typical left-wing nonsense. Thatcher's reforms turning England into Europe's most successful and fast-growing economy, created jobs and wealth for millions of people and were so immensely popular that the LabourParty was only voted back into office under the leadership of "NewLabour" leader TonyBlair who essentially promised not to leave the LabourParty's radical socialist ideology behind and not undo the progress made under Thatcher. Let's also not forget that the war Thatcher waged against Argentina over the Falklands was in defensive in nature, and it's success led to the downfall of the corrupt authoritarian junta ruling Argentina at the time.

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