Mrs Thatcher died this morning.
For her children, loathsome though at least one of them is, I offer sincere condolences. Even nasty people feel the inexpressible pain of losing a parent.
But for me and many like me this is a good day. One less truely awful person in the world.
This was sent to me by one of us here, Tony Wright. Not sure if this means he likes me or is trying to frighten me. You judge. You can see more of his work at www.riotink.com
Unfortunately her acolytes keep her legacy alive.
Sadly true.
But then we, here, and a growing number of other places are keeping alive a true and free opposition and alternative.
David
I’ve admired your honesty for some time now but this post is not one of your best.
Brian
Understood. Sometimes we have to be honest about our failings as well. This is perhaps one of mine. But I am who I am warts and all.
I see I’m late to this party Golem. I haven’t bothered to read all 155 comments as of this time, so this point may have already been made.
The supporters, notably the ‘establishment’, of Thatcherism & most especially her own family, have chosen to use the moment of her death to promote & propagandise all the sh1t she did.
Her family could have insisted on a quiet & private funeral. They have chosen instead to make it extremely public.
In which case, IMO, those of us who saw her for the vicious psychopath she was (1st hand, I was there) I think are equally free to express our own opinions.
On that basis, David, you have zero to apologise for.
On a more interesting note, Mervyn at Real World Economics has a wonderfully concise piece on the relationship between Capitalism & Democracy here:
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/democracy-versus-capitalism-take-two/
Late to the party also: Has someone cited John Steinbeck’s observations on the death of Henry Ford. The magnate’s passing, and Steinbeck’s feeling about it, prompted him to write words to the effect: There are truly only two human responses one can have, sadness or relief.
I put your response down to hyperbolic relief.
i think it is about time we are honest about people like thatcher and the effect of the policies and ideology they impose on society. in writing this i have to say i have been deeply affected by this article which deals with the effects on diabled people of cameron’s austerity programmes and in particular the work of that slimeball IDS: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/where-do-disabled-people-fit-george-osbornes-aspiration-nation – i write this as a disabled person and one who got to my place in life ONLY because of the NHS and free secondary/university education, vital societal aids which are now being dismantled with the covert assistance of the blairites who still infect the labour party. it is time we all realised the very human and tragic consequences of such policies up to and including suicides and shortened lives. in my view the architects of these policies are as guilty of the murder of such people as mick philpott is guilty of killing his kids and are driven by the same base selfishness. so am i glad thatcher is dead? you bet! my only regrets are a) cameron, osborne and IDS are not joining her and b) my atheism, but for which i would also find solace in the belief that hell is today that little bit hotter thanks to a new source of fuel.
I spoke to a greek doctor recently about the real life and death consequences of what is being imposed on Greece. He painted a very grim picture.
13 April 2013
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/13/gree-a13.html
Gee, Golem, is austerity the fault of its enforcer or those who made it inevitable? Britain was broke. The alternative was default I.e austerity by other means.
GeoWaveRider
This is a woman who sent the SAS to train remnants of the Khmer Rouge – on the sordid basis that your enemy’s enemy is your friend (the Khmer Rouge were at war with the Vietnamese at the time).
If by a person’s friends shall you know them, then she was friends with Pinochet – a man who had thousands disappeared, tortured and raped.
She supported the South African regime during the Apartheid years.
She said nothing of the US backed slaughter in Central America.
She made war on sections of her own country.
So please, spare us the sanctimony.
Phil
Not sanctimonious, just thought it wasn’t good form, and certainly not what I expected from David having spent the last few months following his blog and other outputs.
However, it has certainly opened up another lively debate which I have benefited from.
Brian
You have just gone down in my estimation.
Glee is never appropriate.
I agree it does not speak well of me.
But I am unrepentant. She was loathsome. She was a friend to Pinochet for goodness sake. She wrecked the lives of a generation of people in the north of this country. She trampled and abused whole communities.
Hers was a politics of hatred and division. Under her came the notion of ‘The enemy within’.
I support your post Golem. What of all the millions of lives she ruined. Yes, I feel very sorry for her children and for those who were close to her and loved her. No one is immune from the pain of loving a close loved one and it is terrible.
But…she ruined millions of lives. People that no one grieves for. Hard working miners in villages that used to have full employment and by the mid nineties had nothing but crime and heroin addiction and shattered lives.
Who speaks for them? In the days and weeks that come there will be hysteria in the media, the Tories will get more rabid. There may even be a state funeral. It will make me sick to my stomach.
Where is this sentiment of feeling sorry for her children coming from? For one thing it is arguable that any success they’ve had is directly dependent on their mother’s success…I seem to remember Mark Thatcher doing rather well in business…was it connected to an arms deal with Saudi Arabia?
One more thing… Thatcher was a pale reflection of her former self. It can’t have been pleasant to see for her children, so their may be some relief (and sadness) that this woman’s frailty and confusion is now at an end. Plus, death is everywhere. We’re all going to die. 87 years is pretty good going considering she used to boast of sleeping three to four hours a night.
Feeling sorry for John Smith’s 3 daughters was understandable. Let’s not get carried away. Perhaps her children can live more freely now that their (in)famous mother is dead. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I couldn’t care less that she is dead. I want neo-liberalism to die a quick painful death and for a co-operative economy to be built. Life is too short and humans are far too intelligent for the utter dumbness of our market society to continue in the way it has. Co-operation or barbarism. That’s how I see it anyway…
I came on this site to hopefully see an objective piece from you Golum,
I assumed you could see the bigger picture. She was not anti-worker.
Whether you hated her or not, unfortunately the mess we were in at the time required somebody, and there wasn’t anyone else.
She deserves respect for that, but stayed too long because she was in charge of a party of wimps and idiots. And Her Majesty’s loyal opposition were doing their usual, fighting amongst themselves.
Going to have to disagree on this one. We were indeed in a mess and part of that mess was the intransigence and stupidity of a section of the unions.
BUT Mrs Thatcher did not stop at reform or change or any of the other words used at the time. In her mind some of us were enemies. She was not out to reform the unions but to smash them. The word was used at the time.
She and her government did not just ‘smash’ the unions and the power they held but the lives of the people in them. If you had no connection to the places she attacked you perhaps do not know what was done.
People forget that the “winter of discontent” was caused by a capital strike.
Our old friend Mr. Bond Market hoodwinked the government. The unions reacted.
She most definitely was anti worker. Sorry but she was. She wanted wage de-regulation, low paid, insecure workers, no working rights and all the rest of it.
She also started the financial de-regulation that’s led us to where we are now. And privatised our utilities, which even many right wingers now see as dire policy and want renationalised. So we don’t own our own energy infrastructure and can do nothing about the rising costs of gas and electricity. She wasted away the North Sea oil revenue in a criminal manner instead of setting up a soverign wealth fund like the Norwegians did.
She also befriended an actual fascist. A man who had people murdered and tortured and burned alive!
Her policies weren’t just unpopular because of what she did to the industrial North, she also wasted much of our resources and started selling off anything that wasn’t nailed down. A breathtaking act of treachery that has been carried on by Labour and now the Condems.
(Golem, sorry)
We are stumbling headlong into another era where a Thatcher-like leader will have to be created and find their way to power. This time it will be against the banks and the Euro-elite (if we are lucky), or it will be against the working population (if we are not),
The reason we will get a divisive leader is because the calibre of people currently in Parliament (on all sides) is so risible, and so ‘owned’ by the enemies of the people. It will get steadily worse and worse, irrespective of whether Milliband or Cameron is in power or Clegg is hovering in the wings. Sadly it will have to get so bad before people wake up, that it will be all the more brutal.
There are huge tidal swellings in this country because of the economic meltdown. We are going to have racism and fascism, wholesale law-breaking, tax-evasion, community breakdown, huge unemployment, starving pensioners, savings sequestration, a generation of students without a future, NHS will grind to a halt, welfare system will collapse.
You certainly understand how scary the future is going to be (already is) with your excellent work, at any point we in the UK are only 3 weeks away from being a Cyprus, if they pick on sterling to make an example of us.
I would far rather the people and the media forced our current crop of politicians to stand up and fight for us, but they won’t, so at some point there is going to be either a bloodbath or abject surrender by the taxpayer; and we won’t all like the new leadership.
I agree with you Yakima,
That we are indeed stumbling into a very bad place. Encouraged all the way by those who insist they know best.
Will it end in blood? I hope not. Will there be a divisive leader who rises? Probably. Will people turn on each other here, as they did in Bosnia? I do not think so.
Why not? Because we are here. You and me and all the others who come regularly to this place and the many others like it.
These places are where todays’ revolution is being born just as the first English revolution was born in the Public Houses of the 1600s.
Those who gathered and talked in those first Public Houses were no better than us. They, like us, found there were suddenly places they were able to meet as free men and women. There had never been such places before. And a revolution was born in them. What else is this place and those like it if not such a new and un-policed place.
We are here. We, no one else, are the guarentee of a better future for children. It rests with us. And I do not believe we will fail.
“Hers was a politics of hatred and division. Under her came the notion of ‘The enemy within’.”
So true, so very, very true.
“Margaret Thatcher branded Arthur Scargill and the other leaders of the 1984-5 miners’ strike ;’the enemy within’. With the publication of this bestselling book a decade later, the full irony of that accusation became clear. There was an enemy within. But it was not the National Union of Mineworkers that was out to subvert liberty. It was the secret services of the British state – operating inside the NUM itself. Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destry the power of Britain’s miners’ union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, MI5 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners’ leaders. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedentedly savage smear campaign. In this new edition, published for the twentieth anniversary of Britain’s most important postwar social confrontation, new material brings the story up to date – and, in the wake of the Iraq war intelligence scandals, highlights the continuing threat posed by the security services to democracy today.”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Enemy-within-Thatchers-Against/dp/1844675084/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365433495&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=The+enemy+within+semas+milne
I saw this on another blog…
“The dreaded and chill name of Pinochet surfaces, so unlike all those poor souls* he had dumped in the Pacific from helicopters.
Pablo Neruda’s grave to be exhumed in murder investigation
Chilean poet was long thought to have succumbed to cancer but driver claims he was murdered by Pinochet regime
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/07/pablo-neruda-exhumed-murder-investigation
Good for Neruda’s friend and driver Manuel Araya for standing by him.
~~~
*SANTIAGO, Chile — The bodies of 400 to 500 Chileans who “disappeared” under ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bloody rule were dumped into the ocean strapped to pieces of railroad track to make them sink, according to new court testimonies published yesterday in La Nacion newspaper”
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2001799584_chile24.html
*******
Pinochet, Thatchers best friend and all time hero.
I support you also. I wanted to twit along this line, and caught myself to be “inappropriate”. Than I changed my mind again but it was too late.
So, what’s wrong with this? Absolutely nothing. Presumably, we should have some respect because she is death?
Why are people silent about Blair, Bush, Rumsfeld or Cheney and the rest of criminals? Having respect in life and death? No, Gov. historians will write about them as great politicians and that “knowledge” will pass down.
In my mind their graves should be razed.
In fact they are all loathsome. Personally I think Thatcher stands up well against Blair. At least you knew what you were getting.
But on a lighter subject here is a picture of the Cyprus Company registry…so you can see how well things were going there (thanks to friend Nicholas Shaxon)
http://blogs.euobserver.com/shaxson/2013/04/08/what-the-company-registry-in-cyprus-tax-haven-actually-looks-like/
“But I am unrepentant” …………This bothers me Golem and trust me I am no fan of Thatcher or Reagan. I find it interesting that both died of Alzheimers. Perhaps they steered a steady course because the vinyl record spinning in their damaged brains had a deep grove in it preventing the needle from moving on.
That said…. even though we agree about the dangers of corporatism and globalization.I still would not care to leave the world in your admittedly Godless and demonstrably vindictive hands.
Buck
I think David’s belief that there is no God, is not vindictively reserved for Mr. R & Mrs T. or for anyone else. At least if his opinion is true they would truly be resting in peace. If however there was a God in the traditional Christian sense, I would imagine that both of them would have had some explaining to do.
Neither of them personally ever pulled any triggers, this was left to others who would have to live & die with that fact. Perhaps the likes of Reagan, Blair, Kissinger & Thatcher could justify their actions to themselves, but would that cut any ice with an all seeing God ? Unless of course God turns out to be a Republican old testament ‘ Praise the lord & pass the ammunition ‘ type diety, in which case they would have nothing to worry about.
Nobody knows where we end up, but personally I would be much more concerned with the fate of the above’s many innocent victims. As in the ladies case one example comes to mind – The needless murder of the crew of the Belgrano, which was supposedly justifiable in order to protect a British community of about 3000 people. This act was carried out while systematically destroying very many similar communities in Britain.
I would like to believe that we are all held accountable for our actions, preferably in this World. As for afterwards, I have no idea, just an intuition or a false hope that justice does exist somewhere within this mystery.
I won’t defend Pinochet but I must say he was the left’s greatest PR victory. Allende was painted as an innocent, democratically elected leader, despite pulling the democratic rug out from under Chile. Ironically, he came to rule with a percentage of the vote similar to Adolf Hitler, and like Hitler, used that as a mandate to take over the media and everything else. Just swap Jews for Americans. My wife fled Chile with her family when she was 4 after being told by the police that they were on a murder list in a planned counter-coup that was later foiled. Armed gang of Cubans terrorizing the Chilean middle class brought in by Allende and Castro were apparently of no consequence.
No matter, just play “The Motorcycle Diaries” one more time, showing a badly misunderstood Guevera enjoying his youth, rather than the bloody history of communists everywhere.
don’t forget the early 80’s youth of ‘the south’. we too were unemployed. for this young southerner the torture was compounded by the far higher rents/prices we had to pay, all from the same unemployment benefit/exploitative wages as our northern brothers.
when i found work (making furniture) my wage for a 45 hour week (no holiday/sick pay at all) was 52 quid and my rent (for half of a freezing, unfurnished (but for an insatiable gas meter) 2 bed flat that shared the toilet with the hairdressers downstairs) was 45 quid. needless to say there was much walking to be done, mostly on an empty stomach. just before i got that job (by lying through my teeth and as good as begging for it) i had a 5 day stint of eating absolutely nothing, not a bean. for those that haven’t tried it; it makes you stink for some reason.
and it’s all happening again to today’s young folk, except now they are in hock to thatcher’s criminal banking pals for a lazy 20 grand a head before they even start.
she was, at best, a deluded fool, at worst a hate filled, swivel eyed sociopath.
Very tough for everybody who didn’t count as Maggie’s ubermensch, but there was at least a culture of resistance then, music, comedians etc. Maybe as an old fart I am missing it, but I see precious little out there that reflects youth spirit. The stuff I have come across is the cultural & artistic equivalent of a pot noodle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-etiquette
I think this article sums it up pretty well.
Yes, glee is appropriate when a wicked witch is dead. I give you MP Glenda Jackson in a stirring speech to Parliament last week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoP56k_-H4I
No sooner does one pop off, than another one pops up!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lagarde,_Christine_%28official_portrait_2011%29.jpg
She was a traitor to decent people of Northern Ireland, sold them out to appease/protect the City.
which planet did you just arrive from?
I too share your condolensces to her children as losing a parent is terrible.
I cried when I heard the news – not for Thatcher herself. But for the millions of lives she helped ruin, none of whom will be remembered when the hysteria starts in the mainstream media.
I cried for my grandparents and the people that lived around them in Grimethorpe that I knew. People who found their lives utterly smashed and were left on the scrapheap. People that now Thatcher’s heirs are coming for all over again with their welfare ‘reform’.
She was a politician who polished the art of divide and rule and who changed this country and the world for the worse. She sowed the seeds for this financial collapse and crisis and she palled around with dictators and fascists like Pinochet. People will react strongly to criticism of her and, as many do, in response to her death they will start to soften their view of her. But she did some terrible things and they shouldn’t be forgotten just because she’s gone.
Keep up the good work Golem. You’ve written some of the best stuff on Cyprus I’ve seen and I always send people this way when they ask about what’s really going on.
My family also. Good to hear from you, Princesschipchopz. As always.
“Grimethorpe”
“It should also be remembered that in the 1980s this country was the world leader in the development of clean coal technology via the fluidised bed plant at Grimethorpe colliery. Thatcher closed it down.”
http://eeru.open.ac.uk/natta/renewonline/rol62/7.htm
Don’t forget the training and support of the Khmer Rouge that went on under her watch.
I really don’t think she was that bright to be honest.
After the assassination of Airey Neave (which is the great mystery of her time in office) she could be pushed in any direction rather then simply bending to Neaves dark force.
It is generally understood the INLA did not have the capacity for such a operation so who exactly did the job ?
Something very deep happened in British politics / intel back then……….very deep.
Much above party politics.
I’m glad I’m not the only one still waiting for the truth to come out. Thatcher’s initial plans to reform the security services were one of the few radical plans she was not able to follow through. (For others new to this the following summary is from Wikipedia…)
“Kevin Cahill, an Irish investigative journalist, claims Neave was on the verge of a massive overhaul of the security services, possibly involving a merger of MI5 and MI6 and arising from his belief in corruption in the security services. Cahill suggests a link between Neave’s killing, that of Sir Richard Sykes and the attempted murder of Christopher Tugendhat in December 1980. Cahill claims that Neave would have been head of the combined security services with Sykes and Tugendhat as his deputies, with Sykes responsible for foreign operations and Tugendhat responsible for home operations.
Cahill claims to have had a conversation with a drunken Neave on St Patrick’s Day 1979 in the foyer of the Irish embassy in London. Cahill had left a party and was waiting for a taxi. He saw Neave in the room and introduced himself to him as an admirer. Cahill claims that Neave was inebriated and responded “quite out of the blue” by saying “There are going to be changes here, big changes, soon. There is going to be cleaning of the stables… There has been serious corruption.” Neave then said that there was “no use playing games. We have to win… We will win when the [corruption] is sorted out. Count on that.” Cahill found Neave’s remarks surprising because he seemed internally preoccupied with the UK, with his Northern Ireland brief “almost a sideline”. Cahill also thought that Neave’s mention of corruption meant Soviet penetration.”
Maybe I should add that there is only one other person for whom I would stoop as low as celebrating their death, and that is Mr Blair. Mine is not party political dislike.
David
Maybe you can explain why I absolutely concur with you in Blair’s case but feel uneasy with your comment on Thatcher?
Must be a case of “De mortuis nil nisi bonum”!
Blair is the epitomy of what a reprehensible bunch of twats we have who govern our country.
I have never been able to find it on the Internet but maybe someone on here can.
It is Blair in his constituency (Sedgefield) straight after the Labour election victory and telling everyone what wrongs he was going to put right. I remember feeling sick.
Brian
Hello Brian,
I can’t explain. I am revolted by Blair and Thatcher not so much for what they believed – though their shared belief in the unregulated and global market is anathema to me – but for how they did what they did.
Thatcher was brutal verging on the sadistic. Blair lied and lied and lied about things which put young men and children into their graves.
Both did violence to decency – or what was left of it – that I just cannot forgive.
Both of them seemed to incubate some thing rotten in this country and in many of the people in this country. The former incubated hatred and condoned, even praised, the despising of groups of people. Mr Lilly and his ‘little list’ of people it was correct to hate. Opinions it was OK to shout down.
Blair incubated an amorality an ‘ends justify the means’ which fatally undermined notions of justice and truth.
One murdered compassion the other honour and honesty.
‘One murdered compassion the other honour and honesty.’
Wow. That’s the best summing up of Thatcher and Blair I’ve ever read. Wonderfully put.
I have always believed that Thatcher unleashed Greed and Blair (and Brown) unleashed Jealousy.
I’ve found all the tributes to Thatcher a bit annoying although I only have myself to blame, I couldn’t resist reading the tributes in the Mail. Probably a mistake.
But it was amusing to read all those pundits saying she was up there with Lloyd George and second only to Churchill and imagine everyone’s favorite warmonger, Tony Blair reading the articles, getting increasingly miserable as he noticed that NO ONE thinks he was in the same league. Hope it really spoilt his day…
“In September 1936 Lloyd George visited Adolf Hitler in an attempt to persuade him not to stop taking military action in Europe. After his arrival back in Britain he wrote in the Daily Express : “I have now seen the famous German leader and also something of the great change he has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods – and they are certainly not those of a Parliamentary country – there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook. One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will, and a dauntless heart.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRgeorge.htm
When Lloyd George said…”Whatever one may think of his methods”, he must have known what Lord Halifax knew…
“In November, 1937, Neville Chamberlain, who had replaced Stanley Baldwin as prime minister, sent Lord Halifax to meet Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering in Germany. In his diary, Lord Halifax records how he told Hitler: “Although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he (Hitler) had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping Communism out of his country.” This was a reference to the fact that Hitler had banned the Communist Party (KPD) in Germany and placed its leaders in Concentration Camps.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhalifaxL.htm
Note the similarities in their thinking!!!.
“6 July 1944 Winston Churchill’s Secret Poison Gas Memo”
http://www.solami.com/britishgas.htm#1944
“But the great war crime which will be forever linked to Churchill’s name is”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/raico-churchill5.html
on the basis that only nixon could go to china, blair, like obama, is arguably more loathsome and destructive
Golem
How could you dislike Tony the twat? I think he and George make such a lovely couple 😉
Every time i hear a mention of him i think of this and smile..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEH6wZXPA4
As for Thatcher I’m with you 100%
She was merely the political agent for a much longer darker project which I imagine began not long after Suez.
The goal which was achieved in spectacular fashion during both Left & Right wing administrations was the replacement of domestic workers in the primary & secondary industries of the UK with external workers in the primary & secondary Industries.
So it was merely the subtraction of labour value via arbitrage…….capital holders of the UK could then extract labour value and spend their loot on “services”
The result : real goods trade deficit of the UK in the year of our Lord 2012 was £106 Billion or a simply massive 6.9 % of GDP.
Thats a hell of a lot of free stuff.
Its very ironic for sure.
But her monetarist / anti home industrial polices during the big bang era of the early 80s was vital for the development of the growing mercantilist euro soviet regime as you can’t have one without the other.
But life goes on for the remaining hobbits. (I have always admired their community spirit)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7os6lJOZvu8
But they really have no idea of the dark forces which orbit them.
On the + side England is now a much greener land then the Get Carter years of 1970 when all of its coal consumption was domestic production.
But it has come at a extreme cost for the rest of us Orcs.
We were Elf like once upon a time ……………but we have become corrupted ……
Nations will always celebrate their Useful Idiots, Lady Thatcher being one of them.
Hate the Sins Love the sinner? There is a lot of misguided mythology ( or very well guided, depending on your opinion of the ways of Bernays?
The Media Love in will be pretty horrendous, I watched some simpering salivating idiot of an assistant political editor on the BBC assuring us all that all the Politicos of all stripes wanted their pictures taken with ´´The Iron Lady´´,
We will all be assured that kindness to children and Small animals was always assured. Kissinger gave his adoration , one war criminal praising another, oh propaganda, Save us all.
Condolences to Carol ( I do feel for Carol more than anyone else) and Mark ( another useful idiot ).
Mostly I will be trying not to Gag.
This song now has its day
http://mjhibbett.bandcamp.com/track/the-fight-for-history
Great song Mark. twweted face booked and savoured all the way up to 11.
There are very few people in this world whose death would make me feel joy instead of sorrow. Mrs Thatcher was one of them. She chose to be evil, and she did it with her eyes wide open. She was ready to nuke Buenos Aires, you may remember. Evil is the only word descriptive enough for her. I absolutely agree with Golem’s post… would not call her a witch though, rather a witch burner.
Even if she could not compete with Hitler in the 20th century rogues race [she lacked the chance rather than the will] she finished not far away from figures like Mussolini
“[RG] POV Re: Thatcher’s death: “What’s to celebrate? Another war criminal dies without being tried for their crimes. While their ideological children continue to wage war on the poor and vulnerable. The ghosts of Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan are the ones celebrating tonight, as their legacy of destruction and terror plays out across the globe, in our homes, towns and cities. This is not a win of any kind. It is a distraction from the work that needs to be done. The physical beings may die, but the legacy lives on, the asset stripping of the world continues, and the people will be left with nothing. Over and out.”
A truly EVIL entity has departed this world.
I heartily agree with David Malone’s comments. This woman was a lifelong, and utterly shameless, associate of Pinochet, a Fascist and torturer.
She started the neo-liberal project in this country, which is reaching its endgame now. As a result, Britain is a more unequal, more impoverished, more mean-spirited and squalid country. Her son followed in her footsteps by trying to mount a coup in Africa and her daughter distinguished herself by urinating on television – what a legacy – especially for those mining communities such as the one I was brought up in, which she smashed in a vindictive crusade against those she called ‘the enemy within’
As far as I am concerned she leaves a poisonous heritage and I will find it hard to endure the hours of hogwash that will descend on the nation as the media outdo themselves in sycophancy.
I never met a Brit who didn’t despise Thatcher, and this thread confirms my previous conclusions.
So you welfare state socialists think things are so much better now that we have had Blair and Cameron. Bravo. Britain was washed up 30 years ago until Thatcher hitched your wagon to the Fed and the US executive. Now Americans have to constantly hear how bad it would have been if Paulson hadn’t pulled off of his TARP swindle, but please spare us the “Thatcher ruined Britain”. You guys would have met the welfare state end game decades ago. Instead we have to read your drivel about how outrageous this statist was compared to the communist statists you would have preferred. Spare us the whining. A truer argument against Thatcher from you welfare state utopians would be “She was a closet statist but her statism didn’t benifit me”. The reality about Thatcher is that she didn’t go far enough and was in reality almost as big a statist as Blair.
Go easy on whatever it is you’re smoking.
I was a bit concerned when you posted that Max Keiser had picked up on your Plunderball post, that the blog would see an influx of these libertarian/anarcho-capitalist gold bug types.
I am a Brit (expat) and do not despise Mrs Thatcher. I remember the strikes in the seventies when the Unions were out of control and this changed my political outlook from socialist to something more to the right. I can remember thinking back then that the country needed a ‘benign dictator’ and that is what she was.
The reality is that is that she revitalised the country. The liar Blair then threw it all away.
Cameron is a career politician who, like Blair, only does what it takes to try and get re-elected. The country is now broke with little hope of recovery as the youth has been brainwashed with green politics and have little real knowledge.
“This is a politician, after all, who never won the votes of more than a third of the electorate; destroyed communities; created mass unemployment; deindustrialised Britain; redistributed from poor to rich; and, by her deregulation of the City, laid the basis for the crisis that has engulfed us 25 years later.”
Seumas Milne
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/04/margaret-thatcher-state-funeral-protests
I don’t remember Manchester being revitalised. Or anywhere else in the north, Wales or Scotland. I do remember a dirty war being fought in Northern Ireland on her watch – would that count?
Growth under Thatcher was always less than in previous decades. The Unions managed to heap all the blame for stagflation on themselves – I am still angry with them, but let it be clear – they were REACTING to one of capitalism’s periodic crises. They reacted badly but was it worth smashing entire communities? Erroding the social fabric? Forcing the ”greed is good” mantra down our throats?
So much of the mendacity that is discussed here got an incredible phillip under Thatcher.
Blair threw it all away! He was the truest follower of Thatcher ever.
Back in 1979 Britain had problems and so did Germany. They took the road of high class manufacturing, classless education, widespread apprenticeships, no huge financial sector and local banks, no housing bubble and a federal decentralized system…plenty of faults no doubt…but…
The road Thatcher took us on with the continued slavish support of Major, Blair and Brown led directly to where we are now. Massive screwed up Banking sector, bombed out manufacturing, class ridden education, alienated underclass, London drifting off from the rest of the UK and a balance of payments deficit dwarfing any ever.
But Thatcher did at least ( by accident more than design) create the circumstances that destroyed the Argentinian generals as nasty a bunch as Pinochet’s.
go fuck yourself
+1
The UK has been going down the toilet ever since she left the government.
I’m a terrible person but when I heard the news my first thought was the title of this blog
ditto @ richard
Well done David, this is perhaps both the finest and most honest article written about Mrs Thatcher today. We are now reaping the rewards of what this evil woman started and has been gleefully carried on by her successors. The world is most definitely a better place today even if only for a short time.
The piece by Russell Brand in the Guardian is very good.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
And George Galloway gives her a fearsome touch- up that makes David’s effort here look like a panegyric…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34558.htm?utm_source=ICH%3A+Thatcher's+Criminal+Legacy&utm_campaign=FIRST&utm_medium=email
Copy and pasted from another web site…
“Back in the 1980s, Thatcher burnt off most of the UK north sea gas 20/25 years worth into the atmosphere in order to give tax cuts to get re-elected, the money was there to store it. Norway did store their gas and are now selling it to the UK and making a lot of money.
I am old enough to remember three people going into number 10 to BEG Thatcher NOT to burn off all that north sea gas (picture of them going into number 10 was in one of the newpapers at the time). They told her it would soon be needed. It was three days later she came out off number 10 and was asked….”Why are you going to burn off all that gas” she replied…”I have agonised over this but feel it is the best thing to do”…I will remember that until my dying day.
All to give tax cuts to get re-elected. She could not have given those tax cuts and stored the gas.
It should also be pointed out that it was NOT in the interest of some of Thatchers friends for the UK to have that gas (Nuclear industry).”
I remember this at the time I seem to remember that the gov did not want to spend the 5-10 billion needed to fund the pipeline so they dumped the gas. There may have been some technical issues which I have forgotten about those.Always struck me as criminal at the time and even more stupid in the intervening 30 years.
DING DONG
“He responded to his sacking by Mrs Thatcher by issuing a statement declaring that she was steering “full speed ahead for the rocks”. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7007648.stm
Time has proved that he was correct.
Thatchers ‘BIG BANG’ invited the foxes and wolves into our chicken shed. The asset stripping went into hyperdrive and here we are now hollowed out and totally bankrupted.
Those that supported all this are now taking the food away from invalids and the destitute.
Everything they say is always the exact opposite of the truth.
But hatred is no weapon to use.We must find other tools.I gather there is a missing link between the apes and the human beings. I think it is called man..
Class hate is always OK.
Golem XIV I am with you in hating this woman. Do not feel guilty the damage she did was huge and we are still living with the fall out today. With me it started when she stood quoting St Francis on the steps of Downing street I went out and joined the Guild of Hospital Pharmacists the next day (Nearest I could get to a union).
Have recently read Michael Hudson’s “The Bubble and Beyond ” and his comments and observations of the selling off at bargain basement prices British Nationalized assets in the 80’s and the paying of top rates of 7% for underwriting fees in stead of a closer to the mark of 2-3% for established companies. That should be fraud. The return for selling of the family silver could have also been maximized by selling off parts of the stock to get a full market value established (ala B.P.), then selling further lots at a full market price. But that would not suit the Tory friends in the city who’s Christmases came early throughout the 80’s.
Doing best to avoid the BBC’s wet dream coverage tonight.
Thatcher was first elected in 1959 – MP Finchley. Heath nominated Thatcher as a Minister in 1970. Then she became leader of the Opposition, and was finally PM 1979-1990. (>wiki)
Long career. The contra forces were not enough to ever move her out or sideways or downwards … She was successful because she represented a large chunk of Brit public opinion, or if one likes, managed to manipulate it, gather adherence. (See e.g. a few comments on this board, heh.)
It’s an easy argument, I know. She was not a military dictator, but an elected official in a Republic cum Constitutional Monarchy.
At fault is the whole ‘democratic’ structure, the power nexus and its management. The media. The banks, the corporations, etc.
The same system saw Blair come to power.
I was actually surprised at the news of her death, thought she was long in a cold, icy grave.
I imagine she has been somewhere very cold for some time Andrea. A couple of strokes I think, senility & it seems she had also become ” Maggie No Friends “. It is reported that her children were both elsewhere the last 2 christmasses, which doesn’t surprise me, as very old semi demented & often incontinent old fogies are not usually a bunch of laughs, particularly I suspect power junkies who now find themselves powerless & ignored..
It appears most of her time including xmas was spent with her care workers & I read somewhere that her Pleb, security gave her a cake. Personally I couldn’t have cared less whether she was dead or alive & that goes for Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney & many more.
I am happy enough that they end up powerless & therefore unable to cause harm, but I hope that their unavoidable fall from grace & the smell of approaching death, gives them some idea of what it feels like to be truly weak & defenceless – Justice ( for a change ) also would be nicely served if they were forced into using bottom line care provision they deem as satisfactory for the masses.
There will be plenty of grovelling turds who will be dying to kiss her dead arse, but none of them I dare say, would have wiped it for her, this was left to a relatively low paid nobody, who perhaps despite everything, chose to be gentle by showing the old tyrant what would have been to her an unrecognisable face, the face of human empathy.
“….. what would have been to her an unrecognisable face, the face of human empathy.”
What a great line Stevie.
Oh I agree. But I doubt they themselves relate their misery and dependency to that experienced by others. In their minds, or whatever is left of them, they are always exceptional powerful ppl who are in a special category and thus deserve service, subservience, respect, adulation, etc. but mostly – are above the law. Which relates to today, and not Thatcher or Reagan.
Anybody anywhere near the business end of her actions knows why she is loathed in such measure……my ‘better’ self will be taking a brief holiday until she is suitably cold in her hole!(State sponsored violence against miners and travelers for starters)…Some things can not be forgiven!
Hey David,
I tried to contact you via email. Do you have some other mail?
The Golem email is [email protected]
Did this not work? Please try again as it seems to be working. If it fails again please drop me another comment here with an email and I’ll write to you. I just try to keep my other email for other matters. Hope you understand.
Thank God for you and people like you David. You are the real British patriots.
Hopefully Thatcherism will begin to die with her but it will take generations to undo the damage she did to civilized society all over the world especially here in America where she empowered Wall Street.
I am heading for the desert to see the Spring blanket of flowers. They are a sight to see this time of year in the California deserts. But the real reason for my timing is so I don’t have to listen to the Republicans singing her praises and of her sidekick Sir Ronald Reagan.
She is divisive even in death. Ding Dong.
Pat,
Thatcher was the real President of the United States while Reagan was in office, Reagan done everything she told him to do except one thing, that was in the invasion of Grenada, Thatcher thought that was a bad idea, she thought the democratically elected government of Grenada would collapse of its own accord given time. But Reagan so wanted to invade, could have been due to pressure from the US military and the far right nutters in his Republican party.
“They really respected each other’s views, and if that is not influence, I don’t know what is,” she added.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1185177.stm
“Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs”
http://www.jkozy.com/Killing_the_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs.htm
Ding dong indeed Golem, great post.
A biting attack from the left.
I am deeply sceptical of the post war British Labour movement but its a good summary none the less.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/08/the-queen-mother-of-global-austerity-financialization/
As I said above – the free lunch continues.
106 billion or real goods trade deficit is BIG……….
106 billion may not seem like much in todays world of hyperinflated claims on wealth but that 106 billion Sterling is not claims on wealth – its wealth.
If Ireland increased its food clothes and transport imports by even a couple of Billion it would have a large affect on the domestic economy.
The city has managed to externalize the capital destruction of the North Sea yet again.
The Thatcher legacy.
The excellent quarterly British energy trends publication out now.
looking at the final quarter of 2012 and summing up the disastrous energy situation in the UK.
The main points for 2012:
1. Total energy production was 10½ per cent lower than in 2011.
2 . Imports in 2012 were at a record high, with exports at their lowest level since 1989. As a result, net import dependency climbed to 43 per cent, its highest level since 1976
3. Oil production was 14½ per cent lower than in 2011, the lowest annual production volume since our current reporting system began.
4.Natural gas production was 14 per cent lower than in 2011, and at the lowest level of production since 1985
5. Coal production was 10 per cent lower than in 2011, and at a record low level. Coal imports
were 37½ per cent higher. Generators’ demand for coal was higher by 31 per cent. Coal
stocks were 18 per cent lower, and at a record low for the year end.
However the UK is consuming more (mainly lower quality energy – imported coal)
6. Total primary energy consumption for energy uses rose by 5 per cent. However, when adjusted
to take account of weather differences between the fourth quarter of 2011 and the fourth
quarter of 2012, primary energy consumption fell by ½ per cent.
• Final energy consumption was 6½ per cent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2011. Domestic
consumption rose by 19½ per cent, with average temperatures being 2.3 degrees cooler than
2011. On a seasonally and temperature adjusted basis final energy consumption rose by ½ per
cent.
Refer to the special feature near the bottom of the publication – “Coal in 2012″
See chart 1 in particular.
Coal only began to be imported in the UK after 1970…………..
UK income data from the rest of the world and what is the real significance of its massive decline (especially in Europe) ?
Y2011 : £ 25,871 million
Y2012 : £ 2,127 million
remember these are not hyperinflated claims.
This is the real yield from these hyperinflated claims.
Remember in Q1 2008 its income yield from the rest of the world reached a record £14.1 billion.
POP
This is when RBS type operations came to a end.
In my opinion the UK is now choosing real goods over income from the rest of the world (especially Europe)
This is a very big deal me thinks.
Also if a country went through this turnaround things in the country would get very bearish unless it could externalize the losses.
British trade ( fuels) surplus / deficit.
Y2000 : £ + 7,041 million (peak)
Y2003 : £ + 4,262 million
Y2012 : £ – 21,624 million
Thats a swing of over £28 billion + !!!!!
It must get fuel from outside its political (but not economic) hinterland which means less for us Euro commies.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/170736/energy_trends_march_2013.PDF
You’re better than that Golem.
‘I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.’
MLK.
maybe, michael. but i tell you what, it makes you feel fucking great!
I’m no fan of the woman myself. Got some really good mates who were forced into the soup kitchen lines off the back of her. A thoroughly divisive woman who thrived on conflict.
Just thought you should give it a few days before laying in.
I know you’re right Michael. And who could argue with a sentiment like MLK’s?
He was a better man than me. Tha’s all. Anger is powerful and sometimes I feel it festers if you don’t let it out now and again.
I cannot adaquately explain to you how Thatcher and her decade of gloating arrogance made me feel. Except to say I felt she took great pleasure in vandalizing and trampling on everything I held dear.
ed April 8, 2013 at 9:55 pm #
“maybe, michael. but i tell you what, it makes you feel fucking great!”
+1trillion,in today’s terms.
Evil must always be exposed and this blog plays a very big part in that.
The coverage this woman is getting across msm today is absolutely sickening, given the damage she caused in her working life.
Ok, go on, make yourself feel better.
But given a lack of empathy is presumably one of the things you are going to accuse her of……
Most Hobbits thought they were getting Galadriel on heels with handbag but in fact she was but the local washerwoman in nice clothes
They gave the ring freely , without thinking and she took it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spHEw2n9LwE
Now the only funny thought that comes into my head from those dark days is a very sick Alan Clark getting a lazy Horn in the commons while looking at a bit of her leg.
Thank you Golem. You are high up on my list of heros…. if only for this post.
This, from the Independent, shows how out of touch the MSM are. Note the spineless Blairites cowering behind rhetorical hedgerows. creeps!
It was the ancient Greek sage Chilon of Sparta who is recorded as first coining the phrase “do not speak evil of the dead”, 2,600 years ago.
The sentiment was lost on some of Baroness Thatcher’s fiercer critics, as the former Prime Minister continued to polarise opinion in death.
While mainstream Labour politicians issued carefully crafted and calibrated statements to mark her passing, others on the Left did little to disguise their jubilation at her death.
On social media sites, street parties were discussed to “celebrate” Lady Thatcher’s demise. An analysis by the media monitoring firm Synthesio suggested that about one-in-three social media comments following her death was negative.
The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who was leader of the Greater London Council when it was abolished by Lady Thatcher, was more restrained but equally critical.
“She created today’s housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis,” he said. “Every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong,”
George Galloway, the controversial ex-Labour firebrand, took to Twitter to denounce her policies on apartheid and Ireland. “May she burn in the hellfires,” he wrote, adding later: “She was a witch.” A Labour councillor in Colchester was forced to apologise after tweeting a picture of a bottle of champagne with the words: “I’ve had this in the fridge for many years just waiting for this very day.” Tina Bourne said her earlier tweet had been crass and insensitive.
The comedian Frankie Boyle had no such qualms. “Finally, I get to wear my black suit and tap shoes together,” he wrote.
Perhaps not surprisingly some of the harshest criticism came from former miners, whose anger remains undimmed nearly 30 years after their attempt to take on the Conservative Government over pit closures. While the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers Arthur Scargill remained silent, David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, said it was a “great day”. Mr Hopper a former miner, who was 70 yesterday, said it was “one of the best birthdays I have ever had”.
“She destroyed our community, our villages and our people,” he said. “For the union this could not come soon enough and I’m pleased that I have outlived her.
“She absolutely hated working people and I have got very bitter memories of what she did. She turned all the nation against us and the violence that was meted out on us was terrible.”
Wayne Thomas, area secretary for the National Union of Mineworkers Wales added: “Of course you have to sympathise on a human level – she was someone’s parent or grandparent.
“But nevertheless, working class communities across south Wales will never be able to forgive her for her ruthlessness…”
The French socialist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon remarked: “Margaret Thatcher is going to find out in hell what she did to those miners.”
In a sign of how Lady Thatcher’s divisive legacy continues, it was not just old political foes who appeared to welcome her death. When the news reached the National Union of Students conference, it was met with applause and cheering.
Loughborough student Jago Pearson, who was at the conference in Sheffield, said: “There was a significant reaction to it. I’d say it was around 30 or 40 people doing it.
“This didn’t come from the NUS leadership, it was the delegates.”
Speaking at the conference later in the day, NUS President Liam Burns distanced the Union from the cheering: “I’m the last person to agree with Margaret Thatcher’s politics or her policy record as prime minister. But we must not forget that an elderly woman has just died. She had family, friends, colleagues and supporters who will want to pay their respects.
“It’s not just that this would reflect extremely badly upon us if we were to show disrespect at this time. We are better than that. We believe there is such a thing as humanity.”
For one former critic, it was a time to repent. The author and comedian John O’Farrell got into trouble earlier this year during the Eastleigh by-election for comments made in 1998 that he wished Lady Thatcher had died in the Brighton bombing. Yesterday he tweeted: “Person I once hated more than any other has died. Now I’m just sad so much hatred was stirred up. Making a donation (to charity in her name).”
More than 300 people gathered in Glasgow city centre last night to “celebrate” . Anti-capitalist campaigners shouted: “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie” as the crowd replied “dead, dead, dead”. Meanwhile, More than 100 people gathered in Brixton, south London – the scene of fierce riots in 1981. One banner said: “Rejoice, Thatcher is dead.”
“They are taking the Hobbits to Isengard”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxoymq-uah0
There was a huge fear of social breakdown back then (as England was already 10+ years in to the extreme monetarist experiment)
She was voted to bring back normality to the Shire.
Their savior destroyed the Punks(which now look harmless but lost inside) but also destroyed what remained.
We should only speak good when someone dies. Thatcher is dead. Good.
“Thatcherism”
In truth it should not be called “Thatcherism”, it should have been called Gaitskellism, Healey,Thatcher and Blair are the children of Gaitskellism.
The Labour party have always been right wing, they did have a slight flirtation with the left of centre under Attlee’s Labour government, the roots of all the problems we are experiencing at this moment in time go back to the evil seeds Hugh Gaitskell and Denis Healey.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUgaitskell.htm
Note the strange death of Hugh Gaitskell.
“He (Healey) is a strange person. When he was at Oxford he was a communist. Then friends took him in hand, sent him to the Rand Corporation of America, where he was brainwashed and came back very right wing.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhealeyD.htm
“In 1978 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, controversially began imposing tight monetary controls. This included deep cuts in public spending on education and health. Critics claimed that this laid the foundations of what became known as monetarism. In 1978 these public spending cuts led to a wave of strikes (winter of discontent) and the Labour Party was easily defeated in the 1979 General Election.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDthatcher.htm
How very strange!!!, I put the above post on above about the “Rand Corporation” and on another forum about Thatcher I come across this post!!!…
“She got this character over from the Rand Coporation in America to set the NHS privatisation project in motion, ie a private health insurance model. Cameron and Clegg are now completing it.
Affordable health care and consumer choice: An interview with Professor Alain Enthoven”
https://www.extendhealth.com/employers/newsletter/2011/1/affordable-health-care-and-consumer-choice
Healey had close connections to the British security services. He once threatened, very directly, someone close to me.
He was Thatcherite before Thatcher.
Healey is one VERY nasty piece of work. He and a few others were instrumental in taking over control of the Labour party and making it what it is today, a far right wing party.
Another post in response about Healey from the same forum I posted about above…
“Hi At 1.48am you wrote about Denis Healey and his Rand Corp connections. He was also the head of the IMF for a time.
I found his name the other day on this front/’think tank’ outfit. It was founded by the Saudi Sheikh Yamani who ran OPEC. They used to directly control the supply and the price of our oil supplies. I suppose the ‘market’ does that now.
About CGES
Founded in 1990 by His Excellency Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) is a non-profit think tank, specialising in oil market analysis and forecasting, and the economics and politics of energy.
As energy analysts our task is to understand a complex reality, to simplify a confusing picture, to deconstruct the energy market into its constituent parts and reassemble them in such a way as to form a coherent narrative.
The CGES is known for its well-researched, in-depth studies and reports on oil and gas issues. Our expertise lies in:
• Oil demand, supply and price movements and forecasts
• The futures market
• OPEC policy
• Geopolitics of the Middle East, the FSU, Africa and other oil and gas producing regions
We offer advice and consultancy, publish oil market reports and hold regular energy-related events.
http://www.cges.co.uk/aboutus/about-cges
http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-healey/979
~~
Little or nothing has been said so far about the creation of the internal market in the NHS and the ensuing nonsense.
1987 Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher commissions a review of the NHS, amid concerns over growing financial pressures. This leads to the creation of the “internal market” in 1991 under the auspices of the then health secretary Ken Clarke. The market splits health authorities (which commission care for their local population) from hospital trusts (which compete to provide care). GP fundholding, which gives some family doctors budgets to buy care on their patients’ behalf, is introduced.
History of NHS reforms: A state of permanent revolution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/09/nhs-history-reforms-health-policy
Founder member of the Bilderberg group too
“In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, said: “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”[36] In 2005 Davignon discussed these accusations with the BBC: “It is unavoidable and it doesn’t matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion… When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of
ourselves.”
– right there at least
Interesting that Healy was at the Trilateral Commission meeting at Saltsjöbaden, Sweden in 1973 where an agreement was struck between City-Wall Street elites and OPEC who agreed upon the huge rise in the price of oil so that US and UK banks could make a fortune handling Petro Dollars from the newly rich Gulf states.
This is strongly indicated in the now released minutes from the meeting on ‘US Dollar Hegemony – Saudi oil & the Fed’.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/bilderbergfile/contents.htm
Also, much evidence suggests that Healy was ‘running’ with the IMF and the Treasury against the Labour Party and the electorate during the 1976 economic ‘crisis’ (Ramsay 1996. Beckett 2009) and may even have been complicit in the ‘miscalculations’ for the PSBR for 1977-78 by wanting to discipline trade union wage settlements when inflation was running at over 20%.
Costello’s Tramp the Dirt Down finally comes of heartfelt age – shared with my family spread far & wide though we are. Some things are too craven to forgive or forget
This is hilarious. Can’t find one reference in all of this to the fact that she was democratically elected, all of her policies had to be approved by cabinet and she did not personally mete out the violence on the miners. If she had no sympathy for the miners, then neither did the majority of British (dare I say English) people who re-elected her. Personally I think she was a fascist thug, but she was put there by the electorate (sure, with some help from the media but each generation has to deal with spin). So please, share the blame for Britain’s current ills around a bit.
Had I voted for her or any of those who followed her I would. But I didn’t. And neither did a majority. She was always elected by a minority.
Those who did vote for her, I agree, must stand up and take resposibility for what was done by her and her governments in their name.
But it was never in my name or with my consent.
…..no but we allowed ourselves to dragged along by it all. Whether we voted for her or not, as adults in the 80’s we should have done more instead of waiting for her death turn us into armchair anarchists. Rather than moan about what we allowed a dead woman to do to us 30 years ago perhaps we should simply learn from the past, design a humanist, moral and authentic future then work in the present to achieve a better society for us all. Or perhaps that’s just asking a bit too much.
I posted about that above in the sense of the ‘system’ that also elected Blair.
Thatcher had no empathy with people who didn’t want to be like her. She thought all men should wear suits and understood no-one who didn’t want to be like her. Her alleged patriotism and love of her country only extended to the 1% who she was responsible for letting off the leash.
To be fair perhaps many on here wouldn’t understand my idea of a goodweekend. Friday; pub, fight,kebab and shag. Saturday; pub,football,fight,pub,fight, chippy and a shag. Fair enough the shag didn’t happen as often as planned but what the hell you can’t have everything. We were called football thugs, louts, yobbos with never a mention that it was us her class cowered behind when it came to wars. Our fighting made us bloody heros then.
Her legacy is division, greed and destruction. The break up of the UK can be put firmly at her door. She created welfare dependency, City greed, the north-south divide, and much more. She taught us the price of everything and the value of nothing. We became much nastier to each other and intolerant of weakness.
The Telegraph has the comments in lockdown because so many of its’ readers pour vitriol upon their saint. They claim the vitriol aimed at Thatcher is somehow an acknowledgement of her great achievements. BS it is, those who hate her do so with good reason. They are the people who were told to wait whilst the “trickledown welth” arrived.
Thatcher told millions they were useless and only good for the dole queue. The poverty and hopeless drug addiction we see now is all her doing. Many regions are trapped in almost third world conditions that no business can turn around because there is no money to do so. Look at the high streets, charity shops, bookies, greggs, loan sharks, boarded up windows and empty pubs.
Thatchers legacy was to say it’s fine to hate the weak and the poor, that everything was always there own fault. Thatcher preached meritocracy as long as there was an inbuilt advantage for her class. In her world, everyone was born whole, had no addiction, metal health problem or poor upbringing.
The hatred and bile now directed at her was created by her. I hope there is one fuck off big dancefloor on her grave because it’ll need it.
Bill
You got me thinking about my time as a teenager living on a council estate during the 70’s. Looking back with probably slightly rose tinted glasses, things on the whole seemed OK. The pottery industry was flying, & although not being on a major coalfield, there were pits around from which communities had grown, Shelton bar steelworks, a large Michelin plant & companies like GEC with large factories dotted about the city.
Most people it seemed to me were reasonably content with 3 tv stations, a council house, a steady job & a public transport system which for the most part efficiently got workers there & back again. The estate had a line of shops from which it was possible to buy almost all you needed – A tiny Tesco which then seemed massive – A chip shop – A grocer ( bit rough) – TV repairman – Clothes boutique – Grocer – Hardware store – Post office – Newsagent – Posh Grocer – Chemist & a Co-op. Town or City centre shopping was undertaken on a Saturday for other items, from largely independant retailers & those larger household names like John Lewis, C&A etc – There were many small retailers also selling just about anything, like 2nd hand bookshops etc. It was before the days when every English town centre became more or less the same.
Of course I was then too young to know much about the economic state of the country, my main remembrance of the 3 day week was the dark streets in which we were able to run riot & I had little interest or understanding of other issues, NI etc.
It was when I started work I began to develop an understanding of the situation. In between finishing school & starting Art college, in a period of 3 months I had 4 jobs, the first lasting 3 days from which I & a group of others were sacked for staging a strike. A local lunatic had threatened us with physical violence unless we took part. All of us then found another job within a few hours, I soon got fed up of this new one & so had 2 more & lots of eye opening adventures for an innocent 15 yr old.
This was basically a time of full employment & some workers then thought that they had the upper hand. This power led to increasing demands & bad behaviour on the part of some workers, like a friend of mine who worked for something like 5 yrs on nights for a nationalised steelworks. His job basically consisted of pressing a button a few times over an 8hr. shift, with the rest of the time spent, like the others on this shift, sleeping in a camp bed.
Similar behaviour at places like British Leyland & the constant strikes were the things the media fixated upon, but it seemed to me they rarely focused on the many shortcomings of management who perpetuated the ‘ US & Them’ culture,& were largely way behind the times & often incompetent.
The last time I was back at the council estate I partly grew up on, around about 5 yrs ago, the shops were largely boarded up, all have wire mesh over their frontages, especially the ‘ Bargain Booze ‘ which had at that time, caught up with a similar establishment I visited in the mid 70’s in Moss Side, M’chester. The whole place is litter strewn & looks rundown, dogs run wild & according to an old friend you now need permission from the local drug dealer to get permission to visit the local pub.
Driving around it I got the feeling that the sense of community which once came from amongst other things, a shared workplace, shared transport, the local school, lads & Dads football & youth clubs must be long gone. The everywhere Sky dishes hinted at a place of separate, small, people filled bubbles.
Thatcher was the main conductor of the neoliberal orchestra which suceeded in breaking up working class communities. I think she played to the worst instincts of people, bringing out the ‘ Two cars in the drive, but bugger all in the fridge’ mentality, which was ably carried on by her Frankenstein’s monster Blair & others.
The Germans seem to have done a better job, managing to keep their industries largely intact by a combination of better worker / management relations, investing in design & not pushing the idiotic idea of using your home as an investment model, whereas we threw the baby out with the bathwater, invested in debt, which has ironically resulted in what the neoliberals allegedly hate the most, a dependancy culture.
The ‘ Potteries ‘ was the largest giftware / tableware manufacturing centre in the World, now of course it is China, who now import the majority of their quality products of the above items from Germany.
Unless you happen to be of the financial elite we seem to have spent the last 30 odd years gaining very little & throwing away the good things that we once had. Those people from that estate were not debt serfs & had a sense of community, it was pretty rough,( Bill would have had no problem finding a fight there ), but if it came down to trying to survive the coming shit / fan event, those people would have stood up much better than those who now inhabit the same place, where all the bad things have magnified & all the good things have been shrunk.
I never hated Thatcher, but rather what she & many others stand for. Her particular dead head on the Hydra will drop off to be replaced by another, to take it’s place amongst the thousands of others who share the same creed.
Full of keen observation and wisdom. Thank you.
What the legacy of Thatcher tells us is – we should be careful of those who tell us what we should wish for.
David
A bit of cheer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQE
Brian
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15609-thatchers-mean-legacy-the-queen-mother-of-global-austerity-and-financialization
”As the uncredited patron saint of New Labour, Mrs. Thatcher became the intellectual force inspiring her successor and emulator Tony Blair to complete the transformation of British electoral politics to mobilize popular consent to permit the financial sector to privatize and carve up Britain’s public infrastructure into a set of monopolies. In so doing, the United Kingdom’s was transformed from a real economy of production to one that scavenged the world for rents through its offshore banks. In the end, not only was great damage inflicted on England, but on the entire world as capital fled developing countries for safe harbors in London’s banks. Meanwhile, governments throughout the world today are declaring “We’re broke,” as their oligarchs grow ever more rich.”
Golem, another great post..
You’ve acknowledged the fact it will hurt those closest to her whilst not forgetting the many lives and communities she blighted and shattered. She did not enact reform.She was loathsome, contemptuous and annihilated hope for entire communities with glee. She looked after the police though of course 😉
“it will hurt those closest to her”
Who would they be? Denis is already gone, Maggie’s children have apparently ignored her in recent years.
Just because someone is of senior years and their mental faculties aren’t what they used to be, they don’t necessarily become a non-person. But that’s the way Mark and Carol appear to have treated their mother; she was a non-person.
Not only is there “no such thing as society” in Thatcherworld, there’s no such thing as family either.
A very sick family indeed.
I just don’t view her in such a black and white way. Can you tell us how much better Britain (and the world) might be now if she hadn’t come to power?
I can just remember the Britain of the 70s, the strikes, the power cuts and so on. If we had simply carried on like that, where would we be now? I love the idea of a socialist utopia, but I fear we would have ended up with everyone – not just the workers of the North – living in penury by now. And in the end, even the North got its fancy dockside re-developments, art galleries, bridges and executive housing anyway. Not necessarily sustainable, but that’s open to debate. I’m a northerner and, as I recall, life wasn’t all that wonderful up there before Thatcher arrived. Unless you have a romantic view of men descending into the bowels of the earth until they die of emphysema aged 50. ‘Made in Britain’ did used to be shorthand for ‘crap’, but now it’s not – even if we don’t make so much of it (although some people seem to claim we export as much as ever).
Alternatively, you can say that she simply got lucky with the oil revenue, and that indeed maybe we could have carried on as before with a more equitable giveaway of the windfall among a population increasingly employed in nice, state-funded ‘vanity’ projects. It wouldn’t have been a bad life for most people, I’m sure. Just don’t expect to get a new phone without waiting for six months!
But surely, ultimately, there are much bigger questions, such as whether the world economy as currently constituted can be stable after Peak Oil. Britain’s socialist utopia would still have come to an end if only because of this. Could Thatcher be blamed for not foreseeing the ultimate unsustainability of the global economy, or being too simplistic in her views on free market economics? Probably. But probably no worse than her political opposite numbers, and their simplistic socialist fantasies which were to be funded by skimming off the proceeds of that unsustainable global model anyway, or preparedness to bend over to the unions – you must admit that some union leaders were spectacularly unattractive in their personalities and objectives!
For me, in many ways life in Britain is not as good as it was in the seventies, but I find it hard to disentangle Thatcher from the accumulation of thousands of small degradations that have built up relentlessly anyway.
the truth about thatcher, paris, is that but for the falklands war, the stupidity & incompetence of the argentine generals and the hopeless jingoism of the average brit, she would have been turfed out in the 83 election and remembered only as the biggest failure in british political history. i lived through that time and before falklands, anti-thatcher jokes were everywhere. people hated her. but war & death came to her rescue. which is kinda appropriate when you think about it.
Hello Paris Brown,
No one can write an entire alternate history. But I think you can look at many of the things Mrs Thatcher and her governments did and see they were not about creating a better future for all. Selling off national assets instead of changing the law to allow state organizations to raise capital – for one thing.
You seem keen to create a dichotomy which you would like me to chose between: Mrs T’s way or a socialist utopia. Why must this be my choice? You are repeating the ploy used in those Thatcher years.
Mrs T could have easily chosen to do many of the things which the other NS oil beneficiary nations, such as Norway, chose. They kept the proceeds of the windfall and put it into a sovereign Wealth fund. Mrs T would have been opposed to such a thing on the grounds that it would have seemed to her and her ideological guru (Freidman) as far too much like a state, socialist distortion of the free market. And they would have been quite correct. That is exactly what it would have been.
And we can see from Norway and from Singapore that sovereign wealth funds are a far better idea than any idea Mrs T ever had.
While Mrs T pushed ahead with privatizations other more intelligent leaders could see state enterprises could raise private investment, as private concerns do, by selling small stakes or better yet, rasing funding via debt. But Mrs T was ideologically opposed to the idea that the state should be able to raise money that way. Her fundamentalist conviction was that the nation must not have debt. Her green-grocer ideology said so. So she was blind to the stark illogicality of extolling a private sysytem which relied on raising money through debt – but excoriating the same idea in any business run in the public’s name.
And so she insisted all the nations assets had to be simply sold off to those who had raised debts themselves to buy it. Can you see why people like me hate her for her intellectual dishonesty?
Did she do it because she was not very bright, or because she was too much a free-market fundamentalist to be able to challenge her own faith? Or did she know what she was doing and was simply lying in order to pursue a policy of impoverishing the people in favour of making the few very wealthy? I don’t know. I will probaly never know.
But the fact is, the way I have described her policies, while not at all how she beilved them to be, is a perfectly coherent view of them. The above is what she did. The bald fact is there was no trickle down. The gap between rich and poor exploded under Mrs T when it did not have to.
I could go on and on giving examples. But I won’t.
For me what was worst was her fundamentalist desire to shout down all opposing voices. To villify them and use state aparatus to hound them. You know this happened.
Fundamentalists are toxic and she was our first.
A key theme which comes through again and again in T worship is how we were suffering strikes and power cuts and that infamous Winter of Discontent and how even the dead could not be buried….and then Thatcher came and saved us.
More and more wondering how much that “Winter of Discontent” was in fact manufactured. All part of the plan… like the build up to Allende’s demise.
@Golem
Believe me, I don’t disagree with you fundamentally. It just seems less obvious to me that Thatcher was that much worse than any other politician. It seems to me that a politician with a naive or stupid idea can wreak far more havoc than one with a chip on their shoulder, or lack of IQ or whatever you think was going on with Thatcher. So brilliant intellectual warm-and-cuddly-Labour Gordon Brown (who nevertheless invited Pinochet-loving Thatcher to No. 10 as his first visitor after succeeding Bush/Gadaffi-loving ex-public school warmonger Blair as PM) had what appears to have been a stupid idea that “prudence” was about nothing more than a 2% sort-of-inflation target that he stuck to for years, ignoring rising private debt, banks running riot etc. Is it not possible that this one policy could cost far more livelihoods, schools, hospitals than Thatcher ever did?
Fair points all of them.
I rank blair down there with Mrs T.
Brown, in my view, was mainly just a moral coward. He knew what ‘wrong’ was, unlike Blair who couldn’t see what the fuss was about “Truth/lies?! What’s the big deal?” – Brown knew but was too much of a coward to stand up.
It’s not that people are not profiled for these jobs, before they get them, I believe.
You have probably read that economic hitman book — I believe that it describes the principle behind the process well enough.
Only to know that this woman supported Pinochet in a political,financial and ideological way should be enough to tell us what kind of person she was.Or would anyone like to tell us that it is “not black or white” to support a mass murder and fascist like this chilenian monster but “some shade of grey”?Seeing that what has been done to chile and south america is now imposed on greece and the rest of south europe is as seeing a horror movie live in front oy my eyes.Thatcher was a co-architect to all this.
The havoc Thatcher caused,the damage she caused is felt every where.She was the neoliberal grandmother,the messenger of a social war against workers rights,democracy,banking-regulation etc.,she was an evil person.
I am always sad when a human being dies.I feel sorry for their relatives and family.But I see no reason why anyone should try to convince David that his opinion about this woman is wrong.He is happy she is gone.And he is no hypocrit.It is his blog and his opinion.He is angry about all the consequences of thatchers policies.I am too.Am I happy that she is now dead?No.Because the damage of her doings is already a reality.No matter if she is dead or still alive.But I will never forget what she has done.
I agree, but I would say that she, and those she represented, merely reseted polices or the system of ruling establishment as it were in the past. An aristocratic one.
Liberal-Democracies are nothing but monarchies ruled by political class carefully chosen in hallways of assembly chambers and Party clubs, instead of aristocratic families. And, both are reactionary to the bone with only goal that is endless accumulation of surplus for themselves.
By reading The Great Transformation of Carl Polanyi I found out what is know as Enclosure. Enclosure in one or other form is reworked and repeated over again till today.
Those who did Enclosure also put Thatcher on the throne with same goal. Unfortunately people haven’t learned from history or aren’t allowed to learn, they are manipulated as well like an example of Falkland war is very telling.
It was ever thus. Divide and rule and ignore the man behind the curtain over there. She was the product of a society to idle to think for itself and let other people run their lives. The state is the problem and we are never truly free.
Having joined in with the ding-dong chime, and now that a little time has passed,I have come to realize that this was deeply unfair and a gross injustice to witches everywhere. I offer my deepest apologies if I have inadvertently offended anyone.
Good point! Now I feel bad.
I’m astonished with all the comments! 20 years later she can still divide a nation! Being Greek Cypriot i really don’t hold in respect any of the British PM past or present. But then of course i don’t hold in respect any politician! And that includes our own. Although by character i lack the feeling of hatred, i do despise “leaders” who screw up other peoples life in the name of democracy.
I’m afraid forgiveness is not one of our strong points.
She was a bully, lacking in empathy, and patronising to boot. I do feel sorry for her children – but only as lacking a loving mother – not at her demise.
Excellent posts from Bill, Stevie, Princess and others.
Memories of her are being shaped in the MSM by the people who did well from her wealth concentrating policies – why wouldn’t they think kindly of her. For the many whose communities she wrecked – I hope they have a voice in the history books too.
I’ve heard a lot of talk of how much of a c*nt she was was.
I say not so.
She had no depth or warmth.
The news yesterday filled me with glee & bile in equal measures.
Ive never ever thought ill of the dead until yesterday and i doubt i will again until that c*nt Blair goes. Hopefully before me.
Im 2nd generation Irish, born in Manchester reside now in Yorkshire.
That bitch (im being very kind now) divided & ruled us like no other. Im having a party next Wednesday. Your all welcome to join me.
If people dont understand our jubilation that is their call. Im not apologising for my feelings. No one will take them away from me.
The party will never really begin until the last neo con leaves power.
Her children will fly from Marbella & Switzerland for her £8m tax payer majority funded funeral.
Nuff said.
I remember feeling the dread when Mrs Thatcher was elected… but the reality was much worse than I could have possibly envisaged when she won the GE. Now I realise just how much worse she was, than we knew at the time.
The positive is that her death is highlighting this Tory/LD government’s policies, which were set in train by her, and laid out in the 1994 GATS. The downside is that we are well on the way to her neofeudalist state being realised.
Isn’t it ironic how “Society” suddenly pops into existence when taxes are required to pay for a pompous send off?
@ stevefinn
The account of my life always chimes with those of a certain age! I left the UK and travelled Europe for 3 years in the days when you could work your fare on boats and even areoplanes. i got to work behind the iron curtain in East Germany for three months. That cured me of communism and I was getting scared they wouldn’t let me leave.
I returned to find my mates had grown up, mostly married but it felt like returning to a foreign country. Nothing I could put my finger on but everything seemed to be modernising but falling apart. Perhaps the one thing I noticed it that both parents worked, the children were in nurseries and old people put in care homes. No-one seemed to have time to do anything for anyone anymore.
As a DJ I made a good living and also worked as a lifeguard at St-Annes open air swimming pool. The barbarians tore it down. family breakdown seemed everywhere and divorce the norm. Just 10-15 years later marriage was the exception not the rule. The drug dealers were rife and the local hard boys no longer kicked seven bells out of them. Old people were no longer looked out for.
Yes I think many of us got richer but was it a price worth paying? “Shut your mouth and look at my wad”.
Bill
Harry Enfield’s ‘ Loads a Money ‘, kinda hit it on the head, also the advent of ‘ Ford Sierra man ‘.
I always think it’s kind of ironic that the likes of Thatcher whose policies tore apart communities & the fabric of society, then endlessly pontificate about family values etc. while rewarding totally selfish behaviour. It’s a bit like being surprised that Ayn Rand wasn’t monogamous & a good housewife with 2.4 kids.
Judging by a poll I came across over 50% of Britons thought Mrs. T. was a good thing – Cognitive dissonance perhaps, or as I have found out over the years, there is a tendancy from people of all backgrounds to have a bias towards the right, especially when the going gets tough..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
A really good article. I didn’t think Mr Brand had it in him. Fair play
Mrs Thatcher’s funeral should be privatised. She would have wanted that.
So come on Cameron and Orbourne, get selling tickets!
Prof Michael Hudson sums up Thatchers toxic legacy.
http://michael-hudson.com/2013/04/mrs-thatchers-mean-legacy/
I think her worst legacy (or to be more accurate , her advisors legacy) is a junk legacy.
Because wages is suppressed the surplus value is expressed via the creation (by banks) of useless assets which capture the surplus fuel flow created after people are thrown over monetary cliffs.
The Shire may be perhaps protected but the world is turned into a sick joke…..
This news is enough to make a decent Corkman weep.
The lower harbour Burb mess continues…………
“City councillors have also expressed serious concerns the plan does not address the serious traffic issues already blighting the area.
City planners have insisted Mahon can take this level of development as long as there is investment in a high-quality bus-based public transport service; that the potential for non-car trips is maximised; and a more sustainable compact pattern of development is achieved to allow people to live and work in the area”
“City planners”
Now there is a oxymoron if ever there was one.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0410/world/plan-to-develop-retail-hub-despite-traffic-problems-227857.html
The old city has lost critical shopping mass because of Mahon shopping center in particular and yet they want MORE JUNK.
Mahon is home to one of Ireland’s largest shopping centres………………………
The system they created post 1970 especially can only grow outwards.
It discards the better bits and moves outwards into a series of gigantic capital export onion rings.
Tommie Tiernan perhaps best expressed the modern neo – liberal world back when we were partying like it was 1999 (because it was)
“there is no clocks in here , time just passes…….. there’s a clock but it stopped in 1984″
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNgwMYL9ks
“there is no clocks in here , time just passes…….. there’s a clock but it stopped in 1984″
I remember visiting that shopping centre about that time, from what I hear now from those entombed in the land of a thousand smiles, that was pretty much the golden age.
“If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies”
ref. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
“Council tenants could be offered £20,000 to leave Britain”
http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/10/council-tenants-could-be-offered-20000-to-leave-britain-3590534/?ITO=facebook
Putting everything else aside for a moment, I can not recall any occasion where Margaret Thatcher demonstrated that she was gifted with an independent and keen intellect, quite the opposite. If MT was simply a tool of the people who really matter, who did the proper thinking for her than it didn’t matter too much. I came across this on the thoughts and influence of David Rockefeller (abbreviated) and how MT served his cause
In August 1979, to restore world “confidence” in the dollar, President Jimmy Carter, himself a hand-picked protégé of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, was forced by the big New York banks, led by David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, to accept Paul Volckee …as Chairman of the Federal Reserve with an open mandate to do what was necessary to save the dollar as (the World’s) reserve currency.
On taking office, Volcker bluntly announced, “the standard of living for the average American has to decline.”
He was Rockefeller’s hand-picked choice to save the New York financial markets and the dollar at the expense of the nation’s welfare. The (Federal Reserve monetary) policy was outlined in a little-noted book titled, ominously enough, “The Second American Revolution.” written by John D. Rockefeller III. In his book, Rockefeller declared the establishment’s determination to roll back concessions grudgingly granted by the wealthy and powerful during the Great Depression.
Rockefeller (had) issued the call in 1973, long before Jimmy Carter or Margaret Thatcher came to office to implement it.
He called for a “deliberate, consistent, long-term policy to decentralize and privatize many government functions…to diffuse power throughout the society.”
(The Second American Revolution, Harper & Row, New York, 1973.)
The latter was a witting deception as his intent was not to diffuse power, but just the opposite—to concentrate that economic and banking power into the hands of a tight-knit elite. Privatization of essential and socially useful government functions that had been established often with great social agitation and political pressure during the difficult crises of the 1930’s, was the Rockefeller agenda. In brief, it was the removal of Depression era government regulations on all aspects of economic and social life in America.
Above all, deregulation of Wall Street and financial markets was the goal, along with a radical reduction in the equalizing of wealth, …The “Prize” was untold financial gains to be won through a rollback of major concessions to the working blue collar and middle income Americans, concessions granted ….to forestall a more radical revolt.
http://www.financialsensearchive.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0116.html
Seems to me, that the Rockefeller agenda has been successfully implemented.
I tend to agree. I had not heard of the book I shall try to get it. Thank you.
Indeed
And Rockefeller’s primary vehicle for spreading this was, & is, the Bilderberg group which he runs with Kissinger.
The tentacles of that period run right thru’ to the present in UK with Blair, Osborne & Cameron, among others.
Such people are of course merely ‘useful idiots’ somewhere in a ‘cellular’ structure.
I think Thatcher was only ditched when she got delusions of her own importance & started to follow her own (equally psychopathic) agenda.
Yanis Varoufakis: Farewell Mrs Thatcher
… “My break from Britain occurred in 1987 on the night of Mrs Thatcher’s third election victory. It was too much to bear. Soon I started planning my escape.” And while my views on the Iron Lady have not changed one iota, I feel the need to express my sorrow for her passing; a sorrow that I have been feeling well before her death; indeed one that began to creep up on me a few short years after her ‘admirers’ in the Tory party sent her packing.” …
… “So, why is someone who kept screaming at ‘her’ “Out! Out! Out!” (when in government) is missing her after her final exit? The reason is simple and has to do with a combination of two attributes: First, she was the last British politician to have meant what she said. A ‘conviction politician’ as those rare birds were once called. Secondly, she had a sense of history that informed her actions. While I abhorred both her convictions and her historical take of the past, at least she had convictions and did base her thinking on an historical take that extended beyond the past… week of events. This combination is sorely missed in our current predicament when politicians are mere market research-driven simulations, and in which to have convictions is considered outdated, a sign of weakness, a relic of an antiquated past. With Mrs Thatcher, at least you could trust that she meant what she said. Oh how I miss that in a politician…”
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/09/farewell-mrs-thatcher-in-spite-of-everything-you-are-being-missed-already/#more-3586
Hi David, I don’t usually read comments but did this time and found this:
(‘David
I’ve admired your honesty for some time now but this post is not one of your best.
Brian
Reply’)
I wonder what makes Thatcher special in Brian’s eyes, that she can not be included, as far as straight talk, among the ranks of leaders like Stalin and Hitler, and any number of living as well as dead world leaders. I think even Jesus made no bones about the moral and ethical turpitude of his days leaders.
Scrofulous
I was passing my naive view that you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead and I’ve been put right on that on here.
The only special people in my eyes are my family.
Thank You
Brian
Brian,
It has been my inclination to believe, that
ethics isn’t an end in itself, but rather a useful
starting point for a rationalization, an easily
available shortcut for forming a default judgement,
where no apparent controversy exists.
Where a controversy exists, however, I doubt
that ethics suffice — one needs to go deeper,
if I may say so.
Do you have a rationalization that we can discuss,
for the idea that one should not speak ill of the dead?
Samium Gromoff
David’s original post made me feel uncomfortable and I was surprised by his directness which I hadn’t seen from him before. Indeed he seems a caring compassionate person if anything.
I have spoken ill of the dead in the past and have always felt uncomfortable with myself for doing it.
I am not a religious person, but do have certain believes and I suppose there are a number of sayings that may sum up my feelings:
What goes around comes around:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/what_goes_around_comes_around
Do unto others as you would have them do to you:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/do-unto-others.html
I work in IT and I often use the phrase “Computers have hearts and souls and it keeps breaking because of the way you treat it”, probably borne out of my experience that the more someone bitches and complains the more trouble visits on them.
Call me Glen Hoddle if you like.
Brian
Brian,
Please forgive me, if this becomes too personal,
I will not pursue the topic further, if so.
The problem I see here, is that you have to
balance the personal karma, as per Glenn
Hoddle reference, with the tremendous public
aspect of mrs. Thatcher’s work, with the focus
on its historical implications.
The question at stake, as I see it —
do we learn, collectively, from her influence,
or not?
I think that this “never again” aspect is far too
important, to be hindered by “one shall not bitch
excessively”.
Brian,
Despite being an longstanding opponent of MT and all her works, I also felt a sense of unease initially at the raw, personal nature of some of the reactions. That I should separate my feelings about her legacy and the death of a frail old woman, and that this was a more ‘dignified’ approach. I even shook my head and tut-tutted at Facebook friends urging the buying of the Wizard of Oz song.
However, as the week has gone on I’ve changed my mind completely on this. It’s not just acknowledging the fact that, as an individual, she has to bear some responsibility for the injustices and inequalities that were unleashed as a result of the government she led. It’s also the growing realisation that her death would be used directly and cynically as a propaganda exercise to validate the government and shore up support for its austerity programme. Of course I knew, intellectually, that this would be the case, but had not really appreciated just how overt and dangerous this would be in reality.
MT’s death is not (and, I realise now, could never be) just about the passing away of an individual. It is a deeply political occasion. It was naive to think it could be anything else. If we are suckered into playing along with this quasi-state funeral, set up as a memorial to the ‘woman who saved Britain,’ out of a need to appear dignified, we would be falling into a carefully laid trap, not just betraying the memory of our history but acquiescing to our opponents’ view of our future.
“A handful of journalists have defended the revelry, or highlighted the dangers of ‘misplaced death etiquette’. I want to go further, and whole-heartedly advocate for these celebratory outpourings.
These gleeful celebrations represent much more than simplistic macabre response to Thatcher’s abhorrent policies, viewpoints and legacy. They are in fact public, vociferous interruption and contestation of the ‘savior, leader, icon’ narrative being written by a worldwide elite.
These conspicuous, pre-planned actions prevent a dreaded alternative from materialising: While the millions who despised her sit on their hands and silently shake their heads, a state-funded, jingoistic funeral procession roles by and the history books canonise a monster.
This alternative, which remains troublingly close to reality, is the truly sickening proposition. While banal flag waving is expected and encouraged around her funeral, there is little recognition that such action is as least as political, and far more asinine than holding a ‘Maggie burn in Hell!’ placard in Trafalgar Square. Many are ashamed, not proud, of Thatcherism and its progeny, and rightfully refuse to be silent. I support their right to say: ‘Not in my name.’ ”
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/thatcher-youve-got-to-fight-for-the-left-to-party/
Brian, Scrofulous, everyone –
Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you, all of you, those I agreed with those I disagreed with, for all your comments, not these just here but the now tens of thousands of comments over the last few years.
And please let’s make sure her passing leaves no bitterness among us.
BTW
The lyrics to Ding Dong were written by Yip Harburg:
“Edgar Yipsel Harburg (April 8, 1896 – March 5, 1981), born Isidore Hochberg and known as E.Y. Harburg or Yip Harburg, was an American popular song lyricist who worked with many well-known composers. He wrote the lyrics to the standards, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”, “April in Paris”, and “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, as well as all of the songs in The Wizard of Oz, including “Over the Rainbow”.
True to his strongly leftist views, Harburg supported the 1948 presidential campaign of Henry Wallace, and wrote the lyrics of the campaign song “Everyone Likes Wallace, Friendly Henry Wallace.” From about 1951 to 1962, Yip Harburg was a victim of the Hollywood blacklist when movie studio bosses blacklisted industry people for actual or suspected involvement or sympathy with the American Communist Party.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.Y._Harburg
Back in the ’80’s she stirred me to poetry. I called it’ Venus in Furs’ :
Once upon a northern nightmare, in a land of need and treasure,
To a lowly corner grocer, born a maiden from his pleasure.
Not a milksop was this infant,weaned herself on iron and acid.
Spurning milk of human kindness, bitter grew where others placid.
Sharp in tongue and blue in stocking
Black in leg and hair a shocking
Red and combed in to fantastic,
Coils Medusan waves ecstatic,
Petrified her heart by peering
Into mirrors without caring
Who within was outward staring
Siding with the rightest parties, courting with her jealous glances
Rich and titled heirs and graces, prancing where ambition dances’
Sycophancy cultivated,till the moment long awaited,
Then declared “I am your master. He who thwarts me courts disaster”.
“Snatch the milk and bread from kiddies-
Let them eat cake, for now the lid is
Off Pandora’s Box of prizes.
I’m IN! There’s no need now for disguises.
Close the hospitals and clinics,
Break the unions, silence critics”.
Is there no end to her antics?
“Sack the steelmen, nurses, teachers, carmen, miners, whiners, screechers;
Fewer doctors, no more houses. no more houses.Put ’em all in khaki blouses.
Make the poor, the sick and needy, feed the rich, the strong and greedy”.
Shabby Moggy, scabby thrasher,
Carpetbagger, welfare slasher.
Money grubbing, mindless Margo,
Tactless tyrant, vile virago,
Loading those already laden,
Glossing issues for the ad-,men,
Making of the land a midden.
Within the parliamentry coven, Friedmann spells by candles lights.
Democracy is all forgotten, ministers just acolytes
Falling o,er each other fawning- mild dissension takes her breath.
Reminds them of her Prior warning, ‘Exile to The Blasted Heath’
“Bring me my bow of poison ivy,.
Bring me my chariot, and look lively!
Bring me my stocks of bombs atomic,
Poison gases,winds cyclonic,
Powers in whose clutch I revel,
Tolerating no more cavil,
Leading Britain to the Devil”.
Having quickly scanned the comments and not having seen a post talking about the appropriateness of a song from a story about monetary reform being Maggie’s swansong, I thought I should mention it
Mr. Malone
Whence the anger and hatred?
I’ve seem some of your film productions and they are brilliant. Now this post.
Were you glad when Bin Laden died too. And Jesus?
How can you hate someone so much that you are happy when they die.
Should we not sing with the new born, and mourn with the mourners, without exception?
Are you unable to forgive?
Isnt that close to the root of the problems you campaign to reform?
Are you now victim become perpetrator?
Yours,
Robin Smith.
The MELT Fund – Director
Robin Smith,
Are you able to forgive crimes against humanity?
War crimes?
Economic crimes?
Where do you draw the line of forgiveness,
and, most importantly,
why?
RS
Without exception you say – Does this line you have drawn include within it, Mao Zedong, Stalin, & Hitler ? Should they also be mourned & forgiven ? Would if it were possible, expect their millions of victims to do the same ?
I do not think I have the right to forgive her because I assume most of her victims could or would not want to do so. This fact means that as many of her victims are dead, forgiveness from me is impossible, as I cannot speak for them, like I cannot speak for a needlessly murdered young Argentinian sailor & his bereaved parents.
Personally I am glad that the tyrants mentioned no longer infect this planet & I am sure that their many victims would be & have been filled with hatred for them, & I think Justifiably so. Mrs. T. although not being in the same league as the above was cast from a similar mould. She was one of the killers in high places – A creature of power who held human life with little or no regard.
Forgiving tends to lead to forgetting & unfortunately the cancer that she was but one tumour of, is in the process of increasing it’s malignancy, while endeavouring to ( As GordonDonald put it so well) write it’s own version of a sunny neoliberal History, which will include the wonders of St. Margaret.
People become a representation of their acts & are loved or hated accordingly, In my case it’s nothing personal, I simply despise her for her actions as a symbol for those voracious powers that be, who are working away at creating a planet, where it is becoming harder by the day, to truthfully sing a good song in regard to an infant’s future prospects.
Forgiveness is wasted on those who are predators by choice, especially those who have feasted well. Hatred & anger are two of the emotional foundations for resistance to filth such as this.
RS
Having just clicked your name and spent 0.5 seconds digesting the content I would highly recommend people not to waste their time on you other than to take it as all the more reason to despise what Thatcher inspired some people to become…lowlife!
“Margaret Thatcher the tax snatcher? Mystery of her £6m house with links to THREE tax havens”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-tax-snatcher-mystery-1828441
David, did you see Channel 4’s ‘Death of a Revolutionary’ tonight? I’m not expecting you to have liked it! But if you saw it did it confirm what you already knew, or was there anything interesting in there? Were you impressed by Neil Kinnock?
Hello Paris brown,
I’m afraid I hardly ever watch television. So I didn’t know about the film. Where there things you felt of value in the film? I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
On the subject of Cyprus may I recommend the following article on the human consequences of the brazen theft occurring there? http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/helios-orphans-fall-victim-haircut/20130414
On Thatcher I added this to a lively debate over on the Slog.
Thatcher was the luckiest leader ever in the UK. She had North Sea Oil, The City Boom, a recovering Western economy and advances in technology that changed everything forever.
She spunked the whole lot of it against the wall of mass unemployment. Any spare change went to the elites. The good intentions of offering shares in privatised companies lost as the elites hoovered them up. Council houses were sold but never replaced.
Worst of all she burnt the North Sea gas to get at the oil which was largely exported to make vast profits for the privatised BP and a few others. She didn’t leave so much as a sovereign wealth fund. I was astounded when I found out this as I had always assumed we had one.
The bloody woman was an unmitigated, divisive disaster. To those happy with your 30 pieces of silver, shame on you.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/funeral-in-britain-a-nation-bound-by-dissension-and-gagged-by-conformity/
thankyou, golem, the best comment i’ve read is this;
The blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote last week: “She wanted to return Britain to the tradition of her thrifty, traditional father; instead she turned it into a country for the likes of her son, a wayward, money-making opportunist.
Zing!
To Finn and Gromoff,
Are you both saying you have committed no crime? “he who has never sinned may cast the first stone”. Oh yes, but what you have done is far less than them, right? Its OK to do a little wrong, but not a lot.
Or are you saying the conscious act of an individual is worse than the unconscious act of an entire nation, all done in the name of that people, democracy?
Make your mind up time!
Look at the starving millions in Africa, when there is plenty of food to leave none of them without a full meal forever. I have no special sympathy for them.
Yet I am certain why they starve. Because we as a nation, and other nations, rob them. We know this but deny it by making it an unconscious action as if that redeems us.
You see, we own their land. China soon. They export the food they need to survive, past piles of dead bodies of little ones, as a tribute to us in economic rent, in the form of cheap food for us. Just like they did with Rome. Of which we discard 50% anyway. And then we say with staggering arrogance, “Look, there are too many people in the world for nature to support, wars will resolve it”.
And then look for further superficial causes, such as banks and politicians, while we the people, rich and poor, have snouts deep in the trough of rent seeking. I’m not a Christian. I do know now that the hypocrites of Israel had Him nailed up, for pointing this out to them, not the Romans.
So yes, I will forgive Hitler, Lincoln, Mao, Bush, Blair, sooner than I will forgive you. Though I will still forgive you for this. Even if I had that power.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/to-correspondent-on-hitler-simplicity.html
Here’s another idea if you still need evidence:
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/people-go-on-about-teeny-weeny.html
RS
I always ignore people that claim to tell me what it is that I think!!!…suggest others do likewise as you seem to fall into the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them.’ school of thought…I would imagine your biggest arguments are probably with yourself!
An excellent & concise critique of the neo-liberal, monetarist, economics the psychopath Thatcher peddled:
http://reasoninrevolt.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/the-myth-of-margaret-thatcher/
Highly recommended.
And…if you haven’t already subscribed (free) to ‘gfc & mmt daily’ which is where I found this piece shared by Ann Petifor, then you should.
http://paper.li/vvakrina/1323671554?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Education, my friends.
(Well, not dickheads like Robin Smith above, lol. Not to be confused with David’s ‘Lem’ ‘Golem’, but I think Tolkien modelled his character ‘Gollum’ on people like Smith. But….go read his blog to find out how coy he has been in his comments here. A real life ‘consultant’ in property speculation, tax avoidance & rent seeking, way to go!)
Anyhow…
We will have defeated what Thatcher & Reagan peddled & propagandised & all those before & since, when some twat in the media tries to ‘report’ some cr@p by their ilk & the whole room/town/city/country erupts in uncontrollable laughter & walks away.
Until then, we must not let them get away with the kind of propaganda sh1t that Thatcher’s funeral etc. is +really+ about – rewriting history & changing the facts to justify the mess they are making right now. A mess which is steadily getting far harder to propagandise.
Excellent summary of where we are from Ann Pettifor:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/openeconomy/ann-pettifor/eurozone-crisis-what-way-forward
and an oblique view of the whole “Maggie’s Funeral” thang from the Plump One:(keen Pratchett fans will doubtless recognize the reference to Rough Music)
http://fatmanonakeyboard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/england-my-england.html
Hey nonny nonny!
Hi Mike,
I think the Robin Smith blog is satirical. Take another look it´s actually hilarious.
Thanks for the other links.
Cheers
Roger
It took me a little while… Just his comments here didn’t gel with his web site, unless you are stupid enough to take it at face value. 🙂 Almost RS, take a look at the Daily Mash for some lessons…
Well, his comments here seem pretty odd to me.
If his intent is/was satire, I suggest he doesn’t give up the day job 😉
Can’t decide if this is satire or David Icke-ish. Weird either way.
On Al Jazeera there is a series on the 7 Sisters of Oil – I would urge David and all the commentators to read/view it.
It certainly gives clear perspective on the power brokers and the influence they exert on national governments throughout the world.
Now that Osborn has shed a tear over she who could do no wrong, or rather it was the news that his economic plan is based on an excel error :
http://www.businessinsider.com/reinhart-and-rogoff-admit-excel-blunder-2013-4
I just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on Reggie Middleton’s conclusions in regards to Irish banks :
http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9066-what-should-the-us-do-if-one-of-the-biggest-banks-in-ireland-blatantly-defrauded-us-investors
AIB it seems has no banking license – kinda mad Irish joke.
Hehe, good one stevie.
The Reinhart & Rogoff paper was always patently a piece of junk. The direction of the Debt to Growth causality was plucked out of thin air – it’s most likely the reverse direction – and no distinction whatever is made by them as regards what monetary system or currency the countries are using when comparing them. Complete cr@p.
Has to be worth a link to Bill Mitchell’s savaging of it:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=23467
I wonder if any mainstream ‘commentators’ will notice that a pair of the world’s supposedly most prestigious economists are grossly incompetent at best, frauds at worst? Doesn’t say much for the mainstream economics Journals either.
Ambrose from the Torygraph rips into the austerity merchants, the Guardian whose turd of a sub-editor wrote an article praising scorched earth policies, presumably for everyone except himself, is tight lipped & I cannot find anything on the BBC.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100024122/debunking-austerity-claims-makes-no-difference-to-europes-monks-and-zealots/
I imagine Mike that RTE & the rest are very quiet about it too .
Irish debt slaves :
http://trueeconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/1842013-legalising-modern-version-of.html
@Steve
At least they can have free sky shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzQD7DYNklQ
Ireland is a strange non place.
No need to call in Taffin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF6SxjLBfHk
DOC
The first one made me feel sick, the 2nd was hilarious in it’s naffness. I wasn’t aware that Ireland in the 80’s was like Los Angeles, but I was impressed with the power of Taffin’s nose. Where is he, now that he’s really needed ? – Oh I forgot, doing crappy Sky ads 🙂
Yes , its a hidden turkey.
Its one of those films that is interesting when looked upon (only) as a strange cultural island.
The modern neo – liberal period began in Ireland around 1980 ~ when wages as a % of GDP began to fall.
So it makes sense in a strange sort of fashion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5XP409pxNg
Er, I don’t think you’ll see this in the media – http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BIEayhtCUAAqeVA.jpg
It’s a montage of images from Goldthorpe who put in a really alternate funeral celebration effort
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/17/thatcher-funeral-goldthorpe-miners-burn-effigy_n_3101236.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
Roger gets it perfectly. He is what we call a GoodPlayer in The Game. A thinker and seeker. Rare.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-game-defining-terms.html
We treat it as a joke because what nearly all people believe is reality is so absurd. This is why I posted here initially asking Mr Malone “how many stones he had thrown”. What he is saying is absurd.
Bankers and corrupt politics is merely a manifestation of something deeper ALL of us are denying. We keep voting for it so there is no excuse. Throwing blame onto them while we all are complicit in some way is a joke. We laugh so much at the hypocrisy.
Here is some more satire. Do not assume that because we are laughing we are not at the same time deadly serious.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/romes-giant-pyramid-sale.html
This is The Game. Play well.
We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective.
from Race Matters. Cornell West.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2013/01/were-all-niggers-now.html
Off topic re Greek banksters
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/yanis-varoufakis-greek-banksters-in-action-on-the-latest-twist-in-the-story-of-mafia-style-terror-spreading-through-the-greek-polity.html
The Game – Never question a players beliefs
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-game-never-question-players-beliefs.html
Has anyone seen this
http://www.youtube.com/ae911truth
i hadn’t…but i have now…
even while the evidence is just so, so much, you just can’t help but wonder about the dark forces that lay hidden…it needs to be opened up again…it can only be that they knew of the potential attack and made something colossal of it…
The evidence appears compelling and if true, its implications are too disturbing to even contemplate.
“it can only be that they knew of the potential attack and made something colossal of it”
Much worst than that, it directly implicates the US government with masterminding the 9/11 attacks.
I tried posting the same link to the Guardian comments section related to the recent Boston bombings. Since then when I try to comment on anything, my comments never appear as they are pre-moderated. I’ve been banned apparently even though they won’t say I am.
It is disturbing to think that a publication like The Guardian has red-flagged any attempt to make this information available to the wider public and allow them make up their own mind on the single most important event that defines our time.
Would anyone like to post the link and see what happens?
This is an interesting interview regarding some of the physics of the World Trade centre collapse.
http://www.suesupriano.com/article.php?&id=166
That the Guardian are not open to questioning the main stream narrative is really of little surprise, the British Library propaganda exhibition at the moment had one of its staffers interviewing Noam Chomsky last month.
My question is Guardian of What?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I
Whatever happened in Boston there is little doubt that the American intelligence( oxymoron alert) services appetite for turning a blind eye where and when it suits them is pretty voracious.
pilibi – I’d seen almost every other 9/11 documentary, but not this one. It was excellent. Thanks for posting it.
The free fall of WTC Building 7 says it all – planned demolition.
Cognitive dissonance is understandable. I felt the same way a few years ago when I began following the economic crisis, which also looks like a planned demolition.
So many questions left unanswered. Thanks.
while on the subject – http://21stcenturywire.com/tag/boston-marathon/
a seemingly decent non-hysterical wing nut free site
@Golum
What do you make of this ?
This is a example of the “free to choose” thingy turned right around into a strange never ending vortex.
The states monopoly of violence is used to bail out private actors.
The modern market state in action.
http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0422/384457-pensions-oecd/
“The state” for want of a better word will force people to invest their wages in the private pension “industry”
Not only that but the money cannot be spent internally on increasing domestic productivity or redundancy even.
A very strange tax.
What a weird non place Europe has become.
Ah, the wonderful M/s Burton, the one time faux champion of the under privileged – If Reggie Middleton is right, pension funds are but moonshine.
http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9067-as-forewarned-the-irish-savers-have-been-cyprusd-and-theres-much-more-cyprusing-to-come
Off topic but worth a listen these two You Tube recordings of Major Douglas.Great recordings. The Michael Journal carry’s on a lot of the good Majors work to this day.
Major C.H. Douglas on “Causes of War” – part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw28HmmvNNs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpHJdApvtO0
Can’t thank you enough for this.
It allows the audience, yet again, to draws parallels and themes through time. I for one am fascinated by information like this, as it only serves to show that the problems of today were seen time and time again throughout economic history.
How is it so, when the answers are littered throughout time…?
Roger / Pat
Will check out those videos. Sounds similar to this book written in the 1940s:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Empire-City-History-Financial/dp/1585092622/
It describes the Modus Operandi of world financiers (centred in London) which I found highly relevant to the methods employed in the current crisis. Including:
– using fictitious loans as a method for acquiring real assets
– being led into war to fight the City’s causes
– use of complex legal structures to avoid detection and conviction for what would normally be criminal conduct / fraud
Looks like “they’re all in it together”:
“Paul Moore: It seems to me that, in any civilised and developed society, if we cannot rely on the competence, integrity and independence of our professionals – the very people who are supposed to be the best educated, brightest and most honest people in society – then we are in real trouble.”
http://www.ianfraser.org/paul-moore-why-john-griffith-jones-must-go/
the comments are sadly true.
What an interesting little forum. Golem disappears Holmes-like on another of his mysterious missions, leaving his party guests to talk amongst themselves, curious but unconcerned. Golem darts in occasionally, grabs a drink, waves, and off again. Excellent.
What staggers me about all commentators on debt and money is they actually believe that money is wealth. Its so funny how the otherwise intelligent are clueless about something so basic.
Yes, they won’t say this explicitly in public, its too absurd. But their every action and language otherwise demonstrates tacitly that it is what they do actually believe!
The problem is that denial so deep in kind cannot be overwhelmed by logic and reason.
See here for why.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-game-tactics-trilogy.html
In The Game tactics are everything. The ones who use them to their extreme extent are the ones who claim to be “saving the planet for you”. These high priests are backed by an army of supporters, the people in general.
Take the monstrous tax avoidance agenda as a wonderful example. The ones complaining the most about tax avoidance are the ones en masse doing most of it.
The Christ called them “Snakes and Vipers” – The “Scribes and Pharisees”. I am not a Christian.
Robin, in this game of yours are you the God type character that knows what everybody else (‘they’) thinks and does or are you just a bit pompous?
TBH, it somewhat bothers me how he apparently tries to tailor a fitting appearance here.
First, he tries a character attack on David, observes that it doesn’t quite work, and now the tune has changed..
Is he an operative?
WTF!!!!
“Under a government agreement the Serious Fraud Office must get permission from the Treasury to launch any complex new inquiry which comes on top of its normal budget.
But controversially the Treasury can keep its decisions secret – potentially allowing it to veto politically sensitive fraud inquiries, either before or midway through an investigation, without public scrutiny.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-george-osbornes-secret-veto-on-fraud-inquiries-8585215.html
What ever happened to separation of powers??
Does this mean that our judiciary is now wholly beholden to political interests, especially in the realm of financial crime?
Looks like the final nail in an already airtight coffin that.
As it’s quiet around here, may I take this opportunity to plug my own attempts at a blog:
The Two Nations
Early days – feedback welcome.
I have enjoyed reading your pieces Jamie. Hope all is well and you are finding time to write some more.
Best Wishes.
Roger
A government agreement…? This is fully unchecked. What is the merger of the administration and the judiciary called…?
On topic… John Pilger weighs in. I grew up in Australia, but never really understood what a principled journalist he was top to bottom, until I left.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/dance-on-thatcher-s-grave-but-remember-there-has-been-a-coup-in-britain
Yup… he’s right up there with David Icke!
http://jackofkent.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/pilger-on-assange-legal-commentary.html
Haha, not sure Icke is the best comparison, but I know what you mean. I think he just makes up a part of the spectrum of opinion, is heavy with it and is not easily swayed.
I presume, from your link, that when you say ‘cooler and more considered judgements’ you mean the judgement of David Allen Green – an apologist for a supplier of arms to Saddam Hussein, Suharto and Pinochet.
“All this, and her government also defeated a Fascist junta” says Green.
I’ll take Pilger’s fireworks and majestic sweeping generalisations over those weasel words any day.
That’s one hell of a presumption, Jamie.
The quotation was from the comments on the page linked to, and should in no way be taken as an endorsement or criticism of the views that may be held by Mr Allen Green.
What is so majestic about sweeping generalisations? I fear they only encourage lazy thinking and shallow misperceptions.
Fair enough. That guy gets up my nose. Mainly for the hero worship of arch neoconservative Nick Cohen but also because of instances like the post you linked to – giving the impression of cool, rational analysis but actually full of inaccuracies and distortions.
At least there’s honesty in Pilger’s spluttering outrage even if sometimes he goes off half-cocked.
Apologies for the OTT reaction though – you’re right about generalisations of course.
I also enjoy JoK’s legal jottings and find it ‘informative’ at very least when he dissects Pilger.
Yet Pilger’s Thatcher dissection is of considerable value. We ought concede he was indeed there ( .. ” I spoke to ..) during those sad decades and is now simply doing his journalistic thing as commentary from the vantage of experience.
And it shouldn’t demean his “rhetoric’ just because it carries emotion. Empathy is, I hope, what we are all about.
More support for Pilger fanboys.
P.G.Roberts, describing (11 May) Ron Unz of American Conservative website:
” .. Unz’s view of the US media as propagandists for power is consistent with that of John Pilger, one of the last remaining real journalists who refuses to serve power ..”
It’s a good read.
“Unz .. tells the story of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s plan to transform Russia into a make-believe two-party state complete with heated battles fought on divisive and symbolic issues.
Behind the scenes the political elites would orchestrate the political battles between the parties with the purpose of keeping the population divided and funneling popular dissatisfaction into meaningless dead-end issues. In such a system, self-serving power prevails.
After describing Berezovsky’s plot, Unz asks if Berezovsky got his idea from observing the American political scene.”
On attacking Iraq for 9/11, Unz reflects (../articles/our-american-pravda): “Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.”
This is an interesting discussion on you Tube over two hours long I made a modest 20 minute video regarding a question on linguistics that had been puzzling in my head for the past few months.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBe8MTcCqKs
Signs Symbols Stories Language.
Winston/Chomsky.( MIT)
Understanding in our minds and what we express through communication in language are not systems designed to compliment each other . This leads to confusions and the disjoint can be manipulated against our own best interests.
I have been pondering lately whether in Sweden a country that uses a language with 41,000 words; (approx.)
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.com/2013/04/signs-symbols-stories-language.html
This is in my view the stuff which will allow the prevailing narrative to be tackled and exposed.
golem, well and everyone really,
Have you read Matt Talbis’ most recent piece? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
The sheer scale of the mass frauds taking place are going to sink into the public consciences one day, When it does there will be hell to pay,
The scope of the ICAP fix is simply stunning, LIBOR on steroids,
Not as detailed or as long standing as Matt’s investigative career, but worthy of note perhaps 😉
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/top-economist-jeffrey-sachs-says-wall-street-is-full-of-crooks-and-hasnt-changed-since-the-financial-crash-8594779.html
Great piece Mike thanks for sharing posted on Linked too etc.
Interesting story of Libor manipulation I picked up on facebook courtesy of Ian Fraser from the WSJ, regarding a major player, nicknamed ‘ Rain man ‘ who was it seems just trying to please his demanding bosses :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324445904578285810706107442.html
Yes!! Bill Still posted a video (audio only) on youtube of Sachs giving one hell of a spray. Acid rolling of the tongue.
Kick Off @ 2:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VOWnnEphjI
**ah looks like old dog had posted a better version below. (Enjoying it again.)
came across this –
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/jeffrey-sachs-speech-on-wall-street-corruption/
This article might be of interest – It compares ancient Athens at the time of the Ionian wars which featured the original Marathon, to Boston ( The Athens of America ) in how they both compared in coping with a crisis.
Two lunatics basically caused a major city to shut down aided & abetted by police state tactics employed by the authorities in a manner reminiscent of the Keystone cops. It would be hilarious but for the tragic loss of life. It reminds me of the last 5 minutes of the film ‘ The Blues brothers ‘.
Pressure cookers as WMD’s – Was Saddam’s kitchen searched ? Has the World totally lost it ?
http://www.finemrespice.com/node/127
Enjoyable read. Very illustrative. Funny how bloodlusts work, during the frenzy no one really knows what, or how much of it, they have lost. Though I’m afraid in being such a skilled and advanced critique, it may just miss the masses for whom it should jolt back into reality… for a brief moment anyways.
It’s been a long time since I read this blog.
me and my mate got 3/4’s of the way through doing a legal wall before the old bill stopped us. She even has control when she’s dead.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedronicus/8649284528/in/photostream
Should of checked that link when I had a chance to edit it!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedronicus/8649284528/in/photostream/lightbox/
Not had time to fully read through this yet, but a meaty article on Zerohedge about modern money and the desperate search for High Quality Collateral:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-01/desperately-seeking-112-trillion-collateral-or-how-modern-money-really-works
What is backing up this pyramid of debts & claims??
“what is backing up this debt”?
Er duh! Property in land assets. MORTGAGES mostly. There are other things but these are relatively tiny.
True, this is hard to believe. So stop believing and start knowing. By being brave and looking deeper than your prejudices normally allow.
The first stage of your recovery is to stop believing that money is wealth.
Deeper than this, the real value in anything must be the work others do to create wealth. No? Then from whence?
That article demonstrates very well the scariest thing about this whole situation: while the central bankers and politicians of the west can continue prolonging the charade as long as they like ( by robbing their populations to replace the bogus collateral of the bankers) there is absolutely no give in the system for extreme events.
Another liquidity crisis, a sovereign default, another twin towers – anything that prompts another flight to quality – will bring the whole thing crashing down. And then it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen.
Hawkeye
I do not pretend to fully understand that article, but the gist of it to me is that the whole house of cards is being held together by a confidence trick . An unsustainable delusion that could easily & is almost certainly going to unravel due to any one of a possible host of black birds, whether they be sparrows or swans.
Very very scary if taken together with the political consequences such a downfall could unleash in the light of what the last depression created. I think that nobody could have imagined the scale of WW2 before it happened, but now the same type of goons have managed to create the roots of instability again, but with a much larger potential for Armageddon.
I sincerely hope that I am being nothing more than a doom merchant, but we seem to have learned nothing from history & are repeating the same old mistakes, which through time have lead to ever more magnified disastrous consequences. On the other hand, perhaps it will all be over by Christmas & we will not have to try to build something better from a mountain of ashes.
Stevie
Yes, the more I look into this crisis, the more I see that there have been warning signs from history.This doesn’t make one a doom merchant, merely by questioning whether we can sustain our modern economy.
New paradigms are needed:
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/04/30/reaching-oil-limits-new-paradigms-are-needed/
And new perspectives, too:
“Perhaps, given the changes that are happening, we need to change our focus more toward today, and less toward tomorrow. How can we make today the best day possible? What are the good things we can appreciate about today?
We have come to believe that we can and will fix all of the problems of tomorrow. Perhaps we can; but perhaps we cannot. Maybe we need to simply take each day as it comes, and solve that day’s problems as best as we can. That may be all we can reasonably accomplish.”
That’s how I try to live my life Hawkeye, but I am but one drop in an ocean.
Long time no post Golem. Hope that doesn’t mean the frighteners have been round and that you’re just having a well-earned break (or of course working on a new film…)
Have you seen this. It claims the world economy is rooted in pyramid selling or a kind of giant ponzi scheme. Everyone is a willing player in that game through democracy. But no one can see it or will admit it. And some of them go around saying that doing a little bit of it is good. But the guys who are best at it must be punished. Its a wonder!
MELT – Multi Level Markets. Pyramid Selling. Foundation of modern civilisation. Forbidden knowledge.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/multi-level-markets-pyramid-selling.html
How bizarre.
Seems to be accurate, sadly. Those in charge would benefit most and then we end up ruled by kleptocracy.
Regarding the finite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgiMBxaL19M&feature=player_embedded
Maggie was a Kerry girl………………..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJR-9Ah8IFY
Reagan’s Great Grandparents house isn’t next door I hope. I don’t suppose she ever visited it like Ronnie visited his. Easier for her to visit her own ruins closer to hand I expect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UQpTnUAgA5E
http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/thatcher-got-it-all-wrong.html
Rare moment of candour, even frustration, from an establishment ‘insider’….
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/02/jeffrey-sachs-banking-abuses-cant-get-more-in-your-face/
“Why Donald Ogden Stewart was Blacklisted.”
http://spartacus-educational.blogspot.de/2013/04/why-donald-ogden-stewart-was-blacklisted.html
You couldn’t make this stuff up!!!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-06/latest-contribution-us-gdp-promises-no-really
“Lawson: The Banker’s Poison is Out”
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/05/lawson-the-bankers-poison-is-out/
Time to pick up the pen again.
The monkeys are in full flight.
“Thames Valley Police, on the advice of the Fraud Group of the Crown Prosecution Service, has charged eight people following a large-scale investigation into Corruption and other offences originating from the Halifax Bank of Scotland branch in Reading, Berkshire.”
http://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/newsevents/newsevents-pressreleases/newsevents-pressreleases-item.htm?id=241720
Somebody asked – “what’s holding up this whole financial debt structure?”
The answer is easy – myth, sleight of tongue and chronic denial.
And while democracy is manipulated by the 1% and their financial primogeniture there will be no meaningful change.
Which makes the solution somewhat more difficult but in essence it must be public opinion evolving into public demand.
Charles Ponzi, a great man.
People of the world, hypocrites.
Try this:
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/charles-ponzi-gamemaster-and-great-man.html
What are we to make of the EU legislation tabled on Monday 6 May, which apparently aims to outlaw the use, trade, saving etc of unauthorised seeds? It is very alarming to think that the EU may be giving in to the demands of biotech corporations in order to effectively privatise our food supply. More than ever, gardening seems like a revolutionary act. Dig for victory!
Plus, why so little coverage in the MSM? Rhetorical question, I suppose.
http://euobserver.com/environment/120045
Second rate but dangerous politicos are grasping at various Malthusian straws so as to justify the extraction of labour value.
They fail to convey the point that we are at a Malthusian endgame precisely because of their credit / “asset” creation games
The similarity between Dublins 1913 lockout and today is getting ever closer.
Indeed that was a result of deep undercurrents in a Anglo money scheme which broke up entirely a year later.
For example attacking bus drivers pay and claiming their state company model is not sustainable when Ireland has gone from 800, 000 private cars on the road to 1.8 million since 1990 seems to have missed his fat fucking head.
The mindless destruction of physical systems to extract a yield off the money supply knows no bounds.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/former-taoiseach-urges-public-to-tighten-their-belts-in-attack-on-president-29258292.html
Talking about land scarcity and therefore possible food for export is very dangerous ground to be tramping on in Ireland…….yet they seem to be able to push without any pushback.
We are dealing with treachery & avarice on a scale most normal people fail to get their little heads around.
PS This guy was one of the first to benefit from the Euro experiment.
Like all large farmers he was paid off first.
These little and large men can be bought for 30 pieces of silver
The biggest road block is protectionism. Its result is virtual slavery:
MELT – Regulators are our nemesis.
http://gco2e.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/melt-regulators-are-our-nemesis.html
This may come as a shock to some who are not seeking knowledge of life, and then wealth. Good, that is the intention. To wake them up. Particularly the regulators.
They will say:
“Surely enterprise needs protection from the scammers?”
But this presumes we are not trading within a free market on a level playing field. What a preposterous idea.
And worse, it presumes freedom is not the natural order of things. That we are virtual slaves needing the protection of a master in order to remain above water. What a dark and offensive thing.
Worst of all, it suggests that protectionism is the mode of trade and exchange that has the greatest power to produce wealth.
Clearly protection requires force of government regulators, and that has a definite associated cost which requires taxation to pay for.
And taxation on trade means a certain road block standing in the way of trade. Less trade will be the outcome for the same inputs of work.
And then, who actually benefits from this protection the most? The hard working, skilful and industrious entrepreneur and startup. Or the giant monopoly powers where nothing happens?
Who is most able to hold out to these dead weight costs, all else being equal: the small startup, or the giant corporation? And is that a level playing field, where all players get equal protection?
Of course, the most heinous crime of the regulator is to protect those who produce the least. And to punish those who produce the most.
All under a veil of ‘helping’, ‘charity’, ‘rising wages’, ‘capital formation’. Regulatory protection is an enormous lie, looking after idle scroungers, damaging the economy and its noble and genuine producers.
Real trade and exchange does not need protection. It needs freedom. It needs government to get well out of the way. It only needs government to do everything it can to secure equal rights, no more, no less. As soon as government does more than this, it has started to fail in its first duty.
MELT intention is to grow so large, we will eventually be able to so easily influence government, and rid the world of these parasitical regulators.
Trust us on this. We are bold and not intimidated by anyone. This is a call out to the Financial Services Authority and its new offshoots doing yet more damage to the country:
“Get Yourselves ready for a mighty battle”
You crossed a very bad line when gloating over Mrs Thatchers death. I understand your utter disdain and even hatred for her decisions and policies, and you are well in your rights to directly state why you thoroughly despise her political legacy. Your public glee at her death demeans you and your message. You come across as exactly the kind of non-empathetic, self-righteous, and narcissistic person that you appear to blast Thatcher for being. Shame on you.
A short and thoughtful piece on the Thatcher Legacy.
http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2013/05/14/a-reversion-to-a-dickensian-variety-of-capitalism