The Iron Lady

[foha80]

name='Wolfgang']Seriously, apart from laying off some miners what did she do that was so bad? Her hands were tied over Falklands - you either defend your territories or give them all up so what could she do there? It was Poll Tax that finished her, but to be honest I can see more logic behind poll tax than council tax. Council services are primarily personal services (social care, travel facilities, library and leisure etc) rather than property services (dustbin collections), so it does make much more sense to have some system based on individual payments rather than property values which can see pensioners on lower incomes in decent houses subsidising everyone else.



By steering Great Britain towards modern industries she made it fourth most successful economy in world, and consequently she raised more people above poverty line than any other prime minister in history - and along with right to buy she has ironically done more for working class enrichment than any Labour government. Where you have winners you are always going to get some losers, and I do not deny she was hard, but I think her contribution to Great Britain was significant and mostly positive.

Yes she was a peach,up here in Scotland we wont hear a bad word about her.:

[penfold]

name='Wolfgang']Seriously, apart from laying off some miners what did she do that was so bad? Her hands were tied over Falklands - you either defend your territories or give them all up so what could she do there? .

Well, she could have listened to her own intelligence community that warned her it was coming......and she might not have ordered the sinking of the Belgrano just as US-brokered peace talks were coming to fruition....not a coincidence. She wanted that War badly, for her own political ends.

[julian_craster]

There is clearly only one British actress who has the qualities to play Margaret Thatcher: sex appeal (especially for 50 ish old Etonians - many in the cabinet including Alan Clark had lustful thoughts about Maggie, and she greatly charmed her mature US friend Ronald Raygun), good looks, combined with nerves as hard as steel.

That actress is our favourite JENNY AGUTTER, who does a splendid Tory

[check out the BBC4 seriers in which she played Tory grandee Alan Clark's wife....]



Jenny IS the Tory lady personified !

[Wolfgang]

I suppose Vanessa Redgrave is slightly too old for it now otherwise she would have been perfect.

[foha80]

name='julian_craster']That actress is our favourite JENNY AGUTTER, who does a splendid Tory

[check out the BBC4 seriers in which she played Tory grandee Alan Clark's wife....]



Jenny IS the Tory lady personified !

Oh, please don't bite Fell



Terry

[Fellwanderer]

name='foha80']Oh, please don't bite Fell



Terry

No intention

[kelp]

Robin Williams, with Steve Nallons voice?

[Steve Crook]

name='kelp']Robin Williams, with Steve Nallons voice?

I thought Robin Williams was hopeless in drag as Mrs Doubtfire. He just camped it up and overexaggerated everything (yes, I know it was supposed to be comedy). None of the much more believeable subtlety of Alastair Sim as Miss Fritton in the St Trinian's films.



Steve Nallon does quite a good visual impression as well.



Steve

[image45]

Alastair Sim ~ yes he was a good actor thats the real point to that one!!!!!!

[David Brent]

Maybe not an actress as such but I reckon that Anne Robinson of "Weakest Link" fame would play the ideal Thatcher.

If I was casting the Thatcher film I would also sign-up all the Millwall football supporters to play the angry miners.

The closing scene could be where Thatcher meets the miners in person and tries to explain to them the bad news of why they would all lose their jobs and then the good news that she was now going to introduce a poll tax.



Finale - fireworks.





Dave.

[samkydd]

This smacks of cashing-in on the recent success of The Queen, but honestly I don't think a film made about Mrs T would attract much interest. For many of us who lived through the Thatcherite period I think we would rather forget the bad memories, and besides, her dictatorial style of leadership is being re-enacted daily by our present PM but it seems a lot worse somehow!



Perhaps it's because there were some hard line law and order policies in Thatcher's reign whereas today it's become a society where there is little accountability, and low lifes rule the roost in areas where politicians and the police fear to tread.



This is possibly why more right-wing politicians like Thatcher would be welcomed by many in the UK to try and redress the balance and try and get society back on kilter, and not let the rot spread to every community. She also had a healthy disregard for all things EU, and would not capitulate thus allowing non-elected Eurocrats to impose their will on democratically elected governments.



The miners' strike also sticks in the mind; the violence, the thug like attitude of the police. But Thatcher was very clever by allowing people to buy their Council homes and at the same time she lifted restrictions on credit which made mortgages that much easier for everyone to take on. Suddenly the working classes became middle class because they could aspire to owning property, decent cars, gadgets etc and with such debt dependency industrial action became a thing of the past. Strike pay wouldn't cover the repayments on the mortage and the car loan, people needed to work all the overtime they could because they'd got the taste for middle class material values and they would reluctantly toe the line rather than risk losing their new found status (and their homes). So effectively and stealthily Mrs T cuts people's balls off and the natural Bolshe spririt of the British was quashed through chintzy chintzy cheeriness and a new Ford Escort!



So a clever politician with a few personality flaws, but the subject of a feature film? Nah, a film about a PM wouldn't entice me to the flicks or rent the DVD. A TV drama would be more appropriate.

[kelp]

Blimey Sam! There's a Politician in you matey, well spoken lad. You know what? I could feel a vote for Sam coming on.

Only kidding.

[smudge]

name='samkydd']



This is possibly why more right-wing politicians like Thatcher would be welcomed by many in the UK to try and redress the balance and try and get society back on kilter, and not let the rot spread to every community...



...So effectively and stealthily Mrs T cuts people's balls off and the natural Bolshe spririt of the British was quashed through chintzy chintzy cheeriness and a new Ford Escort!

Get society back on kilter ? Don't forget it was Thatcher who famously said that there was no such thing as society - so why should she give a tinker's cuss ? It was her championing of the individual coming first that got us into the mess we are now in, which (as Sam has rightly said) is perpetuated by our current PM, he himself being a failed Tory.



The Thatcherite legacy is ingrained now, with the people who grew up being told it was OK to be selfish spawning away merrily and perpetuating that same philosophy. Add to that the 'bleeding heart' culture of social workers and the ever-increasing counselling industry, and Joe Average, who pays his taxes and keeps his nose clean, stands no chance whatsoever ; he will continue to be a cash cow, milked to support all of those who can't be bothered to work. Ironically those selfsame tabloid regurgitators are often the most vociferous critics of the economic migrants who flood our shores to come to do the very jobs they can't be bothered to do.



I did like Sam's touch of Betjeman there, with, "...chintzy, chintzy cheeriness," but surely (to continue the theme) the car should have been a Ford Cortina ? (I am a young executive....etc.)



SMUDGE

[silverwhistle]

name='samkydd']This is possibly why more right-wing politicians like Thatcher would be welcomed by many in the UK to try and redress the balance and try and get society back on kilter, and not let the rot spread to every community. She also had a healthy disregard for all things EU, and would not capitulate thus allowing non-elected Eurocrats to impose their will on democratically elected governments.

What?!!!! Thatcherism was the "rot" which destroyed the fabric of British society, and created the "dog eat dog", crude, materialistic culture that is so dominant today. 'New Labour' betrayed nearly everything Labour stood for, and the hopes of so many of us in 1997, by not turning its back decisively on Thatcher's legacy. They should have embraced Europe, instead of turning into even more of a US poodle.



I also deeply resent the contempt which seeps through when people talk about "the unemployed". Thanks to the casualisation of the professions, the short-term contract culture, & c., in the 14 years since I got my doctorate, I've only had 4 years of paid full-time work, and it's not through lack of trying. God knows how anyone can fiddle the system, with all the form-filling, and the checks, and the way councils go out of their way not to pay you the full amount of your rent in Housing Benefit...



I regard myself as first and foremost a European.

[silverwhistle]

name='Fellwanderer']And I look forward to spitting on her grave.

May I join you?



I couldn't regard as a friend anyone pro-Thatcher. I haven't written to one of my aunts ever since she said she was her heroine...

[DB7]

"Where there is despair may I bring..."



Treble unemployment, social division, an end to manufacturing industry, war, record interest rates, inner-city riots and the culture of greed.



She basically bribed the electorate by flogging off the family silver.

[Wolfgang]

We are seeing more and more highly qualified people unable to gain stable employment but I wonder how much this is due to 'casualisation of professions' and wonder if it is more to with industrialisation of education. This has produced problem that is two fold: it has seen proliferation of courses that have low employment opportunities with low academic standards: psychology, media studies, and job specific MA/MSCs which have seen employment opportunities drop for traditional subjects such as chemistry and Arts and Humanities subjects. It is understandable on one hand that now you have to pay tuition fees you want something with built in job prospects, but it does mean in terms of employment diploma courses with minimal content can count even more than Phds which will ultimately undermine society's tradition of revising and passing on knowledge. This problem was created when they turned British polytechnics into universities (by Major's government in 1992 - two years after they overthrew Maggie) resulting in courses lacking intellectual rigour being assigned degree status and exacerbated by tuition fees, neither of which Maggie was responsible for.

[penfold]

The only despair I have at the moment is that there is a whole generation of voters, now, who have grown up without memories of the Heath and Thatcher government, and think that the current economic stability, welfare spending, low interest rates and lack of inflation is the norm, rather than the exception. As time progresses there are fewer voters who do remember those times, and the possibility of an Old Etonian cabinet led by that oily poser Cameron increases.

[penfold]

name='Wolfgang']We are seeing more and more highly qualified people unable to gain stable employment but I wonder how much this is due to 'casualisation of professions' and wonder if it is more to with industrialisation of education. This has produced problem that is two fold: it has seen proliferation of courses that have low employment opportunities with low academic standards: psychology, media studies, and job specific MA/MSCs which have seen employment opportunities drop for traditional subjects such as chemistry and Arts and Humanities subjects. It is understandable on one hand that now you have to pay tuition fees you want something with built in job prospects, but it does mean in terms of employment diploma courses with minimal content can count even more than Phds which will ultimately undermine society's tradition of revising and passing on knowledge. This problem was created when they turned British polytechnics into universities (by Major's government in 1992 - two years after they overthrew Maggie) resulting in courses lacking intellectual rigour being assigned degree status and exacerbated by tuition fees, neither of which Maggie was responsible for.

It was more to do with the creation of class-wide massive levels of unemployment in the early 80's allowing employers of many types to get away with offering short-term contracts without the sort of long-term benefits a good employer would have been expected to be provide previously. This has been of huge detriment to the economy as experienced people - if they can be employed regularly enough to gain experience - move on to keep short-term costs down.

[Wolfgang]

I just think there really is not that much to complain about when it comes to Maggie - it seems like nitpicking to me - although being from Germany I probably use different yardstick for measuring my government's effectiveness.