The Iron Lady has died at age 87. Now she is God's Iron Angel.

Rest In Peace, Margaret Thatcher; you have earned your rest.

I wish Australia's first female Prime Minister was more like her. Remarkable woman.

http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/...-mixed-legacy-of-odd.html

I hated her and think she sucked!

got free milk now? when are English parents going to make enough money to feed their own kids? maybe she can knock some sense into God.

:( I hadn't heard. She truly was an incredible woman.

more like iron chancellor (or dictator) than iron angel.

at least she will see familiar faces where ever she goes.

Wow. Bitter much? :p

nope since i'm not brit so didn't suffer due her ruling.

She was a remarkably bad Prime Minister if that is what you're referring to...

well.. she finally put the british coal industry out of its misery (a good thing), but got too swept up in privatisation mania and is responsible for britain having the terrible rail network etc. that it does now. but maybe that saved some money? I don't really dislike her that much for that.

what is absolutely abhorrent about her and makes me glad she's gone is her support for disgusting regimes such as Pinochet's Chile and South Africa. her little exercise of pointless colonialism in the Falklands that Brits seem so proud about for some reason was also stupid.

ppls in brixton celebrated her death.

and glasgow and basically all over scotland and to a lesser degree around the UK.

celebrated around Scottland for sure.

maybe this day will become some national day. :P

mmh, she had good and bad aspects. and is probably loved and hated by a lot of people. not universally loathed or anything like that.

http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/

She was good for the times

She was much more than just a politician, which is why so many hated her. She was a bonafide leader, probably one of the last we'll ever see. Someone who cared about her people beyond political expediency.

God Rest Her Soul

Who is the equivalent leader in earth? Helmet?

Don't insult Helmet by comparing him with this idiot.

She is ultimately the centerpiece for beginning the complete failure of privatizing things owned by the government.

She sold off public monopolies, used the proceeds to cut taxes, and put the privatized firms on a profit-making basis so that the stock prices rose sharply, making capital gains for investors...
And the result Britain achieved with this was simply a transfer from the middle class to the financiers, because the actions of updating infrastructure are 100% the same whether in public or private hands.. it doesn't take a genius to run an electric company. The wealth was transferred because prices had been massively increased against residential consumers in favor of decreases for industrial users. And wages stayed flat while politicians allowed those charges to increase and stole the once-public pensions for those workers moved to private companies.

Note that the other equal side of the public governance issue was that the same people in charge of the Treasury were Chicago monetarists who refused to authorize the funds needed for investment in public services as long as the enterprises remained in public hands.. because they were the same people high on themselves after their advisory escapades in Chile. The problem could have been cured by letting government departments operate as independent public agencies off the balance sheet, like America’s Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA).

Ultimately the Thatcherist legacy was not to make governments work better -- just the opposite like Republicans in the US today, it was to assert that they could not work efficiently while obstructing every mechanism by which that management does actually happen.

Note that the only beneficiary of Thatcher's entire legacy has been the one square mile of London which is the finance sector. What Margaret Thatcher provided was a legitimization [she was a "useful fool"] for turning Britain into a financier's paradise.

She is viewed very differently inside and outside the United Kingdom. If you look at her foreign policy she did a lot of good for Britain, which is why she's known worldwide.

She stood up to the European Union and demanded concessions for our continuing membership.
She said what she thought, whether it was to Regan or the Soviets.
She had the will to authourise the the liberation of the Falkland Islands, despite military inpractibilities and lack of support from anyone else.

On the other hand, she was against German unification and supported South American dictatorships (obviously in opposition to Argentina).

However, internally, her policies were very divisive. After WW2 Britain was one of the most socialist countries on Earth, and a heavily indebted, economically weak one. Thatcher was like a US Republican, who had similar ideas on economic policy and peoples' roles in society. Her years as PM were certainly an upheaval and it split communities and totally ruined whole regions. Basically there were many winners and losers back then and people today are still feeling the benefits and disadvantages of her vision.

I think its her personality and story, which makes her such an interesting character though. Although not a fan of the film, it gives a very brief description of her life and its worth watching.

She also once said "if you're still getting the bus at the age 30, then you've failed."

classic.

faults aside, she was also one hell of a politician. Not only able, but freely willing to stand up to her male colleagues, political opponents and journalists. Stubborn and pig headed did her some good, until she let it go too far. A true political pioneer. RIP.

Just for the record, Gillard (australia's PM) has actually done a far better job than most people realise. Consider how much legislation she has managed to pass through parliament despite a minority government relying on independents to hold office.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/...tertainment-arts-22145306

/me runs away.

Sorry, but she was and is one of the worst leaders we have ever had.

While I will not celebrate someone's death, I wish she passed away in power.

I also hope the new "thatcherites" we have in power get the fluff out of politics asap.

I wonder how many know that when Thatcher left office, taxes were actually higher.

higher how? more people actually had to contribute to help pay for the country that they are living in?

I don't know about her domestic policies but I can't see how liberalizing a control economy into a free-market economy could be bad. She was a friend of Reagan and so I supported her.

Fascism is in no way the "free market." Using government to get trillions of dollars of special favors for an industry consisting of one company is no less a control economy than when that government is actually running the industry/company itself. Free market means multiple companies must compete for business.. and the industries Thatcher deregulated didn't have competition.

Also, the CEO's can siphon significantly more cash into their own pockets if the company is nominally "not controlled by the government" -- because they'd just be civil servants on a fixed salary if .gov is actually running the industry.

That's why taxes were higher -- because everyone had to pay more to subsidize the unearned salaries and stock options/etc that the Csuite was giving itself directly out of the public purse. Just because they're "in" a position does not mean they're actually performing. Think about it: No change in actual efficiency, but the salary of the execs was orders of magnitude more.

Just another torie making the poor - rich gap as wide as they can, ruined mining, ship building and manufacturing for the great ole london. Still continues with cameron now, london has not had a recession as all policy is made in london for london

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/...end-of-margaret-thatcher/

To those familiar with Mrs. Thatcher’s tax policies, these data are not surprising. Although she cut the top personal income tax rate to 60 percent from 83 percent immediately upon taking office, the basic tax rate was only reduced to 30 percent from 33 percent. And in 1980, the 25 percent lower rate of taxation was eliminated so that 30 percent became the lowest tax rate.

More importantly, Mrs. Thatcher paid for her 1979 tax cut by nearly doubling the value-added tax to 15 percent, from 8 percent. Among those who thought Mrs. Thatcher was making a dreadful mistake was the American economist Arthur Laffer. Writing in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 20, 1979, he excoriated her for taking with the one hand while giving with the other.

“The Thatcher budget lowers tax rates where they have little economic consequence and raises tax rates where they affect economic activity directly,” he complained.

In the 1982 forward to the British edition of his American best-seller, “Wealth and Poverty,” George Gilder was also highly critical of Mrs. Thatcher for failing to cut either taxes or spending: “The net effect of the Thatcher program has been a substantial increase in taxation on virtually all taxpayers.”

bons