In deference to our Open Thread on Saturday, Monckton submitted this for WUWT readers. It is insightful and worth a read IMHO – Anthony
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, courtesy of wnd.com
It will be from Heaven that Margaret Thatcher, the greatest friend the United States ever had, will observe the now-inescapable disintegration of the dismal European tyranny-by-clerk whose failure she foresaw even as it brought her down.
Margaret was unique: a fierce champion of people against government, taxpayers against bureaucrats, workers against unions, us against Them, free markets against state control, privatization against nationalization, liberty against socialism, democracy against Communism, prosperity against national bankruptcy, law against international terrorism, independence against global governance; a visionary among pygmies; a doer among dreamers; a statesman among politicians; a destroyer of tyrannies from arrogant Argentina via incursive Iraq to the savage Soviet Union.
It is a measure of the myopia and ingratitude of her Parliamentary colleagues that, when she famously said “No, no, no!” at the despatch-box in response to a scheming proposal by the unelected arch-Kommissar of Brussels that the European Parliament of Eunuchs should supplant national Parliaments and that the hidden cabal of faceless Kommissars should become Europe’s supreme government and the fumbling European Council its senile senate, they ejected her from office and, in so doing, resumed the sad, comfortable decline of the nation that she had briefly and gloriously made great again.
Never did she forget the special relationship that has long and happily united the Old Country to the New. She shared the noble ambition of your great President, Ronald Reagan, that throughout the world all should have the chance to live the life, enjoy the liberty, and celebrate the happiness that your Founding Fathers had bequeathed to you in their last Will and Testament, the Constitution of the United States. I know that my many friends in your athletic democracy will mourn her with as heartfelt a sense of loss as my own.
The sonorous eulogies and glittering panegyrics will be spoken by others greater than I. But I, who had the honor to serve as one of her six policy advisors at the height of her premiership, will affectionately remember her and her late husband, Denis, not only for all that they did but for all that they were; not only for the great acts of State but for the little human kindnesses to which they devoted no less thought and energy.
When Britain’s greatest postwar Prime Minister was fighting a losing battle for her political life, I wrote her a letter urging her to fight on against the moaning Minnies who had encircled her. Within the day, though she was struggling to govern her country while parrying her party, she wrote back to me in her own hand, to say how grateful she was that I had written and to promise that if she could carry on she would.
I had neither expected nor deserved a reply: but that master of the unexpected gave me the undeserved. For no small part of her success lay in the unfailing loyalty she inspired in those to whom she was so unfailingly loyal.
Margaret savored her Soviet soubriquet “the Iron Lady”, and always remained conscious that, as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, she must be seen to be tough enough to do the job – the only man in the Cabinet.
It was said of her that at a Cabinet dinner the waiter asked her what she would like to eat. She replied, “I’ll have the steak.”
“And the vegetables?”
“They’ll have the steak too.”
Yet her reputation for never listening was entirely unfounded. When she was given unwelcome advice, she would say in the plainest terms exactly what she thought of it. But then she would always pause. The advisor had two choices: to cut and run in the face of the onslaught, in which event she would have little respect for him, or to stand his ground and argue his case.
If the advisor was well briefed and had responded well to her first salvo of sharply-directed questions, she would say, “I want to hear more about this, dear.” She would tiptoe archly to the bookcase in the study and reach behind a tome for a bottle of indifferent whisky and two cut-glass tumblers.
At my last official meeting with her, scheduled as a ten-minute farewell, I asked if I could give her one last fourpence-worth of advice. She agreed, but bristled when I told her what I had been working on. “Don’t be so silly, dear! You know perfectly well that I can’t possibly agree to that.” Then, as always, she paused. I stood my ground. A salvo of questions. Out came the whisky from behind the bookshelf. I was still there an hour and a half later.
The following year, during her third general election, I told the story in the London Evening Standard. Within an hour of the paper hitting the streets, a message of thanks came from her office. Unfailing loyalty again. She won by a 100-seat majority.
To the last, her political instinct never left her. One afternoon, Sir Ronald Millar, the colorful playwright who wrote her speeches, took her onstage at the Haymarket Theater, which he owned. She gazed up at the rows of seats, turned to Ronnie and said, “What a wonderful place for a political rally!”
During the long speech-writing sessions that preceded every major speech, Ronnie would suggest a phrase and Margaret would rearrange it several times. Every so often, she would dart across to Denis, sitting nearby with a gin and tonic. She would try the line out on him. If he did not like it, he would drawl, “No, no – that won’t fly!”
A couple of years ago her “kitchen cabinet” invited her to dinner. For two hours she was her vigorous old self. I sat opposite her. Late in the evening, I saw she was tiring and gave her a thumbs-up. Instantly she revived, smiled radiantly, and returned the gesture – using both thumbs.
It was not hard to see why Margaret and Denis Thatcher were the most popular couple among the old stagers working at 10 Downing Street since the Macmillans. Now they are reunited; and I pray, in the words of St. Thomas More, that they may be merry in Heaven. They have both earned it. Let her be given a State Funeral. Nothing less will do.
The latest whine is the ‘cost’ of the funeral.
I wish Boris Johnson or someone would set up a fund for private contributors. I would gladly contribute as would many others and I have no doubt that the full cost would be raised in no time. That would then cut off that line of whining.
Someone else noted the irony of the protests/celebrations. The country is so wealthy today that even unemployable yobs can afford champagne to drink as they stumble about public squares making vermin of themselves.
Just one area of lunacy, though, eh, Sir Christopher?
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108237
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/thatcher-climate-sceptic-monckton
Gods teeth, what has happened to this site? It has metamorphosed from a science and associated issues to a primarily political campaign. Lets get this straight, generally (with very few exceptions such as Winston Churchill), only Royalty gets state funerals. There are those who worshiped Margaret Thatcher, but at the end of the day she was a politician, although she used the Royal ‘we’ on occasions. As a country suffering austerity we seem to be using any excuse of the last few years to blow money on huge state occasions, it is immoral to say the least. Margaret Thatcher was an important politician who’s influence will be felt across the world for many years, but lets keep things in proportion. Is not a funeral in the same Church as royal wedding and televised live across the world not enough? Is she to be worshipped as a deity ? Is this a good use of the mull million pound costs that such a ceremony would incur? And remember, everyone in the UK would have to pay through their taxes, and we know that not all of the UK benefitted from Mrs.Thatchers radical ideas.
Fine for you to post this Anthony as it is your blog , and not just about climate etc. however, I recall a few years ago a shift into conservative politics that I sense you regretted. The corruption of climate science and of climate politics is what unites us here. The thing is that the great relevance of thatcher in this regard is that after Brundtland (Norway ) she was one of the first state leaders to start beating the drum of climate alarm and in doing so clearly demonstrating the financial benefits of scientists beating along – ie 1988 address to royal soc and the establishment of Hadley Centre. The sceptical founding head of CRU, H H Lamb, did not stand a chance after Thatcher stepped in.
I liked this site when it wasn’t a political platform. Ugh!
Just take the cost from the contributions to the EU that she saved us.
In proportion, a state funeral would be just pennies.
That sort of recognition of her value is the least we could do.
Village Idiot The Guardian is spouting it’s usual left wing drivel. Hopefully with it’s declining sales it will soon be no more.
Gareth, I agree with you about a State Funeral, it would set a precedent, because as much as I admire Mrs T and what she did for our country, logically every ex PM should be have a State Funeral. As for the cost if she did have one, it could come out of the £75 billion she has saved us from our contribution to the EU.
I must admit to being deeply saddened by the campaign to buy ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ to mark the death of Maggie Thatcher This is a terrible affront to an old Lady who was much loved by many people across the world. Julie Garland surely deserves better.
I love this site. Let me add to the requests to keep this kind of politics out of it.
“And the vegetables?” indeed. A great lady, and at the right time.
I wonder how our US cousins would feel about a leader who shut just about every coal mine in the US and threw ancient communities on the scrap heap, mainly for political goals.If you want an insight into how such people felt, have a look at this clip from a great film called Brassed off. I would hope the noble Lord would also find time for a quick glance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKx3MUqzCcQ
@gareth Phillips 2013/04/14 at 12:42 am
You might be surprised by the actual figures re coal mine closure:
“…the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.”
I second the calls for keeping this site focused on climate related topics.
She earned enough to pay her own way in life and death. It’s what she would want and besides 60% agree – No state funeral (23% said yes).
Monckton who was feeding from the same table, not one of those waiting for trickle down scraps to occur so his opinion of Mrs T is bound to be warped by his full belly. Calls for a state honour and even a minutes silence come from other table guests who joined in the feasting.
On behalf of the hungry many including the good people of Liverpool besmirched for a ‘greater cause’ of political convenience I say to the good Lord, on this occasion, ‘No thanks, we defend our own too’ and turn our backs.
Tribal political biased hyperbole.
WUWT is a community …. with citizens from across the globe. It is a community that prides itself on civil discourse and where each side of an issue can have their say … within those same limits of civility. That is the strength of a community such as this, and it is also why, I believe, it has the huge worldwide reach that it does.
One can learn much by listening to BOTH sides of an issue, and accomplish even more by respectfully engaging in intelligent discussion with those you disagree with.
As to Margaret Thatcher – agree with her positions or not, she accomplished much and served her country with great spirit, passion and conviction. For that she deserves simple basic respect. At least the courtesy of not being offended, when those who appreciated her service to her country and its people express their respect and remembrance.
Many have said the triumvirate of Lady Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were the only combination that could have accomplished the end of the Cold War – high praise in my book, coming from none other than one Mikhail Gorbachev:
I think Gorbachev’s words have value here – while this community allows that we can disagree – there is value in respectful dialogue. Just as there is considerable value in respecting the thoughts and beliefs of others, agree with them or not, as they express their heartfelt remembrances of someone important – to them, and in many ways important to the world.
Just as Willis’s great stories enhance the value of this great community – so to does the occasional off topic post such as Lord Monckton’s here. Neither do any disservice to the community – to the contrary I think they add considerably to it.
A good link to the thoughts of others about Lady Thatcher
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-i-knew#nigel-lawson
“I second the calls for keeping this site focused on climate related topics.”
“commentary on puzzling things in life. . .climate change. . . .And recent News”
get over yourselves
sober up. this is possibly the most important & honest MSM article in years. just add Thatcher’s name alongside Reagan’s, read it all and weep:
30 March: NYT: David A. Stockman: State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
(David A. Stockman is a former Republican congressman from Michigan, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985 and the author, most recently, of “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.”)
This explosion of borrowing was the stepchild of the floating-money contraption deposited in the Nixon White House by Milton Friedman, the supposed hero of free-market economics who in fact sowed the seed for a never-ending expansion of the money supply…
This dynamic reinforced the Reaganite shibboleth that “deficits don’t matter” and the fact that nearly $5 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion in “publicly held” debt is actually sequestered in the vaults of central banks. The destruction of fiscal rectitude under Ronald Reagan — one reason I resigned as his budget chief in 1985 — was the greatest of his many dramatic acts. It created a template for the Republicans’ utter abandonment of the balanced-budget policies of Calvin Coolidge and allowed George W. Bush to dive into the deep end, bankrupting the nation through two misbegotten and unfinanced wars, a giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy that turned K Street lobbyists into the de facto office of national tax policy. In effect, the G.O.P. embraced Keynesianism — for the wealthy…
The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Gareth/Simon. EVERYTHING is political! We in the UK have to fight not only our govenment’s mad plans, but also those of the European Soviet Union – which is ably supported by the Greens. The articlae Maryland’s “Woind Powered Welfare” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/12/marylands-wind-powered-welfare/ also shows how politics is used – in this case to get potential Green votes for Governor O’Malley. Obama also taps into Green votes. All politics
Tribal political biased hyperbole maybe, but not if you had to live through the dismal preceding years of union domination with the three day week (we continued working by gas and candle light) and rubbish piling on the streets and woe betide the working man if he did not comply with union diktats.
Every so often WUWT strays off the subject of climate. That should be of no concern as no one is obliged to read the articles.
Too much straying and readership will fall dramatically.
I am a great fan of Margaret Thatcher and what she did for Britain; I am a greater fan of what she and Reagen did together, which was being largely instrumental in ridding most of the world from the tyranny of communism. It was simply a case of standing firm against those who believed the state should do everything and can do no wrong.
So it must be with sceptics; the nonsense of CAGW/imminent Thermageddon has been championed by those who work directly, or indirectly, for the state and parasite activist groups like Greenpeace. Both require dire predictions of the future for their leaders to prosper.
Too many of us believe the state can do no wrong. The western world’s leaders of today are political pygmies compared to the likes of Reagen and Thatcher, which is presumably one of the reasons they have been duped by the ‘scientific concensus’ of Mann, Hansen and the Team.
‘Climate science’ is all about increasing the role of government in our lives, something completely abhorrent to the likes of Thatcher and Reagen.
I don’t think this thread is off-topic. Ok, the lady was an “early adopter” of AGW, but she was also an “early dumper”:
Christopher Booker, The Telegraph 12 Jun 2010:
“In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.
She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.
In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. ”
She doesn’t admit she got it wrong, but hey, she was a politician. Lays the blame on the “distortions of science”. She may have been the first, but hopefully won’t be the last, to finesse it this way.
Monckton the joke about ‘and the vegetables’ was from the TV series Spitting Image – Thatcher never said that.
No matter how bad one is some people will always love you. No matter how good one is some people will always hate you. I find it sad that this latter group cannot gloat in silence.
Dear Anthony,
Were you aware of Lady Thatcher’s espousal of AGW, as highlighted by Village Idiot and Berniel ? Yes, she did recant later in life, but only quietly, not vigorously or widely in public as she should have done to counter the damage that her earlier actions continue to cause.
It’s disconcertingly curious that the usually meticulous Lord Monckton’s encomium does not mention – on WUWT, of all sceptic fora – her positions and actions (e.g. creating the Hadley Centre) on AGW.
PS The obscure words are for Lord M’s benefit; my apologies to WUWT readers who did not benefit from his classical education.
I would like to know a lot more about Margaret Thatcher’s, and indeed her Chancellor Nigel Lawson’s, early views on climate science from the 1980s – but not this! Not on this site anyway…
And here’s me thinking this was a science blog and not just a climate blog.
As for Thatcher, she played a MAJOR role in establishing the mess we are in and so her demise is suitable for comment.
As for a state funeral…she was great, but I don’t think she was that great, and I think she would be the first to agree to that. Ever the ‘housewife’
I agree with A. Scott. I was touched by the reminiscences of Christopher Monckton. As I enjoyed reading the capers of Willis. Both distinguished members of this community. If you do not like their stories or opinions on other than strictly climate related issues, skip them.
I was but a wee nipper when Margaret Thatcher came to power.I was in the UK and we were suffering a ‘3 day week’. I remember having to sit around the kitchen table reading by candle light. Also rubbish was not getting collected, and strikes were occurring at a drop of a hat, the place was going to hell in a hand basket. I remember the BBC cutting the coverage of having to go Zurich to borrow money to keeping the economy afloat…
I have the up most respect for her and what she did. The miners had it coming to them for the utter arrogance of thinking they could hold a whole country to ransom and not pay the price for such a breach of trust in providing a critical service. They only have themselves to blame, If you get in the way of letting businesses improve effectiveness they soon loose their competitiveness and nobody has a job.
Yes, unions do have a place, but it is not to obstruct a business, it should be to help the employees help the business and win respect and compensation that way – the only way to sustainability earn more is to make the pie bigger for everyone – and that requires teamwork & commitment by all.
In a way we are fighting a similar battle with climate change, luckily it looks like that too has reached its ‘Zurich moment’.
@ Village Idiot – If you read the links you attach, it is obvious that PM Thatcher had questions about the future and wanted to learn. Anyone who reads the speech (from 1989) can understand that. She mentions the ozone in the speech, and how long it will take to fix – shocks upon shocks, it didn’t take that long to shrink now did it? Trying to pretend that she “flipped” in her views is naive. It seems she simply paid attention to reality and saw that the warming movement was about control, not science.
@gareth Phillips – actually, there have been a number of state funerals that were given to non-royalty. Churchill, Carson, Haig – to name a few.
Those points aside, I also agree with others on this site that I like to see the focus on climate science, politics relating directly to climate science, and other science-themed subjects concerning global warming and climate change. Understandably Monckton has passion for this subject, but I believe it belongs on another site.
If I saw it on another site, colour me in agreement with Monckton.
Funny how Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, as “one of her six policy advisors”, gently entirely leaves out the fact that Mrs. Thatcher was strong believer in human made global warming. No questioning of the IPCC. His very liberal political wievs, economically, are of course legitimate, but when he chooses this as a main point, the global warming issue should not be far to seek. But the global warming issue could of course be one of her weapons to fight the british coal miners. So now we are beeing political.
I like to read this site as scientific.
One of many examples: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/margaret-thatchers-strong-stance-on-climate-change
Interestingly, having recently spent some time in the old East Germany, I was surprised at how much effort Thatcher put into opposing the wall being demolished, with the event only happening due to the refusal of Gorbachev to comply with Thatchers requests to intervene on the side of Erich Honniker. In reality, like most politicians, she did some good things, she also did some appalling things and towards the end of her term was becoming quite bonkers, possibly due to early symptoms of dementia. But one thing is certain, as a casual read through the posts above will demonstrate, she left a much more divided society in the UK and is appreciated in much more in countries outside the UK than by the UK citizens themselves.
Here is something for the left to contemplate: Nearly 33 years ago (May 4th 1980) exactly a year after Margaret Thatcher arrives at Downing Street on 4 May 1979, as the newly elected staunch anti-communist prime minister, she attends funeral (photo) of one, beyond doubt more popular communist leaders of East Europe J.B. Tito
If you aren’t willing to discuss politics, and more than that, to wade hip deep into the political swamp, what the hell are you doing here?
You are a political and scientific heretic, if you are active here. If you are a democrat or a liberal that makes you a traitor to your chosen partie’s long term political platform.
Make peace with yourself on that score, and shut up hippy!
Gareth Phillips, 1:39 am; you are obviously too young to remember.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9991843/Margaret-Thatcher-never-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.html
I shall be there on Wednesday to give thanks for our delivery and pray for our future.
I will second the view that this is too party political.
We all know that Climate ‘Science’ has polarised along party political lines, with rationalists doubting the science, while the day-dreaming betwetters have greater ‘faith’ than the pope.
However, it would have been better to have had an inside account of how Thatcher was initially taken in by climate science (was this due to the coal miners dispute), but then she became very sceptical and rejected it way back in 2003 – long before most skeptics.
Now that would have been an interesting article. But a fawning eulogy and personal trumpet blowing is not what this site needs.
.
I’m happy to read about all topics that you find interesting – or ignore it if I like. It’s your site – your rules & I have no problem with views consistent or contrary to mine.
Michael
What does the extreme right wing politics of Margaret Thatcher have to do with the objective question of whether increased human produced CO2 will produce a serious climatic problem.
Thatcher is a hated figure in large parts of Britain.
A friend of Pinochet the fascist dictator.
When does political opinion decide scientific correctness.
Thatcher represented rob the poor to feed the rich politics.
Much the same as the present British Conservative coalition government.
This left – right split on Global Warming is largely a USA phenomina.
Here in the UK there are as many right wing alarmists making money out of the alarmist scam as right wing opponents of the scam.
What next?
Will we have a right wing – left wing split on whether there is a Higg’s Boson ?
Some posters here have decried the introduction of Thacher as a topic on the site. And certainly, Monckton’s tribute is from an entirely personal experience and identification.
She, as person and policy, was and is highly contentious. Loved and loathed. Which has to a degree been reignited by her death and has invoked a reversion to the personal responses held in those times which have been displayed on WUWT.
Those who do not want this raised here either see no point to it, or do not want their experience of the site polarised. This is understandable because these personal responses in themselves seem to add nothing, on the face of it, to wider issues including AGW.
However the existence of this issue at all cannot be divorced from people. And Thatcher was a significant part of this at a structural level.
What the responses to her death show is the depth of commitment or repudiation people can hold, persistent over many years, and into which many things are unreasonably incorporated to form a false coherence.
This issue of AGW was formulated and then given institutional life over the period that she was PM in the UK. Which she played a part in.
Through that time, AGW also became the prime vehicle for moral intent. A division between Good and Evil. Just as Thatcher is seen by many. A self-defining touchstone.
Her life, her policies, and the personal responses to these are therefore relevant. Both by what can be learnt – or can serve as a reminder – about the degree to which fixed positions can be entrenched at a level that is no longer obvious in subsequent decisions or outlook, and by allowing a view of the social imperatives which created AGW and the way that became established orthodoxy.
To deal with AGW is not simply a matter of science. Without understanding where this came from and what sustains it – apart from now comprehensive special interests in a venal sense, or questions of ego, reputation, or status – it will be difficult to achieve widespread clarity.
This kind of article gives pro-AGW wonderful arguments as to a big oil funded evil consersatve lobby who would not care about science but only about politics and about decreasing the role of the state.
Many left-wing people, who think the state may have an important role towards interpersonal solidarity, may be repelled from this site and the scientific point of view it uses to share. In particular, those who have suffered from the Iron Lady’s actions.
Mixing science and politics is precisely what you criticize the IPCC for. IMO, WUWT should remain as neutral as possible.
Just one example of how we are affected currently. She privatised the water industry that has not spent a single penny on anything but dividends. Now with the massive increase in population were are constantly being warned about “droughts being brought on by global warming” which is garbage. The water companies are being allowed to bleed this country dry and ship the money to their paerent companies in France and Germany and the population are paying more green taxes.
Unfortunately, just like roads, education and hospitals, environmental science has squarely entered the area of politics and opinion.
Whatever one may think of the late Margaret Thatcher,it is clear that those who followed her were more interested in running with the polls, than with scientific realities. This is partly because most of them have no scientific background.
If it is a weekend I have no problem reading about Thatcher. All the other sites I look at have something on about her.
Nigel S says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:51 am
Gareth Phillips, 1:39 am; you are obviously too young to remember.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9991843/Margaret-Thatcher-never-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.html
I shall be there on Wednesday to give thanks for our delivery and pray for our future.
Hi Nigel, thanks for the compliment, but I was in the thick of it as a post grad student in Cambridge at the time. She did some good things like saving a small community of UK citizens from a predatory fascist regime in the south atlantic, despite her fondness for palling up with South American dictators and supporting the Apartheid regime, she also deserves credit for taking down some unbearable union leaders a peg or two. For all that, though, her greatest, single achievement, and it lives on strongly today, was shifting the narrative of popular discourse far to the right. Scape-goating the sick, the infirm, the disabled and the unemployed for the unparalleled greed of the crooks in the City and boardrooms is now the received wisdom. Get on your bikes, idle proles. Poverty is the fault of those labouring under it. The market is infallible and the state is evil and must be shrunk.
She had the essential ingredient of a good political career, she had luck. She had Gorbachev fighting her corner in the East, she had money from oil, she had a basis of the winter of discontent. Other politicians did not have these things, even less, but did well, even better. They have not been deified, I really don’t see the rationale for doing that for Thatcher. After all, apparently Tony Blair was the most successful PM of the last century, be honest, would you want a state funeral for him?
Margaret Thatcher was undoubtedly one of the most important people of the 20th Century and millions of people owe their very freedom to her, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul. The world lost a giant when she died.
For those angry or disappointed that Lord Monckton’s article was reposted here at WUWT, all I can say is get a grip. Nobody made you read the article or take the time to make a post complaining about it.
[snip – totally ad hominem] ~moderator
@ Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 2:25 am
“…I was in the thick of it as a post grad student in Cambridge at the time.”
You have just managed to demonstrate the entire basis for the distortion and perversion of reality that has permeated all levels of society.
You were IN THE THICK OF IT?
Attending university in an institution that forms a self-contained town which constitutes possibly the most REMOTE relationship with wider societal influences in the UK?
You were “in the thick” of NOTHING.
[snip – ad hom ~mod]
“Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news” What part of this do those who protest about our host’s choice of topics not understanding. Now granted commentary on the death of Lady Thatcher is not particularly puzzling; but it is Anthony’s site and he can jolly well choose what to allow. If you really feel that strongly about it, start your own blog.
She was famous for refusing to U-turn but twice she did. According to Christopher Booker’s page today she recanted on the EU which she first supported, thinking it was to be just a trading base of nations, and also on climate change which she supported by helping to start the IPCC with Houghton the retired boss of the UKMO but later she came to think the whole thing a sham.
She is vilified for destroying the unions but truth be told the unions destroyed themselves and heavy industry in the UK by their continual undemocratic strikes. Union laws she introduced ensured that no strike could take place without a vote of all members producing a good majority for such action. She was a union member when she worked as an industrial chemist.
Great lady and we would do well to find another like her.
As a note to Andy above- yes she privatised water but as far as Anglia Water is concerned they are spending bi££ions on replacing Victorian cast iron mains which was a pressing job when nationalised but ignored. New reservoirs are being built, desperate before privatisation but again ignored. We will never know how desperate our water supplies would have been like had privatisation not happened but I guess far worse than today.
John Marshall
As a note to Andy above- yes she privatised water but as far as Anglia Water is concerned they are spending bi££ions on replacing Victorian cast iron mains which was a pressing job when nationalised but ignored. New reservoirs are being built, desperate before privatisation but again ignored. We will never know how desperate our water supplies would have been like had privatisation not happened but I guess far worse than today.
Indeed John, and look at how well the privatised gas industry is doing as well as railways etc. The reality is, if you privatise anything but do not ensure competition you just replace an inefficient state monolith based on service with a privatised monolith based on profit.
I lived in Britain through the whole of Margaret Thatcher’s Prime Ministership. It was a hard time, if you were a worker, or a woman, or not-white, or unemployed. Her (Conservative Party) campaign for the 1979 election was ‘Labour isn’t working’, attacking the level of unemployment at about 1.5 million in that year under the Labour government. In 1983, unemployment was at about 3.5 million, directly due to her and her government’s monetarist policies. I respect her leadership during the Falklands War (living in Mexico and speaking Spanish, I refuse to refer to those islands as ‘Las Malvinas’), but I utterly reject her posture after the victory, ‘We have defeated the external enemy; now comes the internal enemy,’ Meaning, the unions, and in particular the National Union of Mineworkers. Margaret Thatcher destroyed the coal industry in Britain for political reasons; Britain is worse off for that, not to mention the destruction of whole communities of people who lived from and for the mines. Statement of interest: my maternal grandfather was a miner in South Wales, and my posture about miners anywhere is that I support them, be they right or wrong.
Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister of the UK; but she was certainly not a friend to women, cutting back on provision for child care, resisting EU directives on equal pay and opportunities, cutting back on various Social Security programmes that gave support to women, and so on.
She was right-wing, extremely so, in my view, but she was a democrat, in the sense that she respected parliamentary democracy; and so various critics are wrong in calling her ‘fascist’. But, she wanted to break the post-war consensus of the Welfare State; but when she went up against our National Health Service, she lost, and rightly so. Our NHS is one of the jewels in the crown.
It’s difficult to evaluate the effect or influence of a political leader; it requires time and thought and evidence. But, perhaps prematurely, I’d say that the effect or influence of Margaret Thatcher has been negative overall, in her (my) country and in the world.
Other note: I agree that this blog is mainly about climate, and not about political comment; Christopher Monckton has done much to criticise the AGW posture, and I’m grateful for that; but since he chooses to write a panegyric on Margaret Thatcher, I choose to offer a different point of view,
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/margaret-death-of-a-revolutionary/4od
“A radical film about a radical woman.
Martin Durkin’s controversial thesis is that Margaret Thatcher was a working class revolutionary.
She believed that capitalism was in the interests of ordinary people, not the toffs. Many ordinary people agreed.
And that is why the left hated her so much – Margaret Thatcher stole the working class.
This feature-length film includes interviews with the David Cameron, Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson, Cecil Parkinson, Neil Kinnock, Bernard Ingham and many others close to Mrs Thatcher.”
moderators:
I realize its early days, but I am loosing faith in the system here. I posted a comment in Green Eco Porn which didn’t appear and did what I could to notify you but to no avail.
I have posted two comments here, one about 40 minutes ago, one 15, neither of which went through. I am writing this now, rather than waiting an hour or two, in the hope that it is less likely to be lost under other things.
Obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.
She divided a society she didn’t ‘believe in’.
Here is an equally well written piece from the other end of the class divide (at the time):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
A grey area. We should be used to these 🙂
Andy says: April 14, 2013 at 2:17 am
Just one example of how we are affected currently. She privatised the water industry that has not spent a single penny on anything but dividends. … The water companies are being allowed to bleed this country dry.
_____________________________________
Tosh, Andy. You should be embarrassed to write such tosh.
UK water companies have spent $150 billion on infrastructure projects, since they were privatised by Thatcher. And this includes the London Ring, which was one of the largest construction projects in Europe. This is an 80km ring main, of 2.5m diameter, all around London.
http://www.building.co.uk/data/costs/cost-model/infrastructure-water-companies/5044674.article
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/850_2613.htm
Images of the London Ring.
http://construction.morgansindall.com/assets/c/o/coppermills_2-2.jpg
http://www.building.co.uk/Pictures/web/j/d/v/Thameswater8.jpg
And the fact that the UK population is dramatically increasing is the fault of Blair, not Thatcher. You cannot blame Thatcher for Blair opening the immigration floodgates to every freeloader and criminal in the world.
And if you are worried about UK profits going abroad, then again blame Blair. It was Blair who allowed these companies to be sold off abroad, not Thatcher. Should Thatcher have kept a significant government holding in each one (say 35%) including a so-called ‘golden share’? Sure she should, but Blair would have changed that policy straight away, as all he wanted was the money. As they say: “socialism is always the best political system, until they run out of other people’s money.”
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And this is the problem with this thread, Anthony, we are now discussing party politics instead of the Climate Scam.
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By failing to resign after Argentina invaded the Falklands she created a precedent followed by the likes of Julia Slingo and the head of North Staffs NHS Trust.
To those who lament that this site has become politicized through this article: Why do you think the site was founded? Is it your naïve view that climate science has been somehow separate from politics these past few decades? Eisenhower and others have pointed out the dangers of the “military-industrial complex”; they were right, of course, and it is folly to pretend that industry has ever proceeded without a strong scientific component, to which the forces of government (hence politics) soon began to pay attention. That attention, of course, led to various measures to control the science, from banning or restricting certain initiatives, to supporting or encouraging others with tax money (ours) or exemptions or deductions. If you think all this is non-political, go ahead; it will be more painful when you find out the truth. The weather is now the most politicized aspect of nature, or so it seems. This tribute to Thatcher, richly deserved, is perfectly appropriate on a site that exemplifies and promotes aspects of her eventual (not original) views. This is a political site, since its raison d’etre is, among other things, to alert people to a highly political situation with strongly political moves, countermoves, and consequences. The science is also essential here, of course; but the reason it is so important is that so many people in high places refuse to recognize scientific reality. Margaret Thatcher was a realist, who examined her premises whenever possible; Monckton is the same; both are fit to be quoted on this site.
I greatly respect the massive volumes of carefully researched scientific contributions on 99% of this blog but I don’t think reading a few words of tribute for some-one who made a significant impact on our times will much damage the reputation of this highly regarded website.
I always remember Thatcher’s work ethic:
* A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.
* Pay your bills.
* And save something for a rainy day.
After all, whether scientist, bureaucrat, climatologist, retiree or grocer’s daughter, we must all live and work within a political system and row the boat with the oars we have. Anyway, in many respects I am sure that Anthony Watts and Margaret Thatcher have a great deal in common.
I know the temptation is to view the past through rose tinted glasses, but America was not always the friend Thatcher deserved.
America refused to help Britain when Argentina invaded the Falklands. And America repeatedly urged a “settlement” with the Argentine aggressors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/europe/falklands-war-caused-rare-friction-for-thatcher-and-reagan.html
The Falkland islands were settled by the British, and have always been British. Argentina has never shown anything other hostility towards Falkland Islanders – to this day, Argentina continue petty diplomatic attacks on the Falklands, such as threatening to ban cruise ships which visit the islands from Argentine waters. For Ronald Reagan to urge a political settlement, to urge a sovereign, free people, to accept at least partial occupation from a cruel foreign power which usurped their freedom with force of arms, for the sake of geopolitical convenience, was probably one of the most shameful things that otherwise great President ever did.
Argentina appears to once again be on the warpath – this time for greed for the wealth of oil discovered in Falklands territory. Again the rhetoric is rising against people who want nothing to do with a country of hostile foreigners. A new war seems increasingly likely.
http://rt.com/news/britain-war-falklands-argentina-914/
Let us hope that this time America remembers who her friends are.
I would be honored to attend Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and fully support a state funeral. It is odd how political failures repeat, there must be a fundamental reason why the Soviet Union collapsed and why modern countries want to expand the welfare state, are unable to address special interest groups, and kick the deficit can down the road. Thatcher used humor, clarity of speech, and determination against all odds to address special interest problems, to face mass demonstrations and strikes, to save Britain from economic collapse.
As the welfare state expansions, more and more people work for the government. Wages are determined by the economic impact of shutting down services or politically if one can elect a party that does not understand or does not care about a future sovereign bond default. It is easy for a politician to sell a lie. Governments become corrupt, increasing their own wages, turning industrial countries into third world chaos. It is very easy for a modern welfare state to become like Greece, Spain, and Italy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9991843/Margaret-Thatcher-never-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.htm
“Nurses and ambulance drivers were on strike. Old people’s homes and schools were closing. The railways were not running. The electricians’ union marked the approach of Christmas 1978 by taking both BBC One and BBC Two off the air. The country was left with just ITV, to watch (the electricians waited until August 1979 to switch off ITV for 75 days).
More seriously, rubbish was piling high in the streets, creating a health hazard. The most potent metaphor of national decay was in Liverpool. There, a factory was being turned over to storage space for the dead because members of the GMWU union were picketing the cemeteries. Contingency plans were made to bury the city’s rotting corpses at sea.
It is worth recalling what Britain was like before the advent of Thatcherism. Doing so dispels the now prevalent notion that Margaret Thatcher created a nation of selfish individuals thinking only of their own gain and acting without a care for the needs of others. It also helps explain why, in the early Eighties, there were millions of ordinary Britons who continued to believe that her tough and, at times, distasteful, medicine would eventually work. The alternative – so-called consensus politics – had certainly been given long enough and had bequeathed a country commonly derided as “the sick man of Europe”. ”
Henry Galt says: April 14, 2013 at 2:51 am
Here is an equally well written piece from the other end of the class divide (at the time):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
___________________________________
Are you aware that Russell Brand is a foul-mouthed imbecile and egotist, whose primary claim to fame is that he taunted a famous actor about f***ing his daughter on live television.
And Russell Brand was just three years old when Thatcher came to power. So this is a bit like getting Tiger Woods to give us his considered opinion – being such a well-known intellectual – on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
If the Grauniad has to stoop down to the kindergarten and into the filthiest of gutters to get a commentary about Thatcher, then that says more about the Grauniad than it does about Thatcher.
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mwhite, I watched the Durkin film last night, too, and found it very thought provoking. I recommend it.
Well Maggie’s demise is “recent News”, and in my humble estimation worthy of discussion here.
Having lived through the McMillan, Wilson and Heath years when Britain was far from being Great, I also remember the hysteria around global cooling. I remember the cold winters of the early 60’s, and the even colder ones when strikes closed power stations in the early 70’s
Yikes, the miners even managed to close down an oil-fired power station by picketing the railway line delivering the needed fuel.
But I also remember a certain Bert Bolin’s much vaulted plea for nations to burn more coal to avert catastrophic global cooling. This is the same Bert Bolin who later became the first chair of the IPCC.
Maggie saw in Bert, the germ of an idea that coal could have an effect on climate, and commissioned various bodies including the Royal Academy to conduct research – oh and here’s some cash to make sure she got a result that showed coal is bad – something to the beat the miners over the head with.
It seems this approach was highly successful, with the establishment of the CRU etc., oh and of course the crushing of the miners
Only in later years did our Maggie back away from the corrupted science – but hey she was a politician
As for her other qualities – she did great things for Britain – she also did some bad things. I always thought here 3rd term in office was a mistake, since like most politicians with a 3rd term, she saw herself as invincible and inviolate. The Poll Tax is testament to that.
State funeral – NO – but a grand farewell – YES
Andi
Monckton: ” workers against unions, us against Them, free markets against state control, , liberty against socialism, democracy against Communism, prosperity against national bankruptcy…”
Well, the “free markets” that Thatcher deregulated are now controlling the state. The sacred democracy that his lordship spends so much time applauding is now meaningless in the face of banks dictating policy and holding country after country to ransom.
Funny he should mention national bankruptcy. Bit out of touch that one that since the bank bailout pretty much doubled the national debt overnight. The current swathing cuts politely call “austerity” that are pushing the country even close to total economic collapse are needed to recover from a debt imposed by the greed and incompetence of the banks.
“privatization against nationalization”, well privatisation was good for flogging off national assets like BT at half its market value but nationalisation is still de rigeur when it’s an £80bn debt to be picked up by the tax payer.
But do we “nationalise” the banks in order to recover our money having bailed them out. NO, that is a dirty word now. That would “socialist”. Instead, we leave the banks the healthy bit so they can go on reaping obscene bonuses while we assume the astronomic cost of their greed and stupidity.
” workers against unions” . Beaut. That gives us the “right” to be forced do unpaid work as interns. In that past that was called slavery.
Monckton has been an effective opponent to the AGW scam but this attempt to rewrite the history of way Thatcher destroyed the country is an insult.
The US is OWNED by the banks too , where did you last $100bn go ?
Thatcher was at forefront of implementing a failed economic dogma that even the Chicago school that started it no longer believe in.
Prosperity against national bankruptcy.?
Who’s prosperity. That of the landed gentry like his lordship perhaps, Not ours.
Monckton is let down by his right wing polemic.
‘Free markets against state control’
No so-called conservative is for free markets and less state control, it is a nonsense piece of rhetoric that just gives real advocates of free markets a bad name.
Thatcher was as phony as Reagan, who at the time, uncured the highest debt in US history
I prefer this obituary.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/04/09/the-thatcher-paradox/
Well, amidst all the paeans of praise, this man has his own criticisms – and nobody, here or anywhere else, would suggest that Peter Hitchens is some bleeding heart liberal. And those of us who lived through her time as PM, here in the UK, see her as merely a politician, not some icon of western freedom. Where I was brought up, there was once a thriving coal industry, steel works and a functioning local economy. After her, the place became a job desert – and still is. That’s her true legacy in large parts of Britain. *And she started off the AGW rubbish here*.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really–tragic-failure.html
jc says:
April 14, 2013 at 2:50 am
moderators:
I realize its early days, but I am loosing faith in the system here. I posted a comment in Green Eco Porn which didn’t appear and did what I could to notify you but to no avail.
I have posted two comments here, one about 40 minutes ago, one 15, neither of which went through. I am writing this now, rather than waiting an hour or two, in the hope that it is less likely to be lost under other things.
Hi JC, similar experiences, I’ve had three posts on different threads disappear into the ether. I really don’t think they were moderated our or I would have see a snip or similar, I suspect there may be a problem.
“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.”
I make no comment and leave it to others to decide whether Margaret Thatcher attained these ideals whilst in office.
Really poor show wuwt! Please stick to science for fear of looking a bit pathetic and politically bias
Strange how she is accused of being divisive when in fact she put an end to the division that preceded her election.
The 60s and 70s with Labour control most of the time were far more divided times than the 80s and 90s.
But then the authoritarian left (just like fascists) has always thrived on division, using class prejudices to divde and rule the voter base. Without creating division socialism has no purpose in the modern world. With greater individual wealth, easy communication and rapid travel there is no longer a rigid class heirarchy but that doesn’t stop the authoritarians doing their level best to bring it back with them at the top.
It seems that where the left is concerned the truth is always the opposite of what they pretend.Once one has an authoritarian mindset believing that one knows better than others how things should be then it is but a simple step to deciding that ends justify means whereupon complete intellectual corruption inevitably follows.
This is highly relevant to the climate debate because the discussions about dishonest leftist behaviour in those times offer a parallel with the dishonest use of climate science by the left in recent years.
Thatcher was taken in by climate alarmism to begin with but then became an early sceptic when she saw how it could be manipulated for the benefit of an authoritarian agenda.
1. The miners brought down an elected government. They didn’t believe in democracy.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
2. Labour party policy is now Green. ie. CO2 is evil, lets close down the coal powered power stations.
Thatcher just did their dirty work and they aren’t honest enough to admit they would do the same.
Lord Monckton, thank you for sharing your personal story about this incredible person.
Condolences on your loss.
R.I.P. Baroness Thatcher, our world needs more like you.
Let me tell my little story. In 1947, my first real job was with the reasearch lab at Lawford, Essex with BX Plastics. There were three ladies on the scientific establishment, two of who were lots of fun; the other was only interested in politics.
I emigrated to Canada, and decades later visited the UK, and stayed with an old friend I had met at Lawford. He said WWTE, “Do you remember Margaret Roberts?”. I replied “Who the hell was Margaret Roberts?”, and he proceeded to tell me what had transformed her into The Iron Lady.
Frankly, I can remember absolutely nothing about Margaret Roberts; but then I was only 22, and had no interest in politics at all.
Lew Skannen says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:07 am
Someone else noted the irony…
———————————————————————————-
And I’ll note the irony of people who normally rail against every penny spent of taxpayers money demanding that $10m plus is spent on a grandiose mournfest for a woman who said that there was “no such thing as public money”.
Anthony
I notice my post is held up in moderation somewhere in the middle of the comments.
Do you really want Climate Science to turn into a left wing – right wing bun fight?
Will a question of science come down to political outlook?
What will happen to your right wing political beliefs if the IPCC version turns out to be correct.
Anthony Watts forced to be a Marxist?
Surely not!
Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance on Margaret Thatcher:
“She made the environmental nonsense politically fashionable. She was the first senior British politician to start wittering about climate change and ozone holes. She doubtless thought she was further stuffing the coal miners. In fact, she was a useful idiot for the ideology best suited to replace socialism as an excuse for Enemy Class domination.
She hardly cut taxes. She ruthlessly pushed the speed of European integration. Her militaristic foreign policy and slavish obedience to Washington mostly worked against the interests of this country. The one war she fought that might have some justification was only necessary because her own colleagues had effectively told the Argentine Government to invade the Falkland Islands.”
“Her encouragement of enterprise never amounted to more than a liking for big business corporatism. Genuine enterprise was progressively heaped with taxes and regulations that made it hard to do business. Big business, on the other hand, was showered with praise and legal indulgences. ”
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/the-legacy-of-margaret-thatcher/#more-19374
Peter Hannan says:
April 14, 2013 at 2:49 am
Statement of interest: my maternal grandfather was a miner in South Wales, and my posture about miners anywhere is that I support them, be they right or wrong.
Should I take it than that you support throwing concrete blocks off bridges and killing taxi drivers? That actually happened during the miners strike, and in South Wales too. Just Google David Wilkie.
Stephen Wilde says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:27 am
Just take the cost from the contributions to the EU that she saved us.
—————————————————————-
She’d saved us a damned sight more if she had got us the hell out instead of signing the Single European Act.
OK, ‘artwest’ and others, somebody has to do it. Please read this and tell me what part of it you disagree with.
Society
23.9.87
M Thatcher, Woman’s Own
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand”I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or”I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate ” It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it” . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people:”All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say:”But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say:”Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!
I agree with the contribution of C. Monckton, however part of that legacy as quoted below from Communication from the (EU) commission to the EU parliament (march 2013), is seen to be still deep rooted with our non-elected rulers in brussels.
“The first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record and the summer of 2012
witnessed the unprecedented melting of Arctic sea ice. Extreme weather events witnessed
during 2012, such as the extreme drought and wildfires in Southern Europe and the US,
followed by unprecedented storms and flooding inparts of Asia, the Caribbean and North
America, although not individuallyattributable to climate change, are consistent with science
projecting that their frequency and impact will increase as our climate changes further. Even
as the global economic growth slowed, human-induced emissions of the greenhouse gases
(GHGs) that cause global warmingcontinue to rise dramatically.Although the science of climate change is clearand the impacts are increasingly visible,actions to address climate change continue to fall far short of what is needed. The most recentUNEP “gap report” shows that countries’ unconditional pledges to reduce GHG emissions, iffully implemented, will deliver no more than onethird of what is needed by 2020 to prevent a dangerous 2º C rise in global mean temperature above pre-industriallevels. “
No great statesman is so divisive. Thatcher was more than that. She introduced the UK to the governmental equivalent of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I can’t imagine how a country so steeped in austerity as its current conservative prime minister insists (“we”re all in this together”) can find £8,000,000 in loose change to bury someone who has more wealth than this on her own. She never wanted the State to pay for anything when she was alive.
Privatise her funeral and may the cheapest bidder win. It’s what she would have wanted.
And the problem with all the current parties?
They know the cost of nothing.
1,2 trillion in borrowing
5.3 trillion in pensions debts
0.4 trillion in PFI
0.1 trillion in nuclear decommissioning
….
7 trillion in debts
0.55 trillion in tax
07 trillion spending.
Very simply, what ever you value, you won’t get.
Mr Green Genes says:
April 14, 2013 at 3:59 am
Peter Hannan says:
April 14, 2013 at 2:49 am
Statement of interest: my maternal grandfather was a miner in South Wales, and my posture about miners anywhere is that I support them, be they right or wrong.
Should I take it than that you support throwing concrete blocks off bridges and killing taxi drivers? That actually happened during the miners strike, and in South Wales too. Just Google David Wilkie.
Indeed Mr Green Genes. A good point, as well as the police who beat peacefully demonstrating miners half to death and paid off mortgages with the enhanced payments for such work. Thatcher not only succeeded in dividing society and decimating communities in the pursuit of political goals, she also drove us closer to civil war than any other ruler since Charles the first. There were bad actions on both sides, but it was the communities and citizens of the UK who suffered in the long term. By the way we are eternally grateful to her in Wales, without her premiership Wales, Scotland and Ireland would never have voted for devolution from England. We should put up a statue to her in the Welsh Government building.
Jeef says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:06 am
No great statesman is so divisive. Thatcher was more than that. She introduced the UK to the governmental equivalent of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I can’t imagine how a country so steeped in austerity as its current conservative prime minister insists (“we”re all in this together”) can find £8,000,000 in loose change to bury someone who has more wealth than this on her own. She never wanted the State to pay for anything when she was alive.
Privatise her funeral and may the cheapest bidder win. It’s what she would have wanted.
Can I also suggest the service is broadcast on pay to view television only?
“Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:08 am
Can I also suggest the service is broadcast on pay to view television only?”
There is no such thing as free TV, anywhere. For the BBC, you have the license fee. For ITV etc, you pay through product purchases advertised on commercial TV.
SamG. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to think state control, is beneficial both to the individual and the population as a whole as opposed to countries with free market economies. I think the opposite. Can you please name a country that has nationalised industries and state control of all aspects of life that has a better standard of living than say the USA or UK?
Wow, keeping the politics off this site??? Really?? Surely, one only needs to read “one” AGW post, “scientific” “report”, “consensus” building IPCC drivel study, to understand that “this” issue is not about science and totally about “politics” and how much can “we the people” be snookered from our lifelong savings…..
The politics and the science and the divisions matter little in this case. The World has lost a great mind. Such minds are rare and one can do worse than study them carefully, to learn and to be wiser. That is what matters, little vegetables.
Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:08 am
“Privatise her funeral and may the cheapest bidder win. It’s what she would have wanted.”
You liked the economic system that preceded her better? The strike of the undertakers?
Come on, weasel yourself out of that…
As the science of AGW has political, financial and religious corollaries it seems fair to debate them occasionally. I find points on both sides to agree with in this thread. Two terms of not more than 4 years is the maximum any leader can rule without getting ideas of infallibility.
In the 1980’s Margaret Thatcher initially fell for the Global Warming scare. However, she fairly quickly saw through it and latterly was a fierce critic of the scams and scares and bogus science that has led to the current pseudo-sociialsist anti-capitalist secular religion wrapped up in greenery (watermelons). She called the warmist ‘doomsters’, and as the only ever Brisitsh Prime Minister to hold a science degree she questioned the notion that CO2 was the prime forcer of climate. Even better she mocked Al Gore. She was the Iron Lady and on key issues was ‘Not for Turning’, but she knew how to think and when she saw through a scam, like the Global Warming scare, she had the wit, intelligence, and humility to change her mind. A TRULY GREAT lady; not just a politicial but a very great statesman and human being. May she rest in peace.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, courtesy of wnd.com: “But I, who had the honor to serve as one of her six policy advisors at the height of her premiership, … she wrote back to me in her own hand, to say how grateful she was that I had written and to promise that if she could carry on she would … At my last official meeting with her,… I told the story in the London Evening Standard. Within an hour of the paper hitting the streets, a message of thanks came from her office … A couple of years ago her “kitchen cabinet” invited her to dinner. For two hours she was her vigorous old self. I sat opposite her. Late in the evening, I saw she was tiring and gave her a thumbs-up. Instantly she revived, smiled radiantly, and returned the gesture – using both thumbs … “
==========================================================
I will believe all that when I see the evidence.
Confusing Climate Scepticism with Right Wing politics seems to be WUWT’s preferred method of foot-shooting.
Verity Jones says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:19 am
@gareth Phillips 2013/04/14 at 12:42 am
You might be surprised by the actual figures re coal mine closure:
“…the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.”
Thanks Verity, I fully believe that. The difference being that they closed the smaller or inefficient mines, Thatcher closed the lot and started to import coal from as far away as Poland. People who bought up the mines such as Tower Colliery found them to be profitable which leads me to believe the closures were carried out at least in part for political ends. Of course if she had made some sort of alternate investment in these mining communities things may not have been so catastrophic, but as it was, it was a case of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. If you or I were part of a mining community we may have fought for our family, jobs and future, after all, what else did these communities have?
DirkH says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:17 am
Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:08 am
“Privatise her funeral and may the cheapest bidder win. It’s what she would have wanted.”
You liked the economic system that preceded her better? The strike of the undertakers?
Come on, weasel yourself out of that…
Easy DirkH, I did not write that particular line, it was in my quote., it was written by Jeef, As in politics, check your facts before posting. Cheers G
> And this is the problem with this thread, Anthony, we are now discussing party politics instead of the Climate Scam.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Climate Scam is laced with party politics. Look on the bright side, at least we’re discussing someone involved in fundamental changes in the world instead of Lady Gaga or Honey Boo-boo.
Gareth Phillips
“…it is immoral to say the least. Margaret Thatcher was an important politician who’s influence “
Small point: the apostrophe here is an abbreviation for ‘who is’ or maybe ‘who has’. You meant to write ‘whose’.
“If you or I were part of a mining community we may have fought for our family, jobs and future, after all, what else did these communities have?”
You would have received far more consideration if you had not kept disrupting the supply with the avowed intent of bringing down the elected government.
The final Scargill induced strike was arranged without a ballot and did not have majority support even amongst the miners.
Thatcher was forced into a defensive position and had little choice. Fortunately she knew what to expect from Scargill and had prepared well for it.
If the miners had restrained Scargill’s purely political agenda then any necessary further shrinkage of the coal industry could have been managed with adequate support for the communities and individuals affected.
You let Scargill destroy your communities in a stupid political escapade.
andrewmharding
I’m flummoxed. How did you conclude that this was my position?
Please read my post again, particularly the article.
There is no free-market system anywhere; not in Britain, the U.S or Australia. These are democratic socialist countries. Ironically, China’s communism is more free market; Sweden’s democratic socialism is tempered with more market freedom. Conservatives are not free market/small government types. They are the enemy of individuals and protectors of monopoly, banking oligarchs and war profiteers. Conservatives push entitlements like drug dealers to hopelessly addicted junkies of confiscated wealth.
Reagan and Thatcher, to this day, are poster children of the mythical “free market”, “fiscal conservative” It’s a not only a lie, but damages the plight of those against illegitimate power and pro-market, where accountability reigns and losses aren’t socialised.
King of Cool:
At April 14, 2013 at 2:58 am you say
I have seen nothing which could justify such an offensive and disgraceful insult to Anthony Watts.
Richard
When the rich good samaritan saw what Scargill was doing to the mining industry, the rich good samaritan would have helped the victims as well as defeating the evil Scargill.
The vitriol of the left will never cease to amaze me,
As for those “suggesting” that politics be left out of Anthony’s blog, get real. if you haven’t figured out that AGW is a political issue………………………………….
Thatcher’s greatest achievement ~ it’s not what you think
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=14146
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2006/11/17/welcome-to-watts-up-with-that/
@Stephen Wilde says:
April 14, 2013 at 5:25 am
“If you or I were part of a mining community we may have fought for our family, jobs and future, after all, what else did these communities have?”
You would have received far more consideration if you had not kept disrupting the supply with the avowed intent of bringing down the elected government.
The final Scargill induced strike was arranged without a ballot and did not have majority support even amongst the miners.
Thatcher was forced into a defensive position and had little choice. Fortunately she knew what to expect from Scargill and had prepared well for it.
If the miners had restrained Scargill’s purely political agenda then any necessary further shrinkage of the coal industry could have been managed with adequate support for the communities and individuals affected.
You let Scargill destroy your communities in a stupid political escapade.
Interesting point Stephen. So what happened to the miners and pits in the regions that did not strike and opposed Scargil? (For our American cousins I’ll point out that they were treated exactly the same, they all lost their jobs.) Though I agree that Scargill was a plonked who completely lost the plot. and who did not see he was being set up.
Scargill was however right on one thing. He said the UK coal industry would be closed down, and he was correct. By the way, I did not support Scargill and ‘did not let Scargill destroy our commuities’ I opposed the whole escapade because it was nasty, vindictive, economically stupid and designed to destroy miners as a political force who had acted undemocratically during the time of Thatchers predecessor, Edward Heath. Such political goals could have been achieved without the cruelty imposed and would have led to better economic outcomes.
One of the greatest leaders of the 20th century….
Quite accurate Gareth.
Now we have Labour saying lets get rid of coal powered power stations. The hypocrisy of them blaming Thatcher for something that is party policy ….
@alleagra says:
April 14, 2013 at 5:24 am
Gareth Phillips
“…it is immoral to say the least. Margaret Thatcher was an important politician who’s influence “
Small point: the apostrophe here is an abbreviation for ‘who is’ or maybe ‘who has’. You meant to write ‘whose’.
I’m grateful Alleagra, I’d like to blame the autocorrect, but it’s a fair cop! Cursed grocers apostrophe !
Wake up ! agw is a politacal issue .the science is clear agw is a hoax and the policies being brought about are ludicrous. The time for political acti
State funeral for Thatcher? No, I do not agree with that at all. For better or worse, she was just a Prime Minister. Better things to spend that money on IMO. The Thatcher family are very wealthy, Thatcher had been living at The Ritz for many years at taxpayers expense because her own home didn’t have some form of lift to the bedrooms (Apparently). Any other mortal would have been forced to move the bedroom to the ground floor, and die there.
Right-wing economic and political philosophy does not have heart.
At least it seems that way to many left-wing people in the beginning.
Right-wing economics shows its heart in the end; in the results. It just works better and more people have jobs, standard of living increases, mortgage rates fall etc.
Left-wing economics just siphons the spirit out of the economy, it motivates people in the wrong way. It feels good to some in the beginning but it fails in the end. Human nature is what it is.
To me, it is just like climate science. There is theory and emotion-laced feelings about the environment, Then there is bottom line results, what really happens. Do temperatures rise as predicted. Do people have jobs and feel satisfied after an 8 hour day, knowing it bought a nice house and two cars.
I know of a place that used to be extremely left-wing. Unions and government ran everything. Young people moved away after graduating from high school. Nobody wanted to take a risk and start a new business. But one day, the people themselves, decided this was not working anymore.
Today, there have been nearly 20 straight years of balanced budgets, debt has been cut in half, taxes have been reduced. The entrepreneurial spirit is back. The unemployment rate is 3.9%. If you need a job, you can literally walk in off the street and start the next morning. People are immigrating in in large numbers and the population is rising faster than it has in 90 years. Personal satisfaction rates are as high as they can get.
I think we can thank Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman for setting western civilization back on the right track. Some countries decided to stay in the 1970s and they are bankrupt today. Other countries, including the USSR and China and Vietnam decided to listen and they are prospering today. It is what it is; not what is supposed to be according to some. But they probably also believe in global warming instead of what is really happening.
In 1980s when I was working for the ITV (LWT), after an interview with Brian Walden, Mrs T marched into the lift lobby, where a burly security man was holding door open, when she approached, he stepped out for the moment so the lady could get in, and as he was to re-enter the lift, Mrs T. pressed the button, closed the door and left, the security man departed running up the stairs, followed by laughter of some studio employees from the adjacent coffee bar,
I’ll never understand why people need to come in and complain about topics like this. You could tell from the title what was going to be said, why read it if it upsets you?
Although this was Roger Waters’ scathing commentary on the Falklands, pretty much a whole album of whining about Thatcher and Reagan, this particular verse defines my mental image of Margaret Thatcher. Bravely sending a weakened military to practically the other end of the world, some on a Ferry, some on the longest airborne sorties in history, to claim back an otherwise unimportant piece of real estate. Knowing that a large percentage of her electorate would hate it. Knowing that military force was “out of fashion” in the “modern world”. Doing what needed to be done. Telling tin-pot dictators ‘NO’.
In an era where Air Traffic Controllers had to be fired en-masse, because they wanted to strike and deprive the world of an essential service. An era where Unions could literally bring an entire first world country to its knees. Someone had to do the right thing. Someone did.
I never really appreciated what I was seeing, being in my teens and early 20s, subject to the media manipulation that made me think Thatcher and Reagan were insane. In retrospect I have nothing but admiration for the strength of character demonstrated by both of them, and a desire to Do The Right Thing, even when faulty advice was giving them the wrong message.
Sure, in that era “science” seemed to be showing us that Global Warming and the Ozone Layer were big problems. Sure she championed that cause, then walked away from it. I also recall that the EU seemed like a great idea at first, however there are only a very few people that actually benefit from it.
You’ll never convince me that Thatcher was anything other than a great leader. Even when the hated former PM Trudeau passed away some years back I would never, EVER have danced in the streets or made “ding dong the witch is dead” into a hit song. No, people with any sort of sense keep those opinions to themselves and let those who appreciated or admired what someone did mourn their passing. Myself, I spit in the Trudeau fountain when I had a layover in Montreal a few years back. That’s all.
Not everything that a great leader does is all that great. Taking risks sometimes means losing your wager. Someone who was truly as horrid as some people seem to think Thatcher was would never have been reelected. She did what she needed to do. No less.
had neither expected nor deserved a reply: but that master of the unexpected gave me the undeserved. For no small part of her success lay in the unfailing loyalty she inspired in those to whom she was so unfailingly loyal.
There are two general ways one inspires loyalty:
1.) By reciprocating. (The way she did it. Anthony also springs to mind)
2.) The usual tawdry methods with which history is so replete.
And it is incumbent on those who inspire such loyalty (by either route) to lead effectively and in the correct direction. She was one of those rare ones who made the grade without the curve.
I was 33 when Margaret Thatcher came to power, having spent the 70s trying to establish a career and to support myself in a country in chaos, with the economy on its knees and 33% inflation. I left university in the late 60s very left wing (as most of us were), but I remember the years before Thatcher with utter horror, and voted for her gladly. If you weren’t economically active in that decade you can really have little idea how dreadful things were.
It’s ridiculous to claim that Thatcher caused the rifts in society or left/right and north/south divide: they were always there. And all governments to that point were dedicated to maintaining the status quo: the Tories looked after the toffs and the upper middle classes, while Labour expanded the state at every opportunity and kept their client state of the working class under their bureaucratic thumb in state-owned industry and publicly owned housing.
mwhite above recommended the programme shown last night on Ch4: “Death of a Revolutionary”. I second that, since it went a long way to explain why Thatcher’s election was both inevitable and desirable given what went before; and it also explained how far she empowered the working class to get out from under the heel of the state. It was the working class who voted for her in their millions, who understood what she stood for. The paternalistic empire-building Left never did, and never will.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/margaret-death-of-a-revolutionary/4od
Like all revolutions this one was taken too far in some respects (eg so called ‘care in the community’ for mental health sufferers, and the axeing of subsidies to the arts); but all the excesses from which we now suffer of unfettered immigration, political and eco-indoctrination in schools, anti-democratic aims and actions of the CAGW lobby and the EU bureaucracy, and so much else would have been unthinkable under Thatcher, who put the British people first (and never lied to them). That, of course, is why she had to go.
She was indeed a giant among pygmies, for better or worse; but the party political system is now so centralised in the two main parties via the selection system, it may be impossible for such an individual ‘conviction politician’ to rise to power – more’s the pity. Her legacy rests now within UKIP, whose policies reflect her views and priorities: those are not shared by the increasinly social democrat Tory party
As for the desirability of such a post on this site: I’ve been grateful to read so many thoughtful posts, providing a more rounded view of Thatcher and her legacy than can be found in the partisan press. And whether we like it or not, AGW is an entirely politicised topic, a movement with an agenda – as she came to realise.
patrick (are you Irish?) wrote:
” The Thatcher family are very wealthy, Thatcher had been living at The Ritz for many years at taxpayers expense ”
Wrong on both counts. The couple was well off by most people’s standards; but ‘very wealthy’? No. Dennis was a pretty poor businessman and in the end lived off his wife’s earnings. Mark may be wealthy but Carol certainly is not. I imagine Mrs Thatcher’s savings paid for her stay at the Ritz, or maybe the cost was donated by rich admirers. On what basis do you claim the taxpayer funded it?
Gareth: the remaining mines were shut down as they were no longer viable given cheaper sources of coal offshore. Blame the strikes for allowing competition to get a foothold that they would have never had otherwise. The mines were never set up to operate in such a market, so could not compete.
Jolan
As an X power worker, now retired, i can remember the months preceding the miner’s strike when the CEGB secretely stockpiled coal and chemicals, shipped in under the cover of darkness. Yes it was a set up, cunningly conceived, and executed by Thatcher and her cronies. Scargill rose to the bait like the clown he was. Mind you if he had called a ballot there might have been a different outcome. I remember the police, shipped around the country, so as not to confront locals, waving their obscene, fat bonus pay packets in the miners faces, as they goaded and taunted them as they were slowly starved into submission.
I remember a pickets caravan, not on CEGB property, being deliberately crushed by a 40 tonner, as the police looked on, laughing.
Anyone remember Orgreave where the police cavalry, clad in full riot gear, attacked and gave a cruel beating to a gang of miners, a lot of them mere boys, most of them wearing only tea shirts and daps and how the BBC deliberately distorted the report so as to appear that the miners had attacked the police.
I remember Gorgachev who for a year or more had attempted to get Thatcher around the table to negotiate a peace deal. With the whole country clamouring for him to be heard Thatcher deigned to recognise him with the words ‘I can do busness with this man’ Where had she been all this time?
Can anyone remember the number of Argentinian missiles and bombs which scored direct hits on the British fleet and fortunately failed to detonate? If the bombs had gone off it would have been a calamity, the Falklands war could have had a far different outcome.
Maggie you were so lucky!
The prevailing defence in the comments of this slipping over into partisan party politics seems to be that this climate science issue is already overwhelmingly politicised. I don’t think many readers would disagree with that!
The irony is that exactly what is ignored in this encomium is exceptional about its famously successful conservative subject, and it is precisely this which is of interest to the discussion of the politicisation of climate science.
The tragedy is that seemingly neither his lordship nor Anthony could see this. An apparently emotive and egotistical post has just placed a giant spotlight on a blind spot caused by the sorts of political emotives that they otherwise purport to want removed from the science debate.
Oh well, the damage is done, but as penance for His proud folly, I suggest, his Lordship’s next essay discuss Erasmus’s encomium to folly, and it’s classic model, Lucian’s praise of the flea. And I hope we can all learn through the ridicule that we should expect for the fabulous irony of what has passed here.
Too bad the “Iron Lady” nickname stuck. Iron is so Middle Ages technology, and she was a very modern woman. Stainless steel would have been a better descriptor. Although, “Stainless Steel Lady” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
“Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary”
http://www.martindurkin.com/short-thoughts/margaret-death-revolutionary
The blog of the film
@ EcoGuy says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:29 am
Gareth: the remaining mines were shut down as they were no longer viable given cheaper sources of coal offshore. Blame the strikes for allowing competition to get a foothold that they would have never had otherwise. The mines were never set up to operate in such a market, so could not compete.
So are you saying that it was less expensive to pay these miners to be unemployed, give their children and families social welfare, import coal from other countries and address the horrendous social problems resulting from such action than keep marginally profitable mines open? Remember, Tower colliery was supposed to unprofitable, the miners took it over and it ran it at healthy profit for another 25 years. They were lucky, Price-Waterhouse Cooper helped them achieve that, many others did not get the chance. Thatcher could do this as she frittered away the revenue from North sea oil, the sad thing is that her successors have had to pick up the pieces of that lost generation.
Good God … why is this crap on here!!!
Give her her due, she was sharp at avoiding tax right till the end. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-tax-snatcher-mystery-1828441
Despite our obvious differences on MT the general tone has remained respectful. I am thankful for that. It would be sad if the passing of a historical figure soured the work of this community. I found this site when climategate broke and I was trying to understand what it was all about. Although skeptical of government in general I did not understand that basic science was being corrupted. Those posting here opened my eyes and mind. Over the years I have come to enjoy cheering you on as you gored one ox after another. As an unabashed fan of what you have accomplished against staggering odds I sincerely hope nothing ever dimishes your zeal for the work.
What a wonderful tribute. Thank you, Lord Monckton. Those who think the tribute is not suitable for WUWT, stop trying to impose your limitations on what can and cannot be posted on this site. It hasn’t been a purely scientific site for a long time and it is growing in stature. The Wall Street Journal was once primarily a stock listing site and then it grew into a newspaper that is renowned around the world. WUWT is growing and it’s only Anthony’s business as to which topics it will exclude.
If you don’t like it, wander over to RealClimate and stay there.
She was strong, intelligent, and courageous. Wish there were more politicians with her qualities.
“John Matthews says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:45 am
“Anyone remember Orgreave where the police cavalry, clad in full riot gear, attacked and gave a cruel beating to a gang of miners, a lot of them mere boys, most of them wearing only tea shirts and daps and how the BBC deliberately distorted the report so as to appear that the miners had attacked the police.”
BBC distort facts? Gosh, shock, horror!
“Can anyone remember the number of Argentinian missiles and bombs which scored direct hits on the British fleet and fortunately failed to detonate? If the bombs had gone off it would have been a calamity, the Falklands war could have had a far different outcome.
Maggie you were so lucky!”
Argentinian? They were French bombs and dropped from Russian aircraft! Still no mention of HSM Shefield!
Jon says:
April 14, 2013 at 7:09 am
Good God … why is this crap on here!!!
To piss people like you off. Why else?
“Sam the First says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:27 am”
The fact that as a, former PM, taxpayers “support” former PM’s…you can google this stuff…
“Sam the First says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:18 am”
Like this post. Need a like button here I think!
One thing I am sure of,if Gillard had just a tiny bit of Thatcher in her Australia would not be paying a carbon tax,And people dare to say global warming has nothing to do with politics.How I wish that were so.I read that she stated she did not want a state funeral.If that is so then her wish should be respected.
@EcoGuy says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:29 am
“Gareth: the remaining mines were shut down as they were no longer viable given cheaper sources of coal offshore. Blame the strikes for allowing competition to get a foothold that they would have never had otherwise. The mines were never set up to operate in such a market, so could not compete.”
Bunk.
But interesting to see a Greenie troll turn up to stick up for the PM who founded the cAGW scam.
The vast majority of ‘no longer viable’ British mines were closed by Harold Wilson as others have pointed out – whilst trying to justify Thatcher’s (and Major’s) decimation of productive mines – often new mines, like the ones opened or refurbished in the early ’80s in the Barnsley Area, at a cost to taxpayers of £500 Million,(to buy off the NUM until Thatcher’s preparations for the strike were complete. £B 0.5 was serious money, then).
Other ‘no longer viable’ mines closed when they were exhausted, as they always did and still do. But now there are only three left and they are doomed by the present Government’s (and EU’s) absurd policies.
And in fairness to Wilson, the closures were in the context of the 1974 ‘Plan for Coal’, prepared after the Six-Days war saw oil prices quadruple, and was a blueprint for a modernised, indigenous coal industry. Now, I’m not a fan of Wilson, nor of State Planning. But the Plan for Coal was agreed by ALL political parties (including the Tories) and it was Thatcher who reneged on it.
So far as competition with foreign coal, the only time that foreign coal was seriously cheaper than British coal was early in the 1990s when Poland was dumping coal on the market to get hold of foreign currency (and indeed, Columbia was doing the same). So, yes, the Daily Torygraph huffed and puffed then about overpriced British Coal. But didn’t let on that this was the spot market price for odd boatloads of high sulphur coal delivered at Rotterdam (not in the UK). And, indeed, until Immingham was upgraded a decade or so ago, there was no mechanism of keeping UK coal powered power stations supplied with sufficient imported coal. Even today, if the surviving British Coal Mines could supply twice as much coal, they’d sell every shovel full.
I well remember in the run up to Privatisation, German coal production costs were three times the UK production costs. In Spain, where the EU had poured money into new coal mines, the production costs were five times as much. So much for the EU (and UK Government) assuring a ‘level playing field’.
yet another tale of dogma, incompetence, greed and malice.
berniel says Thatchers ….”1988 address to royal soc and the establishment of Hadley Centre. The sceptical founding head of CRU, H H Lamb, did not stand a chance after Thatcher stepped in.”
Spot on.
In 1980 the tyranny of the Unions had no bounds and none could stand against them if they wished to work.
I used a self employed graphic artist who could not work without a union card; without his individually numbered union stamp upon them no one would print his creations,
Differing craft Unions were interlaced and strictly controlled the market place to the sole benefit of their members, enforcing at the same time an obligatory monthly contribution to the Labour Party.
The freedoms that we enjoy today were not won lightly and the sadly tortured souls, still tormented 23 years after she left office, and who would dance on the grave of our freedom fighter, for such she was, serve only to highlight the dangers that await us if we forget the lessons of that time.
Well done Anthony for posting this. And thank you Christopher for writing it.
<radical>
I think it is very important for people who are objective with regard to science to train that same objectivity on politics.
What has surprised me is the vehemence with which those on the “left” – including people I work with – have denigrated Thatcher. I confess that in the early 1980s I was on her side, but my views are now more nuanced.
Even so, I suspect that when Tony Blair dies, I will be as vehement as those who now criticize Thatcher. Not only for trashing the UK economy and destroying civil liberties, but also for giving Bush an excuse to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq.
We live in so-called “democracies,” which are supposed to rule over us for our benefit. But they don’t – do they?
Why should conservatives have to suffer under Obama? And why should “liberals” have had to suffer under Bush? Why should socialists have had to suffer under Thatcher? And why should those of us, who are not socialists, have had to suffer under Blair and Brown, and are still suffering under Cameron?
Why can’t we all have our own communities, with our own rules? Like WUWT? With a simple justice (a.k.a. moderation) system keeping everything peaceful?
</radical>
Nigel S says:
April 14, 2013 at 4:03 am
OK, ‘artwest’ and others, somebody has to do it. Please read this and tell me what part of it you disagree with.
————————————————-
Chose to evade answering the two specific points I made if you like, but why on earth should I waste my time writing an essay just to help you do so?
As regard to your lengthy “Thatcher/society” quote, the point is not whether I agree with it but whether those calling for a lavish state-funded funeral for a very wealthy family agree with it.
If so, they are guilty of rank hypocrisy.
Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:14 am
“Gods teeth, what has happened to this site? It has metamorphosed from a science and associated issues to a primarily political campaign. Lets get this straight, generally (with very few exceptions such as Winston Churchill), only Royalty gets state funerals. ”
To a farm-seasoned US citizen used to annual winter belt tightening, I would have to say you have convicted yourself by your own words. What country, in such a state of financial austerity as yours, would be willing to foot the bill for crowned idiot funerals??????
I don’t cotton much to crowns. No Sir! As far as I’m concerned Prime Minister Thatcher’s decidely uncrowned head and wicked smart sharp-edged tongue is far more deserving of such a state burial than your delightful hat-crowned queen, nice though she be.
42 reasons why not
The Queen has represented England for years.I don’t think an American can understand what that woman represents to a lot of people.In her eighties and still giving her all to England.It will be a sad day when she passes on.The end of an era.I wonder how much the royal family has brought in in tourism over the years?
You won’t get me to criticise the queen even though I’m not English.her sons however…
That assertion leaves me virtually speechless, so I’ll defer to the late Mrs. Thatcher:
–British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
(Peter Jenkins, Mrs. Thatcher’s Revolution)
pat says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:14 am
Thanks for that link,State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, and your excerpt. As soon as the steam clears from my eyeballs, I’ll read the entire article.
Hans
Interesting banner ad included with the video. To close it you have to select NO. Ironic considering the nature of this site.
Great Britan had no business of being in the business of coal mining, making cars, providing phone service, making steel, collecting trash and whatever industries that were nationalized after the war. If anyone is to blame for the suffering of the working class, blame the post war Labour Party and the British people who who fell head over heals with socialism. What naturally followed was a disaster and the coal industry was just the most dramatic example. Those of you who lament the closure of those mines- do you wish British Telecom was still around, or that you were still subsidizing the manufacture of autos, steel and every other state run business?
They call her the Iron Lady because, like all great leaders, she had the courage to act and knew that merely snipping at the cornes would prolong suffering. People had to suffer, it was inevitable. Hence the tragedy of socialism.
Thatcher was divisive.
But that is politics. Most issues are complex. Many people who agree on some issues will vehemently disagree on others. And a blog is a good forum for discussion of these differences.
But it is foolish to put up a blog post from a friend of such a divisive person without a balancing blog post. Because it is politically naïve to pick a side. You will alienate potential friends. As for your enemies…
If you want to do politics (and why shouldn’t you) then be politically aware before jumping in.
I`m delighted to see so many differing and deeply held political viewpoints here at WUWT.
Who would have thought that we sceptics encompassed such broad church?
roger at 7.35am:
“In 1980 the tyranny of the Unions had no bounds and none could stand against them if they wished to work”
This hits the nail on the head, and I had much personal experience of it. Even my husband was forced to join SOGAT to work for Reuters, where as an ex-Naval communications whizz, he could copy-take at the speed of light (he did this as a second job at nights, so we could save to buy a flat). During the ‘printing union wars’ c1982 when Sogat and the NUJ forced the closure of many papers and news outlets, he broke the strike and went into work (only to be sent home by a supine management!). The print strikes by the way were an attempt to resist the introduction of computers.
My husband wanted to embrace this new technology. He was of impeccably working-class origins in the East End, and loathed the unions with a passion for their Stalinist grip on every aspect of this country’s life and economy. His working class mother and step-father had bought their first and every subsequent house outright, and taught him to work hard and never borrow. They too hugely admired Thatcher, as did so many of their class and outlook.
As for the former industrialised communities of the north, Wales and Scotland: yes, they did suffer in the wake of the Thatcher revolution; but this was largely suffering of their own making. They continued with their tribalised voting, choosing Labour at both national and local level, with the result that City Halls all over those areas remained in the hands of the sclerotic, blinkered and often corrupt Labour Party machine. These voters supported the forces which got their money and their raison d’etre from the Unions, which had caused so much of the problem Thatcher was forced to tackle.
Why on earth would capitalists invest in these areas, with their history of workforce militancy, wildcat srikes, and their refusal to enter into the modern world or to acknowledge economic realities? Everything they produced could be more cheaply made in Asia or Eastern Europe. Meanwhile (as am American working in the north of the UK at the time wrote on yesterday’s thread), people refused to move to where there was work, even by a few miles, preferring to remain in dying towns where almost everyone was on the dole.
I see no reason why Thatcher should have poured yet more taxpayers’ money into new businesses such areas, given the attitude of the people to work and economic realities. It would have been wasted. It was up to the local political leaders to provide a welcoming climate for inward investment: they conspicuously failed to do so, and employers took note. These realities persist to this day.
@ patrick: If Mrs Thatcher chose to spend her tax-payer funded prime ministerial pension on living at the Ritz with a carer, why not? It was handily central for friends to pop in to see her. She would have received the pension regardless of where she chose to live.
Lord Monckton: I was listening to you on Roy Green’s show yesterday and had the following thought. P.M. Thatcher essentially saved Great Britain from the road to Greece. Yes, some communities were uprooted/changed but those are realities which must occur not because the so called political overlords wish them, but because we, as a population, are constantly changing. Our underlying resources must adapt to the constant change in demand. Only because we constantly resist change instead of constantly adapt to it, are the large upheavals required.
I hear the arguments about how she “devastated” these communities with no consideration given to what would have happened if the gov’t of the time had not acted. Would love to see someone write an article about how life would be if she had not acted. Along the lines of the article Anthony posted about how life would be if oil stopped flowing out of the ground. And, by the way, by somebody, I’m suggesting you. You have the in depth knowledge of the sociopolitical circumstances and economics along with the writing skills to do it!! ;>)
To those who think Anthony should keep politics off this blog there is one problem. He would have to stop writing about climate change. As Roger Pielke Jr. said, and I paraphrase, C.C. moved from science to political science a LONG time ago.
My last post has gone into the trash – it was polite, as they all are! Mods?
Belay that, it’s now appeared! Sorry
berniel says:
April 14, 2013 at 6:52 am
“The prevailing defence in the comments of this slipping over into partisan party politics seems to be that this climate science issue is already overwhelmingly politicised. I don’t think many readers would disagree with that!
The irony is that exactly what is ignored in this encomium is exceptional about its famously successful conservative subject, and it is precisely this which is of interest to the discussion of the politicisation of climate science.”
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Good point. Sort of.
But it is the point.
To see displayed the range of issues, grievances, and affirmations, encompassed by adherents of any partisan position is to show what will be be for many an intractable blindness and impossibility of separating the issue of AGW from their personal existence.
Like it or not, that is the reality.
Lord Monckton – I think you may be mistaken: “and the vegetables” was a Spitting Image lampoon. When I watched it I rolled OFL as did everyone else – but these words are not attributable to Mrs Thatcher.
And in “It is a measure of the myopia and ingratitude of her Parliamentary colleagues that, when she famously said No, no, no! at the despatch-box … they ejected her from office”, this runs contrary to such constitutional conventions as we have in the UK. Mrs Thatcher was MP for Finchley and could expect to hold that position so long as she had the confidence of the Finchley electors. In 1975 she was elected leader of the Conservative party but she enjoyed that position only so long as she had the confidence of the Conservative parliamentary party. She lost that confidence in late 1990, due to a succession of events including the poll tax riots, the Howe resignation speech, many polls showing that she was then personally less popular than the party and the Meyer and Heseltine leadership challenges. She withdrew from the second leadership ballot and tendered her resignation to the Queen: this is the fate of all party leaders who lose the confidence of their parliamentary parties. She knew that from the outset.
Like everyone she had good features as well as bad. One feature that I suspect had something of both was her combative side – without which (unlike Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan before her) she could not successfully have taken on the IRA, the Argentinians, the unions, the miners, all the state monopolies, the EU – and the general perception that the UK was the sick man of Europe when she took office. But this comes at a price – views of her are very polarised and she became widely hated as much as she was respected (but I think she would have expected and possibly relished this).
However, what I think is objectionable is the faux-protests by youngsters who weren’t even born or were in their infancy when she left office 23 years ago, and cannot know what she faced in office. I saw her from the House of Commons gallery in the early 1980s, waited breathlessly for Ian MacDonald’s announcements during the Falklands campaign (including those after the Belgrano and Sheffield sinkings) saw her demolish the “perks” of my own profession (scale conveyancing fees etc), saw how the trade union barons sought to defeat her in the same way as Ted Heath and came away respecting her – but I also respect the fact that many others do not. In short, I think that any true verdict on her can only now await the perspective of history.
Thank you for this personal account.
Climate change *is* politics. Those whining about this piece have forgotten that. We are not all engaged here because of climate change – we are here because of the politics of climate change. Remember that well.
Spending money on a crowned family who lives in crowndum for the rest of their lives is all well and good if a majority of voters wish to do so. But those very same voters then need to take in a lot of foul-tasting governmental decrees that go along with that. My thought is to put up or shut up.
As for our own government in the good ol’ US of A we have our own “crowned” entities for life that have created entitled behavior, even among the well heeled. For example, all kinds of folk, rich and poor, are lamenting the proposal that snail-mail delivery and pick-up on Saturday needs to end in order to balance the government-sponsered postal service budget. Boo hoo. All that catawalling is because of entitlement behavior. Can you imagine the uproar that would happen if the government got out of the postal service all together to let local private business fill the hole? Oh my gosh! Such wailing would drown an infant-filled maternity ward!
But the current system will continue in its crowned capacity, creating entitlement behavior and making unfathomably silly decisions. To wit: mail that I wish to send to an address in my town must now be driven to Portland nearly 200 miles away then back again, to be delivered to a business less than a mile away from my home. Which proves that even I have been infused with entitled behavior.
Any politician who would champion the cause of, for example, me getting off my butt and delivering that piece of mail myself has my vote for a state burial.
Addendum: tis true that as far as academic acumen is concerned, compared to the level possessed by Thatcher, Reagan could indeed be described as having little to nothing between the ears.
I haven’t figured out the new comment moderation system. A previous short comment got in instantly, but a longer one later sent has not appeared. Maybe it’s the length?
In reading the many critical messages about Margaret Thatcher, I am reminded of the words of Carlyle:
`No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men`
Thomas Carlyle (1840)
For `men` read `women`
As a well-meaing proposal to appease all sides, may I suggest that she be given not a state but a continental funeral, arranged and paid for by leaders of the European Union?
I am not convinced that this is a suitable topic for WUWT. It is not that I have any objections to Baroness Thatcher being honoured in this way, indeed I hold the country owes her more than it is every likely to consent to, certainly in my case I fully recognise her overall contributions as being solidly in the national good, it is just that speaking of it here introduces a distraction to the real purpose and goals of this site. These modestly adverse sentiments have little to the do with any costs of arranging such an event, given the waste of public funds in modern Britain this would at least be money spent for good intent, but really what I prefer to see here are articles about the climate, even is sometimes this link is tenuous. Irrespective of that view I thank all those who have taken the time and trouble to add some reflections of this distinguished lady’s life, the world is a poorer place for her passing.
Politics defines climate science like cancer defines the human body. It is something to be reviled, railed against, caught as early as possible and removed. The claim that climate science IS politics is a dismal defence of the complicity here in the politicisation of the subject.
In common with Pamela and other posters I find short posting appear immediately, but longer one take much longer, if they appear at all. Am I missing something? is there a word limit or optimum size for a post?
We’re all still fighting Thatcher’s climate war, so Hell can have her.
I guess Gareth will be having steak too, stand back mr lefty, and see she was the first and only world leader to see through this scam, you know the scam that all of us humans here want exposed! So indeed she has a place here!
I join others in expressing my disgust of those that are celebrating the death of the Iron Lady. I note that most of the celebrants appear to be quite young, probably too young to have actually lived through the Thatcher years. Perhaps they have been informed by their professors that Thatcher destroyed the socialist movement, and that somehow that is a bad thing. Regardless, the celebrations are inappropriate at this time, and they demonstrate a complete lack of decorum and respect. I would like to believe that this type of thing would never happen in civilized society, at least not for the death of a duly elected and hard working patriotic public official.
Monckton’s eulogy for Thatcher doesn’t bother me much, though I almost totally disagree with what he said about her. As someone else commented, it’s Anthony’s blog and he can publish whatever he wishes on it. However, as the mixed responses show, by no means all of us AGW sceptics hold conservative or right-wing political views – unlike the warmists who are almost invariably on the left. I’d hate to think that anyone visiting WUWT would be turned off by an apparent bias towards the kind of politics represented by Thatcher (or Reagan). One of the things that made me initially wary about climate scepticism was that many of its proponents were right-wing advocates of unregulated free-market economics, so I assumed they had an ideological agenda which coloured their objections to the ‘consensus’ view. I got over that, and became a convinced sceptic on rational and scientific grounds, despite disagreeing with the economics and politics of many AGW sceptics. We have sound arguments which should appeal to any open-minded person of whatever political persuasion – let’s not nail our colours to the mast of any political or economic ideology, whether of the left or the right.
For those who blame Lady Thatcher for initially talking of AGW, let’s don’t forget that she did her homework and reversed her position quickly.
As far as a state funeral – I should think she deserves at least the same sort of tribute as was accorded Winston Churchill.
No great leader is perfect – Abraham Lincoiln wasn’t, Frankin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t, Ronald Reagan wasn’t, Winston Churchill wasn’t, and Margaret Thatcher wasn’t – but their achievements so far outshine the negatives that they will live on as the greatest political figures of the last two centuries.
NikFromNYC at 10:13:
What a nasty thing to say.
Thatcher was a victim of the activist/scientists like the rest of us. We all grew up trusting in science and Thatcher was herself a research chemist before becoming a politician. I’m guessing her experience in science was one characterized by adherence to the scientific method and integrity in research. I don’t think she understood the rules were changing and that post-normal science was becoming de rigueur.
In 2003, as noted above, she reversed course and refuted the theory of CAGW rather vigorously.
I’m sure God has forgiven her and that Satan will be left longing.
Learned a lot about MT, mostly that like all politicians, she had mixed success and depending on your lot in life or feelings for others (or not), as tp how the public felt about her endeavors. Enjoyed the “42 Reasons, Ding Dong” video, and also the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
Thanks. However this viewpoint may (hopefully) be tempered by the new regulations (not well known as they haven’t gotten much publicity) in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
As to:
“Good God … why is this crap on here!!!”
The same reason as Reality TV Shows or the National Enquirer (Inquiring Minds Want to Know), it gets the view rate/comment count up.
SamG Apologies, I re-read your post and realised my interpretation of it was wrong. I disagree with the article though on that here in the UK we think the USA should be the worlds police, we most certainly do not, we have our own armed forces and nuclear deterrent.
Under Margaret Thatcher capitalism flourished and state intervention decreased, property ownership boomed as did the ease that ordinary people can buy stocks and shares. By selling off British Telecom and British Leyland, she demonstrated the truism that governments should not be running telecommunication services or building cars.
Pamela Gray, I know in the USA many people find the idea of a ruling monarch a bit antiquated. The point is it works, after The Civil War when Charles I tried to become an absolute monarch and was executed, the modern British constitution was born. The police and armed forces swear allegiance to the monarch, so we cannot have a dictatorship by a government that wants to stay in power. Likewise the monarch cannot mobilise the armed forces to overthrow a government, because it needs an act of parliament to do so. The House of Lords is an unelected chamber that passes laws of they are sensible ones, if not they get thrown out, so an incumbant government could not pass a law to change the constitution without the approval of the Lords and the signature of the monarch. A second chamber, elected mid-term does not work because the voters usually vote for the oppostion which leads to conflict (as the USA had wrt the budget deficit). Ours isn’t a perfect sytem but it has kept people like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco out of office.
Eric Worrall said on April 14, 2013 at 3:00 am
“I know the temptation is to view the past through rose tinted glasses, but America was not always the friend Thatcher deserved. America refused to help Britain when Argentina invaded the Falklands. And America repeatedly urged a “settlement” with the Argentine aggressors.”
Not so. A number of US munitions and military parts factories went on to a 24 hour shift in order to ensure the British military continued to be supplied with whatever they needed. IIRC The then US secretary of defence (?) was given a UK honour for his part in ensuring that Britain received anything and everything they wanted for the UK military.
And as for politics and Climate science. The bottom line is not about the science much as it should be. Unfortunately the bottom line is about the politics, in the US it is about party politics since the Democrats are almost uniformly believers in AGW and the Republicans almost uniformly sceptics. In the UK virtually all politicians have been taken in by the AGW extremists.
It is the politicians who are damaging our economies in the name of AGW, and it is the politicians whom sites such as this need to reach.
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Hopefully one day politics will indeed form no part of climate science.
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Normally I would agree that ex Prime Ministers should not be given state funerals. But in this instance I think that Margaret Thatcher’s role on the World stage was such that she should most definitely be given a state funeral.
Regarding the auto-moderator, I’ve discovered there are some stop words that appear to land a post in the moderator’s pile. For example, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” may land your post on that pile where “darned if you do…” won’t. My guess is there is a simple test that looks for known hot button words, possibly even a Bayesian test. That is how the spam blocker in our email readers works. With over a million posts there is certainly an adequate corpus to work from.
Grant,
“If anyone is to blame for the suffering of the working class, blame the post war Labour Party and the British people who who fell head over heals with socialism.”
Whilst true, it is incomplete. It was not only socialist Labour who preferred the status quo of subsidised rust belt industries, the pre-Thatcher conservative party was no different. Together they formed the post war consensus of maintaining state run industries and “managed decline”. For the left, it fitted in with their ideology that the working classes were hapless victims to be “protected” and “cared for from cradle to grave.” For the traditional Conservatives, they saw it as the embodiment of the class hierarchy. Workers at the bottom, given their low paid jobs, living in council estates, middle class professionals who owned their own semis in pleasant suburbs, and themselves, the ruling class.
Since Thatcher was of lower middle class, she was very much an outsider. Whilst her predecessor Heath was also from a similar background, he was her opposite – an apologist for the status quo and fully recruited into the post war consensus.
It was Thatchers job to return power to the working classes. And what power was unleased! Thousands of energetic wannabe entrepeneurs succeeded in becoming extremely rich, by the standards of the day. Charlie Mullins, a working class plumber from a council estate in East London, was a typical success story. Leaving school with no qualifications, he set up “Pimlico plumbers” and now lives in a mansion in one of the best neighbourhoods.
Imagine how that grated on the sensibilities of traditional Conservatives of the upper classes? To them, there is something distasteful and vulgar about an uneducated cockney-talking upstart coming into loadsa money, and horror of horrors, moving into their neighbourhood.
It was no wonder that the tradiional conservative grandees were uncomfortable. Whilst it is right and proper for someone with the right background, social skills and connections to gain wealth, they would prefer those of the great unwashed to remain in their place.
Therefore, the traditional conservative establishment (of Thatchers time), were not supporters of free market capitalism, for exactly that reason. Capitalism should be based on family connections and upbringing. After all, wasn’t that the point of sending ones progeny to Eton and Harrow? Social mobility was not a subject on their agendas.
So whilst Labour was the obvious enemy of social mobility, at that time conservatism was the less obvious enemy.
Thank you Lord Monckton for your article and thank you Anthony for putting it on WUWT. I believe a public figure is best known by those by those that hate them. As I look around these past few days and see the hate spewed at Lady Thatcher I can see she was a trully great person, much like Ronald Reagan. She must be in heaven ROFL at the all the haters and thinking “I must have done somethings right”
Quite. The cost of the funeral is largely policing, against the very people complaining about the cost.
Over all it compares well with the Philpotts. He so far has consumed 4 million plus of public money in cash and services. On top you’ve got the police investigation, the cost of jailing three of them, then there will be cost when they are released, because he’s not going to be working. No doubt, he’s then going to expect his pension on top, plus housing benefit, plus …
Hat tip RitchieP 3:16am
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really–tragic-failure.html
Nearer to my view than Monckton’s uncharacteristically weak attempt at hagiography.
I said in the ‘open thread’ discussion that Maggie Thatcher was (uniquely) divisive.
I think both this thread and the other can be taken as proof of this proposition.
Hey! I’m even divided myself in my attitude to her!
I enjoyed Martin Durkin’s Channel 4 film Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary. Interesting hypothesis but some very special pleading at some points, and glosses over some major issues.
But, for the avoidance of doubt, I do wish that MT’s many fans would desist from putting up the strawmen. I’ve not spotted anyone here who confesses to being a fan of Scargill. Enthusiasm for the lamentable state of the UK in 1979 and the Winter of Discontent is, so far as I can see, entirely absent. And the argument ‘what would the UK have been without her’ is about as intellectually rigorous as the suggestion that we wouldn’t have had the 17 year warming pause if we hadn’t built all those windmills.
Personally, I’m not absolutely persuaded that an inefficient private monopoly is obviously superior to a comparatively efficient public monopoly, although a genuine free market alternative is likely to be significantly superior to both. And I suggest most people just want decent services and affordable, reliable goods, whoever produces them.
It isn’t as if the history of the last few years or consideration of outfits like Enron or Goldman Sachs or Lehman Bros. or HBOS leads to the conviction that Maggie’s legacy is beyond criticism.
By helping to end the Cold War, every Briton and every person in the world lives in a safer place. That alone should be enough to accord Margaret Thatcher the honor of a state funeral. Like Churchill, she left Britain largely free of an existential threat. I believe the Falklands War had a greater impact in the Soviet Union that in Argentina, because it signalled that the appeasement of 1939 was not going to happen again. I have greatly appreciated the discourse on this post and it is a tribute to WUWT that it has been so civilized. While remembering her history is appropriate, I disagree that her passing is an appropriate occasion to judge her. She has already been judged, which is what happens when one casts a vote. (For those of you who are Believers) Now she is in the hands of the Lord and she will be judged by Him, as all of us will be too. (For those of you who are not, please accept my words allegorically.)
I cannot express my sentiments better than John Donne in 1623 in his Meditation #17 from which Ernest Hemingway took the title of one of his most famous novels:
Putting aside Thatcher herself, it is worth recalling the circumstances that caused her to be elected in the first place.
Union officials, who were often not even representative of their members, attempted to usurp the authority and powers of the elected government for their political ends. They had brought down previous governments from both sides of the house.
That they also put almost religiously-held beliefs above common sense economics during times of economic hardship has a striking parallel in the anti-CO2 views of today’s political-environmentalists.
Today’s parliament would also do well to remember that without North-Sea Oil & Gas, the situation would have been far worse. Politicians would have found themselves facing an electorate in a very ugly mood indeed. I hope the lesson is not forgotten.
berniel says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:19 am
Fine for you to post this Anthony as it is your blog , and not just about climate etc. however, I recall a few years ago a shift into conservative politics that I sense you regretted…
=======
Nope, that’s on you, don’t attempt to transfer your feelings.
Nov 22nd 1990 was one of the finest days of my life. I took the afternoon off and went up the pub. Why you may ask? Simple, it was the day Thatcher got the ‘old heave ho’
She was no Iron Lady. She blubbed!
Just one correction dear Christopher, from a Biblical perspective, no one can ‘earn’ their way into Heaven.
If you repeat a lie long enough it becomes the truth. Margaret Thatches did not close the bulk of UK mines. The statsitics are
1960 698 mines
1965 483
1970 292
1975 241
1980 211
1985 133
1990 65.
Source ncm.org.uk
The bulk of the closures in the 1960’s were directed by the great socialist Anthony Wedgewood Benn ( Energy Secretary). So who destroyed the UK coal mining industry?
Whether Margaret Thatcher earned her state funeral is for wiser heads than mine. That she focused world-wide concern on environmental issues – on the “fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere” – probably earns her both cheers and jeers. What is known is that she warned about the dangers of climate change to the Royal Society (September, 1988), in a speech to the Conservative Party Conference (October, 1988), and in an Address to the United Nations (November, 1988). Then, rather unapologetically, seemed to recant these positions in her memoirs.
It would just be great if we could field a politician who did not feel compelled to “wax off” in his private memoir what he eloquently “waxed on” about during his public career.
Strange I don’t see any mention of the Poll Tax here. That was the one big mistake.
Having destroyed the power of the unions she thought there was nothing that could hold her back. She decided to attack the majority of working and unemployed people in Britain by replacing the property tax (“rates”) with an individual tax on every adult in the country.
This meant families with maybe two adult children in a council house would be paying four or five times more per year so that people like his lordship, here, could be given a huge tax break on their large, spacious properties. The poor were to subsidise the rich.
This resulted a mobilsation far more powerful than the union movement could have organised years earlier.
31st March 1990, about a million people descended on the capital. After being “kettled” by police for several hours they were then subjected to police cavalry charging into the crowd. The resulting battle spilled out into the chic West End of London and shook the country.
Despite this massive popular rejection of her new tax, the “lady” was still not for turning. The 31 of October the same year a follow up demonstration was scheduled. The evening before it happened the government announced that the Poll Tax would be repealed. The “lady” had turned.
It was the first and only time she had be forced to back down and it showed she was not unbeatable
Less than three weeks later she failed to get the support of her own party in a leadership vote and was forced to announce her resignation as party leader and hence Prime Minister.
It was the combined force of millions of common men and women of Britain that broke her iron will.
There’s little cause for celebration now , she lost her power and her marbles decades ago, her death now is irrelevant.
We did celebrate in 1990 though. 😉
Now that I read through the other posts here I realize that I have no place to say what should and should not appear on WUWT. My apologies for being so foolish as to suggest what someone else should do with their blog!
This has turned into an interesting post. Someone else mentioned it, what a broad spectrum there is among skeptics!
Thatcher was convinced that she was right and had no compassion for those that disagreed with her policies.
She divided a nation and alienated the industrial north, driving many proud working class men and their families to despair. Whilst these men were defending their right to work, she unleashed thousands of highly paid policemen to attack and demoralise them.
She should pay for her own funeral like everyone else has to.
ralfellis says:
April 14, 2013 at 3:03 am
Henry Galt says: April 14, 2013 at 2:51 am
Here is an equally well written piece from the other end of the class divide (at the time):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
___________________________________
“” Are you aware that Russell Brand is a foul-mouthed imbecile and egotist, whose primary claim to fame is that he taunted a famous actor about f***ing his daughter on live television.
And Russell Brand was just three years old when Thatcher came to power. So this is a bit like getting Tiger Woods to give us his considered opinion – being such a well-known intellectual – on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
If the Grauniad has to stoop down to the kindergarten and into the filthiest of gutters to get a commentary about Thatcher, then that says more about the Grauniad than it does about Thatcher. “”
Why not say what you really think?
Russel Brand is a multiple £million best selling author. He is also a prodigeous radio host, TV presenter, actor and creator of programs, film (and voice) actor in over ten movies and is currently filming with Oliver Stone. He also has many top awards for stand-up comedy.
Not too shabby for someone “… diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder who has suffered from bulimia and been through a period of self-harming …” and, to use your own phrase “”foul-mouthed imbecile””.
His part in the incident you focus upon is as far removed from his ‘…primary claim to fame…’ as your handle on reality is from the facts.
Although, please note I am not excusing the parties involved, the story was about the actor’s grand-daughter, not daughter as you claim. A little further investigation of the incident would reveal that, until the Daily Fail sensationally blew it out of proportion, the ‘affronted’ central character was late for his gig, had laughed out loud when told about the story a week earlier, before accepting the interview and is on the record with ” … has thanked Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for helping his career with the obscene messages affair…” Please note the other protagonist in the media event. People get a tad carried away in the ‘entertainment business’ don’t they?
I would bet good money you never so much as read a sentence of the article, which has garnered much praise from many diverse quarters. I base this assumption on nothing but my belief that your prejudices are showing, partly through your use of language.
Tez says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Dead right – except that many, many of those ‘policemen’ were soldiers with no unique identification number. These are usually referred to as shoulder or collar numbers and were absent from nearly two thirds of those involved.
Mark Thatcher should be paying for his mum’s funeral – like we all have to with ours.
‘… he was arrested in South Africa in connection with the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d’état attempt and pleaded guilty in January 2005 to breaking anti-mercenary legislation. At this time the Sunday Times suggested that he had personal assets of £60 million, most of which was in offshore accounts.’
Greg Goodman,
“She decided to attack the majority of working and unemployed people in Britain by replacing the property tax (“rates”) with an individual tax on every adult in the country.”
Whilst I cannot comprehend the logic in trying to impose the poll tax, I am utterly convinced it was not done out of some vindictive motive to “destroy working people.” The idea is completely out of kilter with everything related to her ideology. She believed in liberating the working people from the class structures held in place by traditional conservatism. She gave workers their unions back by introducing secret balloting. She wanted working people to “get on” and succeed.
I am saddened that so many believe she hated working people and “tried to destroy them.” Sure, the poll tax was misguided, but I am sure she believed it fair in her own mind – probably based on some notion of cutting taxes for rich as well as poor.
Thank you Anthony and Lord Monckton for posting this.
I, for one, mourn Lady Thatcher’s passing; may she rest in peace. I hope she is enjoying a (good quality) whisky or gin and tonic with Denis! On the day of the funeral I shall wear the blue ribbon I attached to my cycle on Election day in May 1979. Our country was thoroughly demoralised and in a terrible state, being held to ransom by bloody-minded trade unions. We were incredibly hard-up despite my husband being a senior professional. Then along came Maggie…hooray!
I fear that a lot of her legacy is being lost and the country is becoming degraded again. All the litter lying around is one symptom. Would that we had someone of integrity, vision and energy as PM now, instead of all the lookalike, soundalike, PPE little boys who ‘lead’ us now.
It’s worth reading Christopher Booker’s article in today’s Sunday Telegraph. She did make mistakes (anybody in this life who doesn’t?).
I have been very upset by the nastiness, hate, and viciousness of the response to her death in certain quarters. I dislike Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Balls and wife and the Millibands. I think they have done some bad things to this country. I would not, however, ‘celebrate’ their deaths.The young and ignorant members of the Socialist Workers’ Party, who ‘celebrated’ with champagne might like to consider that they wouldn’t have thought of drinking champagne back in the late 70s. They couldn’t have afforded it. Now they can is a measure of how things have changed.
Thank you Hans Erren:
April 14, 2013 at 7:55 am
That’s a keeper.
Funny how welfare costs, as a percentage of GDP were hovering around 11% for her reign, dropped to around 6% when Labour got in and only rose back above that level when the banking disaster happened yet we are being fed the opposite of that day in and day out right now.
I have no love for any political party but, “… balance dear boy, balance…” and in that vein here is an article from the Torygraph – whom I detest as much as the Guardian. An insightful, well written piece, even by a youth, leaning left, or right, is still a well written piece after all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/owen-jones-thatcherism-was-a-national-catastrophe-that-still-poisons-us-8564858.html?fb_action_ids=10200397257428313&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%2210200397257428313%22%3A298478733616613}&action_type_map={%2210200397257428313%22%3A%22og.recommends%22}&action_ref_map=[]
Post has disappeared.
I was wrong…it has now appeared…sorry!
Knock it off Gareth. Just admit that you are distraught and offended by even the concept of a strident anti-Communist being in a position of power anywhere. I predict you will throw everything including the kitchen sink into this thread, including that she wasn’t “conservative enough”, to take a crap on the recently deceased lady. You lefties are so transparent.
Yeah right Nik. Because when thinking of the AGW hoax and all manner of eco-babble and eco-terrorism the first person who comes to mind is Thatcher. Characters like Sagan, Hansen, Mann, Schneider, Earth First, 10:10, Greenpeace (… ad nauseum ) all take a back seat to this Iron Maiden! I think all that Upper East Side sushi and caviar has clouded your brain 🙂
To educate Gareth Philips:
1. More pits closed under Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson that during Thatcher’s time; and she didn’t close them anyway – economic circumstances and the march of progress closed them, like the cotton mills and steam railways; the politically motivated union strikes simply hastened that end. Industrial suicide.
2. You cannot simply say she opposed the reunification of Germany – with hindsight now universally accepted as a ‘good thing’ – as evidence of another thing she got ‘wrong’. Unlike political dogmatists she thought each matter through. Over the reunification of Germany her worry was that a united Germany might once again rise to dominate and threaten European stability. You might like to ask the Greeks and the Cypriots, newly impoverished to protect the euro, whether she was right.
And a further point: She opposed apartheid sanctions on South Africa because she thought they would affect the poorest most, therefore would be counter-productive. True leadership requires decisions based on best evidence at the time; not following consensus to stay in with those self appointed to the moral high ground. And if one feels history proved her wrong on that issue, that doesn’t make her evil.
Never malign someone’s actions without discovering their motives. And certainly not attribute motives. But that’s the left all over; can’t win an argument, so play the man (or in this case, the Lady) not the ball.
JC Sez::
“Those who do not want this raised here either see no point to it, or do not want their experience of the site polarised. This is understandable because these personal responses in themselves seem to add nothing, on the face of it, to wider issues including AGW.”
Perhaps. Perhaps they’re still viscerally clinging to the Leftist Politics they were indoctrinated with, notwithstanding clarity re: Climate – they’re Birds Of A Feather, Climate and Politics.
London247:
Your post at April 14, 2013 at 12:57 pm confuses post-war mechanisation and consolidation of UK coal industry conducted by both Conservative a Labour governments with closure of the coal industry then asks.
” So who destroyed the UK coal mining industry?”
The Thatcher governnment closed the UK coal industry.
I relate how and why in my post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/13/weekend-open-thread-6/#comment-1274534
It is a matter of political opinion as to whether this was a good or bad policy.
But that policy was a reversal of ‘The Plan For Coal’ which had been adopted by all the main political parties.
Richard
I was a grad student in the history of science at Oxford in the early ’70s, when the UK had three elections in four years & two in 1974 alone. That was during the three day week & the year of gas lanterns, during the OPEC oil shock & constant union action. I made the mistake of wearing a red hat in the Middle Common Room of Queens College. I worked as a volunteer Tory pol watcher in one of the 1974 elections in a working class borough of London. It was a dreary & depressing time but I enjoyed talking to my fellow Liberal & Labour watchers. Also my “scout”, the lady who cleaned our rooms in college, who said she was going out to vote for paradise, who regaled me with tales of her vacation in Bulgaria & how she wished there was a British (or English) holiday like Thanksgiving, the give thanks for the inestimable benefit of being English (or British). Little wonder that not joining Europe was popular on both ends of the political spectrum.
Ted Heath was an object of humo(u)r. A Trotskyite friend of a friend of mine (now a famous liberal commentator) did an hilarious impersonation of him. But a tall friend of mine, a chemist from the North, told me about the Tory pol he hoped his party would chose as its leader. A middle class woman, a chemist, a persuasive orator, a profound thinker, a fighter, whom he hoped would shake up the “wets” & move British politics closer to the (then, if no more) American model of two parties who both favor free markets, but argue over how much of profits to tax & how much to regulate.
He got his wish & IMO Britain got, for all her successes & failures, its greatest peacetime leader of the 20th century. A real man among pigmies, finally brought down by the jealous & vengeful wets, not by her more honest Marxist opponents.
If you want to know the truth, the reason I just love saying things like “the only funeral thatcher deserves is to be shoved in a coal mine and collapse the roof over her”
…. is because it annoys the hell out of the idiotic conservative politicians that did so much to destroy the UK. Not only did they create the absurdly false myth that manufacturing was “Outdated” (it isn’t we all still buy cars and fridges and cookers and TVs and computers all of which we could still be producing in the UK if it hadn’t been for Thatcher’s cronies) .. but these gormless Thatcher “babes” rejected the pragmatic engineering approach which almost all sceptics support and pandered to the very “science” (aka “anti-industry”) sentiment, in the UK epitomised by the BBC, which created the environment in which the global warming scam took hold.
And yes the UK manufacturing needed reforming … but these politicians revelled in its destruction.
The conservative party was a heartless bunch of thugs and even if what they were doing was right (it wasn’t) they didn’t have to enjoy it.
pottereaton says: “Thatcher was a victim of the activist/scientists like the rest of us. We all grew up trusting in science and Thatcher was herself a research chemist before becoming a politician. I’m guessing her experience in science was one characterized by adherence to the scientific method and integrity in research. I don’t think she understood the rules were changing and that post-normal science was becoming de rigueur. “
I am open minded enough to accept that is a real possibility. Thatcher was part of an anti-industry movement which paradoxically turned into the anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist movement movement in academia which spawned the global warming anti-industry and eventually anti-science scam.
Gerg Goodman says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:14 pm
You are wrong, the Poll Tax replaced the Rates. The Rates was a tax on a property, with it’s cost determined on the value of the property, levied on the owner of said property. In other words, a mansion might have 2 people living in it, both using local services, and the owner of the mansion would be paying a fortune. A family of 5 living in a council house, all working would be using local services and the person whose name was renting the house was paying 30 % of what the mansion owner was paying. Is that fair? Idon’t think so. They are all using the same services, so why should the couple who are living on a pension, pay more than a family of 5 who use local services a lot more?
It was her firm personal wish not to have a state funeral, otherwise she would certainly merit one. End of story.
Lord Monckton and Anthony thank you for the respect you have shown to a great lady.
Margret Thacher would not put up with the fraud that the AGW crowd has perpetrated on the world.
I grew up in Liverpool. UK. in a poor demoralized area. I finally realized that the Labour Government policy’s were never about the working man it was always about enriching the few and the union leaders. On a final note every one of my working class relatives (and there are many of them) broken out of the poverty cycle .they own there own homes and have had many new cars, holidays and good quality lives, thanks to the Iron Lady’s policy’s that opened the door for the many,not for the few..
I’m a Climate,socialist and a Watermelon skeptic Ive looked at life from both sides.
DaveG says (April 14, 2013 at 5:51 pm): “Margret Thacher would not put up with the fraud that the AGW crowd has perpetrated on the world.”
==============================================================
Really? She was apparently one of the main perpetrators. I suggest everyone reads her speech to United Nations General Assembly, 1989 Nov 8 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817), quote:
“What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate—all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. …
VAST INCREASE IN CARBON DIOXIDE
We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is three billion tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution still remains in the atmosphere. At the same time as this is happening, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale of tropical forests which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air. …
It is of course true that none of us would be here but for the greenhouse effect. It gives us the moist atmosphere which sustains life on earth. We need the greenhouse effect—but only in the right proportions. …
But the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. …
Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. …
CONVENTION ON GLOBAL CLIMATE
The most pressing task which faces us at the international level is to negotiate a framework convention on climate change—a sort of good conduct guide for all nations. …
But a framework is not enough. It will need to be filled out with specific undertakings, or protocols in diplomatic language, on the different aspects of climate change.
These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application. Otherwise those nations which accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out competitively to those who do not. The negotiation of some of these protocols will undoubtedly be difficult. And no issue will be more contentious than the need to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the major contributor—apart from water vapour—to the greenhouse effect. …
We can then agree to targets to reduce the greenhouse gases, and how much individual countries should contribute to their achievement. …
The Inter-governmental Panel’s work must remain on target, and we must not allow ourselves to be diverted into fruitless and divisive argument. Time is too short for that. …”
DaveG says (April 14, 2013 at 5:51 pm): “Margret Thacher would not put up with the fraud that the AGW crowd has perpetrated on the world.”
==============================================================
Really? She was apparently one of the main perpetrators. I suggest everyone reads her speech to United Nations General Assembly, 1989 Nov 8 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817), quote: http://thatcher-1.pen.io/
I read it and note she also said
Mr President, the evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the International Community, do about it?
In some areas, the action required is primarily for individual nations or groups of nations to take.
I am thinking for example of action to deal with pollution of rivers—and many of us now see the fish back in rivers from which they had disappeared.
I am thinking of action to improve agricultural methods—good husbandry which ploughs back nourishment into the soil rather than the cut-and-burn which has damaged and degraded so much land in some parts of the world.
And I am thinking of the use of nuclear power which—despite the attitude of so-called greens—is the most environmentally safe form of energy.
But the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.
It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
We have to look forward not backward and we shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort.
Before we act, we need the best possible scientific assessment: otherwise we risk making matters worse. We must use science to cast a light ahead, so that we can move step by step in the right direction.
The United Kingdom has agreed to take on the task of co-ordinating such an assessment within the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, an assessment which will be available to everyone by the time of the Second World Climate Conference next year.
But that will take us only so far. The report will not be able to tell us where the hurricanes will be striking; who will be flooded; or how often and how severe the droughts will be. Yet we will need to know these things if we are to adapt to future climate change, and that[fo 6] means we must expand our capacity to model and predict climate change. We can test our skills and methods by seeing whether they would have successfully predicted past climate change for which historical records exist.
Britain has some of the leading experts in this field and I am pleased to be able to tell you that the United Kingdom will be establishing a new centre for the prediction of climate change, which will lead the effort to improve our prophetic capacity.
It will also provide the advanced computing facilities that scientists need. And it will be open to experts from all over the world, especially from the developing countries, who can come to the United Kingdom and contribute to this vital work.
But as well as the science, we need to get the economics right. That means first we must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment. But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.
And second, we must resist the simplistic tendency to blame modern multinational industry for the damage which is being done to the environment. Far from being the villains, it is on them that we rely to do the research and find the solutions.
It is industry which will develop safe alternative chemicals for refrigerators and air-conditioning. It is industry which will devise bio-degradable plastics. It is industry which will find the means to treat pollutants and make nuclear waste safe—and many companies as you know already have massive research programmes.
The multinationals have to take the long view. There will be no profit or satisfaction for anyone if pollution continues to destroy our planet.
As people’s consciousness of environmental needs rises, they are turning increasingly to ozone-friendly and other environmentally safe products. The market itself acts as a corrective the new products sell and those which caused environmental damage are disappearing from the shelves.
And by making these new products widely available, industry will make it possible for developing countries to[fo 7] avoid many of the mistakes which we older industrialised countries have made.
We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.
On the basis then of sound science and sound economics, we need to build a strong framework for international action.
It is not new institutions that we need. Rather we need to strengthen and improve those which already exist: in particular the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme.
The United Kingdom has recently more than doubled its contribution to UNEP and we urge others, who have not done so and who can afford it, to do the same.
And the central organs of the United Nations, like this General Assembly, must also be seized of a problem which reaches into virtually all aspects of their work and will do so still more in the future.
CONVENTION ON GLOBAL CLIMATE
Noelene says (April 14, 2013 at 8:03 pm): “I read it and note she also said…”
==========================================================
Right, she was a sort of all-round alarmist: “…we have all recently become aware of another insidious danger. It is as menacing in its way as those more accustomed perils with which international diplomacy has concerned itself for centuries. It is the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself. … It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”
“””””…..Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:14 am
Gods teeth, what has happened to this site? It has metamorphosed from a science and associated issues to a primarily political campaign……”””””
So Gareth, then what special dispensation was granted to you, that you elected to comment on a thread that riles you up so much.
Perhaps you should read Anthony’s site heading again as it states quite clearly what this site IS about.
“””””…..Gerg Goodman says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:14 pm
Strange I don’t see any mention of the Poll Tax here. That was the one big mistake.
Having destroyed the power of the unions she thought there was nothing that could hold her back. She decided to attack the majority of working and unemployed people in Britain by replacing the property tax (“rates”) with an individual tax on every adult in the country……”””””
So Gerg, what tax system could possibly be more fair, than a tax on every adult in the country.
Contrast that with today’s United States of America, locked in a graveyard spiral; with half of the adult population paying no tax at all.
If you’re not paying any tax; somebody else is paying your fair share, and as a result, they have to increase the price of everything they provide for you to purchase, or make use of. If they didn’t have to do that, then you would also be able to afford to pay your fair share of taxes.
When some can get everything for nothing, just handed to them, then obviously money ceases to have any value; same goes for hard work.
The British; just like the Americans, thoroughly deserve what is surely coming their way; after all, they asked for it.
Lech Walesa, Solidarity, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Regan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika, Glasnost, the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. The miracle of the decade in a century of miracles.
Greg House says: April 14, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Right, she was a sort of all-round alarmist:
You must have skipped some of the thread. Even Homer nods but she got it right in 2002.
‘…in her last book, Lady Thatcher had already written, under the heading “Hot air and global warming”, what amounted to a complete recantation of her earlier views, voicing precisely those fundamental doubts over the warming panic that were later to become familiar.
Pouring scorn on what she called “the doomsters”, she questioned all the main scientific assumptions that had been used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the main force shaping the world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of what she recognised as “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5 degree rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda that posed a very serious threat to human progress and prosperity.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9990332/Margaret-Thatcher-On-two-of-the-great-issues-the-lady-was-indeed-for-turning.html
Nigel S:
Your post shows you are joinin g others in this thread who are trying to convnice themselves Margaret Thatcher did not create the AGW scare or – if she did – then she soon ‘saw the light’ and changed her mind.
Margaret Thatcher created the AGW-scare for reasons of pure personal benefit that had nothing to do with coal and/or miners. Her political party was willing to go allong with her AGW-campaign because it was not helpful to coal. She dropped the campaign when it had fulfilled its political purpose for her. She then attacked AGW (as she always attacked what was not useful to her).
How and why she created the AGW-scare can be read here.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/
Richard
richardscourtney says:
April 15, 2013 at 12:45 am
Well an article by you will probably support your point of view, I wasted no time in reading it. I read quite enough on the topic on Junk Science some years ago.
I was simply pointing out that she did get it right eventually. The rest is political spin and point scoring.
Here are some more annoying myths, enjoy!
http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/business-news/politics/7-most-annoying-thatcher-myths/5218.article
@ george e. smith says:
April 14, 2013 at 8:41 pm
“””””…..Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:14 am
Gods teeth, what has happened to this site? It has metamorphosed from a science and associated issues to a primarily political campaign……”””””
So Gareth, then what special dispensation was granted to you, that you elected to comment on a thread that riles you up so much.
Perhaps you should read Anthony’s site heading again as it states quite clearly what this site IS about.
………………………….
Apologies George, I thought we had a right to comment freely on threads that we disagreed with as long as we stayed within the rules. I know understand that we should only comment if we agree with what is being posted.
[As you obviously read the comments here the only conclusion is that you inadvertently left the “/sarc” tag off of your comment . . mod]
The interesting thing about this thread is that we have the right wing expressing revisionist histories of a difficult time in UK history, celebrating the successes and glossing over the disasters, and the Left pointing out that Thatcher was part of a European time where many things occurred, but that she was not a Saint by any means. Incidentally it’s interesting to see how many people praise her from countries other than the UK. I wonder if things always look better if you do not have to experience something and look at the events through the wrong end of a telescope. It’s good to see that skeptics are not all raving right wing loonies, and that lefties are not all Marxists; as someone else has said, it’s a broad church. Possibly we can accept that there are skeptics and warmies on both sides of the political debate and oppose any move to hijack the high ground by any side?
I have now accepted that the Thatcher post was a useful exercise to demonstrate these issues. Which politician are we discussing next? Can I suggest Neil Kinnock who hauled the Labour party kicking and screaming into modern politics, or Bill Clinton who appears to have been the best President the US has ever elected in modern times. I don’t tend to debate with Willis as he has a much more detailed understanding of the science than I have, but politics is my work and interest so it’s great to see another site for political debate appearing.
@Apologies George, I thought we had a right to comment freely on threads that we disagreed with as long as we stayed within the rules. I know understand that we should only comment if we agree with what is being posted.
[As you obviously read the comments here the only conclusion is that you inadvertently left the “/sarc” tag off of your comment . . mod]
————————————————
Thanks Mod, I had kind of hoped my post spoke for itself, but I will remember to make things a bit more simple for future reference. /sarc ( is that how to write it?, if not, maybe some details?)
Nigel S,
Thank you for posting that link. Most of the myths I already knew to be such, but I was pleased to see the “Mandela= terrorist” myth revealed in its true context. I do remember news reports about “necklacing” and found it deeply shocking – almost like being transported back in time to when victims were hung, drawn and quartered.
There is no doubt that at the time the ANC engaged in brutal violence against its political opponents, including supporters of Buthelezi. I am sure that Mandela was above such acts, and would never condone it, but his wife Winnie was something else. It is quite common that violence perpetrated by the left, such as by the ANC and Sandinistas are ignored by left wing thinkers in the west.
There are numerous grammatical errors in my last post but it’s readable.
Nigel S:
Your post at April 15, 2013 at 1:11 am says to me
Clearly, you really do support Margaret Thatcher and her methods: i.e.
obtain an idea which suites your purposes then deliberately ignore any and all analysis and information pertaining to that idea.
To quote from the Introduction of the item I cited which is at
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/
[snip]
Simply, my analysis was conducted BEFORE the scare arose and predicted how and why Margaret Thatcher would create it and it would become the major environmental issue.
But, of course, such an analysis is of no interest to someone who has read opinions written on JunkScience decades later.
Richard
Thank you Lord Monckton. It was a great tribute to a lady that is admired on this side of the pond as well by rational people.
richardscourtney says:
April 15, 2013 at 3:39 am
‘Clearly, you really do support Margaret Thatcher and her methods’
An average of 13.5 million people voted for her in three elections over eight years. To my eternal shame I didn’t at first but then I bought a house and had children and put away childish things…
Gareth Phillips says:
April 15, 2013 at 2:46 am
Can I suggest … Bill Clinton who appears to have been the best President the US has ever elected in modern times.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Did you leave the sarc tag off again?
@richardscourtney says:
April 15, 2013 at 3:39 am
Very interesting! Even if someone is inclined to take issue with each and every influence you you cite, and the effect of them individually and in conjunction with each other, the predictions flowing from your study can be evaluated. And they clearly have more evidence to support them than anything at all to do with AGW when viewed as “science” alone!
This is the level that the whole issue needs to be dealt with. It is obvious that, as a matter of intellectual construction, not science, AGW has, and never has had, any legitimacy as a basis for public policy decisions. The proposition of significant detrimental impact from CO2 has, at best, only ever been one possible result, with no reason at all for preference over alternative outcomes.
Your reduction of the reasons for this having occurred to what might be called “human impulse” in the various forms you mention, I think will prove to be largely accurate. What is telling is that you at least were able to discern these things at the time, 33 odd years ago now. Whilst not at all deprecating your insights – obviously they were not widely shared – the things you mention were prosaic and were there to be seen.
Personally, although the structural elements of “politics” you mention were not then active or obvious, I date, as an approximation, the start of this as a cultural/societal process to 1968 and the publication of “the Population Bomb”, after which the “idea” that humans were destructive began to be formalized by some, and the general population was “primed” to accept any notion that apparently reflected this.
For this reason, very much supported by your 1980 evaluation, I am completely certain that AGW is now a “dead man walking” soon to be finished off. Quite independently of “science” this has run its course.
@ Nigel S says:
April 15, 2013 at 5:49 am
Gareth Phillips says:
April 15, 2013 at 2:46 am
Can I suggest … Bill Clinton who appears to have been the best President the US has ever elected in modern times.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Did you leave the sarc tag off again?
—————————-
Freddie and Fannie? Is that the company who collapsed under Mr.Bush’s watch?
How many adventures did that man have? By the way satire is ruined by having to explain that a phrase used is satire, it’s like explaining a joke. If I call our current Prime Minister Kim Il Kameron I sort of hope most people will understand that this is satire without me having to give clues. Then again, maybe I am missing something in our cultural divide.
jc:
Thankyou for your comment on my analysis of the formation of the AGW-scare which you provide. at April 15, 2013 at 7:33 am.
You say of my analysis at
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/richard-courtney-the-history-of-the-global-warming-scare/
Obviously, I would – and do – agree with that.
Unfortunately, debate of AGW tends to be dominated by people who deliberately choose to be ignorant bigots. They exist on both ‘sides’ of the issue as, for example, is demonstrated by Nigel S in this thread. Frankly, I despair of people who – as he has – claim they have gained an opinion so do not want information.
Richard
Gareth Phillips says at 2:46 am
“The interesting thing about this thread is that we have the right wing expressing revisionist histories of a difficult time in UK history…”
No; what we have is people who were there at the time, who persoanlly experienced the horrors of the collapse of society and of the UK economy in the 70s, pointing out why Margaret Thatcher’s election was necessary. She didn’t get everything right – who does? – but she got the country *as a whole* back up off its knees, and left it infinitely more prosperous than she found it.
Ideologues in the union-dominated north and Wales preferred to remain stuck in the attitudes which led to our collapse – that’s why they suffered and still do, to this day, from lack of investment in their areas
Pointing out these things has nothing to do with right-wing revisionism: it has everything to do with pragmatic people who lived through those events themselves (as I did) telling it as they see it. I loathed Maggie at the time and would not want to sit next to her at dinner – but I voted for her (with my head) and find the vitriolic and entirely misleading insults heaped on her in the last week (inc by a few on here) to be ignorant, dishonest, and in many instances, distasteful.
richardscourtney says: April 15, 2013 at 9:01 am
‘Unfortunately, debate of AGW tends to be dominated by people who deliberately choose to be ignorant bigots. They exist on both ‘sides’ of the issue as, for example, is demonstrated by Nigel S in this thread.’
‘Ignorant bigots’ is a bit strong. An engineering MA from Isaac Newton’s old college and nearly 40 year’s industry experience give me some idea of what’s up.
To being at the beginning…(1:11 AM)
I said (quoting Christopher Booker) that Margaret Thatcher had got it wrong on CAGW at first and corrected herself in 2002. I think that’s a reasonably accurate summary. More so than your description of me at least.
‘…in her last book, Lady Thatcher had already written, under the heading “Hot air and global warming”, what amounted to a complete recantation of her earlier views, voicing precisely those fundamental doubts over the warming panic that were later to become familiar.’
Gareth Philips again:
“Freddie and Fannie? Is that the company who collapsed under Mr.Bush’s watch?”
It’s the company which was set up at Bill Clinton’s diktat to force banks to give mortgages to those who could not afford them, this leading to the near-collapse of the banking system (after Clinton left office). The Left’s adulation of the Clintons is a complete mystery to those of us who view politicians with some degree of objectivity.
Sam the First says: April 15, 2013 at 9:44 am
Thanks for that, in fact they both existed before Clinton (1970 and 1938) but he did the damage for which we are all still suffering as you explained.
“Sam the First says:
April 15, 2013 at 9:44 am
Freddie and Fannie were setup well before Clinton and Bush.
@richardscourtney says:
April 15, 2013 at 9:01 am
I’m not sure that your description of “ignorant bigots” – or maybe just those with fixed ideas – is accurate when you say that they “deliberately choose”. That such people exist on both sides there is no doubt.
But I think “deliberately choosing” allows too much latitude. Rather, I think saying imprisoned is more accurate.
As I said up-thread, the legitimacy of introducing Thatcher as a topic, apart from her active role in AGW, is in demonstrating, through the content and personalization of the comments, how intractable the issue of AGW warming is, because it is, for many, indistinguishable from their sense of self. Quite obviously, Thacher was a major influence on the development of AGW as public policy – and culture – but this is extremely difficult for some to admit since it just does not “fit”. And for others, different things are not convenient.
Beyond anything else, this thread is a case study in the absolute necessity of “generational change” since not a few posters here are demonstrating that they cannot break free from experiences of 20, 30 or 40 years ago to the degree needed to be able to see clearly and call a spade a spade. And I think it is reasonable to believe that relative to society generally the posters here are more capable of that.
Whilst “generational change” as a matter purely of age has been a debatable proposition, it is not obvious to me that there exists a sufficient mass of people who are free of the formative period running to the end of the ’80’s, that underpins what now exists, who have any significantly distinct outlook, and so any “generational change ” possible is likely to have to come from a wide range of ages, with the core requirement being that there is the capacity to look from outside all the orthodoxies of the past 25 years, which had been in the making for the previous 25..
how intractable the issue of AGW warming is, because it is, for many, indistinguishable from their sense of self
============
So ask those with these views if they think Thatcher did the right thing in breaking the miners and they will say they hate Thatcher.
Just shows they aren’t particularly clever to get the connection between their views and the consequences for the coal mining industry.
To those who object to this article’s inclusion. Viscount Monkton is a regular contributor to this site, so his public letter remembering and honoring an old friend recently deceased is not more irrelevant than Willis’s life history even if she was not the former Prime Minister of Britain. While the state funeral is a separate matter, and one that this American is staying out of, this is quite reasonable to include.
The fight Vs. AGW is a political one. But in the documentary from 2008 (?), ‘The Great GLobal Warming Swindle’, they alleged it was her Govt. that established a politically driven research bent to look for AGW so as to blame coal mining. Corruption of climate change perhaps can trace it’s roots to her office? I’d be interested to see what Monckton thinks of the accusation made in that documentary. I think the correlation of the left with AGW is a curious thing.
I don’t think the left/AGW connection is strange at all.
FIrst there was the collapse of the socialist block. With it truly opened up, people could see its effects from Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot with mass murder to the economic impoverishment.
So that ruled out socialism as a major force.
However, they still want to control, and what better than to use AGW as the means by which you can control and tell people what to do.
Then you have the profiteers who will look to make a quick buck in any way whatsoever.
@ LB says:
April 15, 2013 at 10:43 am
Not disagreeing but would add that there are those opposed to AGW simply because it forms part of their general attitude to those who support it. Or to those who they think might represent it by what they think they might show in other attitudes. Works both ways.
LB says: April 15, 2013 at 10:43 am
‘…if they think Thatcher did the right thing in breaking the miners…’
Margaret Thatcher broke the power of the union bosses who had brought down one democratically elected government and wanted to break hers (Google Arthur Scargill, see example below). She freed the working people of this country from their oppressors and industry from the dead hand of the state. For this she is hated by the entitled classes. The rest of us are grateful that she did.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307753/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Arthur-Scargills-satisfaction-seeing-bitter-enemy.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
@ Nigel S says:
April 15, 2013 at 9:41 am
“I said (quoting Christopher Booker) that Margaret Thatcher had got it wrong on CAGW at first and corrected herself in 2002.”
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If loving/hating/admiring/despising Thacher can be left out of it, the question is why did she get it wrong (and then why did she get it right)?
Possibly in addition to that, did she get it wrong in the substance of what she understood, or did she get it wrong in actions taken for other reasons?
Whatever the answers, why did this happen?
I remember the 1970s in Britain very well. The ‘British disease’ was quite specific, namely, trade union militancy. The unions knew they could get away with it, because they owned the Labour party, just as big business owned the Conservative party. (Of course it’s all quite different now; big business owns both parties. ‘We, the people’ just take whatever is thrown at us, as usual. But I digress.)
Margaret Thatcher was elected (including by many Labour voters) to sort out the unions. This she did. But when you call in the rat catcher, you don’t expect him to gut the house. That is the side of the picture that the Maggie worshippers ignore.
No doubt the historians will eventually reach a balanced view of that period. Just don’t expect those of us who lived through it to do so. It’s still too raw.
When questioned about some aspect of the Falklands fracas with Argentina back in 1982, that the inquisitor found particularly onerous, The Honorable M. Thatcher replied Britannia Rules the Waves. Therefore, Britannia Waves the Rules!
The Grand Old Gal had a delightful sense of humor… and an iron girdle. The world is a bit more impoverished with her loss. We mourn her passing, with all true-hearted Britons.
MtK
Thatcher’s funeral is going to be a disaster, with thousands standing with their backs to the parade. There have been dozens of street parties, and protests at football grounds (she blamed 95 Liverpool fans for their own deaths in 1989). She was hated like no other prime minister in the last century. “A destroyer of tyrannies from arrogant Argentina via incursive Iraq to the savage Soviet Union” – Monckton’s history is as bad as his poetry. He should stick to refuting global warming, and not spoil his argument by mixing it up with conservative mythology. Same with others on this site.
@ Sam the First says:
April 15, 2013 at 9:44 am
Gareth Philips again:
“Freddie and Fannie? Is that the company who collapsed under Mr.Bush’s watch?”
It’s the company which was set up at Bill Clinton’s diktat to force banks to give mortgages to those who could not afford them, this leading to the near-collapse of the banking system (after Clinton left office). The Left’s adulation of the Clintons is a complete mystery to those of us who view politicians with some degree of objectivity.
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Thanks Sam, same principle with regards to Thatcher on this side of the Atlantic, the adulation is very strange and somewhat unsettling to the majority of the UK public.
It makes me smile to know that Lady Thatcher can reach out from beyond the grave and manage peoples’ minds as this thread suggests. That she can cause the “Ding Dong” song to hit the top of the charts is magical. That she can, in death, compel people to do crazy things in public is dazzling. She is in their heads and won’t leave and won’t let go. We need more like her – she causes nutters and haters to self-identify. That is a beautiful thing.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/16/mary-archer-on-margaret-thatcher/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/10000508/Margaret-Thatchers-funeral-Bishop-of-Londons-sermon-in-full.html
Margaret Thatcher funeral procession: How applause drowned out the jeers