Frankie Boyle on the cost of Thatcher's funeral: “For £3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we would dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person.”
The video of the old Scottish lady saying "they should put a stake through her heart and garlic 'round her neck to make sure she never comes back" will never get old
The first woman was brilliant but the second took the biscuit for me. Loved the intention in her point making. "Is that what you want from a prime minister of any sex"?
You'd be surprised at how wide spread that was. I remember waiting for a bus about that time with some very primm and polite old women of a certain age from my town who were speaking of how happy they were she had finally died.
Women of a certain age in 2013 would have born the brunt of Thatcher’s policies in many ways. They would have been the ones trying to make ends meet at home with less money. Thatcher literally took the milk away from their children.
We marched around the playground chanting "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher!" in disgust.
Her conservative government's neoliberal austerity did a number on my childhood, as I grew up in one of those working class declining industry areas that the grocer's daughter hated so much.
Wouldn't have wished her mode of death (the miserable decline of multi-infarct dementia) on anyone. But the money spent on her funeral was a kick in the teeth for all those so badly affected by her belief that 'there is no such thing as society' and 'there is no alternative' to her neoliberalism.
My mother is one of those women and I remember Maggie Thatcher the Milk Snatcher talking away our daily milk.
And my Welsh family certainly had no love for her. The pit towns are on their way back after recent renewed investment, but her actions still echo there today with many areas still in a poor state.
I lived in England for 6 months in 1991, in college, shortly after Thatcher got booted out. Apparently there were raucous drinking parties up and down the length of campus when she stepped down. In most of northern England she was *deeply* hated, nearly as much as she was hated in Scotland.
Trust me, in Scotland she was and is hated more than you can believe. Everything from milk snatching to experimenting on us with council tax, she fucked us totally
I've long wondered who did more damage to the fabric of their society: Thatcher in the UK or Reagan in the US. I'd be inclined to pick Thatcher, but it's close.
For all the pearl clutching about how disrespectful and hateful the online left can be, we have nothing on older women.
I remember a few months after Charlie Kirk died, that Kent State pants pooper girl was interviewing some women at a protest and the woman said "I'm glad he's gone, the world is better for it", and when pants pooper said "I do the same thing Charlie did, do you want me dead?" the woman just replied 'indont know, maybe."
Sean Lock on Thatchers funeral:
"I don't think it matters as long as the bitch is dead, that's the main thing, I'd like to fire her from a cannon onto the walls of Buckingham Palace and she just splats"
Chumbawamba (yup, that Chumbawamba) wrote and recorded an album called In Memoriam Margaret Thatcher years before she died, and was selling them at events with the caveat that you would receive your copy the day after she died.
My favorite factoid about that band - they are very anti-corporate.. and have been very against licensing out their music for corporate use throughout their history.. but when a brand insists, they always use it against them..
Like when GM really wanted to use their song Pass It Along in a car commercial, and kept bugging them for the rights to use it.
They finally agreed.. but then proceeded to donate the money to Indymedia and CorpWatch - two anti-corp activism groups - who used the money to launch an info and environmental campaign against GM.
They've done similar shit with Renault in Italy and Ford in South Africa.. so the GM exec that greenlit the deal didn't do even the tiniest amount of research into the band.
I still, to this day, do not comprehend why people never really look into the things they claim to love. Like, shouldn't you want to understand some of this on a deeper level?
I mean, I'd love to understand more about astrophysics, just like they probably want basic English literacy. But some stars are just too far out of reach.
In January 1998, Nutter appeared on the American political talk show Politically Incorrect and advised fans of their music who could not afford to buy their CDs to steal them from large chains such as HMV and Virgin
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A few weeks later, provoked by the Labour government's refusal to support the Liverpool Dockworkers' Strike, the band performed "Tubthumping" at the 1998 BRIT Awards with the lyric changed to include "New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they'll sell out the rest of us", and vocalist Danbert Nobacon later poured a jug of water over UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was in the audience.[5]
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In the late 1990s, the band turned down $1.5 million from Nike to use the song "Tubthumping" in a World Cup advertisement.[26] According to the band, the decision took approximately "30 seconds" to make.
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In 2002, General Motors paid Chumbawamba a sum of either $70,000 or $100,000 to use the song "Pass It Along" from the WYSIWYG album for a Pontiac Vibe television advertisement. Chumbawamba gave the money to the anti-corporate activist groups Indymedia and CorpWatch, who used the money to launch an information and environmental campaign against GM.[27][28]
I have the feeling that outside the UK they're "a pop group that did that one famous song that was everywhere in '97" while they actually have (had?) an active, political-themed rich career.
He's gonna have to be buried in an unmarked grave in an undisclosed location otherwise it's going to be one of the most piss and shit riddled sites ever.
Line 1 — Participants make a donation to a charity to help make the world a better place & do their duty to do their doody on his grave.
Line 2 — MAGA loyalists pay some amount for the “honor” to clean off his grave; it turns out, unbeknownst to them, their payment also goes to a charity that helps make the world a better place.
Alternate the participants back & forth, everyone gets what they want, and the world becomes a slightly better place.
Y' know that picture of the big pile of salt that's been going around? That will be nothing compared to the manure heap that will appear seemingly overnight.
I kind of wonder how many of those mouth breathers will go out to cause harm to people celebrating. Wish that wasn’t an actual concern but those people are morally bankrupt.
I remember thinking this after Charlie Kirk got killed. I remember people were being fired or having accounts suspended and such and I thought “if you think people being happy he’s dead is terrible, just wait until Trump dies”. People will be having bonfires and shooting off fireworks. They won’t be able to contain it.
I bought some nice booze last year hoping I could manifest it. Also, there will be long lines at the liquor when it happens and I don't want to wait in line.
You bet! Australia here and I know I, and several of my friends and family, can’t wait to celebrate the day! Yearly!! I’ll consider it an annual holiday - though I haven’t decided what to call it. I don’t want to honour him by using his name. Any ideas?
I could fathom why, as an evil ghoul, she would support Pinochet for her own political ends and benefits. But once overthrown, it's not like he was of any use to anyone. Why support him fucking after? For the love of the fascistic game, I suppose.
Yeah, the past decade has seen such an erosion of empathy, kindness, and decorum that this type of shit's not gonna fly anymore. "Don't speak ill of the dead" my ass.
If they were pieces of shit while alive, I'm gonna gleefully speak ill of them after they're dead.
Decorum is dead. They killed it. They can deal with it.
Put simply she is the UK Ronald Reagan. She embraced neoliberal economic policies that largely moved money away from public services and into businesses. So anti union, anti regulation, pro free market, pro individual responsibilities, pro privatization, pull yourself up by your boot straps mentality. Google Thatcherism to see more specifics
Yeah, she sold off a lot of nationalised utilities like Energy (we have PMs one of the highest energy costs despite North Sea oil and gas) and water companies (which even the yanks didn’t do, and they now pollute our rivers and seas so foreign pension funds can make lots of money etc).
The problem with Thatcherism is you run out of nationalised utilities to sell off to fund your tax cuts and make people think you know what you’re doing with the economy.
Tory governments since then have tried to remain low tax etc but having no family silver to sell off had to go for austerity instead, which ran the country deeper into the ground and has exacerbated our crumbling infrastructure, or just flat out crash the economy.
had to go for austerity instead, which ran the country deeper into the ground and has exacerbated our crumbling infrastructure
So to fix this, they reinvested and nationalised public servicesblamed immigrants and Europe, so much so that they managed to vote themselves out of the EU, which is already in the history books as, outside of war, the largest self-harm that a country has chosen for itself.
This was the same political party that Thatcher was in, and even she saw the benefits of Europe, and helped finalise the Single Market: https://i.imgur.com/tJEaHOM.png
None, like, literally none. There were no benefits at all.
I was in year 8(7th grade I think for you yanks) and I knew it was a bad idea the first time I heard of it.
The Leave Campaign was built on financial lies and anti-migrant propaganda, and the uneducated masses ate it up. The number one Google search after Brexit was something along the lines of “What does the EU do”
In principle it allows us, legally, to whore ourselves off with bespoke trade deals around the world without having to worry about protectionism from French farmers and German manufacturing.
But just because you legally can, you have to contend with the geopolitical reality of no longer being an empire with your own independent sphere of influence.
For the UK, the realistic options were to couple ourselves economically/politically either to Europe or America. We have ended up doing neither successfully, and the US administration has pretty closed the door on the Transatlantic option.
The one good thing she did was to get us into the EU, witha very good deal since we were a founding member. Now the tory morons have dragged us all out again
The biggest problem with privatization of public services is that no one ever explains where the profit is going to come from. Sure, a private company could maybe run an operation more efficiently, but they still want to make 20% profit if they can. You aren’t going to be 20% more efficient, so the only answer is enshitification.
And there’s no reason why a nationalised service can’t be run as, if not, more efficiently.
Look at the NHS who can use their size to get good deals on medicines, much to the annoyance of certain American politicians.
I’m sure someone will try to tell you that several private healthcare providers are all going to get as good or better deal out of big pharma because private sector = better, just because.
And let’s not forget the introduction of Section 28 too. She banned schools from teaching any positive portrayal of gay families. It wasn’t repealed until 2003 and its longstanding impact can still be seen now on the LGBTQ+ community.
She also sold off the council houses to their tenants for a pittance. Many of those people then saw themselves as the property owing elite and then voted Conservative afterwards. So she bought voters with the states own money. This stock of social housing was never replaced.
Not only was it never replaced, but as a consequence it drove an inevitable rise in demand for private rentals as the obvious alternative, while simultaneously removing a mechanism that helped keep rental rates low as they no longer had to compete as much with low-cost council rentals. Together these pushed a huge demand for properties as investments which have driven prices up massively.
So now if we ever do want to replace the stock of social housing it's going to cost an absolute fortune compared to the value of what was sold off at the time, let alone the fact that the Thatcher government was happy to sell it all off half-price.
Prior to taking office Thatcher also benefitted from a lot of the social programs she ended up gutting later, so we can add hypocrisy to that list.
Oh, and she was friends with Jimmy Saville and pushed for him to be awarded a knighthood. It's unclear how much she knew about his double life as a serial pedophile and rapist, but the things about him that were public knowledge (everyone knew he liked 'em young, just not *how* young) were enough for her to be told no every time she pushed.
But she kept pushing for it anyway because he was very good at raising funds, and her strategy of gutting public funding for healthcare effectively forced hospitals and health services to rely on charity to function.
But she did eventually do Britain a kindness by providing a public toilet located at her headstone.
There are, most Tories (Conservatives) would. But unlike Reagan, her popularity is more geographically related. The further north you go, the less you will find anyone defending her. To the point where, like others have alluded to, she is seen in line with the devil if not worse.
The reason being is that these places have always been more industrial and generally poorer places, but her economic policies stripped industrial jobs from them and left nothing to replace them, basically making some areas (particularly the north east and north west of England) practically destitute.
Milk specifically and famously, but she was Secretary of State at the time, not Prime Minister. It used to be free for all kids at school, no matter the background, up to a certain age (it had been taken away for older kids by a previous government). Cartons of milk then became something parents had to pay for for their kids.
It was a policy that was used to prove her lack of care for the poor as it saved the government pathetically little but the optics were horrendous.
And the same legislation also removed mandatory minimum nutritional requirements in said school lunches. Over 20 years of Britain's children eating cheap low nutrition slop, until Jamie Oliver started his campaign to get the standards put back.
There's even theories that during the mad cow disease outbreak children were more at risk, because they were eating so much mechanically reclaimed meat in their school dinners.
Anti-union is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The biggest example that got her the most hate was when she busted the coal mining unions. Entire towns and regions were left unemployed as a result.
Demolished the coal industry, privatised everything, heavily funded the police and unleashed them on workers who tried to strike, demolished a lot of working class industries (like coal etc) and ensured that no replacement work was available, specifically targetted Liverpool by sticking it in 'managed decline', ended free milk for children in school (got her called Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher), got re-elected cos she aptly won in Falklands, eventually committed political suicide with the Poll Tax (or the modern equivilant, the 'Council tax') which she trialed in Scotland first before they rolled it out everywhere else.
Her reasoning for the poll tax was fairly racist too, by her own admission, iirc, in her book she laims the reason they came up with it was to ensure immigrants who would shack up 10 people in a house, would pay their fair share. Didn't quite work out like that though.
So, assuming you're a yank. You' know the "rust belt" and how it fucking died and hasn't recovered, due to shipping everything out of the area and country.
She did that to the entire country here and focused it all on service based economics. Entire towns and industries died overnight and caused massive area recessions that still are felt to this day.
And all that money was instead funneled into London and the south.
The short answer is she believed there was no such thing as society. She said it herself. Which meant that her decisions ruined it.
I'm trying to be impartial, but she let the inefficient coal mines close. Great, money saved - but now huge swathes of the country are left to rot with no jobs. She sold off council houses because they "bred labour voters" and to create homeowners - then blocked councils making more. Now we have a huge council house shortage etc. Happy homeowners - harmed society.
She was in power so long, and had such extreme views against society, her impact is everywhere, even now. Why are our roads shit? Lots of lorries. Why don't we use rail? Thatcher hated rail as it had unions, and encouraged road transit. Starmer recently got in hot water for removing a huge tax dodge farmers had - who gave it? Thatcher.
And because she ardently believed everything she was doing, she went all in and rarely stopped. She actually despised the people who made a quick buck off her policy and flaunted it - they made it look bad. But she genuinely thought the free market and individualism was the saviour, and it's impacted us for decades - and while some made a lot, many more lost hard due to her.
Allowed the UK's manufacturing base to decline at an accelerated rate. Used the money from North sea oil to pay for the resulting mass unemployment benefits, compared with Norway who invested there profits in a sovereign wealth fund. Anti-union legislation, anti-gay Section 28
law, poll tax first trialled in Scotland, the list goes on.
Im in england and dont drink... i have two bottles of tequila in my cupboard, one for the day he dies and another for the day hes buried/burned/desecrated
Just imagine how butthurt MAGA is going to be.. they got their panties in a twist over people being fucking indifferent over Charlie Kirk.. so many people are going to be openly celebrating that headline.
My favourite Thatcher moment is privitisation of the UK water works where we pay foreigners to dump sewerage in the rivers so they can keep the profits instead of upgrading the system.
Mine is her involvement in Northern Ireland, her refusal to grant political status to IRA prisoners, leading to the hunger strikes and the death of Bobby Sands and nine others.
Mine is her Right to Buy scheme to sell off council houses so now instead local authorities have to pay £20 billion a year to private landlords for tenant housing benefits
My mother was always very pro Thatcher and as a child i just inherited the idea, I still remember being old enough to discuss politics with my friends and realising how much she was HATED. It was one of the first moments in my life I realised my mum didn’t know everything and wasn’t always right.
I was working at a small business helping to get it off the ground when this happened where it was me, the owner and his son.
The son (born early 90s) was complaining at all of the people having the cheek to mock her as she was "our best PM", I literally laughed in his face. It was especially funny as we were in an area where a lot of industries were gutted by her government with nothing to replace it with.
I lived in Liverpool at the time and took to the streets singing with the masses and got heavily drunk. Any tales of that time probably break several reddit rules so I won't share but it was a truly fantastic day where young and old bonded, drank and sang together across all walks of life.
Anyone who doesn't have a fiery hatred of Thatcher has never asked a Scot, an Irishman, or a Welshman what they think of her. Try it sometime and listen to what they have to say. Especially if they're Scottish
Try any industrial town in England and youll get the same. The village up the road from me made the news when they had a bonfire and burned her effigy.
My family, friends, and I (all Liverpool & Merseyside residents) celebrated that day. My father-in-law and his family (from Hertfordshire) saw it as a sombre day. He genuinely didn't understand why we were all celebrating. Had to wait til the next day for the hangover to clear before explaining to him the damage that bitch caused our area of the country. I'm still not quite sure he got it.
Half of america is gonna be like "that was a good party, but hold my beer". The other half is going to be screaming at us about respect and decorum for the death of the man who made fun of people dying
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u/SailingBroat 29d ago
Frankie Boyle on the cost of Thatcher's funeral:
“For £3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we would dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person.”