Quote: SmokeyTA "Can you provide evidence only a few people purchased the track over and over? And yes that's 3k in Trafalgar Square, with more throughout the towns and cities of Britain. They didn't celebrate as much when Shipman died. In fact I struggle to remember anyone since Hitler whose death was greeted with as much celebration in this country. It is forever now, recorded historical fact that large numbers of people actively celebrated her death, whereas the man she dismissed as a terrorist was almost universally mourned. I can think of no more clear cut decision that history can hand down to a PM than dying an old, irrelevant woman, unable to wipe her own bottom, still hated, still reviled, with people dancing on her grave. I don't believe in an afterlife, so that is just about as close to hell as I can imagine.'" Three thousand people out of a population of c.65 million. Wow. I imagine 'large' numbers of people in the Confederate States of America celebrated the death of Abe Lincoln. Doesn't really affect how he is viewed now. You want to look at various rankings of British prime ministers through the years. They are nicely collated here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical ... st_war_PMs You will notice Thatcher is ranked highly across various polls / surveys. Doesn't really tally with your earlier statement does it? By all means have your opinion, but don't tell me it's what the majority believe because it's not.

Quote: SmokeyTA "Can you provide evidence only a few people purchased the track over and over? And yes that's 3k in Trafalgar Square, with more throughout the towns and cities of Britain. They didn't celebrate as much when Shipman died. In fact I struggle to remember anyone since Hitler whose death was greeted with as much celebration in this country. It is forever now, recorded historical fact that large numbers of people actively celebrated her death, whereas the man she dismissed as a terrorist was almost universally mourned. I can think of no more clear cut decision that history can hand down to a PM than dying an old, irrelevant woman, unable to wipe her own bottom, still hated, still reviled, with people dancing on her grave. I don't believe in an afterlife, so that is just about as close to hell as I can imagine.'" Three thousand people out of a population of c.65 million. Wow. I imagine 'large' numbers of people in the Confederate States of America celebrated the death of Abe Lincoln. Doesn't really affect how he is viewed now. You want to look at various rankings of British prime ministers through the years. They are nicely collated here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical ... st_war_PMs You will notice Thatcher is ranked highly across various polls / surveys. Doesn't really tally with your earlier statement does it? By all means have your opinion, but don't tell me it's what the majority believe because it's not.

The last time I posted it, 'Him' who has a similar viewpoint to yours on this matter but has yet to produce a shred of evidence to support his opinion (at least you have, albeit very weak) attempted to discredit every single poll / survey including those of thousands of people simply because he said so. Quite ridiculous really.

Strange isn't it don't you think? You state that she was 'found wanting' etc etc. Then surely she should be at the bottom of these polls / surveys, shouldn't she?

Really? Jonas Salks family will be please to hear that I'm sure. Must billions on its way to them. Louis Pasteur, Edward Jenner too
Madame Curie, Wilhelm Rontgen and Herman Carr Vladislav Ivanov (a Russian communist no less) are very surprised to hear this. Sir Peter Mansfield (of Nottingham University) and Paul Lauterbur (university of Illinois) asked who at Glaxosmithklne they should give their Nobel prize for discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging to? Charles Babbage, Alan Turing sir Tim Berners-Lee, max Newman and Tom Kilburn might disagree.

The first 5 of those have sample sizes of 106, 258, 20, 22 and 1. Come with me to Grimethorpe and we cane find 200 people and ask thm what they think of her and pretend that's representative if you want?

You really are a glutton for punishment aren't you

Too much battery licking methinks.

and the poll with 27,000 responses....and the BBC poll with over 30,000?

Take your Grimethorpe polll and come back to me.

The fact is history is remembering her as a successful prime minister, whether you like it or not. In 100 years time when the bitter pockets of hatred for Thatcher have long since been forgotten school children will look at these polls / surveys and see what the great British public thought / think of the Iron Lady. History is written by the victors and she was certainly victorious.

As might Karl Benz, Raymond Damadian might have something to say about the award to Mansfield & Lauterbur, Rolls Royce, IBM, Johannes Gutenberg, James Black/ICI, John Vane/Wellcome David Wong/Eli Lilly we could go on and on.

Yu are aware of the posters history with polls? It's a valid comment my friend

Don't feed the trolls.

Save your breath. There's no point asking Ajw a question, he'll just either produce a reply that ignores the question or not even reply to it at all.

You know physicists reckon that there's such a thing as dark energy, that's basically the opposite of gravity?
Ajw is to knowledge as dark energy is to gravity.


Give him a minute, he's just looking up his next reply on wikipedia, it's his one and only source of information.

Raymond Damadian can say what he want, in fact he did. Nobody listened. That's why Mansfield and Lauterbur have a noble prize and damadian doesn't.

Eli Lilly(the company) did do pretty well manufacturing others discoveries. But it's not difficult to make money when there is a pressing need, the state pays out fortunes to researchers, and a brave Genius makes his discoveries available for free. Especially when your capital was provided by selling sugar pills, elixers, and tonics. These days we call them placebos and we would refer to the Eli Lily company as snake oil salesmen.

IBM would have been nowhere, they wouldn't even have existed without the work of, Babbage, they would still be making punch card machines without the work of Turing.

I'm not sure what world changing discovery we are attributing to ICI, which bares comparison to the likes of Curie and Salk. Blacks discoveries simply built on his work at Glasgow University.

John Vanes work at wellcome foundation. A charity. Not Wellcome Burroughs the pharmaceutical company. Vane also spent almost all of his working life in academia.


Capitalism makes good doodads and whatsits if you want a gizmo a capitalist is your man. If you want world changing paradigm shifting research, the capitalist is counting his money and shouting at poor people and is nowhere to be seen.

Recent (as in the last 50 years) developments in combustion engine technology have not been driven by automotive manufacturers but as a consequence of goverment demands

Pay rises back then were, across the board in % terms, way way above anything we have now. Even attempts at wage restraint by governments meant they were after pay rises of less than 10% (not the 1% public sector workers are lucky to get today).

Inflation rate was 16%. Miners were also paid 8% less than other manual workers on average which Wilson used to in the election to make the Tories stance on pay re the minors look stupid. That is asking for a high % rise was not "printing money" but about parity at least in part.

So what do we end up with? In real terms a 6% pay rise for a dangerous job of national importance at the time.

In other words you are cherry picking one statistic and taking it way out of context.



He had to deal with the fall out whatever the reason for the decline in numbers. What he didn't have was an agenda to decimate the industry. Thatcher did.



To answer your last question I have always thought the considered opinion was because she never forgot what happened to Ted Heath in 1974. She blamed the miners for Wilson winning in 1974 when in fact it was Heath's fault he lost the election when he tried to stage it as one of "Who runs the country".

The sequence of events back then is interesting. The miners announced a strike with 81% in favour, three days later Heath calls an election on the basis of "Who runs the country?".

Heath saw an opportunity with Labour 4% behind in the polls to exploit the miners strike to win another term.

What then happened is Wilson totally out manoeuvred him on that one by not backing the miners! He was neutral in everything he said. He instead went on about negotiation and blamed the Tories for the confrontation (as well as slagging them off on the economy).

So back then it was clearly was [inot[/i the unions who brought the government down as you have argued. It was Ted Heath who sought to exploit the miners strike expecting Labour to back it outright which they did not, lost a 4% lead in the polls and basically screwed up.