Girls with a time machine: dresses up as puppygirl Hitler
yeah this way the troubles could last 50 years instead… thatcher was a hag but something tells me successfully assassinating her would have led to more problems not fewer.
That something is wrong and you shouldn’t listen to it.
Now if only we could have gotten Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet in a room together in 1978 at the latest, preferably 72, that would’ve been a magnificent place for a bomb!
would be a very interesting alt history for sure. might have made the cold war go on longer, depending on the reactions to whomever pulled it off.
Personally, though, I’d prefer Pinochet get dumped from an aircraft at high altitude so he has time to reflect.
might have made the cold war go on longer
The cold war never ended. It just became multipolar and (mostly) less overt.
Thatcher and Reagan got in power in 1979 and 1981, respectively, and Pinochet in 73. The whole point of the timing was to do it BEFORE they became part of the world’s politics. Nobody’s starting WW3 over a governor, an MP and a general from 3 different countries, only two of which are even friendly with each other.
That’s why you have to assassinate Thatcher earlier before she got into politics. No one is going to care about some nobody.
- doubled VAT to reduce inflation but in doing so destroyed domestic manufacturing and set the stage for mass home repossessions and rises in costs of social housing creating both the economic issues Britain has over diminishing exports and a housing crisis
- created a tax to vote, that disproportionately targeted poorer people, creating the worst riots in history
- introduced privatization to the health care system which is still being felt today
- section 28: it was illegal to mention homosexuality
- reclassified IRA prisoners of war as criminals so they no longer were treated as captives in war but as offenders of the law, as a result 10 of them voluntarily starved themselves to death, causing their leader to get elected to parliament from his prison cell, and invoked an intervention by the Pope and the EU human rights commission, and further exacerbated the troubles
- destruction of many traditional ways of life in areas of the country for laborers and trade unionists
Not that I care about being fair to Thatcher, but she wasn’t the first.
The milk thing can be summarized as such:
- 1906, kids are malnourished, let’s give them milk - some counties (LEAs but im trying to translate here) refused
- 1930, a bunch of counties are still refusing, they are encouraged
- 1945, schools are forced to give all children under 18 1/3 pint of milk a day (same government as founded the NHS btw)
- 1968 Harold Wilson’s Labour govt cut this to under 11 years old
- 1971 Edward Heath instructs Thatcher (then Education Secretary) to cut it to under 7 years old, she does, many schools pay for the milk themselves instead
- 1977 the EU allows for extra funding to be claimed on 7-18 year olds for milk if they are malnourished
- 1978 uk provided funding back to up to 12 year olds if their families were on government assistance
- 1979 Thatcher elected
- 1980 widened the subsidies for milk again
- 1986 narrowed to only government assistance families again
- 1995 it was cut again now to children 5 and under where it remains today
- 1997 Blair elected, program for healthy school meals is started shifting the focus from “milk” to all food and drink.
- 1999 report claims children eat unhealthier than they did in 1950
- 2001 Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver starts his School Dinners Campaign
TAX TO VOTE? Okay that made me actually LOL. Imagine not just thinking about this idea, but even implementing it. Hilarious.
to be fair, it wasn’t literally that (but it kinda was)
basically instead of taxing you based on where you lived or what you earned, it was changed based on “you existing” (ie practically this meant you were registered to vote, and/or rented a property or other legal mechanism determining you address, but the most common one being voter registration).
so in order to dodge the tax people had to keep moving house or not register to vote and instead of voting… rioted.
This is an excellent list of specific examples, but I think it fails to really capture the overall tone of Thatcher’s leadership.
I don’t think it is in any way an exaggeration to describe her government as fascist. Her rhetoric leaned heavily on nationalism. She spoke glowingly of the British empire, dehamunized the Irish, and treated the working class an enemy to be defeated. Her MPs spoke openly of their desire to see queer people eradicated. Under Thatcher policing in Britain became open warfare. She endorsed and encouraged every vile and base instinct of her conservative base. To describe her as the British Donald Trump only fails in one aspect; unlike Trump, she was often terrifyingly competent.
She had a very tough and uncompromising stance on most things, including Northern Ireland and the Troubles. Rather than seek compromise, she increased the military presence there, which many believe exacerbated and prolonged the situation.
It is, of course, much more complex than this, but her policies regarding Northern Ireland are a large factor in why she is not remembered fondly by many Irish.
