The Iron Lady

[Joe]

The new film about Mrs Thatcher looks to be one to watch.

[just john]

One very topical quote ''The medicine is hard, but its what the patient needs''

 

[Alan Zoff]

Having lived through the Thatcher years, read a number of books about her and absorbed the countless opinions expressed for and against, I am drawn more and more to the conclusion that she was simply in the right place at the right time. As a British Leyland senior manager told me many years ago, Thatcher came along when the unions had become something of a bad joke. (Interestingly, he attributed their power not to socialism or Red Robbo but to weak management of which he admitted he was a part.) It was time for change and ambitious Maggie happened to be there at the time, surrounded by lack-lustre colleagues. If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else, although she had the added novelty value of being a tough-talking woman.

She then grew into the role that the media - and political stylists - created for her. Like Blair with Bush later, she grabbed the coat-tails of an American president to lift her profile still further and the Lady who wasn't for turning tore up the monetarist rule book that had been at the heart of her economic policy.

She had already been losing popularity when the Falklands War came along to save her. After that, it became unpatriotic not to support the Iron Lady (another lesson not missed by Blair).

In short, her specialness was very much overblown.

I will be interested to see what slant the film puts on things.

[Anton Redman]

There was no decent management of British Leyland.

Anybody who had not had 90% of there brain amputated would have worked out that for instance launching the Triumph Stag with a new V8 when the Buick V8 that Rover had sourced was available did not make anysense.

Ditto the Maxi / Allegro 1500 / 1750 engine which was designed as 1000 cc with a stretch to 1300 cc.

BL was controlled by Stokes who had made Leylands money bribing people in Africa to buy their buses

[Alan Zoff]

Ah the Triumph Stag. My first boss had one.

He took me out in it only once; I don't think he managed many more trips in it himself. His language could be colourful at the best of times but the profanities surely peaked during his ownership of that car. I had an 80 quid old banger at the time and it must have hurt when I had to rescue him with a lift home.

Sorry. Gone way off topic. But "old banger" - perhaps not so far off.