He managed to work “Thatcher” in, so extra Guardian points for that.
Always a good time to revisit the original “society” quote.
Extract here: 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 …
Will I ever understand the relationship the British have with Thatcher? Most criticism sounds Like my 5-year-old’s complaints. “Mummy took our toys away” “Mummy didn’t love us enough”. Since Thatcher, Britain was run by spineless men like Blair, Boris and Cameron. Cameron is currently employed by China! And yet they get a fraction of the criticism that Margareth receives. She had to run a nearly bankrupt country due to socialist pipe dreams. As an Anglophile, I have a problem with two things regarding the British, their over-fondness of pets and their Edipian relationship with Maggie Thatcher
I’m sure it is perplexing. On the flip side, she won one landslide election and two more very comfortably. Many people rightly credit her with reversing national decline; but I accept the criticism that nothing replaced the heavy industry and manufacturing that were lost, although this had been happening since the late 60s. The useless men who followed have had 30 years to ‘level up’ as it where, but instead pursued policies of high immigration, low wage jobs and dumbed-down university courses over technical or vocational skills.
Like many western countries the heavy industrial jobs went – and were replaced by work that is thought based, of the intellect. Most folk are better off, and their lives much enhanced because of that. The mistake was not to resist the sucking south east vortex that this created – made much worse by improving transport links so that businesses could be based in the south east. See what effect HS2 will have Birmingham in the long term.
Also of course we insist on educating people for a world that no longer exists. We need vocational education to teach modern technology and all its spin offs. Study the arts when you take early retirement!
Because all problems can be be solved privately can they? Destroy all affordable public housing, which in turn kept private rents down, allow builders free reign to build anywhere, remove all minimum space, light, area, storage, requirements as “an impediment to the market” MT and what is the reult? Paying 60% of income to rent, rather then 30%. Hooray for the ‘market’.
Maureen Finucane
1 year ago
Why have so many of the men who visited Epsteins Island never been prosecuted?
They were too important and Maxwell probably wanted to stay alive, even if in prison.
AC Harper
1 year ago
And the point of this article is?
The law is based on the idea that we are agents, and finds us guilty (or not) of the things we did. It is one of the ways our societies hang together and don’t degenerate into vendetta.
Claiming ever more distant events added to our causes as an excuse for our illegal actions also means that we should allow for the ever more distant events that improved our behaviour. It is just handwaving, trying to sound profound, when really the immediate causes and effects are enough.
Michael Butcher
1 year ago
Too little on « But we shouldn’t allow them to get away with it either. »
mike ogrady
1 year ago
Thanks TE….prompted some personal reflections and the theme itself is so ripe …just listening to some John Martyn and reading this article…https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/17373827.musical-genius-wasted-talent-search-real-john-martyn/
Fate, inheritance, choice, what does freedom mean…in the end the deepest questions possible…glad you address them and prompt reflection, which is what writing prompts and allows…
Many commentators on Unherd never get beyond point scoring politics it seems to me…(he mentioned Thatcher!) every piece is nothing more than a red rag to their ongoing rage…..surely writing is far more than this…it is for me….whether I ‘agree’ with it or not…and so poor is writing if all you can do is ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with it or what you see in it..
JR Stoker
1 year ago
Grief, how many times does it have to be pointed that that is not what Margaret Thatcher said; she said that there is no such thing as the opinion of society; and there isn’t.
But more to the point, this article invents a theory, then invents the facts to fit it. Mr Maxwell’s children were no doubt a bit nervous about him in a rage, but actually they so far as can be seen loved him; they are a very close family. And Ghislaine was a friend of a monster, rich, and English. She was never going to escape that burden in a courtroom.
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Wow. How does this guy get up in the morning?
David Evans
1 year ago
While we may all be victims of our inheritance, Ghislaine Maxwell was also victim of Israel. Maxwell and Epstein ran an Israeli blackmail operation that helped assure perpetual US-Uk-led wars to advance Israel’s Balkanizing Oded Yinon plan of perpetual chaos.
Peter Dunn
1 year ago
Terry the stuff they sell nowadays is wayyy more damaging than the grass you used to smoke..
He managed to work “Thatcher” in, so extra Guardian points for that.
Always a good time to revisit the original “society” quote.
Full interview here:
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689
Will I ever understand the relationship the British have with Thatcher? Most criticism sounds Like my 5-year-old’s complaints. “Mummy took our toys away” “Mummy didn’t love us enough”. Since Thatcher, Britain was run by spineless men like Blair, Boris and Cameron. Cameron is currently employed by China! And yet they get a fraction of the criticism that Margareth receives. She had to run a nearly bankrupt country due to socialist pipe dreams. As an Anglophile, I have a problem with two things regarding the British, their over-fondness of pets and their Edipian relationship with Maggie Thatcher
I’m sure it is perplexing. On the flip side, she won one landslide election and two more very comfortably. Many people rightly credit her with reversing national decline; but I accept the criticism that nothing replaced the heavy industry and manufacturing that were lost, although this had been happening since the late 60s. The useless men who followed have had 30 years to ‘level up’ as it where, but instead pursued policies of high immigration, low wage jobs and dumbed-down university courses over technical or vocational skills.
Like many western countries the heavy industrial jobs went – and were replaced by work that is thought based, of the intellect. Most folk are better off, and their lives much enhanced because of that. The mistake was not to resist the sucking south east vortex that this created – made much worse by improving transport links so that businesses could be based in the south east. See what effect HS2 will have Birmingham in the long term.
Also of course we insist on educating people for a world that no longer exists. We need vocational education to teach modern technology and all its spin offs. Study the arts when you take early retirement!
How true that quote remains.
Conversely, the existence of society is an excuse for not doing anything to support others
Please to see that you have found the full statement that Thatcher made. It cannot be quoted often enough.
Because all problems can be be solved privately can they? Destroy all affordable public housing, which in turn kept private rents down, allow builders free reign to build anywhere, remove all minimum space, light, area, storage, requirements as “an impediment to the market” MT and what is the reult? Paying 60% of income to rent, rather then 30%. Hooray for the ‘market’.
Why have so many of the men who visited Epsteins Island never been prosecuted?
They were too important and Maxwell probably wanted to stay alive, even if in prison.
And the point of this article is?
The law is based on the idea that we are agents, and finds us guilty (or not) of the things we did. It is one of the ways our societies hang together and don’t degenerate into vendetta.
Claiming ever more distant events added to our causes as an excuse for our illegal actions also means that we should allow for the ever more distant events that improved our behaviour. It is just handwaving, trying to sound profound, when really the immediate causes and effects are enough.
Too little on « But we shouldn’t allow them to get away with it either. »
Thanks TE….prompted some personal reflections and the theme itself is so ripe …just listening to some John Martyn and reading this article…https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/17373827.musical-genius-wasted-talent-search-real-john-martyn/
Fate, inheritance, choice, what does freedom mean…in the end the deepest questions possible…glad you address them and prompt reflection, which is what writing prompts and allows…
Many commentators on Unherd never get beyond point scoring politics it seems to me…(he mentioned Thatcher!) every piece is nothing more than a red rag to their ongoing rage…..surely writing is far more than this…it is for me….whether I ‘agree’ with it or not…and so poor is writing if all you can do is ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with it or what you see in it..
Grief, how many times does it have to be pointed that that is not what Margaret Thatcher said; she said that there is no such thing as the opinion of society; and there isn’t.
But more to the point, this article invents a theory, then invents the facts to fit it. Mr Maxwell’s children were no doubt a bit nervous about him in a rage, but actually they so far as can be seen loved him; they are a very close family. And Ghislaine was a friend of a monster, rich, and English. She was never going to escape that burden in a courtroom.
Wow. How does this guy get up in the morning?
While we may all be victims of our inheritance, Ghislaine Maxwell was also victim of Israel. Maxwell and Epstein ran an Israeli blackmail operation that helped assure perpetual US-Uk-led wars to advance Israel’s Balkanizing Oded Yinon plan of perpetual chaos.
Terry the stuff they sell nowadays is wayyy more damaging than the grass you used to smoke..