Margaret Thatcher

Think about how great it would be without the left wing bias and just plain wrong-ness of Radio NZ and TVNZ.

Earlier I blogged about what is happening in Greece…now the subsidised illuminati of the BBC are working themselves into a lather in the UK.

But others like me think it would be bliss, and the trough-snufflers of state funded broadcasting would finally have their throats cut.

John Humphrys has invited Radio 4 listeners to imagine life without the BBC. They are to picture themselves sitting down to watch Countryfile or Holby City, only for the screen to go black. That’s what happened to the Greek national broadcaster ERT, you see, the Hellenic equivalent of the BBC. On Tuesday night the good citizens of Greece were watching the news when… pfft. Apparently the money had run out.

I closed my eyes, but before I had a chance to imagine a Britain without the BBC, Humphrys dismissed the idea as “unimaginable”. You have to admire the complacency behind that “unimaginable”. The Herculean smugness. The scale of the self-congratulation. And it’s not just Humphrys. They’re all at it, all the 30,000 or so people who work for the BBC.  Read more »

The Daily Beast has put together this compilation of the best Margaret Thatcher:

Known for her firm convictions, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher knew how to make her point. Watch this mashup of some of her best lines.

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Michael Gove delivers up one great big long pommy sledge against Ed Miliband.

Now that Margaret Thatcher has died many of her famous lines are being recounted and you can really see just how effective a good sledge can be.

Edward Heath, who Thatcher deposed as the leader of the Conservative Party, had been powerless against the miners and their feared leader Arthur Scargill. When the Conservatives decisively won the election of 1979, Thatcher was unleashed. She said of Scargill, “Poor Arthur, he’s out on a limb, and all I have to help him with is a chainsaw.”  Read more »

Jeremy Elwood, the unfunny comedian who likes to dance on Margaret Thatchers grave, has shown no contrition.

He even thinks that she is the same as Adolf Hitler:

@irenecpink I will never apologise for dancing on Thatchers grave. She was my personal Hitler. P.H. was just a guy.

— Jeremy Elwood (@JeremyElwood) April 29, 2013

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While I don’t excuse Matthew Hooton’s brain explosion tweet:

Go @derekfox for byelection. U wld win for @maoriparty against @nzlabour – and become leader. #nzpol

— Matthew Hooton (@MatthewHootonNZ) April 29, 2013

I could not believe the gall of this reply from the ‘C’ grade, NZ on Air remunerated ‘comedian’ Jeremy Elwood:

@matthewhootonnz You know someone just died, right? I want to think you don’t because the level of fucktardness if you do is inexcusable. — Jeremy Elwood (@JeremyElwood) April 29, 2013

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The world needs leaders with conviction, what I call a gut politician. New Zealand desperately needs the same. Leaders like Margaret Thatcher who did what was required because it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately we get the limp “aspirational” politicians.

The nostalgia of the past week following the death of the former Conservative prime minister has shown that voters want a sense of moral mission.

The magic word of the week was “conviction” – which replaced “aspiration” as the one every political leader had to utter as many times as possible in every public pronouncement. There was no longer any question, apparently, about whether “conviction politics” was a good or a bad thing, or whether it was an optional extra for political leaders. (How did that notion ever get off the ground, anyway? After all, what is the alternative: lack-of-conviction politics?) Convictions are simply strongly held, principled beliefs. What business would you have pursuing power if you had no strong principled beliefs about what was right for the country?

Unfortunately, until about 20 minutes ago, it was fashionable to imply that there was something faintly demonic about being a conviction-led leader: that it was tantamount to demagoguery or just implacable bloody-mindedness. And no one was more guilty of perpetrating this fiction than the present generation of Tories. But let’s not go over that ground again. I have said it before and I repeat it here: the great Modernising Terror is over.

The events of this past week, when the ragged anti-Thatcher protest failed to gain any traction, and the nation seemed united in respect and admiration (to the manifest surprise of the BBC), snuffed out any remaining flicker of doubt. It is safe now to speak with reverence about what the Conservatives accomplished in the 1980s. Something like real politics is back. Even if nobody is absolutely sure what it might consist of, we have a pretty clear idea of what it should look like. It is fairly crucial that the people who espouse it sound as if they believe in something. Using the word “convictions” all the time without embarrassment is not quite the same thing as having them. But it’s a start.  Read more »

Steve Maharey writes at NBR:

I have been reflecting on the state of politics in the wake of Thatcher’s death. The outpouring of vitriol from the left is not something I share. After all, the real problem is not what Thatcher did but what those who want to see progressive politics failed to do.

They have never explained why policies that have caused so much pain for so little gain have endured and show no signs of going away. And why the left has yet to come up with a convincing narrative that will allow it to take over the policy steering wheel. Despite many worthy efforts, the left is still opposing right rather than proposing a clear alternative.

Never a truer word spoken. Good on Steve Maharey speaking out.

President Obama might have offered a way forward but, to date, has not. French President François Hollande has talked a good game but has become preoccupied with “domestic” issues. There is no other flag carrier on the horizon.  Read more »

At Quadrant Online, Gina Rinehart blogs about Rupert Murdoch’s speech to the Institute of Public Affairs:

I arrived in Melbourne in good time to neaten up for a dinner function celebrating the IPA’s 70 years. Although it seems a long way to fly from Tokyo for dinner, it was fantastic to see so many friendly and enthusiastic people. Thank you to all the friends and new friends who came to chat with me.

I spoke briefly, but it was the other speeches that made the night so worthwhile, including the address by IPA award winner Rupert Murdoch. He said the sort of things Baroness Thatcher would have appreciated because, like him, she strongly believed free societies are moral and socialism is not.

The speech she was talking about said this in main:

How often have you elected political leaders to fight against some horrible regulation or tax, only to watch as they basically agree to a watered down version of what their opponents are arguing?

Placating a nation is not leading a nation.

So long as we allow the debate to be framed by people who think the market is efficient because it is based on a human failing, we are going to lose every argument.

The only way to uphold market freedom is to show people that the market doesn’t succeed because of greed. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

The market succeeds because it gives people incentives to put their own wants and needs aside to address the wants and needs of others. To succeed, you have to produce something that other people are willing to pay for.

Of course the socialists would have you believe otherwise.

Matt Ridley is a British author who has given great thought to these issues. He wrote a famous book called The Rational Optimistthat many of you must know. He points out a few simple facts:

First, that today by almost any measure you can think of, people on this planet are better fed, better sheltered, and better protected than they’ve ever been – and that prosperity has really accelerated in the last 100 years. lndeed, that the average person’s standard of living has improved ten fold – yes, ten fold – in the last century.

Second, he says that the key is simply trade, or the interchange of goods, services, and ideas among people.

Let’s put this in human terms. Recently the World Bank reported that in 1981, 42% of people in the developing world had to live on less than a dollar a day. That is one-and-a-half billion people in poverty or starvation.

Thirty years later, the percentage has been reduced to 14%, a huge change in a relatively short period of time. What could be more moral than that?

This is unparalleled in history.  Read more »

Despite the spin from Downing Street that David Cameron is offering a Thatcherite solution for Britain I have my doubts. I don’t think David Cameron has the guts for a scrap. The Tories face the same problem as National does here.

After years of demonisation by the left who wrote the narrative for too long, and locked in expensive welfare programmes to keep the electorate enslaved, their focus groups told them that they had to be nice. So rather than grasp the nettle against unions and special interests and speaking truth to the elecotrate about the dire consequences both John Key and David Cameron took the wet option.

It is time they manned up.

Unfortunately the numbers are against both.

Sometimes in politics, numbers speak more eloquently than any words. Those figures are not a grid reference, yet they point to the central issue in Conservative Party politics after Margaret Thatcher. They also describe the struggle facing the man trying to fill her shoes.

The first three numbers are the share of the vote Baroness Thatcher took in the general elections she fought as Conservative leader, in 1979, 1983 and 1987. The last, smaller, figure is Mr Cameron’s score in 2010. The difference forced him into coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

What were the components of Lady Thatcher’s victories? And can Mr Cameron ever hope to reassemble all the pieces of the puzzle and build something not seen since 1997 – an all-Conservative Government?   Read more »