....and not forgetting her military defence cuts which invited a war. With a desparate dictator seeking glory of taking the malvinas under Argy control to keep him in power, Thatch signals to them to invade by taking away its only defence - removing HMS Endurance from protecting the islands . We then had the embarressment of having to patch up our armed forces that simply was not ready for such a conflict away from our shores - ie loss of too many lives, and ships because of defence cuts etc. We even had the USA ready to bail us out with air craft carriers. This against a tinpot army of unmotivated reluctant conscripts.
Brave people lost their lives unnecessary and Thatch became the hero, and given even more power with a landslide election. The government had the warnings but you don't hear much about it apart from how Britain rules the waves.

Her biggest battle was with the Foreign Office who were, to a man, against any conflict whatsoever. Thankfully she had more balls than any of them.

Agree. But her government did not recognise the threat even though they was made fully aware. That war could have been a complete embarressment and even more costly if it wasn't for the brave armed forces fighting with arms behind their backs. We was totally unprepared for such a war, and it was totally avoidable.

I'll let it go as you only support Fax so know no better.

Kids today.

your obviously not old enough to have actually seen or understood what she caused.

run along now i think your mammys calling

I know, i know, what can you do? Thankfully there were tougher people than you from your generation to sort out the undesirables. I know if someone attacked my homeland i would want my government to defend me and not simply pat me on the head and remove me to New Zealand.

Homeland ? How many times have you been there ? You right wing loonie and I know you are joking.



Along time ago and not something worth shouting about.

See you before the game May 30th we will have a pint talk about what we both care about and then probably beat 7 bells out of each other.

It'll be a one sided beating - i am almost too wee



I am a right wing loony though. I thought Mrs Thatch was bloody great. Sexy minx.

Now you have got me annoyed so I'll only get you a half.

sorry frank but i have to agree with littlerich in all of this argument.it dosen't matter if it was for political reasons or if it was for oil, the facts are the falklands are a british dependency and as such they needed to be defended accordingly.

shocking lack of knowledge you show with this statement.
if i was to say to you in 1978 there was less than one & a half million on the dole & less than one & a half million claiming invalidity benefit what would you say?.
if i said in 1984 there was over 3million on the dole & anything up to 5 million claiming invalidity benifit what would you say?.
if i was to say to you margaret payed for this with the sale of north sea gas & oil & with the selling off of all the company that you allready owned like telicom,gas,electricity,steel,water & any other profit making company that you care to mention.
margeret sorted out the unions & for that she should be praised.but sadly theres been a price to pay & that price is millions of people now think benefits are a right & not just a fail safe when things go wrong.

This Labour Government sent our troops off to die in Iraq based on a lie.
We have body bags being shipped home every week from Afganistan.
Gordon Brown as chancellor created a £75billion pound hole in everyones pensions, he's a much bigger thie than Robert Maxwell ever was.
Labour promised no more boom and bust and yet we are in the middle of the biggest recession for 70 years.
My kids are 2 and 4, they both have £25,000 worth of debt thanks to Gordon Brown.
So stop going on about the mistake of Margret Thatcher and have a close look at the disaster that has been the Labour party running this country.
Unfortunately in some communities, you could dress up a pig, stick a red rosette on it and you'd have a labour MP.

Blimey - how many Wii games have they been buying!!!!

What is spounge? Did you mean sponge? And i do hope you were being sarcastic!

it doesn't really matter to the masses who is in power, if the tories get in they only look after the rich, we will get screwed either way,

it's Gordon for me Magic Man

a lot of reference on this post is made to the scummy people who infest leigh town centre and margaret thatcher and they are indelibly linked.
Thatcher created a complete underclass in society with no hope( hence the riots).

a lot of the youth in question are the first generation of that underclass

Mo's manifesto - remember vote Mo

1. Abolish Social Security payments for those out of work for over 3 months, replace with vouchers for food clothes etc ie all essentials. Often money is made available for children who never see it, vouchers ensure they do
2. All out of work after 3 months are forced into community work, ie cleaning streets, parks, cutting grass etc This shows they are wanting work and retains a must work mentality, showing children its a way of life to get up and earn an income, not get pregnant at 16 get a council house, breed and never work
3. Repatriate all illegal immigrants without appeal
4. No state financial support for immigrants entering the UK
5. Relocate many government departments away from London. Reduce costs and spread wealth
6. Change sick pay/pensions for all local government/health/police/education employees, its unsustainable.
7. Impose import taxes at a level of the exporting country to protect whats left of British manufacturing
8. Implement significant tax breaks for manufacturing industry in the UK
9. Reduce tax at the higher band, we need these people to stimulate growth
10. Withdraw from humah rights garbage, this no longer achieves what it was set up to protect.
11. Revise legal aid and look at the claims culture we have become, we protect the scum over the average man.
12. Change criteria for disability, those that are get too little because too many have jumped on the bandwagon.
13. Get Afghanistan sorted properly, appeasement never works, we are in so lets get on with it.
14. Sort out S.Korea and Iran before its too late
15. Sort out Israel, get them back to the borders they started at.

Thatch made a mistake with her cost cutting and got us involved in a war with Argies.
Thatch as history has shown would have done the same as Blair with Iraq. Britain and USA always seemingly take brunt of these conflicts over the years while other countries have their principles and are too frightened to make the hard decisions. Nobody wants to go to war. Labs and Tories backed the war. Only Libs didn't because of course they change their views depending on opinion on that given week, which is hardly a recipe for making them difficult unpopular but necessary decisions.


The pensions has been a problem for years. Not enough money will be going in the pot mainly due to an aging population ratio wise. Again super Thatch couldn't have done much about this.

Its a global recession that has hit everyone and caught most governments and businesses by surprise. He admitted to mistakes being done and could have done things differently - takes a big man to do that considering how unpopular you would be. But I prefer him to have a go to stem the recession and get us out of it quicker rather than Tories usual plan of cutting and letting it happen.

Thatch sorted the last recession out in a different way which caused too much suffering. We will only know in a few years whether this different approach works. Thatch privatised companies, sold off our Gas reserves cheaply (so now we are more reliant from abroad), sold off council houses for the government pot to keep people on the dole - this government can't do that. She brought in the unfair poll tax, misread the Argy situation to then put us in a war and it goes on. Its very easy to look at now because of the Global recession when most of us are suffering and look back at the 80's under Thatch with the tinted glasses.

Agree. There is guaranteed support for Tories and Labour no matter what, which show them as lazy and ignorant voters.
I hated Thatch at the time but now can appreciate she did some good, and she has played her part for some of us getting on in the world nowadays. The country was on its knees when she took over, with a workforce ruled by unions that where more interested in striking than helping Britain compete with other countries - she gets a well done on that score for crushing the Unions.

maurice-with a little bit of tinkering you'd get my vote but sadly its to late for you to stand so i guess i wont be voting again.

Is that a 'George W Bush moment' there Maurice? Invading the wrong Korea

Getting back to the original topic, I'm glad to see the old Woolworths store in use again instead of the boarded up mess it had become. Pity we couldn't have had a WH Smith or HMV as there's nowhere to buy a CD or DVD in the town centre these days.

Since you mention it, the Leigh stations were closed under Harold McMillain's Tory government as a part of the cuts introduced by Dr Beeching, and Leigh lost its town hall to Wiggin in the 1974 Local Government reorganisation under the Tory government of Edward Heath.

Hopefully Cameron can obliterate the whole Town



Only joking of course.

And after weve done the short ar$ed slant eyed buggers in the South we can take on their cousins up North