The day that Thatcher dies

Oh Christ yeah, that was fucking funny! That was Peter Richardson too, wasn't it? Playing Al Pacino playing Scargill....

 

But that sidesteps the issue of the potential contribution to society of the individuals you have chosen to remove. If your policies prevent a Hawking from being born, you would be responsible for diminishing society not improving it.

If you assume that intellect is entirely a product of nurture rather than nature (I think it's probably a bit of both), how does that help the case for sterilising the disabled? Presumably on your terms, our hypothetical disabled genius would provide a positive learning environment and his child would be an above average intellect and likely be able to provide a valuable contribution to society, just like his dad?

And on the matter of nature / nurture....
You say having stupid parents would mean that you want to be more clever, whereas having bright parents would mean that you would feel the need to excel; or in other words, no matter what the learning environment, there is always incentive to do well. This is a little inconsistent and simplistic. You could equally make the case that being surrounded by dummies would mean you would have no incentive to learn, leading to a downward trend. But there is neither a downward nor an upward trend, but a normalising trend. In general, morons don't give birth to geniuses, but neither do geniuses; people always tend upwards or downwards towards the average, perhaps suggesting a genetic element to intelligence, and indicating that both the well above average and well below average intellects are freaks.

This comes back to the limited criteria upon which you make these kinds of judgements. There are many physical disabilities which have no impact on a person's mental abilities or their ability to live their lives as they wish. They may experience life in a way which is different to most people, and this itself may give them greater insight. This additional individual perspective can do nothing other than enrich society as a whole. It's quite despicable to look at a disabled person and assume that they would be better off if they had never been born - that judgement is not anyone's to make but the individual concerned.

Eugenics seeks always to homogenise a society towards a certain model of normality. Any such conception of normality is necessarily subjective, limited, biased, flawed. There is no such thing as objectively normal. Genetic mutations might prove detrimental in some aspects while providing for the possibility of greater diversity and difference in others. In eugenics there is the potential for mistakes and abuse. You may deprive society of valuable contributions not to mention depriving individuals of their own potentially valuable experience.

When can any of that ever be a good thing? It can only be seen as good if you regard society, an abstract concept, as more important than actual people, if you value normality above individuality, and if you hold obedience and state control to be more important than personal freedom. In other words, only if you have fascist tendencies.

 

Hmm, you're quite right in every point you make, I can't really keep up the devils advocate position any more on this one as I've got no sympathy for the idea at all and I can't find any convincing positives about it. It's still a subject that really interests me though, I think I need to find someone who passionately believes in eugenics and pick their brains for a bit, trying not to jump up and slap them of course but no promises eh ...

 

Oh I'm sorry, the question was "how will you feel when Thatcher dies". I didn't realise that meant only one perspective was allowed.

Must... resist... the... urge... to... have... my... own... opinion.

Tony Benn is exactly the sort of socialist dinosaur that Thatcher drove out of the political mainstream forever. Good riddance.

And DA you can stop whining now, its been 14 years. Or do you still want the coal mines reopened?

 

Thank you. That would be doing a service to the human beings on these boards.

On the bright side, he'll still be politically active when she's just dust on the crematorium floor. Oh yeah, and I'd hardly call Thatcher mainstream anymore. She's exactly the sort of capitalist dinosaur that Blair's driven out of the political mainstream forever!

If you can get your tongue out of Maggies ass crack for a minute, you might want to consider exactly why the mines were allegedly uneconomic to begin with. Could it possibly have anything to do with the cheap, heavily subsidised foreign coal that we were importing? Isn't subsidy the sort of thing that free market economists are supposed to be opposed to? So wouldn't that make it a mistake to allow a national industry to be destroyed when it was never competing on a level playing field to begin with? Not to mention the fact that once closed, mines are virtually impossible to re-open. That's be the much-vaunted Conservative sense of patriotism and national pride, huh?

 

Aww c'mon Starfly! It's a bit of an extreme left-wing position that, isn't it? Y'know, not wanting to kill people 'n' all!!!

 

If you read back you will find that my perspective is slightly differerent as I will not be celebrating when Thatcher dies, nor will I be mourning, death is not a good thing to celebrate, no matter who is on the recieving end ... plus there is no point as the damage has already been done.

Prime minister Thatcher was a warmonger and, in spite of her claims to a humble upbringing, she was no ally to the ordinary working man.

I just found this ... haven't read it yet but I'm about to:

http://www.maggiethatchersdead.co.uk/

 

Sorry, you'll just have to deal with a diversity of opinion. Don't cry, it'll be OK.

Large parts of Thatcherism represent the mainstream now. Tony Blair knows good policy when he sees it.

Patriotism and national pride have no place in economic policy. The market will decide what industries the UK is competitive at, not state planners. If peope want to sell us subsidised coal, let's take it and use it to increase our advantage in industries we are already competitive at.

There may still be people such as yourself who nearly 20 years later wish we kept alive a dirty, dangerous industry mining a highly polluting energy resource at prices higher than could be fetched on the world market. Fortunately, Thatcher ended that kind of economic thinking. No country ever got rich subsidising coal mines.

 

no but this country completely screwed a massive portion of it's workforce that way, if you really think that Thatchers 'policy' on the coal mines was ok then I'm going to have to put forward the idea that you have no compassion whatsoever for the people that ended up homeless (some of whom are still on the streets) and hold only money in regard, not a template for a healthy human being I'm afraid.

 

Eww, bad place, bad place *cries*

 

heh, the one bit of good she's done the country if providing a face for men to think of when they need to 'last longer'!

 

Surely that's just gonna kill it dead right?

 

well, at least you'd be able to try again in a few weeks when you got over the shock, we could have been talking about Regan!

 

Hahaha, mine's Ann Widdecombe!

 

OK, now you're just scaring me.

Don't mix sex with politics!!

 

too true, looks like I'm going to have to apologise for degenerating the thread into a childish conversation about sex, sorry guys...


Showmet: well, just think of Maggie as a back up plan for when you get a REALLY hot chick!

 

Paul, I thought your question was genuine. Its just that some here don't want alternate view. I tried your link, seems a bit over the top!

Tony Benn strongly opposes war, and strongly supports doing fuck all in the face of tyranny. He didn't care if Saddam stayed in power. He opposed military action against Serbia. He is opposed to the trial of Milosovic. He is a clueless socialist dope. I deeply enjoyed seeing him humiliated by an angry Iraqi woman at a protest in London asking him how exactly he suggested getting rid of Saddam "Er umm.. its the Americans fault he's there... we need more diplomacy... er... negotiations..." That's the thing about Benn, he keeps his policies far enough away from reality that he is never in danger of being relevant.

So having among the lowest inflation, lowest unemployment, and fastest expected GDP growth in the EU is your definition of tough times for the UK economy?

The UK economy cannot be frozen in time to preserve incumbent industries. And any industry which has been declining for 20 years has given its participants more than enough notice that there will be a time when you have to move on. Are you telling me this people sat there watching the industry decline for 20 YEARS and then when they lost their job -BOOM!- instantly homeless? I'm not buying that.

You capitalise 'imports' as if there is something outrageous about products from other countries. Hasn't - and isn't it still - British porcelain been exported for at least 100 years? Do you want only British cars and British televisions allowed in the country? Should British musicians be forced to compte with foreign musicians for CD sales?

 

Oh no, I insist. Shedding tears of laughter at what a stupid, ignorant little **** you easier to tolerate

But large parts of it have been abandoned, even by her own party. Major ditched the poll tax faster than a whore dropping her knickers, and subsequent Tory leaders have done all they can to distance themselves from privatisation.

Well we're agreed on that much at least. You might want to mention that to the tory party though.

Even if we're left with no jobs and no national industries at the end of it? You're really blind, aren't you? How long do you think we'd have lasted in WWII if we'd had no native industries? Kinda ironic when you think that most of the subsidised coal we were importing in the 80s was German. And what happends when cheap supplies have dried up and our own mines are no longer viable? Your attitude stinks of the typical short term idiocy that has always blinded free marketeers.

Oh, excuse me. Weren't you suggesting that we should rely on cheap, imported coal? Y'know, from some of those third world countries with poor working conditions and safety standards? You just make this shit up as you go along, don't you? One minute you're saying we should buy our coal cheap from abroad, and then the next minute you're arguing we should close the mines because they're not very green. Make your fucking mind up.

What's a gimp like you doing in a hippy forum anyway? Just here to check out the chicks or something?

 

Tony Benn Readily admitted that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, he doesn't apoplogise for him, he just gets things into their correct perspective.

The argument that he puts forward was that it was the US who financed and armed him, and that was long before the Iran/Iraq war. There was a trade embargo on US buying fuel from the middle east and Saddam Hussein took advantage of this to sell oil to the US. It was this US money that built Iraq up to become a modern country. At one time the Iraqi people had a health service that was deemed to be one of the best in the world. There was employment and there was stability.

It was estimated that 500,000 people died as a direct result of trade sanctions imposed after the first gulf war. A war that started because Kuwait was stealing Iraq oil by cross drilling the Ramada oilfield. Saddam Hussein approached the UN and asked for permission to take action against Kuwait, The UN virtually gave him permission to do what he needed to, they just never expected him to invade.

Plus we have still not seen any weapons of mass destruction, except those owned by the US.


http://www.tonybenn.com/Articles.html

 

Not half as much as I enjoyed watching the coppers sieve bits of Lord Mountbatten outta the lake after the IRA toasted him