NYC crime down 90% in less than 3 decades

[lilpixieofterror]

She was wrong about pretty much everything, and her political policies were atrocious. What else is new?

Which means she was right since pretty much everything you say is wrong. In many ways you’re like a lighthouse on bad ideas. Warning everyone to stay away.

[lilpixieofterror]

Margaret Thatcher named worst Prime Minister in 100 years (2016 poll of historical writers), even beating the notable failure Neville Chamberlain.

Rating her lower than the man that nearly gave away the world to Hitler tells us how seriously we should take a word you or your source says.

So I don't find something Thatcher once said to be worthwhile evidence for the truth of your worldview. I think your own political position has been repeatedly proven empirically around the world to be an utter failure. People across the Western world are increasingly sick of your idiotic and ideological right-wing policies that only serve to harm most of society while funneling money into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. It's time for a bit more government by the people and for the people, rather than having the ultra-rich owning the politicians who in turn funnel money into their pockets via things like the recent Republican tax scam bill and ludicrous military spending that are both blowing up the debt and deficit.

Yep only the truly stupid and inept would seriously say letting people keep their own money is a bad idea that’s doing so bad that the unemployment rate is down, stocks are up, and pay is increasing for workers. Only Starlight fantasy land would that be a failure. More proof that every time that hole in your face opens, we should start laughing.

[Terraceth]

Margaret Thatcher named worst Prime Minister in 100 years (2016 poll of historical writers), even beating the notable failure Neville Chamberlain.

First, trying to rank an in-office person is completely absurd; you have to let them complete their term in order to fairly compare them (actually, you probably should wait a while even then, so examinations can be done more objectively).

Second, the survey is of the "Historical Writers Association". Who are these? Well, according to their site, "The HWA exists to promote, support and connect authors of historical fiction and non-fiction." So the only apparent criteria to joining is to write something about history, which doesn't even have to be non-fiction;. In what way does that make one particularly knowledgeable about history? Plenty of people will write books on subjects they know surprisingly little about. So this really isn't a group of actual historians. Even worse, these aren't necessarily "historical writers" of British history, it's anyone who qualifies as a "historical writer" even if what they've written is about King Henry VIII. So you can get someone whose knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with the past Prime Ministers of the UK.

In other words, there's little reason to consider the group to be in any way authoritative on this subject and a lot of them probably don't know that much outside of popular culture depictions. The fact Nevile Chamberlain got as much of the vote as he did is a strong indicator of that--Chamberlain was actually a lot better than a lot of people think, but his flaws get dramatically exaggerated in popular culture. This suggests that a good number of these "historical writers" are relying less on a legitimate appraisal from research and more from popular culture depictions of him.

So basically, there's very little reason to put any credence whatsoever into the results of this.

[Roy]

First, trying to rank an in-office person is completely absurd;

Um, what? They didn't list Ms May...

[Starlight]

Um, what? They didn't list Ms May...

Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May... both women, both with names with similar initial letters, both widely disliked Conservative PMs, so probably the same person right?

[demi-conservative]

Margaret Thatcher named worst Prime Minister in 100 years (2016 poll of historical writers), even beating the notable failure Neville Chamberlain.

'historical writers' just means authors. Random people writing fiction of history dislike Thatcher, who cares libtard.

Can you try harder? No, you like useless popularity surveys too much, rabbit.

[Sparko]

She was wrong about pretty much everything, and her political policies were atrocious. What else is new?

Why don't you move to a socialist country Starlight? That way you will be happier. You seem to love socialism and defend it at every turn. Go for it! Move! I would ask you to tell us how you like it later on, but you probably won't have internet access, so we will just have to imagine the paradise you will be living in.

[Mountain Man]

Margaret Thatcher named worst Prime Minister in 100 years (2016 poll of historical writers), even beating the notable failure Neville Chamberlain.

Shows you how worthless a poll of historical writers is.

[Mountain Man]

And then there's this:

MPs vote Margaret Thatcher ‘best modern prime minister’

And this:

Margaret Thatcher judged to be best post-war prime minister by politicians of all parties

Not saying that these polls are any more correct or definitive than the one Dimbulb posted. I'm just demonstrating that you can find a poll to support pretty much any view you want.

[seer]

The only thing here that's never worked is your brain. Try engaging it before making such absurd statements.

Tell me Star, why are former Communist countries like Russia and China moving towards Capitalism? As fast as they can...

[One Bad Pig]

Tell me Star, why are former Communist countries like Russia and China moving towards Capitalism? As fast as they can...

I don't know that I'd call Russia especially capitalist at this point, or even moving that way. There was an immediate shift post-communism, but they seem to have steadily moved back the other way since.

[seer]

I don't know that I'd call Russia especially capitalist at this point, or even moving that way. There was an immediate shift post-communism, but they seem to have steadily moved back the other way since.

No, even with all their problems they are still capitalist, and I suspect that North Korea and Cuba will follow in a few years, like Vietnam...

[Terraceth]

Um, what? They didn't list Ms May...

Sorry, I got Margaret Thatcher mixed up with Theresa May. That was totally my bad. I think the rest of my points stand, though.

Incidentally, as part of my point was that the poll wasn't of actual historians with interest in the relevant areas. As noted, it was only of "historical writers" (not historians) and there was no indication that said historical writers actually wrote about anything relevant to prime ministers of the last century. So what do actual historians who have done research on the applicable subjects have to say? Well, if we look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...United_Kingdom

Yeah, I know, Wikipedia, but it is just reporting on surveys here. Now, some of the surveys it shows aren't of historians (e.g. the last few are popular opinion), but the first 4 are relatively recent surveys among historians with interest in the relevant areas. Their date ranges differ, but Margaret Thatcher is ranked highly in all of these. 4/20 in the first, 2/12 in the second, 1/12 in the third, and 2/13 in the fourth. Additionally, in the poll of "historical writers" that was posted, the top 6 worst were Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Neville Chamberlain, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown/Edward Heath (the last two were tied). Noticeably, Anthony Eden isn't in those top 6 despite getting dead last in all four of those historian rankings I pointed to.

Someone can of course try to argue the historians have it wrong, and maybe they are. But I can't help but notice that the actual historians' assessment is at such dramatic difference with the poll of "historical writers" that was posted that supposedly showed Margaret Thatcher was considered the worst.

EDIT: Another goof on my part, the third of the four surveys wasn't of historians, but of MPs. But as before, even removing that from consideration, all the points otherwise stand.

[Starlight]

Why don't you move to a socialist country Starlight? That way you will be happier.

Depends what you mean by "socialism", that's a broad category and by many measures I live in a socialist country. The current Prime Minister here was in 2008 elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth. We've had 'socialist' healthcare here for the past 76 years. The political science name for political environment of NZ and the Scandinavian countries would be "social democracies".

You seem to love socialism and defend it at every turn.

I would consider my views as falling broadly under the general category of "socialism". I hold the positions I do because I think they have been shown historically by empirical data to be the optimal political policies. The countries in today's world where the citizens consistently rate themselves as happiest and which consistently score the highest on multivariate empirical studies have the policies closest to those I would consider optimal.

I would ask you to tell us how you like it later on, but you probably won't have internet access, so we will just have to imagine the paradise you will be living in.

Why on earth would a socialist country not have internet access? The government here has been busily upgrading internet across the country over the last few years (fiber to every home), and my own internet connection has improved substantially directly as a result of government spending. Since my country is a long way from others and has quite a low population density, leaving internet provision in the hands of private industry made it quite expensive and low quality, but getting some good old socialist government spending on infrastructure improvement has made it better in both end-user-price and speed/bandwidth.

[Starlight]

Basically Margaret Thatcher got a lot of stuff done. A pretty large percentage of the population considered a lot of what she got done to be bad things. So if you are assessing her as a leader, you've got to decide to what extent your criteria focuses on that the leader achieved things versus the extent that the leader achieved good things.

It's like assessing Stalin as a leader. Certainly Stalin was a forceful leader who got Things Done. He's one for the history books. So does he get "10/10 Russia's best leader ever"? Well not if you consider that the Things Done were mostly bad things. But is that relevant to whether he is labelled one of "History's Great Leaders"?

Obviously with Thatcher, the Bad Things weren't as bad as in Stalin's case, and some people view those Bad Things as actually being good. But the point remains that everyone agrees she was a leader who Got Stuff Done, but the quality of that stuff was controversial at best.


The point remains that I am not a fan of Thatcher, and think she was mostly wrong on most things, and so MM quoting her to say that socialism is bad is something I would consider evidence for socialism being good to the extent that I would take it seriously at all.