Talk:Margaret Thatcher

Legacy section

I moved the passage regarding Mrs. Thatcher's various honours from the Falkland Islanders (Margaret Thatcher Day, etc) out of foreign honours, and with the section on her British hoinours. Clearly honours for Mrs. Thatcher from the Falkland Islanders are not foreign, they are British. CMarshall (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Mrs Thatcher - "This is no time to get wobbly"

I am certain that this well known remark was not made to President Bush, senior. It happened in the build up to the Falklands War, not the Gulf War. The circumstances were that the US Secretary of State - Al Haig and his entourage were in 10 Downing Street discussing the pros and cons with Mrs. Thatcher. What I believe she actually said was - " This is no time to get wobbly, Al." And when returning by car to the US Embassy in London, one of his group remarked to Haig. "Do you realise that Mrs. Thatcher has given you a new name?" Asked to explain, he was told that he was now 'Wobbly Al'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottishbrian (talk • contribs) 08:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Abolition of councils

The following line should be deleted or edited;

' Several of them had however rendered themselves politically vulnerable by committing public funds to causes seen as extreme.'

Criticism of criticism results in flip-flop tit-for-tat edits by those with opposing viewpoints. This information should be included in the first sentence regarding the councils, not as a response to the alternative viewpoint. A key giveaway is the double-use of 'however' in the same paragraph. Also, its a partisan line - obviously the councils didn't see themselves as 'extreme,' or their policies as 'politically vulnerable' - only those opposing the council's policies hold this view. Given this section is all about describing a political confrontation and a potential partisan abuse of power, the tone needs to be much less one-eyed itself. Mdw0 (talk) 06:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

text {{editsemiprotected}} Songs Section

In the songs section I reckon this is missing : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Maggie I remember it being banned in the UK when it came out, but I can't find any evidence of this at the moment... Anyway, that should defo make it there—Preceding unsigned comment added by Vbm11 (talk • contribs) 10:25, 8 October 2008

 Not doneThat song's article has just been deleted for copyright infringement. Also, I'm not sure what exactly about the song you wanted to be put into the section. If you would kindly write exactly what you would like inserted, then I can copy and paste it into the article if it's warranted.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 05:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Songs

i know of another song inspired by Margret Thatcher which is thatcher fucked the kids by "Frank Turner" i don't know whether to put it into the segment or what it is quite a famous song if you search on "youtube" and find it so should i place it into the article.

I believe this would be classified under WP:TRIVIA. Happyme22 (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Happyme22: What sort of "citations" are you looking for, and can you explain what you mean by a "GA"? Prince_Philip_of_Greece (talk) 10:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Certainly. As outlined in the Manual of Style, all content on Wikipedia needs to be cited. This means that everything added needs to be verified by a reliable source. I've recently completly redone this article, re-structuring sections and paragraphs, and adding citations. As a part of this process, I removed the section entitled "Songs" for two reasons: a.) It contained few, if any, citations; b.) The content could easily be classified as trivia. A paragraph full of songs, most protest songs, really adds nothing to the article. Featured articles such as Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford contain no such sections either, though I'm sure that many songs have been written about those two leaders as well. As you will see, however, I added a sentence in the Legacy section regarding the songs.

"GA" means good article, which is a type of article rank. I have nominated this article for good article status, which would make it a GA. Please see WP:GA for more information on that. Hope this helps. Best, Happyme22 (talk) 01:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Cheers. Most of the artists and/or songs listed were cross-referenced to articles in WP - is this not sufficient citations? Also, the trivia section includes, "a selectively populated list with a relatively narrow theme is not necessarily trivia, and can be the best way to present some types of information." You say? Prince_Philip_of_Greece (talk) 14:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately Wikipedia cannot be used as its own source. Any claims made in a Wikipedia article need to be supported by reliable, third-party sources to conform with the key verifiability policy. Road Wizard (talk) 18:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

Great work so far, but I see a few things missing.

• No mention of her relationship with the Queen. Sure She's only a limited monarch, and there's been much gossip on the subject, but they did have weekly meetings and it's a fairly important (though not essential) detail. See [1],[2],[3],[4],[5].
• No mention of her initial opposition to German reunification - pretty important. See [6].
• No mention of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock. Of course this is about Thatcher and not them, and about her life as a whole and not the '83 & '87 campaigns, but we should lay some slight emphasis on the dynamics between her and her chief political adversaries during that period. She was of course a great politician, but also fortunate that Labour was unelectable for much of that decade. For some flavour see [7],[8],[9],[10],[11],[12]. -- Biruitorul ^Talk 06:27, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'll give them a try and see what you think. Thanks for the compliments and the suggestions! Best, Happyme22 (talk) 23:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I've inserted something on each of your above points. --Happyme22 (talk) 00:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Excellent - looks great! I'll let you know if I think up anything else, but I trust this can regain FA status in fairly short order. Biruitorul ^Talk 06:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

That is the ultimate goal, and it will be much better than before! Best, Happyme22 (talk) 06:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Deleted "because of her tactful handling and diplomacy" for NPOV reasons from the intro section about 1982 Falklands War and 1983 General Election. This was not how many perceived her and I think the sentence reads fine without it.JohnG62 (talk) 23:11, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that removal. I am also reverting many other changes recently made to the page on the account of WP:RS and WP:NPOV. Happyme22 (talk) 07:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Shareholding

The article currently says "the proportion of shares held by individuals rather than institutions did not increase. By the mid 1980s, the number of individual stockholders had tripled". Either one of these statements is untrue, or they are true at different dates. It does need clarification. djnjwd (talk) 18:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know whether either statement is true, but they aren't contradictory. For example, it could be that in 1980, 20% of British shares were owned by 1000 individuals, owning an average of 0.02% of the shares each, but by 1985, 20% of shares were owned by 3000 individuals, an average of 0.007% each. That would be consistent with what the article claims about fast turnover of holdings. Clarification would help, if anyone knows the actual figures. TheAstonishingBadger (talk) 22:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

raspberry ripple

she invented raspberry ripple icecream. she was pround of her chemistry, and felt it was an important part of her life leading to her political life. this fact should be included. 82.33.48.96 (talk) 20:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Do you have a citation to back it up? Happyme22 (talk) 22:15, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Happyme22

Just want to say i think you do good work here - I hate people like Tirailleur - that's the danger of Wikipedia - you have right-wingers like him trying to protect and whitewash the Thatcher and Reagan articles while left-wingers try to whitewash and protect the Lenin and Castro articles. Paul Austin (talk) 20:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Thatcher is such an interesting figure and I wanted to get to know more about her by undertaking the task of expanding and fixing up this article. I think it has gone quite well! Thanks for the compliment, Happyme22 (talk) 05:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Brighton bombing

"she delivered her speech as planned in defiance of the bombers, a gesture which won widespread approval across the political spectrum" is apparently sourced by "The Downing Street Years" pages 379 to 383. While these pages do deal with the bombing and Thatcher's activities after it, I can find no reference to "widespread approval across the political spectrum". The nearest it gets to any reaction to Thatcher's presence at the conference is a colossal ovation when Thatcher (and others) walked on to the platform the conference at 9:30am, and this was quite some time before her speech was delivered. I have amended the sentence, changing the "as planned" to avoid any possible misleading meanings as her speech was actually changed as a result of the bombing. O Fenian (talk) 18:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What does this source say then, since the last one was totally bogus? O Fenian (talk) 02:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Reelected?

Personally, I would have said that she was re-elected, but maybe that's just me and all the other articles containing the word...or perhaps I am missing a point of policy on hyphen usage here? Eitherway, the article is protected so, um, if there is meant to be a hyphen there then someone with the appropriate user permissions may wish to add it (ctrl+F might help). Conjugate the verb to reelect --Tangent747 14:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Religion

There's nothing in the article on this but perhaps there should be. I think that the official line is that she was raised Methodist but became Anglican. Certainly she was married in a Methodist church, but since Denis had been divorced, it would have been difficult then for her to marry in the Church of England. However, although she latterly considered herself Anglican, according to Hugo Young in "One of Us", she was never comfirmed into the Church of England, and indeed despised the Anglican establishment for what she considered its "wet" views. Millbanks (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)