₦airaland Forum

LONDON — Margaret Thatcher, the combative “Iron Lady” who infuriated European allies, found a fellow believer in Ronald Reagan and transformed her country by a ruthless dedication to free markets in 11 bruising years as prime minister, has died. She was 87 years old.

Her former spokesman, Tim Bell, said that the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher had died Monday morning of a stroke.
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To her fervent admirers, battling Maggie was an icon, a national savior who ended Britain’s post-World War II cycle of confrontation and decline — eclipsed as a 20th-century British leader only by Winston Churchill.

Her vehement critics, however, saw her as a bellicose figure at home and abroad, a destroyer of industries and, with it, a way of life.

She was a sharply divisive figure even within her Conservative Party, especially on the issue of European integration; the party declined into a bickering shambles after she fell from power.

Between 1979 and 1990, her governments sold a string of nationalized industries into private ownership, crushed the once-mighty labor unions, defeated Argentina in the Falkland Islands war and preached military readiness to the Western alliance.

“We have raised Britain in the respect of the world from what it was — broke, bankrupt, unwilling to defend itself properly,” Thatcher declared in 1987. “We have, I think, transformed Britain.”

Thatcher’s years in power overlapped Reagan’s two terms as president, and her support for the American leader and her agreement with his world view never wavered. It was a political union of opposites: Thatcher had none of Reagan’s disarming charm, and he lacked her appetite for hard work and devotion to detail.

The grocer’s daughter became Europe’s first female prime minister in 1979, four years after the Conservative Party surprised itself by making her its leader. Typically, she jumped into the leadership race while more prominent male colleagues dithered, and then proved unstoppable.

Thatcher led the Tories to a landslide victory in 1979, followed by easy wins in 1983 and 1987.

She loved the jokes claiming she beat her all-male Cabinet ministers with her handbag, and reveled in being the “Iron Lady,” a nickname coined by the Soviet press.

At home, she sold huge, loss-making state-owned companies, from Jaguar to national utilities to British Airways. Many became profitable.

For the employed majority of Britons, living standards rose dramatically, but the gap widened between the well-off and the poor.

The late Peter Jenkins, a leading liberal political commentator throughout the Thatcher years, once wrote that she had “changed the political map and put her country on its feet again.”

“She did all this with ruthlessness and much injustice and at a high cost in human misery, but she did it,” he said.

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born Oct. 13, 1925, in the central England town of Grantham, the younger daughter of Beatrice and Alfred Roberts, a strict Methodist and pillar of the local community. Throughout her life, she espoused his values of hard work and thrift.

She earned a science degree at Oxford University, working for a time as a research chemist before switching to law and becoming a barrister — a lawyer who argues cases in court.

In 1951, she married Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman 11 years her senior. Their children, twins Mark and Carol, were born in 1953.

She called Denis, who died June 26, 2003, her rock and her great support. He paid for the nannies and private boarding schools which gave her the freedom to make a political career.

Thatcher was elected to Parliament in 1959, the youngest of 25 women in the House of Commons, representing Finchley in north London.

As education secretary in the 1970-74 government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, newspapers dubbed her “Thatcher Milk Snatcher” when she ended free milk for schoolchildren.

Her big chance came in 1975 when the Tories dumped Heath. Thus began what a biographer, the late Hugo Young, called “an era in which an ordinary politician, laboring under many disadvantages, grew into an international figure who did some extraordinary things to her country.”

She marked her course clearly. “A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy, and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend,” she said in a speech in 1975.

Her ascension to prime minister came in May 1979 on a wave of popular disgust at high inflation, garbage-strewn streets and a series of public sector strikes under the Labour Party government of James Callaghan.

When her popularity was at a low ebb in 1982, Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands. Spurning negotiation, she dispatched warships to the remote south Atlantic archipelago.

“Rejoice! Rejoice!” she exclaimed after British Marines retook South Georgia island. The surge of national pride that followed Britain’s victory carried her triumphantly through the 1983 national elections, a victory aided by a Labour Party torn apart by years of infighting.

Even detractors admired her courage.

After surviving an Irish Republican Army bomb that killed five people at the Conservatives’ 1984 convention, Thatcher brushed off the dust of her shattered Brighton hotel suite and, hours later, made her keynote speech on cue.

She never faltered, in word or deed, in her support of the United States. In 1986, she allowed U.S. warplanes to fly from British bases to bomb Libya. She sent ships, tanks and troops to fight against Iraq in the first Gulf War, but had resigned before the battle was joined in 1991.

Thatcher was one of the first to spot Mikhail Gorbachev as a promising leader of the Soviet Union. “I like Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business together,” she said after their first meeting in Britain in 1984.

Three months later, Gorbachev became the Soviet leader.

In her memoirs, Thatcher said of Gorbachev: “I spotted him because I was searching for someone like him. And I was confident that such a person could exist, even within that totalitarian structure, because I believed that the spirit of the individual could never ultimately be crushed in the Kremlin any more than in the Gulag.”

Thatcher sat next to Gorbachev at Reagan’s funeral, and in a taped eulogy spoke of the personal dynamics of the era of “perestroika.”

“I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on (Reagan’s) words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: ‘Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.’ Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust,” she said.

Though Thatcher’s Conservatives won re-election in 1987, the fall of the Iron Curtain deprived her of a key role as the scourge of communism, and she could appear out of touch with the times. She opposed the unification of Germany in tones that suggested the Nazi era was not forgiven, and her opposition to the growing influence of the European Union became more strident and nationalistic.

Thatcher had often seemed at odds with her own government’s policy of developing European integration, and the issue became her downfall in 1990 when Conservative legislators were feeling a panic over the government’s low opinion poll ratings.

In November of that year, she fell short of winning re-election as Tory leader on the first ballot of Conservative legislators. “I fight on. I fight to win,” she said. But, persuaded that the party had abandoned her, she resigned.

“The people who brought about that incident are responsible for the biggest defeat the Conservative Party has ever had,” she said after Tony Blair’s Labour Party ended 18 years of Tory rule in 1997. “It was catastrophic for me because I got things right.”

Blair’s “New Labour” government, ironically, became part of her formidable legacy. The once-socialist Labourites moved to the center with echoes of Thatcherism — from preserving Britain’s nuclear deterrent to telling single mothers on welfare to find work.

Out of power, Lady Thatcher, named a baroness in 1992, made regular and lucrative U.S. lecture tours, and founded the Thatcher Foundation to spread her free-market philosophy.

Europe remained an obsession. In her book, “Statecraft,” published in 2002, she described the European Union as “perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era” and wrote that most of the 20th century’s greatest problems — including Nazism and Marxism — originated on the continent.

Her speechmaking ended that year, when she heeded doctors’ advice to slow down after a series of small strokes.

Thatcher hardly ever admitted any regrets, but in a 1998 interview with the British magazine Saga she said she rarely saw her children or grandchildren.

“It’s very sad,” she said. “It’s something that I thought would never happen.”

Was it the price of power?

“Look,” she replied, “you can’t have everything.”
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130408/PC1601/130409360/1005/former-british-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-has-died

GBILE AKANNI is also an honest Overseer. He does not take regular announced Offerings yet he hosts hundreds of thousands once every year feeding and accommodating them every december. He believes if you are led to give, you will come and give quietly.

Me thinks KIM K used Ray J to climb up there..Now Ray J wants to use her to climb back to relevance

Ray J just released the name of his new single, “I Hit It First,” due out April 9, and the cover art is a blurred out picture of Kim! The lyrics are totally shocking, referring to their infamous sex tape, and he calls out Kanye too!
Kanye West is going to be so angry! Kim Kardashian‘s ex-boyfriend Ray J just took to Twitter and Instagram to tell his fans that his new single is called “I Hit It First.” It’s all about how he had sex with Kim long before Kanye. Don’t forget they starred in the infamous sex tape Super Star, which was leaked in 2007.
Ray J’s New Song About Kim Kardashian
Ray J and Kim dated for five years and broke up over six years ago, but it appears as though he isn’t over the reality star. He dedicated an entire song to his hot-and-heavy relationship with the brunette vixen, and it’s called “I Hit It First.” This sounds like a total diss!
Here are some of the lyrics: “Hit it from north/Brought her head down south/Now that I’m finished/She’s on to Mr. West.”
Ray J even took to Twitter to say: “Check out my new single cover ‘I Hit It first’ available on ITUNES on 4/9 ‘I Put her On’ #KOmusic.”
Will Kim & KanyeWest Speak Out About Ray J’s Single?
It wouldn’t be surprising if Kim and Kanye take to Twitter to slam this song. This is absolutely uncalled for and ridiculous! Kim is six months pregnant and clearly has moved on with Kanye. Plus, she isn’t even officially divorced from Kris Humphries! Why would Ray J do this?

HollywoodLife.com has reached out to both Kim and Ray J’s reps.
http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/04/05/ray-j-i-hit-it-first-kim-kardashian-song/

So PDP forgot to bribe other people to appear as National Officers for their Fake Party. Na so people scarce to collect free money. Na Gpd dey catch them so

Ekans: Who is talking of bank shares and dividends?,they only know how to syphon peoples money for the ogas at the top.Buy nestle or guinness shares and you wont be sorry.Please quote me.

And you are WHO? you hide behind a computer and expect people to quote you. You do realise you are talking about People and Investment right?

THIS IS GETTING ME MORE PISSED BY THE DAY. CANT THEY JUST UNDERSTAND THAT THE MORE THEY TRY TO JUSTIFY THEIR STUP1DITY THE MORE RIDICULOUS THEY SOUND. BTW..ISNT THERE A YOUNG MEMBER OF THE AWOLOO FAMILY TO REIN TRIBUNE INTO ORDER. TRIBUNE HAS BECOME THE MOUTH PIECE OF PDP IN THE SOUTH WEST

TOP TWEETS
Ghanaians shuld rejoice, Kenyans are now the S.I unit of darkness! Darkness is now measured in Kenyans

someone asking how many cowries a blackberry costs in kenya
Then u guys are Haiti "@CodeKlerk: #SomeoneTellNigeria that they are the india of africa in terms of population and chaos
the civilized Kenyan will pay bus fare only to end up running beside the bus
lol #SomeoneTellKenya RT @BRANDENDORSERng: ATTENTION Nigerians: we risk ALIENS INVASION as troupes of Kenyans are matching to Lagos on foot!
: Go on,waste ur natural resources!! @Sewe450: #SomeoneTellNigeria we can throw stones from Kenya and break that African Cup""
Do u know that owning a cow in kenya would make u a governor of a state/region

Fat JOE visited Kenya and left as joe

Kenyans don't need a guitar...They have their ribs

USA - Hollywood, India - Bollywood, Nigeria - Nollywood, Kenya? Firewood

Unlike Nigeria, Kenya is a Malaria free place tho. All their Mosquitoes starved to Death"

Another one said It’s all fun till these Kenyans decide to jog to our houses here in Lagos

chingyjant: Na wa for you sef.Na everything about Nigeria you must find fault?Can't you deduce the tactics the Kenyans are trying to use on Nigeria?If you don't get it they wanted to sneak into Nigeria and train without being spied on but it all backfired.

No be today naija start this thing. We dey put match for 1pm when we dey play some of those north African countries a few years ago.. we no try. We cant blame our guest no matter their antics. we got to put our house in other. NO be same NFF wey Keshi dey vex for. Abi they don repent btw Feb and Now? smh

Nigerians respond via twitter

Abeg Leave all that excuse Jare..Are we Kids? how did they get access to train in a primary school without our knowledge. Wouldn't those responsible have known that it was going to embarass the country. Now it has backfired, one govt officer is making excuses. Im not absolving Kenya Of blame here But we all know the NFF can arrange accomodation at short notice for anybody. Why take them to a hotel owned by an NFF member.

Is it still available? Can I come and inspect on sat or sun pls?

What year is this Audi? Email me @ kaybedavid@ymail.com

This is not new na..African countries just look at how to get unfair advantage over competitors. I remember Nigeria fixing matches at 1pm when they host north African countries..anyways we had better make our own preparations when we visit them

NO AND YES

Am not disputing this statistics but dont you think If the statistics are not that high, the people in charge wont have enough money. The amount of money NGO's in Benue get because of this statistics is something else.

ayox2003: Small minds discuss people. Great minds discuss issues.

Listen, if then u wanna compare the GEJ's pardon with that of the Bill Clinton, then you should compare GEJ's accountability with that of the Bill. You should also compare GEJs regime as a whole with that of Bill Clinton.

You think you know how to make-up excuses, right. Then GEJ has no excuse to achieve what Clinton achieved cos he and Clinton granted pardon to crooks, okay? You wrote a dyslogistic statement for teens who don't know politics.


Frawzey

Both presidents actually did that as last acts of their second term in office

Badt Guy..I no say na JOSITES dey represent like this..Nice thread with lots of humour

I'm Willing to offer you 900,000..serious buyer here. what is the milage of the car? has it ever been involved in an accident?

I have been Playing this game and its fun
http://www.kuluya.com/games/my-oga-at-the-top/

My understanding on this issue is those who have made up their minds about Sen Enangs ridiculous claims are not going to change their minds no matter what anyone says and that shows how youths in Nigeria today reason. We must rise above our petty tribalistic leanings and decide to be enlightened by information. There is nothing wrong with changing your mind when you have further insight or information. It actually makes you a better human being.

Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir El-Rufai has accused the Federal Government of wanting the Boko Haram insurgency to continue for selfish reasons.
Speaking on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily, Mr El-Rufai faulted President Goodluck Jonathan’s statement suggesting that members of the Boko Haram group are ghosts.
He said, “over a thousand Boko Haram operatives are in the custody of the SSS here in Abuja,” hence the Government cannot claim to not know who the terrorists are. He added that he knows the government has a lot of information about the Islamist group.
“What is lacking is the will to address this issue. I think the government just wants this to continue because it is profitable for the security agencies to have huge budgets, most of which is stolen.” He said.
The former minister also said that the government which has over time requested the help of people such as himself, the Sultan of Sokoto and the Borno Elder’s Council, in talking to the extremist group has also accused them of being ‘Boko Haram Sympathisers.’
Watch the video below for the complete interview with Mr El-Rufai
http://www.channelstv.com/home/2013/03/12/fg-wants-boko-harams-insurgency-to-continue-el-rufai/?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-hUfN1GrNU&feature=player_embedded#!

needed

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Rolland926: Why do people mislead others. This car is converted. Say it. Nobody will kill you. And its not because of the few thousands you will make then you mislead buyers. Check out the wipers. Is that the position Left Handed drive or Right handed drive wiper blades Are you a learner.

Rolland926: [quote author=Don Pedro]Thank you sir.

Is the car converted or not?

Bobandgreat: ]

Always whiping up sentiments. SMH! Somebody is telling u how he feels and u r telling him SS and SE. Nobody is happy with the Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba connection now. It is rediculous. Ur support makes them feel they r right. Yoruba when will u change. Haba!

And you really think SE and SS loves the meiddlebelter more than the North..The middlebelters dont even like each Other. Tiv and Idoma's dont see eye to eye. Tiv and Jukun. Berom and other tribes dislike each others in the plateau or is it Igala and Igbirra. You cant claim to know more than the middlebelter so stop crying more than the mourner.
You only want a middlebelter to support the South South cos of what you feel You stand to gain. If you have studied Nigeria's history You will see why J S Tarka Chose to identify with the North In 1979 after Leading the Middlebelt Congress against the north for nearly 2 decades.