"Shutting down the entire U.K mining industry and introducing an unfair tax is hardly a ' cherry picked titbit'. "

Thatcher's gov't never stated an initial intention to shut down the entire mining industry. Her stated intention was to reform and make the mining industry in the UK more viable and accountable. It was the militant mining union that decided to shut down the entire mining industry in response to certain mine closures. The mining union thought it would be able to dispose of Thatcher as easily as it did the previous conservative gov't it went head-to-head with, costing them their re-election.

The fact is the coal mining industry was one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the UK, as well as costing the UK taxpayer ~25% more to mine coal in the UK than what could be imported. Thus the UK taxpayer was being hit with a double economic whammy, subsidizing an industry that could not even compete with imported sources of energy. It was a dead weight around the UK taxpayer's neck. The only reason the mining union had got its way in the past is because it would simply shut down coal production, generally leading up to or during the winter months as leverage to force the general public to rally in support of ending any such disputes. But Thatcher was ready for these socialist thug tactics and was able to finally break the back of the union's stranglehold over the country.

In fact, because Thatcher minimized the union's ability to leverage the public's support because her gov't stockpiled coal prior to the inevitable head-to-head confrontation with the union, as well as re-tooling some coal-burning plants to burn heavy crude instead, and creating special police task forces to deal with the violent, thug tactics the militant unions were renowned for using, keeping the violence to a minimum, the general public at large did not rally in support of the union and their worker's plight during the year-long walkout. Even the workers at multiple coal mines broke with the union to go back to work, which should be their right.

"My initial post was in response to Thatcher reportedly replying to Gorbachev's question about'who feeds the British public'. Thatchers reported answer was factually incorrect as food parcels were delivered to 147K Miners and their families by the European Union. "

Thatcher's answer was not factually incorrect even though food parcels might well have been delivered to your reported 147k miners and their families by outside groups sympathetic to the miner's plight, including a couple of communist gov'ts. Because the mining industry, and so miners and their families were earning their wages from generous gov't subsidies, coupled with the fact the UK taxpayer was being forced to pay an additional ~25% more for domestic coal than what they could import, meant the miners and their families were in fact living heavily off the teets of the gov't and so the UK taxpayer. Their industry was not viable and would simply collapse and fade away if it were not for the heavy subsidies and taxpayers being forced to overpay for coal. Therefore, the coal miners in the UK were indeed being fed by the the British public, which Thatcher had every intention to reducing and put a stop to.

"The ranking system you refer to say they were ranked on their success, what exactly does that mean?"

First of all, there were at least a couple of polls cited that were polls of the general voting public. And it's not too difficult to discern the consistent results of the multiple polls taken across such a wide spectrum of UK's population, from the general public to political historians to modern day politicians: Thatcher's leadership is consistently regarded as being generally successful when compared with other leaders voters could choose from. Such results also lay waste to the argument that the UK population in general were celebrating Thatcher's death.

"The celebrations of Thatcher's "apparent" death, as you put it, even had a song go viral. It was the song from the Wizard of Oz, "The Wicked Witch is Dead". "

The majority of the celebrations were, with no surprise, enjoyed by the small, but bullhorn loud minority of socialist union die-hards who still don't understand nor appreciate the power of the free market, which when left alone to freely create wealth, improves life for everyone willing to work rather than just whine for the next handout.

@NonAgrssvMight A "hit list" of collieries to be shut down was leaked to the press from the Conservative government which showed Thatchers intention to close the mining industry down in it's entirety and she had no intention of streamlining it.
The special police task force you mentioned involved mounted police attacking legal pickets. Not a single miner was convicted of assault against the police although many were charged.
The strike went on for a year and Thatcher starved the mining populations back to work, then she proceeded to close mines down, including the viable ones.
Some communities have never recovered. "Even the workers at multiple coal mines broke with the union to go back to work, which should be their right" Thatchers tactic was to divide and conquer by giving in to the strikers demands most notably in the north of England's coal mining areas while leaving the Welsh mining areas destitute.
She eventually shut all mines. Some mines were kept open by the worker who bought the pits from the government with their own money and stayed open for many years afterwards.
The European union has a stockpile of foodstuffs reserved for disaster relief ready at all times. the food parcels and all food contained in them were labeled with the European Union flag.
The celebrations of Thatcher's death took place in the mining areas of the U.K that have never recovered and the free market has failed to create wealth in those areas. It's comparable to some areas of the U.S where an industry shuts down and is not replaced, creating urban decline, Detroit springs to mind.

"A "hit list" of collieries to be shut down was leaked to the press from the Conservative government which showed Thatchers intention to close the mining industry down in it's entirety and she had no intention of streamlining it."

Math doesn't lie. It was likely inevitable the UK's mining industry, because of its reliance on gov't subsidies coupled with the higher than market price req'd for UK mined coal to pay for inflated wages, would get completely shutdown. Thatcher's stated aim during her election was to reduce gov't subsidies to industry (check). Another of her stated goals was to reduce the influence of union power (check). The fact is, domestic coal mining in the UK was unviable and unfair for the general taxpayer being held ransom by the NUM. In addition to heavy gov't subsidies, the coal produced domestically cost ~25% more than what could be imported.

The fact is, like in so many industries in the West, including Detroit as you notably point out, hard-line union greed, attempting to strong-arm businesses to overpay its workers, and forcing gov'ts thru publically manipulated emotion to heavily subsidize industries, no longer viable due to hyper-inflated wages, has resulted in the devastation of many previously viable industries. Many still viable businesses have been forced to flee to regions where they can continue to survive; win-lose Or businesses were unfortunately forced to shutdown because they just simply couldn't compete paying wages the market refused to bear; lose-lose.

The only stronghold unions really have left are groups of gov't workers, which in and of itself is ridiculous. Gov't workers should not be allowed to unionize in the first place. Unions were meant to ensure safety for workers in the workplace was not compromised by business owners' pursuit for maximum profit at all costs. Since gov't jobs are purely service based, paid solely by public taxes, and so not at risk of workplace safety due to pursuit for profit, that condition is moot. Additionally, all gov't positions, because they are paid with public taxes, should be based on wages for similar jobs in the free market minus 10%. That is, gov't paid positions should only earn 90% of what a worker could earn in the free market using similar skills.

Unfortunately, modern day taxpayers, in many western countries, where unions have been allowed to operate, are held at ransom by unions that have wrangled unfair wages for their collective (unfair for the taxpayer I do mean), with the avg gov't position earning ~10-30% more than comparable positions available in the free market. This is the exact kind of sceario that forced businesses to relocate to free themselves from greedy unions in order to remain viable, or forced true leaders for the people to put an end to unfair subsidies, artificially propping up otherwise unviable industries, like Thatcher did for the UK back in 84-85.

What courage Thatcher demonstrated. Most lesser leaders would and continue to cave to greedy union demands because it is not their money they are negotiating with, and so agreeing to ovepay represented gov't workers as the easier thing to do, than be villified by emotional campaigns driven by union greed to leverage agreement to unfair wages.

From [en.m.wikipedia.org] (my empasis)

"The NUM was divided over the action and many mineworkers, especially in the Midlands, worked through the dispute. **Few major trade unions supported the NUM, primarily because of the absence of a vote at national level."

This general lack of support was also evident through out the UK's general population. Were UK citizens finally fed up subsidizing an industey they were also being overcharged to pay for what it produced? Shouldn't taxpayers have a say, the primary say even, when it is their money being mismanaged to artificially prop up unviable industries?

"Violent confrontations between flying pickets and police characterised the year-long strike, which ended in a decisive victory for the Conservative government and allowed the closure of most of Britain's collieries."

In otherwords, closing the collaries was a decisive victory, not for all of course as there are seldom if any decisions that benefit all parties involved. But this was by and far a victory for the large majority of taxpayers.

"Many observers regard the strike as 'the most bitter industrial dispute in British history'. The number of person-days of work lost to the strike was over 26 million, making it the largest since the 1926 general strike. The journalist Seumas Milne said of the strike, 'it has no real parallel – in size, duration and impact – anywhere in the world'.

The NCB was encouraged to gear itself towards reduced subsidies in the early 1980s. After a strike was narrowly averted in February 1981, pit closures and pay restraint led to unofficial strikes. The main strike started on 6 March 1984 with a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery, which led to the NUM's Yorkshire Area's sanctioning of a strike on the grounds of a ballot result from 1981 in the Yorkshire Area, which was later challenged in court. The NUM President, Arthur Scargill, made the strike official across Britain on 12 March 1984, but the lack of a national ballot beforehand caused controversy. The NUM strategy was to cause a severe energy shortage of the sort that had won victory in the 1972 strike."

In other words, the union, lead by Scargill, decided to strike, hoping a caused energy shortage would leverage the public to do the union's dirty work once more. Pathetic tactics.

"The government strategy, designed by Margaret Thatcher, was threefold: to build up ample coal stocks, to keep as many miners at work as possible, and to use police to break up attacks by pickets on working miners. The critical element was the NUM's failure to hold a national strike ballot.

The strike was ruled illegal in September 1984, as no national ballot of NUM members had been held. It ended on 3 March 1985. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, the NUM's defeat significantly weakening the trade union movement. It was a major victory for Thatcher and the Conservative Party, with the Thatcher government able to consolidate their economic programme. The number of strikes fell sharply in 1985 as a result of the 'demonstration effect' and trade union power in general diminished."

Thank God for leaders like Thatcher who have the conviction to step up and fix what is so obviously broken.

Ok so you could cherry pick multiple unpopular policies by everyone who has ever been elected and made a decision. In fact, it might be well worrh arguing that good policy decisions will be painful to vaying degrees.

So let's just see how well M Thatcher is rated by many different factions of UKs populace, rather than rely on some twisted cherry picked tidbits of possibly unpopular policy that apparently stoked "celebrations on British streets on her death," shall we:

Winston Churchill generally rates highly, except when his wartime leadership is excluded. Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher are also often at the top of rankings.

• 1999 BBC Radio 4 poll of 20 prominent historians, politicians and commentators for The Westminster Hour produced the verdict that Churchill was the best British prime minister of the 20th century; Thatcher was #5

• In a 2006 issue of BBC History, historian Francis Beckett ranked the 20th-century prime ministers with points out of five in 2006, based on how well the leaders implemented their policies – not on the policies themselves. Margaret Thatcher and Clement Attlee shared the highest ranking.

• In 2004, the University of Leeds and Ipsos Mori conducted an online survey of 258 academics who specialised in 20th-century British history and/or politics. There were 139 replies to the survey, a return rate of 54% – by far the most extensive survey done so far. The respondents were asked, among other historical questions, to rate all the 20th-century prime ministers in terms of their success and asking them to assess the key characteristics of successful ones. Thatcher was ranked #4.

• In 2010, the University of Leeds and Woodnewton Associates carried out a survey of 106 academics who specialised in British politics or British history, to rank the performance of all 12 prime ministers who served between 1945 and 2010. Thatcher ranked #2.

• In October 2016 the University of Leeds, in conjunction with Woodnewton Associates, surveyed 82 academics specialising in post-1945 British history and politics, following the Brexit referendum. Thatcher ranked #2.

• In 2013, a group of academic staff and students at Royal Holloway, University of London, conducted a postal survey of British Members of Parliament, asking them to evaluate the success of post-war British prime ministers. Overall, MPs rated Margaret Thatcher as the most successful post-war Prime Minister.

• In September 2008 the BBC Newsnight programme conducted an online poll. Asking voters to decide who they thought was the greatest and worst of post-war prime ministers. 27,000 people responded, and decided that Winston Churchill was the greatest, with Thatcher ranking #3 of 11 listed.

• The Times constructed a poll for the first time of all British prime ministers in the lead-up to the 2010 general election. Thatcher ranked #5 of 52 listed.

• In a BBC poll to find the 100 Greatest Britons in 2002, five prime ministers were ranked in the top 100. Winston Churchill was voted greatest Briton, while Margaret Thatcher was in 16th place overall out 100 top Britons across the spectrum.

• The BBC television programme The Daily Politics asked viewers in 2007 to select their favourite Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher topped the list with 49% of the vote.

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

My hero!

@Edgework Yes! Hear! hear!

@Edgework Today - in the year 2020 Milton Friedman would be shouted down, prohibited speaking on campus, (for the safety and good of students) at more than 90% of colleges and Universities.
He was clearly a man for his time - because today his voice - his ideas would be lost in the maelstrom of "social justice" activism.

@KeithThroop They don’t even remember what it is. They’ve gotten wealthy and more powerful through the utilization and exploitation of ‘crony capitalism’.

@KeithThroop Republicans, Democrats - professional politicians all. - with the obvious exception of Trump.
Their first loyalty is to the preservation of the hog wallow in which they live. There isn't a pig snouts difference between a republican and a democrat.
Government is NOT your friend and neither is your Congressman, Senator, Governor...