Margaret Thatcher

No I didn't. She is one of the very few people who truly gave me the heeby jeebies and I could never understand... as you said above.

I didn't see it, but do you think that's what's happening with Farage now? Or do you think he's cleverer than Thatcher?

I found her difficult to work out much of the time, yet many politicians and people clearly felt she was queen bee......

History throws up several megalomaniacs. It is always fascinating to find out about their reasoning, whether one agrees or not!
It is even more interesting when one of them has been so powerful in our lifetime.
x

Perhaps it is only with hindsight that we can see how misguided she was. The thing is, though, she radiated confidence and had very rigid views about how the world should be ordered. I think the word I am looking for is 'conviction' - she had that in spades - and many people loved it, saw her as a sort of Britannia figure. I actually think she went a bit mad towards the end. I reckon one of the worst things she did was to sell off the council houses.

PS I was teaching in a college at the time of her demise. I remember very clearly walking down a corridor between classes, students thronging around me, when suddenly from the end of the corridor a student came running, yelling and waving his arms - 'Maggie Thatcher's gone!' and the whole corridor went wild.

My award for "Most Deranged Politician" would have to go to Tony Blair and he's certainly wearing a spectacularly deranged face on his Christmas card offering this year, just to remind us!

NotooOld: I totally agree with you. Also, if she had to, the councils should have been allowed to keep the money to build replacements. X

I don't like a lot of Farage's views but he does not seem deranged.

I absolutely agree with you TerriBull, he gives me the heebie jeebies, that grimace that he thinks is a smile...and Cherie's not far behind. Spitting Image got them to a tee........

Gordon Brown was deranged too - mind you, Tony probably had a lot to do with that!

It was the look in her eyes on the TV clips last night that was so truly scary. I detested her views - there is no such thing as society being top of the list. How could we have been governed for so long by someone who had really had no concept of how societies work and the value of human interaction?

There was a clip of her announcing the birth of her GC - "We have become a grandmother." - with no apparent irony.

It just set me thinking about those who rise to the top politically and how in general they are not quite the ticket. I do not know how one deals with this, but they wield such power and can, as we know, create such havoc.

Have a feeling this thread will run for some time now!!

She managed to make the most beautiful poem totally unbearable for me to hear or read now, as I can hear her awful RP voice saying it.

I think you may be right nonu. I started it, not because I felt the need for a re-run of people's views on her policies as such, but because it set me wondering about the personalities and mental well-being of those who govern us; and the apparent willingness of so many people, both other politicians and voters to be sucked along by them, even when they can see that they are just plain wrong about something or that they are losing their mental grip.

Is it because people are afraid of losing their positions? Do none of them have the courage to put the country first when someone at the top is losing it?

Perhaps it was also because yesterday I watched Putin holding forth - now that was pretty scary too. And the N Korean leader (whose name I cannot spell), and even Angela Merkel (who seems pretty benign on the surface) has some creepy undertones.

I wonder what motivates them.

Someone recently wrote a book about the upbringings and psychological state of politicians - I wish I could remember who it was.

Would anyone on this forum have the remotest desire to lead a country? If not, what makes us different from those who do aspire to this?

Oh yes granjura - how I do agree with that!!!! It was terminally cringeworthy - and that was right at the beginning; and still no-one in her coterie thought to tell her that this was tasteless and boded ill for us all.

Is the book 'The Establishment and how they got away with it?' By Owen Jones?
Agree wholeheartedly Mishap, a degree of egotistical delusion probably essential.

As you point out, Mishap, it's certainly not a phenomenon peculiar to the UK! Boris Yeltsin springs to mind (although his strange behaviour probably had a lot to do with his vodka consumption).

I suppose that when they are appointed to such a position of power, they're automatically surrounded by a crowd of sycophantic 'advisers' and staff eager to curry favour. It must take a very strong person to avoid being changed or affected in any way by the trappings of power.

Selling off the council houses would have been a great idea if they had used the money to build more, that way you don't have social housing occupied by those who no longer need it. But Thatcher just wanted rid of social housing altogether, and what better way to do that than bribe the people who have most to lose with an offer they can't refuse.

Mishap, i did not mean Farage getting deranged, I meant about others being sucked into his world.

To me KimFooYung (or whatever the N Korean Leader's called) is the most terrifying politician out there; with no one in the country daring to challenge him he truly is a loose cannon. How on earth can he have close family members killed on an apparent whim?

There are one or two others who had better remain nameless on here but who make all ours, past and present, seem positively well-balanced and even benevolent in comparison...

Might have liked to lead a country years ago, but certainly not now , too busy going on holiday.