Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
Meryl Streep is playing the role of Margaret Thatcher in a forthcoming biopic. The first trailer is now available. Streep has caught the voice to a “T”, as it were, and it sends shivers down my spine.
I’m torn between wanting to see the film, and dreading all the negative emotions that will be dredged up thinking about the impact Thatcher has had on British society.
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I dislike many aspects of Thatcher’s personality myself, and in the elections of my country (the US) have voted for the Democratic candidate in every election for over thirty years. However, I saw firsthand how overly strong unions werd wrecking the UK economy as a teenager when my father was a Visiting Professor there in the late 1970s. Our car, made by the nationalized company British Leyland, managed to make the junk GM was then making look good. We had rolling power cuts due to strikes by coal miners and utility workers. The UK clearly needed to have a cattle prod applied to the backsides of its unions, and Thatcher was exactly that. Now I think the pendulum has swung the other way on both sides of the Atlantic and corporations are too powerful. But let us not forget why Thatcher became PM!
Thanks Matt. I agree that things in the UK were hardly perfect at the time, but I still have a nagging doubt that the cure was worse than the disease! 🙂
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