Former Britain Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dies after suffering stroke

Published April 08, 2013

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died April 8, 2013 following a stroke, her spokesperson said.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died after suffering a stroke.

"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” Thatcher spokesperson Lord Bell said in a statement.

Thatcher, an outspoken woman known to many as "The Iron Lady," was 87. She led Britain's Conservatives to three election victories from 1979 to 1990, the longest continuous period in office by a British prime minister since the early 19th century. Alongside former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Thatcher battled against communism and saw the Berlin Wall get torn down in 1989.

On Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his trip to several European countries after the announcement of Thatcher's death.

"We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,'' Cameron said in a statement.

Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth was sad to hear the news of Thatcher's passing, adding that she would be sending a private message of sympathy to the family today.

During 11 bruising years as prime minister, Thatcher transformed her country by a ruthless dedication to free markets and infuriated European allies. She transferred large chunks of the economy from the state hands to private ownership

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money," she once said, according to Reuters.

Thatcher retired from public engagements in 2002 following a series of small strokes, and was only occasionally seen in public since then.

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.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/08/britain-margaret-thatcher-at-age-87-dies-after-suffering-stroke/#ixzz2PsOw7FXk 

Film at 11.... 🙏

MARGARET Thatcher’s famous line “The lady’s not for turning” has gone down as one of the former prime minister’s most-quoted expressions.

The phrase referred to her refusal to do a U-turn on her economic policy after unemployment rocketed by 500,000 in just one year to hit 2million.

But the Iron Lady, who has died following a stroke, made a number of pithy remarks during her 87 years.

Here we have compiled her top 15 quips:

1) Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

2) If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

3) I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

4) To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

5) It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

6) To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

7) I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.

8) To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

9) I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

10) There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

11) If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

12) Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

13) We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.

14) You need quite good shock absorbers and a sense of humour to be the Prime Minister’s child.

15) “I don’t mind how much my ministers talk, as long as they do what I say.”

:-k

[sarcasm]