h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/22/newsid_2549000/2549189.stm

22nd Nov 1990 Maggie T quits. Gotta have something good to start the week with, and an anniversary like that is good enough for me!

doesn't seem that* long ago.... I guess its awfulness is still fresh in the mind

Was it really 20 years ago they made Band Aid??!!!

And is the new version a travesty or what? I nearly fell off my chair when someone started rapping on it
Wasn't the first one things like spontaneous and original?

And the question is, will it do as well as the original?

Mmm, let me think about that one for a minute...

I can't believe they've released that; its like a really c**p attempt at doing something clever by an undergraduate first year uni student studieing audio music tech or something.... I'd give them a 'U' for ungraded and if its no one at Xmas I'm emigrating

Incidentally I remember the day Thatcher quit very well

Largely because I nearly missed it. I was at college as an undergrad and spent a good hour or so wandering around wondering where all my mates were (I'd been in labs all day). None were in the common room, pub or bar...
Of course I eventually found everyone glued to the telly...

I don't think the original band aid song was anything to write home about but it was just something we all got swept up in. Particularly as the famine in Ethiopia at the time was pretty biblical ( I also suspect we are a bit desensitised to images of war and starvation these days ).
I think it's almost insulting to the original to do this, they should just rereleas the damn thing if they want to commemorate the 20th anniversary. Weren't half of those involved wearing sponsorship and the like as they turned up at the studio - really really *not* to the spirit of 1984.

I was at school - the first time I remember watching TV at school staff and pupils alike (with the honourable exception of the raising of the Mary Rose - why did they make us watch that? what could be more dull? 1 cm per hour?)

I was just about to leave a physics lesson at school when the headteacher announced it over the tannoy. He tried so hard to sound neutral and apolitical and BBC newsreaderish, annoucing an event of national importance to the pupils, but couldn't hide the delight. I remember there was a huge cheer and everyone went around grinning for the rest of the day.

I remember that the evil teacher that everyone hated was a big Labour activist, so we were all mighty pissed off that something had made her happy .

Maggie leaving office..the tears...I remember it very well. I was a first year uni student when she was elected PM and remember campaigning for the Labour Party in a very safe Tory seat. Labour was the Party of Jim Callaghan, Dennis Healy, Michael Foot, Tony Benn etc. the SDP members were still in the fold, we had a coal and steel industry and the Tories campaigned under the slogan of 'Labour isn't working' because unemployment was about what it is now. In the eleven years she was in office the country changed so much, in the fourteen years she has been out - it has hardly changed at all.

I was in the Civil Service - strangely everyone seemed to have a smile on their face........

'In the eleven years she was in office the country changed so much, in the fourteen years she has been out - it has hardly changed at all.'

How very true. the question is, is this a good or a bad thing?

'In the eleven years she was in office the country changed so much, in the fourteen years she has been out - it has hardly changed at all.'

I think the country has changed, and it's changed significantly since 'new' Labour came to power. It's just easy to forget - Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Mayor for London and some other cities, European Convention on Human Rights, Minimum Wage, end of political control of interest rates, reform of post 16 education, reform of the NHS, new lower income tax bracket....

'New' Labour is quite Thatcherite in its outlook. Unlike 'old' labour it sees the market as something to be obeyed rather than controlled. Hardly a year goes by without some NHS reform, but the government is committed to expanding the private sector and such things as Private Finance Initiatives. In education we have seen Labour out do the Conservatives in tuition fees, top-ups etc. It has gotten to the point where some people are looking to the Tories as the guardians of the state pension.
TB could easily have made it into Maggies cabinet.

"TB could easily have made it into Maggies cabinet."
Probably, but I bet he wouldn;t have been there for long!

...weeeeeeell i ain't gonna work on maggies farm no more