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Tim Berners-Lee awarded the British Order of Merit
MarsBar writes "The BBC is reporting that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded The Order of Merit, a royal award granted directly by the Queen. Previous recipients have included Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Sir Edward Elgar, Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher."
Internet != WWW.
You forget that Thatcher invented "soft frozen ice-cream"
I kid you not.
Twit.
What was once true, is no longer so
She also probably stopped WWIII by convincing Reagan to actually talk to Russians instead of threaten them from afar. Stopping the incredibly expensive British nuclear energy program without stopping nuclear research was also a good move.
No he's really not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_ice_cream
Not that you're an ignorant fool, but from 1975-1990, when Thatcher was PM, British GDP increased from 100,000 million pounds to 557,000 million pounds. That's about 11% per year on average, and far from "destroying prosperity", I think most countries would consider that pretty good economic performance. The changes she made made it more inviting for other companies to come and invest in Britain. For example, the company I was working for in 1979 when Thatcher came to power, Mitel Corp, built two plants in Britain. Later, when Terry Mathews left Mitel and started Newbridge Networks, he built more plants in Britain, creating thousands of jobs. I remember sitting in on a management meeting a few years after Thatcher came in, and Mathews was asked if he would have invested in Britain under a Labour government. He just snorted derisively and said "No".
What was once true, is no longer so
Your fear is justified. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to drive nails into my eyes.
Well, the following is from Wikipedia, so you can take it with a grain of salt if you like:
On 19 January 1976, she made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union. The most famous part of her speech ran: "The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns."
Also from Wikipedia:
n the Cold War, Mrs. Thatcher supported United States President Ronald Reagan's policies of deterrence against the Soviets. This contrasted with the policy of détente which the West had pursued during the 1970s, and caused friction with allies who still adhered to the idea of détente. US forces were permitted by Mrs. Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
However, I will agree with you that when Gorby came to power, she famously said "He is a man we can do business with". But perhaps she sensed that Gorby was a man who could be talked into the sort of reforms that were needed to break up the Soviet bloc. I'm not on intimate speaking terms with the lady, so I'll never know for sure.
At any rate, I never suggested she wanted to go to war with the Soviets, just that she wanted to put up a strong front againt them, while practically every other country in Europre was begging to make some deal with the Soviets that would have kept the entire Warsaw pact intact.
What was once true, is no longer so
Thatcher came to power in 1979, not 1975. Bear that in mind next time you call someone an ignorant fool.
As another poster has commented, those figures don't take into account inflation, which reached 18% at one point. Also, between 1978 and 1983, manufacturing output dropped 30%.
I'm sure that felt great for the 3.6 million who were unemployed in the early 80s (more than three times the number unemployed under the previous Labour government).
"Not that you're an ignorant fool, but from 1975-1990, when Thatcher was PM"
....
Ummm - you later say yourself that she actually came to power in 1979 however the years you note were key to building growth in the UK. Not much to do with politics as you may suggest though;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullom_Voe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_crude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_oilfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis
you may wish to review what percentage of UK GDP North Sea Oil represented during Maggie's years
Sure Labour was a dog wagged by the tail of the Trade Unions in the mid 70's but to try to say Maggie's policies "made the country" isn't very accurate.
The point being, that Berners-Lee is actually in much better company than the list given in the introduction might have suggested, and this award extends beyond the British gene pool to Americans like Eliot and Anglo-Americans like Churchill.
Pining for the fjords
Well the key is, Sir Tim did a LOT to make it accessible. Sure some of the ground work was already done, namely: TCP/IP, SGML, MIME, etc.
What Sir Tim and his team did is:
- Created HTML, which was arguably much simpler than SGML (yes it also allowed some mediocre "designers" to also design pages, but ultimately it lead to greater adoption)
- Created the HTTP protocol, which by far and large was the greatest "enabler" of the technology, ie allow anonymous access to the information held in a ordered and secure manner.
- Still actively in charge of W3C, and creating new standards, largely without breaking old ones.
- Helped begat XML.
- Did not try and patent it.
So his contributions are large, and he is still actively participating. More importantly, he didnt try to patent it, but freed it.
Have a nice day!
Why don't you move to France? You could discuss the merits of protectionism with the locals in the dole queue.
The unions were out of control, even the last labour government had tried to reign them in - only to be humiliated. Brutal, yes it was. But it only needed to be quite so brutal because the idiots of the previous decades protected massive nationalised companies from real competition. Thats what killed British industry, decades of protectionism that left us with manufacturing industries that hadn't a hope of competing globally. Thatcher just convinced the corpse to lie down, and IMO this was her greatest acomplishment.
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