The so-called "Big Bang", introduced on 27 October 1986, made it far simpler to trade shares on the London Stock Exchange. The King family in Milton Keynes receive the deeds to their council house in 1979, Holiday money in the 1970s was strictly controlled, BT privatisation day at the London Stock Exchange was a big event, The advert for the sale of British Gas shares became one of the most celebrated campaigns, Traders on the London Stock Exchange were a close-knit bunch, Credit and savings: Seeds of future crises, Russian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims. Secret ballots were introduced, as were restrictions on holding legitimate disputes that still rankle with the unions to this day. She wore lipstick, smoked cigarettes, and flirted with boys. Jack and David relive their childhood by visiting the newly reopened ice cream parlor. On January 15 1990 those warrants were issued by Strathclyde Regional Council - then the countrys largest local authority - and anyone who ignored them suffered the humiliation of a warrant sale in their own home. The Guardian: Was Margaret Thatcher really part of team that invented Mr Whippy? Figure 2: Changes in post-tax real hourly earnings and average hours for the median and top 1 per cent. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter'. With little else to report on, Evans wrote a small article about how the Soviets perceived this rebuke from a British politician. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Why was the origin of soft-serve ice cream so wrapped up in someone who doesnt really evoke the innocence and simplicity of childhood? The future prime minister, then Margaret Roberts, receiveda degree in chemistry from Oxfordin 1947. The biggest strike against the story is that soft-serve was already well-known in the US by the time Thatcher supposedly invented it. One of the first actions of the Labour government in 1997 was to repeal the ban on unions at GCHQ - the Government Communications Headquarters - imposed under the Tories. That silence speaks volumes for the lasting legacy that her reforms had on the power of the movement. Big Bang saw many of the City's historic names disappear in a frenzy of takeovers as banks jostled to buy jobbers and stockbrokers in order to become one-stop shops. VAT, or value added tax, jumped from 8% to 15%. What, then, accounts for the popularity of the Thatcher soft-serve origin myth? The Conservative government set about a series of changes to employment and trade union laws, which ended mass picketing, secondary action and the closed shop, where staff had to join a union to get a job. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. In 1938, one of them, Edith Mhlbauer, wrote to ask to stay with the family. After the Conservatives gained power in 1970, Thatcher was appointed secretary of education. That poll tax was her downfall. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. When Labour came to power in 1997, it reduced the value of such discounts in areas where councils were running short of housing stock. This had fallen to 20% by the end of the Thatcher term in 1990. Long before she became prime minister of the United Kingdom, a young Margaret Thatcher was a chemist for . Email us atscoop@thesun.co.ukor call 0141 420 5300, News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. The new formula also. Sam Dean, blogging for Bon Apptit about the Thatcher-soft-serve connection, suggests that this early soft-serve was more like proto-soft-serve, since it wasnt the fluffy, creamy stuff youd expect to get from a Mr. Softee today. This raises an intriguing ontological questionif ice cream is soft, and looks like soft-serve, is it, in fact, soft-serve?but also raises further red flags about Thatchers bona fides, condemning her, at best, to be a lesser figure in the sort of Talmudic quarrels that have characterized disputes about the origins of the hamburger and other iconic foods. These days, that number is typically well below one million. Although they never met when either was in power, Thatcher was enraged at the Labour Party governments arrest of Pinochet, who had been seen as an ally against the spread of communism in Latin America and who provided intelligence to Thatchers war room during the Falklands War. The year-long dispute over pit closures led to repeated scenes of violence as striking miners clashed with police. When Thatcher died in 2013, there was an odd idea tossed out almost nonchalantly at her funeral. At best it was a self-regulating club, where bounders could easily be spotted, but at its worst this club fostered insider dealing and share price ramping. Reagan sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, she said, and to free the slaves of communism. Okay. In an attempt to cut spending, the Treasury ended a 1940s-era program providing milk, free of charge, at schools to children ages 7 to 11. Instead of a house rate, it was a people rate with a single flat-rate per-capita tax on every adult. Margaret Thatcher, who passed away this morning at 87, was Britain's first female prime minister, a paragon of free-market conservatism, and a good friend of Ronald Reagan. So the next time you order a cone of soft serve, feel free to imagine Margaret Thatcher's face staring out at you from the sweet, milky swirls, and maybe, if there isn't anyone else around, say a brief "thank you" before biting in. America's Flavorites. Restaurant recommendations you trust. Even when she was there, she was mostly working on soap and pie fillings. In 1990, Pinochet left his self-declared position as president of the Republic to take a seat as senator-for-life. After World War II, the UK had amassed a vast portfolio of government-owned companies in the energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. Foxiz News Network. They suggest that it was started by the British left, who could think of no metaphor more appropriate than soft-serve ice cream to point out all that they thought was wrong with Thatchers politics. The problem comes when you consider that soft-serve had been popular in the US for around a decade before Thatcher started her work at J. Lyons & Co. The page was one of the first things to be scrapped by the new government, as the Tories moved to abolish exchange controls. In the months preceding Englands entry into World War II, the precocious Margaret was keen to debate international policy, once shouting down a man in a fish and chip shop for complimenting Adolf Hitlers leadership style. AN astonishing 250,000 Scots were served summary warrants in what was the defining moment in Scotland's war with Margaret Thatcher's hated poll tax. Why did Margaret Thatcher close the mines? While some of her achievements over her long career have been and remain controversial, there is one accomplishment that has proven purely and Platonically beneficial -- to Britons, to Americans, to lovers of dairy the world over. Clement Attlee (prime minister from 1945 to 1951), who built the welfare state Thatcher worked to dismantle, ranked highest in both. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. Lyons certainly worked on this new product, but there is no firm evidence that Thatcher directly assisted in its invention.". The recession of the early 1980s created the environment that allowed the Conservatives to drive forward the idea of moving nationalised industries into private ownership. Another one of Thatcher's longtime alliances was more controversial. But some believe that other changes, such as those that made mortgages and credit much easier to get, sowed the seeds of future crises that still affect many to this day. Read about our approach to external linking. the central banks initial list of some 800 names, thorniest legacies of Britains withdrawal from the bloc, is being stymied by his ousted predecessors, some of the worlds first business computers, the address given at her funeral in 2013 by the then bishop of London. And it was six years after that, in 1959, that Thatcher was first elected to Parliamentafter 10 years of losses and jockeying for candidacies within the Conservative Party. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. As for rankings by historians and academics, Thatcher ranked fourth most successful among the 20 prime ministers of the century in a 2004 survey conducted by the University of Leeds and she came in second in 2010 survey of experts of only post-war prime ministers. Big Bang helped facilitate privatisation, demystifying the share-buying process that many ordinary people had found a stumbling block, thus allowing people to simply walk into their banks and order a parcel of shares. KnowledgeNuts.com would like to show you notifications for our latest post and updates. Tillyer has serious doubts about the Thatcher myth. As she spoke out against the Labour government, which was in power from 1964 to 1970, Thatcher sharpened her wit and developed a rather caustic public persona. Cooking advice that works. Members agreed to pay for her passage and rotate hosting duties. When soft-serve arrived in the UK, J Lyons was indeed at the forefront. The innovation spread thanks to Mr. Whippy, a chain of British ice-cream trucks that paved the way for todays hawkers of towering cones pierced with Cadbury Flake bars, and became popular worldwide. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. At the funeral, she sat next to Gorbachev. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Meryl Streep, left, as the Iron Lady, in "The Iron Lady"; and the real Margaret Thatcher (Credit: Path / Wikimedia Commons). She was the daughter of Jewish bankers in Vienna. While beating the country into submission, his regime murdered at least 2279 people and tortured another 27,255. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit., After the Labour party retook power in 1974, Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Big Bang moved them at a stroke from that to screen-based and telephone trading. Margaret Thatcher tags: appearances , power 774 likes Like "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. One of the nominees? There, her work centered on testing the quality of cake fillings and ice cream. (It is worth noting that there were almost no women and the gentlemen described came from a far wider class base than the phrase suggests.). By 1959, Tillyer continues, J. Lyons was in the vanguard of the new soft ice cream revolution and well ahead of WallsT. By John Moylan, employment correspondent, BBC News. Despite the brevity of her career, Britains premier scientific organization honored her with a fellowship in 1983, a controversial move that reportedly irked some British scientists. At the former presidents request, she gave a eulogy at Reagans state funeral via a prerecorded video. But, sadly, they backfired. For other inquiries Contact Us. Building societies were allowed to lend more and foreign banks set up in the UK to compete. (A similar patriotic impulse may lie behind the widespread notion that Thomas Jefferson introduced vanilla ice cream to America.) I doubt very much the president of the Board of Trade would even notice the difference. It was a jab at the apparent cluelessness of trade president Douglas Jayand a pretty edgy insult for that eras British politics. One of the first privatisations and arguably the most memorable - through a celebrated advertising campaign - was the sell-off of shares in British Gas in 1986. That ice cream would be branded Mr Whippy in the UK, and it spread to other parts of the world from there. Attention cookie and ice cream lovers - OREO Cookies circle the top of this deliciously frosted cake, drizzled in dark chocolate and edged with a fudge border. By Brian Milligan, personal finance reporter, BBC News. And thework resulted, ultimately, in the swirly stuff we know today as soft serve.