Tuesday is Margaret Thatcher Day on Reasoned Audacity

Margaret Thatcher wanted to shift taxes from the rich to the rest of us:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax

“The Community Charge was introduced by the government of Margaret Thatcher. In 1985, Thatcher decided to act upon a long standing aspiration to replace the rating system of local taxes (based on the notional rental value of a house). The proposed replacement that emerged from consultations within the Department of the Environment, primarily between Lord Rothschild, William Waldegrave and Kenneth Baker, and which secured Mrs Thatcher’s strong support, was for a Community Charge. This was a fixed tax per adult resident, hence a poll tax, although there was a reduction for poor people. This charged each person for the services they received in their community. Due to the amount of local taxes paid by businesses varying, and the amount of grant provided by central government to individual local authorities sometimes varying capriciously, there were dramatic differences in the amount charged between boroughs, with Conservative boroughs often charging less.

This proposal was contained in the Conservative Manifesto for the 1987 General Election. The legislation introducing the Community Charge was passed in 1988 and the new tax replaced the rates in Scotland from the start of the 1989/90 financial year and in England and Wales from the start of the 1990/91 financial year. The tax was not implemented in Northern Ireland, which continued, as it still does, to levy the rating system, despite some unionists calling for the province to have the same taxation system as the rest of the United Kingdom. That the tax was introduced in Scotland a year before England and Wales was another fatal political mistake for Thatcher – the already low support of her policies north of the border turned into even greater animosity, and planted seeds of distrust towards the Conservatives within the Scottish people which continues to haunt the Conservative Party to the present day.

It was thought to be unfair as the tax burden shifted from the estimated price of a house to the number of people living in it, with the perceived effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor.”

I think most of us would prefer a country run by Mrs. Thatcher as opposed to one run by Ms. Davis. But, I also think it safe to say that a poster of Geena Davis, from say Transylvania 6-5000, rather than one of Mrs. Thatcher similarly attired. would be more to our liking.