He also may have enriched himself via tax evasion, arms deals, and embezzlement. Margaret Thatcher gave her last speech as Prime Minister at the October 1990 Conservative Party Conference, Poll tax protestors march through Glasgow, Scottish campaigners took the fight to Westminster, Poll tax protestor Tommy Sheridan became a household name in Scotland, Resignation speech by Geoffrey Howe in 1990 which led to the end of Margaret Thatcher's reign as PM. Do you have a story or video for The Scottish Sun? Mr. Lee, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Oxford University from 1943 to 1947. The poll tax (or community charge) was supposed to make local council . She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the . The company invented machines popularized in Mr. Whippy ice cream trucks, but theres no evidence Thatcher worked on that project. By the end of its first term, it had already privatised British Aerospace and Cable & Wireless. British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel, as well as water and electricity firms were among those privatised later. Figure 2: Changes in post-tax real hourly earnings and average hours for the median and top 1 per cent. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. Charles Moore, her authorized biographer, is skeptical. 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). (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.). With the death of Margaret Thatcher came a bizarre claim that she was responsible for the development of one of our favorite summer treats: soft-serve ice cream. America's Flavorites. Why did Margaret Thatcher close the mines? Reached by phone at the B. and B. he operates in Northamptonshire, Tillyer told me that Softee and Whippy evolved separately from one another, and that Whippy was in fact founded because its proprietor failed to secure rights to the Softee brand. Ruby Design Company. Bishop of London's claim during funeral address, like everything else about former PM, is subject of controversy, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Margaret Thatcher's involvement in Mr Whippy ice-cream's invention is a 'frozen-dessert origin myth', says the New Yorker. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click here. Heres one aspect of Margaret Thatchers legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about: The Iron Lady, better known for her bruising political style and free-market views, helped invent soft-serve ice cream as a chemist in the late 1940s. 2023 Cond Nast. Albert Roberts ran a grocery/tobacco shop and the family had neither the time nor the money to permanently take in Edith, who was then 17. Even when she was there, she was mostly working on soap and pie fillings. Her popularity peaked at 59 percent in June 1982, after British forces repelled the Argentineans from the Falklands, and sunk to 20 percent in March 1990, after the proposal of a poll tax.. The Russians calculate that their military strength will more than make up for their economic and social weakness, she said. VAT, or value added tax, jumped from 8% to 15%. That was the thinking behind the launch of personal pensions in 1988. With money from tax cuts in their pockets, shoppers began to rediscover the "feelgood factor". Before Big Bang, share dealing was done through a stockbroker, who advised clients on dealings. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. Margaret Thatcher speaking on taxation - YouTube Another one of Thatcher's longtime alliances was more controversial. The claim was that Thatcher, who had gotten her degree in chemistry from the University of Oxford, had worked at J. Lyons & Co., where she had been instrumental in creating the emulsifiers used in soft-serve ice cream, along with the process of injecting air into the mixture to make it even more light and wonderful. There is, of course, a certain appeal to this possible lighter side of the woman The Atlantic has christened the Iron Lady of Soft Serve. But this Thatcher-as-Wonka narrative, like most origin myths, resides somewhere in the hazy borderlands between simplification and legend, telling us more about memory and politics than about where soft-serve actually came from. The Messed Up Truth About Margaret Thatcher - Grunge.com The Right to Buy Scheme was extended in the March 2013 Budget, as the government vowed to increase sales once again. Margaret Thatcher's Forgotten Tax Increase - Bloomberg 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. After a stint as a research chemist for a plastics company, Thatcher worked as a food scientist at J. Lyons and Co. where she was part of a team that found a method to increase the amount of air. National Archives: Thatcher's poll tax miscalculation - BBC News During Thatchers tenure, British Aerospace, British Cable & Wireless, British Telecom, Britoil, British Gas, British Steel, British Petroleum, and British Airways were all sold off. In March 1989, 50,000 people from all sections of the working class and from across Scotland marched in the centre of Glasgow. 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. But her greatest achievement, her most lasting contribution to the great adventure that we call civilization, the work for which she will be remembered even when future space-dwelling humans have forgotten what "England" ever was, had to do with food: yes,Margaret Thatcher helped invent soft-serve ice cream. Margaret Roberts became Margaret Thatcher when she married Denis Thatcher in 1951 (they were married for more than 50 years, until his death in 2003). 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. Almost as odd is how frequently versions of the claimwhich range from the baroque (Margaret Thatcher, Baroness of Ice Cream) to the purely declarative (Margaret Thatcher Helped Invent Soft-Serve Ice Cream) to the cautiously arresting (Margaret Thatcher May Have Helped Invent Soft-Serve Ice Cream, emphasis mine)have proliferated online in the hours since her death. Thatcher sent British troops and warships, leading to the 10-week Falkland Islands War. Some newcomers just know her as a new character on Netflixs The Crown. Jack and David relive their childhood by visiting the newly reopened ice cream parlor. Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Icon, Raised Taxes To Balance The This was half the Argentinean casualties in the war. 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. One of the nominees? This had fallen to 20% by the end of the Thatcher term in 1990. It was enshrined in the Housing Act of 1980, making it one of her first major pieces of legislation after she came to office in 1979. To help figure out a way to whip extra air into ice cream using emulsifiers -- so that the ice creamcould be manufactured with fewer ingredients, thereby reducing production costs. Which, as you might imagine, is where the Iron Lady comes in. Just as a Margaret Thatcher museum is about to open (at a cost of 15 million), we look into the rumour that the former Prime Minsister was somehow involved in the making of ice-cream as we know it. Here's one sweet spot in The Iron Lady's history: She helped create soft-serve ice cream. (Or, if you're in Britain, "soft scoop.") These days, that number is typically well below one million. Thatcher, you see, before she was a . In 2008, Marian Burros offered a version of the conventional narrative in the Times: Either J. F. McCullough or Tom Carvel deserves credit as the first soft-serve maker. 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. It was discovered jointly by J.F. Long before she became prime minister of the United Kingdom, a young Margaret Thatcher was a chemist for . On the world stage, she was renowned for her close friendship with Ronald Reagan, and for standing up to the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher, then known as chemist Margaret Roberts helped turn ice cream into a cheaper dessert by adding air. The British people still believe in loyalty to their friends., The UK released Pinochet back to Chile on medical grounds in March of 2000. Restaurant recommendations you trust. Other nominees include Alan Turing, the mathematician who played a key role in inventing modern computing, and Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. Thatcher, and colleagues, invented a way to add more air into the ice cream so that it was less dense and used less ingredients, which also made it more cost-effective. Her older sister, Muriel, amassed pen pals. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). The tax, known as the Community Charge, had been introduced in Scotland on April 1, 1989, to replace domestic rates, which had been based on the rentable value of your house and not your ability to pay. (A similar patriotic impulse may lie behind the widespread notion that Thomas Jefferson introduced vanilla ice cream to America.) When Labour came to power in 1997, it reduced the value of such discounts in areas where councils were running short of housing stock. Scuffles often broke out as activists tried to prevent sheriffs' officers entering homes and led to a young Tommy Sheridan - who went on to become an MSP - rising to prominence for the first time. She was ushered to power in the wake of the Winter of Discontent when a wave of strikes paralysed many parts of the economy. She topped a 2019 YouGov poll of the general public; 21 percent of respondents selected her as the UKs greatest leader since 1945. The most visible reform was that traders no longer stalked the floor of the Exchange, animatedly dealing with each other face-to-face. J. Lyons's airy dairy was served from ice cream trucks -- under the brand Mr. Whippy-- in Great Britain. When the Belgrano, the Argentina battleship, was outside the exclusion zone and actually sailing away from the Falkands, why did you give the order to sink it? Gould asked. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? The Washington Post, in the wake of her death last week, claimed she "helped invent ice-cream as we know it", adding that her efforts as part of the Lyons team to create a cheap, airy ice-cream were "one aspect of Margaret Thatcher's legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about". The idea of European unity is a grand concept, she told Les Grandes Conferences Catholiques. 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. More successful were personal equity plans or Peps, designed to encourage savers to salt away up to 6,000 a year in shares, in exchange for a tax break. Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female prime minister and, almost as important, helped invent soft-serve ice cream By Sam Dean April 8, 2013 Margaret Thatcher, who passed away. Incidentally, Thatcher didn't invent the Cadbury Flake either. Two years later, the couple welcomed twins Mark and Carol. The Milk Snatcher, who was also an ice cream inventor. Please whitelist in order to read our content as well as support our work. Thatcher left chemistry after only a few years, returning to school to study law in 1952. Biography | Margaret Thatcher Foundation And thework resulted, ultimately, in the swirly stuff we know today as soft serve. Margaret Thatcher Invented Soft-Serve Ice Cream | Bon Apptit Wall & Sons, a subsidiary of Unileverwho had to purchase the Mr. Whippy organisation in order to catch up. Lyons-owned Softee and Walls-owned Whippy were rivals, the Coke and Pepsi of British soft-serve.