Margaret Thatcher speaks during the Conservative Party . With money from tax cuts in their pockets, shoppers began to rediscover the "feelgood factor". More importantly, Mrs. Thatcher paid for her 1979 tax cut by nearly doubling the value-added tax to 15 percent, from 8 percent. I stand before you tonight, she said, in my Red Star evening gown, my face softly made up, and my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the Western world. The Iron Lady nickname followed her throughout her career. As Bruce Bartlett, a former policy adviser to Reagan and George . Very little connected to Margaret Thatcher's legacy comes without an argument. John Major wrote a five-page personal letter to his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, to tell her of his government's decision to abolish her flagship poll tax, which he described as unfair,. Ad Choices, Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female prime minister and, almost as important, helped invent soft-serve ice cream, I Am Begging More Restaurants to Serve Big Hunks of Cheese as the Main Course, These CheesyGreenPea Fritters Are Delightfully Cheap, Eleven Madison Park Launches a Soup Box for the Low, Low Price of $117. 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 frozen-dessert origin myth goes like this: shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1947 with a degree in chemistry, Margaret Roberts, the future Mrs. Thatcher, worked briefly at the food conglomerate J. Lyons & Company, where she helped devise a method for whipping extra air into ice cream that laid the foundation for modern soft-serve. The Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, raised travel allowances to 1,000 per trip and permitted overseas property purchases of up to 100,000. A petition to put Mrs. Thatcher on the 50 note was started last month by a right-wing British political blog, Guido Fawkes, seemingly in part as a parody of a much-attacked but eventually successful feminist campaign for Jane Austen to appear on the 10 note. In 1995, two economists calculated the total worth of the assets sold from 1979 through the early 90s, at 45 billion, which is about 87.16 billionor $115 billiontoday. Butterscotch Blondie Ice Cream. In the late 1940s she was part of a team of sweet scientists that perfected the method for doubling the air in each serving of ice cream, dramatically reducing the cost. 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. But her work in food engineering led to her introduction to Denis Thatcher, then the managing director of his family's chemical and paint company. Thatcher repeated, When it was sunk, it was a danger to our ships, but Gould would not back down, noting several times that it was not in an exclusion zone the British had deemed unsafe for ships. From 1989 to 2010, the highest rate of income tax remained at 40 per cent and this was not a live political issue. As a result, it hoped that the large subsidies granted to industry over the decades would be eventually phased out, allowing for further tax cuts and controlling borrowing. All Rights Reserved. The story of soft ice cream in Britain, Tillyer writes, started in the United States.. For other inquiries Contact Us. To fund lower taxes on incomes, up went tax on most things shoppers bought. British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel, as well as water and electricity firms were among those privatised later. Even better, the resulting product could be dispensed by a machine rather than scooped by hand. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. Mr-Whippy-style soft-serve ice-cream originated in the US about a decade before Thatcher worked at J Lyons, it reports. During her years as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher revolutionised the economic fortunes of every person in the UK. In public hearings, Labour PMs called Thatcher the most mean and vicious member of a thoroughly discredited government and a reactionary cavewoman. The Sun asked in a headline, Is Mrs. Thatcher Even Human? Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher was one of the kinder taunts to come from the streets and pubs. That meant sheriffs officers coming into your house to value your belongings before arranging a public sale of those goods. However, he felt compelled to help and took the letter to the local Rotary Club. Instead of a house rate, it was a people rate with a single flat-rate per-capita tax on every adult. Margaret Thatcher died this morning at the age of 87. 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. The future prime minister, then Margaret Roberts, receiveda degree in chemistry from Oxfordin 1947. One of the nominees? 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". This led to a new wave of first-time shareholders in the UK. Predictably, she was least popular in working class areas like the Midlands. They are determined to use it in order to get what they want from us.. Clement Attlee (prime minister from 1945 to 1951), who built the welfare state Thatcher worked to dismantle, ranked highest in both. Thatcher's task in that role? Among those who thought Mrs. Thatcher was making a dreadful mistake was the American economist Arthur Laffer. Another one of Thatcher's longtime alliances was more controversial. (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.). 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. Thatchers refusal to give in to a coal miners strike mirrored Reagans firing of striking traffic controllers. By Simon Gompertz, personal finance correspondent, BBC News. But under New Labour, the main planks of the reforms of the Thatcher years remained unchanged. Margaret Thatcher, then known as chemist Margaret Roberts helped turn ice cream into a cheaper dessert by adding air. Mrs. Thatcher held power for more than a decade from 1979, reshaping British politics. For starters, most sources agree that the soft-serve industry arose in the United States, not Britain, and that it preceded Thatchers arrival at J. Lyons by about a decade. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. Despite her work in the field, though, Thatcher didn't love chemistry. Contrary to some aggrandizing myths, Thatcher did not invent soft serve ice cream while working at J. Lyons. Please whitelist in order to read our content as well as support our work. The Telegraph: Margaret Thatcher didnt invent Mr Whippy. By 1959, Tillyer continues, J. Lyons was in the vanguard of the new soft ice cream revolution and well ahead of WallsT. 1925-1947: Grantham & Oxford Margaret Thatcher at a friend's house, summer 1935. The claim that Mrs. Thatcher helped invent soft-serve ice cream while at Lyons is widely distributed, even appearing in the address given at her funeral in 2013 by the then bishop of London, who described her as part of the team that invented Mr. Whippy, the major British soft-serve brand. In 1938, one of them, Edith Mhlbauer, wrote to ask to stay with the family. 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. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. The Russians calculate that their military strength will more than make up for their economic and social weakness, she said. It also encouraged the idea of members of the public owning shares in big former monopolies. When his truck carrying ice cream broke down in Hartsdale, N.Y., he sold it from the truck over two days as it softened. The page was one of the first things to be scrapped by the new government, as the Tories moved to abolish exchange controls. Consumer borrowing tripled during the 1980s. (A similar patriotic impulse may lie behind the widespread notion that Thomas Jefferson introduced vanilla ice cream to America.) It was discovered jointly by J.F. J. Lyons, the company Thatcher worked for, did so by buying American soft-serve technology. All rights reserved. America's Flavorites. Thatcher left chemistry after only a few years, returning to school to study law in 1952. This morning, Margaret Thatcher, a chemist on the team that invented the 99-cent soft ice cream cone, died at 87 due to complications from a stroke. Giving people the right to buy their council houses and shares in previously. The real aeration breakthroughs, he says, occurred when ice-cream-machine manufacturers themselvesoften American or Italianintroduced equipment, during the sixties, that included mechanized air pumps. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? 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. The so-called "Big Bang", introduced on 27 October 1986, made it far simpler to trade shares on the London Stock Exchange. Perhaps giving in to the publics expectations for a wife and mother, she often promoted the Conservative Partys mission of lowering taxes in household terms, according to Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands by Charles Moore. She also gave Margaret, then 13, a firsthand account of Nazism that affected the future PM deeply. Diana Gould, who taught primary school in Cirencester, grilled Thatcher about the sinking of the Belgrano. Margaret Thatcher, in full Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, ne Margaret Hilda Roberts, (born October 13, 1925, Grantham, Lincolnshire, Englanddied April 8, 2013, London), British Conservative Party politician and prime minister (1979-90), Europe's first woman prime minister. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. I did quite a bit of research, he said, and one of the problems is that other people have written stuff where I havent been able to substantiate what theyve written. Tillyer also notes that Lyonss primary goal when Thatcher worked there was to invent a soft-serve recipe that was compatible with Softees American machinesa recipe that was still much denser than modern variants. This was half the Argentinean casualties in the war. On the tax front, the basic rate was cut by 3p to 30p in the pound, while the highest rate came down from 83p to 60p. Xi Jinping's power grab - and why it matters, Street fighting in Bakhmut but Russia not in control, Russian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims. And sheput it to use first in work at a glue factory, and then with a research job at food manufacturer J. Lyons and Company, a "foodstuff conglomerate" in Hammersmith. 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. Yet, figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the percentage of the UK stock market owned by UK individuals was higher in the 1960s and 1970s in terms of value, than the 1980s. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). In 1981, 28% was owned by UK individuals. By the end of its first term, it had already privatised British Aerospace and Cable & Wireless. Rubbish was piled high in the streets as collections stopped. The article reports: "An oft-told anecdote in British left circles associates Thatcher with the invention of soft ice-cream, which added air, lowered quality and raised profits. In terms of distinction, I think she very much deserves it, he said. Subscribe to Iconic: http://bit.ly/zVEuIYMargaret Thatcher at the conservative party conference giving a speech on taxes. Mr. Moore, the biographer, said the time was not yet ripe for Mrs. Thatcher to appear on a bank note. Unions insist that the collapse in traditional manufacturing industries during the 1980s did as much to diminish their power. Furthermore, the history of the British soft-serve industry in particular does not reinforce the notion that the soft-serve technology developed by J. Lyons & Company, much less by Thatcher, laid the groundwork for Mr. Whippys cones. The ice cream innovator, who also left behind a . One possibility is that, given the embarrassingly New World pedigree of soft ice cream, anointing Thatcher as queen of soft-serve provided Britons with a less problematic, and more nationalistic, account of where those cones they spear with Flake bars come from. 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. Thatcher reveled in the designation. Which, as you might imagine, is where the Iron Lady comes in. Peps and Tessas later morphed into individual savings accounts, or Isas, in which Britons have 390bn salted away. The number of people who bought their council house from their local authorities rose to 200,000 by 1982, and again peaked at 180,000 in 1989, her last full year as prime minister. The claim by the Bishop of London today that Margaret Thatcher was one of the inventors of Mr Whippy ice cream went viral on micro-blogging site Twitter, with Britons debating whether the former . The idea of European unity is a grand concept, she told Les Grandes Conferences Catholiques. Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013) was the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom and the first European woman to serve as a prime minister. 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. I dont know when or how this tragedy will end, Thatcher said in 1999, but we will fight on for as long as it takes to see Senator Pinochet returned safely to his own country. The poll tax was supposed to make local council finance more accountable but instead it brought about civil disobedience and riots not seen in this country for years. 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.. On November 22, 1990, Thatcher announced she was resigning as Prime Minister after more than a decade in office. 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. Her older sister, Muriel, amassed pen pals. The old rule of thumb that you only borrow two-and-a-half times salary was thrown out of the window. Her real accomplishment was developing an emulsifier that let manufacturers whip more air into the soft-serve formula, paving the profitable way for everyone from small soft-serve vendors on up to Britain's fleet of Mr. Whippy soft-serve trucks. 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. 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. This, in turn, unleashed a succession of takeovers by even bigger organisations, the giant American finance houses. 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. Not be confused with the antiquated American voter suppression tactic of charging a tax to vote, the tax was a single payment made by each adult in a jurisdiction to pay for local government services. The Bank of England did not control the expansion of credit and there are those who see the roots of the current financial crisis in the credit boom of the Thatcher years. He also may have enriched himself via tax evasion, arms deals, and embezzlement. He never faced a trial for human rights crimes.