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However, college associates recommended her as a possible parliamentary candidate to the Dartford Conservative Association. 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 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. More importantly, Mrs. Thatcher paid for her 1979 tax cut by nearly doubling the value-added tax to 15 percent, from 8 percent. According to the Bishop of London, Thatcher was partially responsible for the creation of one of the favorite summertime treats of children everywhere: soft-serve ice cream. Margaret Thatcher Helped Invent Soft-Serve Ice Cream. John Major, her successor as leader of the conservative party, quickly announced that he would abolish the poll tax. Use product code ED-12 if placing your order in-shop. 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. 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. The preceding Labour government had ended a similar program for older children with little controversy, but the same could not be said for Thatcher. Private Company. The promotional campaign featured TV adverts in which characters urged each other to "tell Sid" about the chance to buy shares at "affordable" prices. To complement Peps, John Major, the last chancellor of the Thatcher era, introduced a tax-free vehicle for cash savings, the Tessa. The impact of one of Margaret Thatcher's deregulation drives was the drastic reorganisation of the way shares were traded in the UK. So what the heck, Britain? VAT, or value added tax, jumped from 8% to 15%. In 1979 there were more than 29 million working days lost to strike action. ("I just didn't like staying in the laboratory that long," she once explained. On the world stage, she was renowned for her close friendship with Ronald Reagan, and for standing up to the Soviet Union. Few senior trade union figures have commented on the death of Baroness Thatcher. 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. Perhaps the oddest claim about the legacy of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday at the age of eighty-seven, is, in the words of the Washington Post, that she " helped. Mr. McCullough made soft serve in 1938 in Moline, Ill. One August day, he offered it at a friends ice cream shop in Kankakee, Ill., and 1,600 people paid 10 cents for all they could eat of his newfangled treat. Mr. Carvel appears to have stumbled on soft serve about the same time. It was the most brutal twist in the conflict which defined the Tory Prime Minister's reign and ultimately led to her fall from power. Her strong will and determination struck fear into colleagues, and she . Since the Housing Act came into force, it is estimated that some two million homes have been sold to former council tenants. In the end the miners went back to work. To see all content on The Sun, please use the Site Map. Ad Choices. That meant sheriffs officers coming into your house to value your belongings before arranging a public sale of those goods. The page was one of the first things to be scrapped by the new government, as the Tories moved to abolish exchange controls. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. McCullough (who came up with this new kind of ice cream on purpose) and Tom Carvel (who came up with it quite accidentally when his truck broke down and he kept selling the melting ice cream) in 1938. Ruby Design Company. She was ushered to power in the wake of the Winter of Discontent when a wave of strikes paralysed many parts of the economy. The bank plans to introduce a new 50-pound note the largest and rarest of its regular denominations, worth about $64 in 2020, as part of a program replacing paper bills with sturdier polymer versions. 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'. Some people remember former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as the quick-witted "Iron Lady" who resolutely lead the UK through the end of the Cold War. In 1938, one of them, Edith Mhlbauer, wrote to ask to stay with the family. ("I just didn't like staying in the laboratory that long,", a research job at food manufacturer J. Lyons and Company, could be manufactured with fewer ingredients, the swirly stuff we know today as soft serve. A young Margaret Thatcher, in the lab. In 1973, Pinochet, a general, toppled the socialist government of Chile in a coup. Nominations for a replacement are open until Dec. 14, but on Monday the bank published the suggestions that had met its basic criteria so far. 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. 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, who was already a studious learner, read up on Nazi anti-Semitism. He also may have enriched himself via tax evasion, arms deals, and embezzlement. Thatcher, characteristically, would not budge. A working class household with five adults would pay five times as much as a company director who lived alone on the street. 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. Thatcher, you see, before she was a . Mrs. Thatcher, then Margaret Hilda Roberts, studied chemistry at the University of Oxford, and after graduating went to work as a chemist at J. Lyons, a British restaurant chain that also sold its own lines of food and, for a while, some of the worlds first business computers. Essential reporting and analysis from correspondents around the world. Membership fell from over 12 million in 1980 - today there are fewer than 6 million members of Trades Union Congress-affiliated unions. But the cause of unity is surely not advanced by hundreds of petty internal regulations, such as on the content of ice cream or the activities of doorstep salesmen., Update:Daniel Fromson,writing at NewYorker.com, looks into the history of Thatcher's role in the development of soft serve, arguing that the story "resides somewhere in the hazy borderlands between simplification and legend.". 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. But when people are pictured in our currency, they should be from the more distant past.. At the former presidents request, she gave a eulogy at Reagans state funeral via a prerecorded video. Others include Ada Lovelace, the mathematician who wrote the first computer program in 1843, and Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer in mapping molecular structures who was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and also taught Mrs. Thatcher at Oxford. 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. Here's one aspect of Margaret Thatcher's legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about: The Iron Lady, better known for her " bruising political style and free-market views ," helped invent. Please whitelist in order to read our content as well as support our work. This article was published more than9 years ago. Anyone who has held on to these shares will now have a portfolio that includes a stake in Centrica, BG Group and National Grid. British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel, as well as water and electricity firms were among those privatised later. Denis Thatcher muttered that the BBC was a nest of long-haired Trots and wooftahs. Her critics reveled in seeing an average citizen make Thatcher lose her cool. Advisers went to town, encouraging savers to switch out of solid traditional schemes into riskier personal pensions. Eleven of the states that exempt groceries from their sales tax base include both candy and soda in their definition of groceries: Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wyoming. 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. 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. 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. The idea caught on. Among those who thought Mrs. Thatcher was making a dreadful mistake was the American economist Arthur Laffer. The most visible reform was that traders no longer stalked the floor of the Exchange, animatedly dealing with each other face-to-face. But in order to pay for the revenue loss, she raised the Value Added Tax -- the UK's equivalent to the sales tax, according to a 1990 report from a resident scholar at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This had fallen to 20% by the end of the Thatcher term in 1990. Featured image via Wikipedia Restaurant recommendations you trust. Thatcher helped to convince Reagan to develop a working relationship with new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Theres an argument there about when soft-serve became soft-serve and whether or not the earliest versions of the ice cream are legitimate. (Or, if you're in Britain, "soft scoop.") 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. 1925-1947: Grantham & Oxford Margaret Thatcher at a friend's house, summer 1935. Recipes you want to make. She ordered the Navy to sink the Argentinean warship ARA General Belgrano, killing 323 onboard. 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 January of 1976, she gave a speech decrying what she saw as complacency in the face of Soviet military build-up. In her autobiography, The Path to Power, she reflected that she had made a miscalculation: I learned a valuable lesson. Margaret Thatcher became one of the world's most influential and respected political leaders, as well as one of the most controversial, dynamic, and plain-spoken, a reference point for friends and enemies alike. Members of England's scientific community were none too pleased with her being honored by the Royal Society, "England's premier body of scientists," according to the journal New Scientist. 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 . 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. But under New Labour, the main planks of the reforms of the Thatcher years remained unchanged. When Thatcher died in 2013, there was an odd idea tossed out almost nonchalantly at her funeral. "The harm she has done to the universities more than outweighs government funding of the research councils and her general friendliness to science," one anonymous critic told the magazine. In 1981, 28% was owned by UK individuals. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. A MediaComms.IO company. Predictably, she was least popular in working class areas like the Midlands. 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. 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. During her years as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher revolutionised the economic fortunes of every person in the UK. 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. The British people still believe in loyalty to their friends., The UK released Pinochet back to Chile on medical grounds in March of 2000. J. Lyons, the company Thatcher worked for, did so by buying American soft-serve technology. Charles Moore, her authorized biographer, is skeptical. Producers solicited Britons to ask Thatcher questions live via a live video feed. 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. 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. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. Looking for a more convenient base from which to launch a campaign, she relocated to London and took a new job at the food conglomerate J. Lyons & Co. 2023 BBC. America's Flavorites. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. Anyone can read what you share. )The Sriracha Ice Cream SandwichMarmalade Ice Cream, 2023 Cond Nast. In 1982, acting on long-held territory disputes, the military government of Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, which the British claimed as a colony. The press and Labour politicians were brutal to Thatcher, painting her as a cold-hearted miser stealing milk from children, according to Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality. Rubbish was piled high in the streets as collections stopped. Giving people the right to buy their council houses and shares in previously nationalised firms such as British Telecom and British Gas were among the initiatives that won her much support. After World War II, the UK had amassed a vast portfolio of government-owned companies in the energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. 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. Subscribe to Iconic: http://bit.ly/zVEuIYMargaret Thatcher at the conservative party conference giving a speech on taxes. While Thatcher's exact contribution to the effort remains, in a way that would foreshadow her future political career, Despite her work in the field, though, Thatcher didn't love chemistry. 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. While beating the country into submission, his regime murdered at least 2279 people and tortured another 27,255. 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,. He never faced a trial for human rights crimes. The Iron Lady of Soft Serve. Before entering politics, Thatcher was an Oxford-trained chemist, and in the 1950s worked the lab where soft-serve ice cream was perfected. 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. Mr. Lee, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Oxford University from 1943 to 1947. Transactions were carried out by jobbers, who made markets in shares - physically seeking out others with whom to trade on the Stock Exchange floor. Restrictions on hire purchase offers were relaxed, stores offered credit, credit cards boomed. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. . But Mrs. Thatcher is not the only female scientist nominated. That ice cream would be branded Mr Whippy in the UK, and it spread to other parts of the world from there. When Labour came to power in 1997, it reduced the value of such discounts in areas where councils were running short of housing stock. Denis encouraged Margaret to switch careers -- from chemistry to the field that would prove her real, if not her first, love: the law. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). All Rights Reserved. The Nazi army had occupied the country, stripping Jews of their rights, shuttering their businesses, and burning down synagogues. Mrs Thatcher wanted self-reliance, not reliance on the state. Strategic tax-raiser. 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. Margaret Thatcher, Ice Cream Pioneer, Is Nominated as Face of 50 Note - The New York Times Margaret Thatcher, Ice Cream Pioneer, Is Nominated as Face of 50 Note Margaret. 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. Thatcher, you see, before she was a politician, was a research chemist. All Rights Reserved. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Other nominees include Alan Turing, the mathematician who played a key role in inventing modern computing, and Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. Photograph, of Margaret Thatcher, by Andrew Kiggins/Daily Mail/Rex USA. 10 Sweet Sandwich Recipes (Including Ice Cream Sandwiches! Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. 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. 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. While Thatcher's exact contribution to the effort remains, in a way that would foreshadow her future political career, a matter of controversy, her team ultimately succeeded. 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. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. Learn More. In 1990, Pinochet left his self-declared position as president of the Republic to take a seat as senator-for-life. She also gave Margaret, then 13, a firsthand account of Nazism that affected the future PM deeply.