The New Yorker: The Margaret Thatcher Soft-Serve Myth That was the thinking behind the launch of personal pensions in 1988. 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. Margaret Thatcher, Britains first female prime minister. There, her work centered on testing the quality of cake fillings and ice cream. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, raised travel allowances to 1,000 per trip and permitted overseas property purchases of up to 100,000. Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. The sale price was based on market valuation, but included substantial discounts, depending on how long a tenant had been living there. Advisers went to town, encouraging savers to switch out of solid traditional schemes into riskier personal pensions. Meryl Streep won an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher, Chadwick Boseman played music icon James Brown, and Zac Efron played serial killer Ted Bundy. Here's one sweet spot in The Iron Lady's history: She helped create soft-serve ice cream. Thatcher reveled in the designation. 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. 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. A young Margaret Thatcher, in the lab. She was the daughter of Jewish bankers in Vienna. 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. Privatisation was key to the Thatcher government's economic policy. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC (ne Roberts; 13 October 1925 - 8 April 2013), was a British politician and stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. 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. 1946565D. 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. Diana Gould, who taught primary school in Cirencester, grilled Thatcher about the sinking of the Belgrano. The idea of European unity is a grand concept, she told Les Grandes Conferences Catholiques. But she appears on the central banks initial list of some 800 names because of her time as a research chemist at a food company in the late 1940s, playing a disputed but much-discussed role in the history of ice cream. The myth was likely started by the British left as a metaphor for her political policies. RELATED10 Sweet Sandwich Recipes (Including Ice Cream Sandwiches! Very little connected to Margaret Thatcher's legacy comes without an argument. Margaret Thatcher died this morning at the age of 87. 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. Margaret Thatcher's government reduced it to 60 per cent in 1980 and 40 per cent in 1989 (equal to the higher rate). Here are 10 things you might not know about Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Oxford University from 1943 to 1947. Made-to-order and customizable just the way you like it, one bite is all it takes to taste the Creamistry difference . The Guardian: Was Margaret Thatcher really part of team that invented Mr Whippy? It was Margaret Thatcher's biggest political misjudgement - and brought her career as prime minister to an ignominious end. What is the Significance of Luck in Japan? Thatcher left chemistry after only a few years, returning to school to study law in 1952. We pay for your stories and videos! Others recall her as a heartless conservative hardliner who tore down labor unions while stripping away the countrys public resources. the Iron Lady may not have been solely responsible but in the 1950's before running the country she worked in a lab where soft serve ice cream was perfected! Among those who thought Mrs. Thatcher was making a dreadful mistake was the American economist Arthur Laffer. 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. All Rights Reserved. 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. 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. 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. 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. She studied chemistry at Oxford and worked for a food company before beginning her political career. The old rule of thumb that you only borrow two-and-a-half times salary was thrown out of the window. By the end of its first term, it had already privatised British Aerospace and Cable & Wireless. There are plans to hold a competition to design the new note, and with only one woman apart from the Queen featured on any of the new polymer notes so far, Guido has made a helpful suggestion in the interests of gender equality, the petition read. Thatcher was a food research scientist at J Lyons but, as a Royal Society article noted in May 2011, the details of her work there are sketchy. 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. 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. The most visible reform was that traders no longer stalked the floor of the Exchange, animatedly dealing with each other face-to-face. 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. She worked at J. Lyons for about 18 months, he said. 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. Ruby Design Company. It was replaced by the council tax in April 1993 - a tax which is based on banded property valuation of houses - which remains in place to this day. 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. Bon Apptit may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. In January of 1939, she stayed with the Roberts family. Why was the origin of soft-serve ice cream so wrapped up in someone who doesnt really evoke the innocence and simplicity of childhood? Another one of Thatcher's longtime alliances was more controversial. What was the poll tax and why did Margaret Thatchers policy start riots in Scotland? Thatcher was also a popular guest on the BBC's radio panel show Any Questions? The claim by the bishop of London in his funeral address that the former scientist was "part of the team that invented Mr Whippy ice-cream" is no exception. The Right to Buy Scheme was extended in the March 2013 Budget, as the government vowed to increase sales once again. Compensating the victims cost the pensions industry 11bn. 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. 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. 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. The Iron Lady of Soft Serve. When soft-serve arrived in the UK, J Lyons was indeed at the forefront. Butterscotch Blondie Ice Cream. As in the United States, in Britain multiple entities pioneered soft-serve simultaneously. 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. The Right to Buy Scheme for council houses was one of Margaret Thatcher's most popular policies. Mr. Lee, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Oxford University from 1943 to 1947. 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. Despite her work in the field, though, Thatcher didn't love chemistry. Not only was it seen asmassively unfair against the poor, a decision was made to introduce the tax in Scotland one full year before England and Wales, causing Scotland to be referred to as Thatchers guinea pig. That ice cream would be branded Mr Whippy in the UK, and it spread to other parts of the world from there. Some newcomers just know her as a new character on Netflixs The Crown. The company invented machines popularized in Mr. Whippy ice cream trucks, but theres no evidence Thatcher worked on that project. 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. Restrictions on hire purchase offers were relaxed, stores offered credit, credit cards boomed. The British people still believe in loyalty to their friends., The UK released Pinochet back to Chile on medical grounds in March of 2000. The Iron Lady of Soft Serve. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. KnowledgeNuts.com would like to show you notifications for our latest post and updates. The new formula also. To complement Peps, John Major, the last chancellor of the Thatcher era, introduced a tax-free vehicle for cash savings, the Tessa. 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. A closer look into the work Thatcher did at J. Lyons shows that most of what she researched was in the fields of soap-making and in documenting the quality of pie and cake fillings. 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. "I wanted to have more direct work to do with people.") All rights reserved. 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. In her autobiography, The Path to Power, she reflected that she had made a miscalculation: I learned a valuable lesson. Clement Attlee (prime minister from 1945 to 1951), who built the welfare state Thatcher worked to dismantle, ranked highest in both. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. She also gave Margaret, then 13, a firsthand account of Nazism that affected the future PM deeply. 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. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? Strategic tax-raiser. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 10 Facts You Didnt Know About Queen Elizabeth II. 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. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. On the world stage, she was renowned for her close friendship with Ronald Reagan, and for standing up to the Soviet Union. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. AN astonishing 250,000 Scots were served summary warrants in what was the defining momentin Scotlands war with Margaret Thatchers hated poll tax. Consumer borrowing tripled during the 1980s. 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. 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). The poll tax (or community charge) was supposed to make local council . Other nominees include Alan Turing, the mathematician who played a key role in inventing modern computing, and Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. 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. 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. In 1981, 28% was owned by UK individuals. And, of course, mortgages were easier to get. In her first budget proposal, Thatcher slashed income taxes. However, college associates recommended her as a possible parliamentary candidate to the Dartford Conservative Association. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. The Russians calculate that their military strength will more than make up for their economic and social weakness, she said. 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. J. Lyons, the company Thatcher worked for, did so by buying American soft-serve technology. Photograph: James Green Photography/Getty Images/Flickr RF, claimed she "helped invent ice-cream as we know it", a Royal Society article noted in May 2011. In 1979 there were more than 29 million working days lost to strike action. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. In 2011, declassified documents showed that intelligence reports, reviewed by Thatcher, indicated the Belgrano was heading into the warzone. Margaret Thatcher, then known as chemist Margaret Roberts helped turn ice cream into a cheaper dessert by adding air. As Bruce Bartlett, a former policy adviser to Reagan and George . Margaret Thatcher tags: appearances , power 774 likes Like "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. 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. Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). They are determined to use it in order to get what they want from us.. Margaret Thatcher shortlisted to be on the 50 note for being an 'ice cream pioneer' (not prime minister) November 28, 2018, 4:53 PM. 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. Members agreed to pay for her passage and rotate hosting duties. Membership fell from over 12 million in 1980 - today there are fewer than 6 million members of Trades Union Congress-affiliated unions. Do you have a story or video for The Scottish Sun? 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. 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 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. Private Company. Anyone who has held on to these shares will now have a portfolio that includes a stake in Centrica, BG Group and National Grid. Okay. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. Use product code ED-12 if placing your order in-shop. The discovery would become "soft scoop," as it is known in England. It's not the usual epithet for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who's generally remembered by . In 1982, acting on long-held territory disputes, the military government of Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, which the British claimed as a colony. Figure 2: Changes in post-tax real hourly earnings and average hours for the median and top 1 per cent. These days, that number is typically well below one million. He never faced a trial for human rights crimes. Regardless of opinions on that, though, we do know that there were a couple of different companies in the UK trying to break into the soft-serve market. 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 invent ice cream as we know it. Soft-serve, specifically. From 1989 to 2010, the highest rate of income tax remained at 40 per cent and this was not a live political issue. America's Flavorites. Cooking advice that works. Specialties: We handcraft our premium ice cream one delicious scoop at a time! The so-called "Big Bang", introduced on 27 October 1986, made it far simpler to trade shares on the London Stock Exchange. Here's one sweet spot in The Iron Lady's history: She helped create soft-serve ice cream. When Reagan died in 2004, Thatcher had retired from public speaking due to a series of strokes. A week later, she gave a speech to conservatives. By Simon Gompertz, personal finance correspondent, BBC News. Before Big Bang, share dealing was done through a stockbroker, who advised clients on dealings. They were encouraged further as credit was unleashed. The new plans provided a route to save for those who did not have a company scheme. In 1990, Pinochet left his self-declared position as president of the Republic to take a seat as senator-for-life. Since the Housing Act came into force, it is estimated that some two million homes have been sold to former council tenants. 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. The story of soft ice cream in Britain, Tillyer writes, started in the United States.. Jack and David relive their childhood by visiting the newly reopened ice cream parlor. A visibly agitated Thatcher retorted, I think it could only be in Britain that a prime minister was accused of sinking an enemy ship that was a danger to our navy, when my main motive was to protect the boys in our navy, adding, One day, all the facts will be revealed and they will indicate as I have said.. One was J. Lyonsbut, according to Steve Tillyer, who is almost certainly the most avid amateur chronicler of midcentury British soft-serve, with several books on the subject to his name, J. Lyons entered the industry by partnering with the American ice-cream-truck brand Mister Softee and opening local franchises using that companys American machines. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). It was the most brutal twist in the conflic Predictably, she was least popular in working class areas like the Midlands. These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.. He also may have enriched himself via tax evasion, arms deals, and embezzlement. At the former presidents request, she gave a eulogy at Reagans state funeral via a prerecorded video. Mrs Thatcher wanted self-reliance, not reliance on the state. (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.). In 2014, then First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond announced plans to stop councils collecting poll tax debt, stating: All poll tax debt would be written off. LONDON The Bank of England has decided to honor a scientist with its next bank note design. Yet it fell to just over 11% by the end of 2010. A policy of privatising the UK's large utilities revolutionised share ownership in the UK, and as such it was widely popular with many, though the initiatives also had their critics. The promotional campaign featured TV adverts in which characters urged each other to "tell Sid" about the chance to buy shares at "affordable" prices. Margaret, who was already a studious learner, read up on Nazi anti-Semitism. The warning signs were there. 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. We have reviewed each unique nomination to assess whether they are a real person, deceased and whether they have contributed to the field of science in the U.K. in any way, a spokesman for the Bank of England said in a statement. Thatcher, characteristically, would not budge. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the . 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. But, sadly, they backfired. In January of 1976, she gave a speech decrying what she saw as complacency in the face of Soviet military build-up.