The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. And then, as soft serve is wont to do, it quickly spread. A working class household with five adults would pay five times as much as a company director who lived alone on the street. USD/bbl. 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. Which, as you might imagine, is where the Iron Lady comes in. AN astonishing 250,000 Scots were served summary warrants in what was the defining moment in Scotland's war with Margaret Thatcher's hated poll tax. Scotland became the first battle ground in the resistance and it was north of the border that the national anti-poll tax movement went about stopping bailiffs and fighting court cases. 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. She studied chemistry at Oxford and worked for a food company before beginning her political career. 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. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the . What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? And thework resulted, ultimately, in the swirly stuff we know today as soft serve. Before she became the "Milk Snatcher," Thatcher found another way to work with dairy. What is the Significance of Luck in Japan? 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. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. Margaret Thatcher's government reduced it to 60 per cent in 1980 and 40 per cent in 1989 (equal to the higher rate). 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. I doubt very much the president of the Board of Trade would even notice the difference. It was a jab at the apparent cluelessness of trade president Douglas Jayand a pretty edgy insult for that eras British politics. Critics said the policy resulted in speculators buying up valuable housing stock too cheaply. He also may have enriched himself via tax evasion, arms deals, and embezzlement. Before Mrs Thatcher arrived at No 10, British passports contained a special page to record the amount of cash travellers took out of the country. REPUBLIC. As in the United States, in Britain multiple entities pioneered soft-serve simultaneously. Mrs Thatcher wanted self-reliance, not reliance on the state. (A similar patriotic impulse may lie behind the widespread notion that Thomas Jefferson introduced vanilla ice cream to America.) But some believe that other changes, such as those that made mortgages and credit much easier to get, sowed the seeds of future crises that still affect many to this day. The Milk Snatcher, who was also an ice cream inventor. Few world leaders had tenures as parallel as those of Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, whose administration overlapped much of Thatchers premiership. 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. A week later, she gave a speech to conservatives. In March 1989, 50,000 people from all sections of the working class and from across Scotland marched in the centre of Glasgow. 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. (BBC via YouTube), (And so that, additionally, the dairy-y result. ) 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. Meryl Streep won an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher, Chadwick Boseman played music icon James Brown, and Zac Efron played serial killer Ted Bundy. 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 myth was likely started by the British left as a metaphor for her political policies. Restaurant recommendations you trust. 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. Margaret Thatcher earned a place in history overnight when she was elected Britain's first female Prime Minister in 1979. 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. 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. Of the soft-serve claim, he added: Ive never been able to establish that its definitely true., An article on Mrs. Thatchers scientific career in Notes and Records of the Royal Society, a history-of-science journal, suggests the idea of her inventing soft-serve appealed to British left circles, who thought it fitting that a future free-market prime minister should have been involved in a product that added air, lowered quality and raised profits.. Rubbish was piled high in the streets as collections stopped. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. 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. Essential reporting and analysis from correspondents around the world. By the end of its first term, it had already privatised British Aerospace and Cable & Wireless. Advisers went to town, encouraging savers to switch out of solid traditional schemes into riskier personal pensions. Few senior trade union figures have commented on the death of Baroness Thatcher. 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. But, to quote British ice cream truck franchise Mr. Whippy, her work also made possible the soft ice-cream machine, beloved by sweet tooths across the political spectrum. Margaret Thatcher, the legend goes, helped invent soft-serve ice cream. The preceding Labour government had ended a similar program for older children with little controversy, but the same could not be said for Thatcher. Thatcher, characteristically, would not budge. Thatcher was guest of honour at the 1988 Scottish Cup final between Celtic and Dundee Utd when the whole of Hampden Park showed her red cards and chanted against her and the forthcoming tax. 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. While speaking against the Labour Partys tax plan, she said, So once more, the married woman who goes to the butcher, grocer, and dry cleaner and then, when she finishes and wishes for a little pleasure, to the hairdresser, will find the prices going up.. The New Scientist reported in July 1983, as Thatcher was elected a fellow of the Royal Society body of scientists, that she had worked "developing emulsifiers for ice-creams for Joe Lyons from 1949-51". 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. AN astonishing 250,000 Scots were served summary warrants in what was the defining momentin Scotlands war with Margaret Thatchers hated poll tax. Contrary to some aggrandizing myths, Thatcher did not invent soft serve ice cream while working at J. Lyons. By 1959, Tillyer continues, J. Lyons was in the vanguard of the new soft ice cream revolution and well ahead of WallsT. 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. In 1973, Pinochet, a general, toppled the socialist government of Chile in a coup. Robert Evans, the Reuters bureau chief in Moscow, was trudging through what he would later recall as miserably slushy day in the city when he came across a copy of Krasnaya Zvezda, a Soviet army propaganda paper. She worked at J. Lyons for about 18 months, he said. LONDON The Bank of England has decided to honor a scientist with its next bank note design. Its bills feature Queen Elizabeth on one side, and a historical figure on the other; the current 50 has James Watt and Matthew Boulton, pioneers of the steam engine. Thatcher helped to convince Reagan to develop a working relationship with new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. (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.). Here's one sweet spot in The Iron Lady's history: She helped create soft-serve ice cream. 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. Producers solicited Britons to ask Thatcher questions live via a live video feed. And it was six years after that, in 1959, that Thatcher was first elected to Parliamentafter 10 years of losses and jockeying for candidacies within the Conservative Party. 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. The year-long dispute over pit closures led to repeated scenes of violence as striking miners clashed with police. After World War II, the UK had amassed a vast portfolio of government-owned companies in the energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. For other inquiries Contact Us. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. And in 1980, the 25 percent lower rate of taxation was eliminated so that 30 percent became the lowest tax rate. 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. By Rebecca Marston, business reporter, BBC News. The company invented machines popularized in Mr. Whippy ice cream trucks, but theres no evidence Thatcher worked on that project. The only British prime minister in the 20th century to win three consecutive terms and . The new plans provided a route to save for those who did not have a company scheme. The poll tax (or community charge) was supposed to make local council . Thatcher's task in that role? 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. 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. Mr. Moore, the biographer, said the time was not yet ripe for Mrs. Thatcher to appear on a bank note. Customer must pay applicable taxes. Strategic tax-raiser. 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. Predictably, she was least popular in working class areas like the Midlands. Made-to-order and customizable just the way you like it, one bite is all it takes to taste the Creamistry difference . During Thatchers tenure, British Aerospace, British Cable & Wireless, British Telecom, Britoil, British Gas, British Steel, British Petroleum, and British Airways were all sold off. 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 . 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 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. In her first budget proposal, Thatcher slashed income taxes. 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'. 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. ("I just didn't like staying in the laboratory that long," she once explained. 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.