Liliputin-4836

I'm not everyone's Aunt Sally! ... "
Margaret Thatcher


Liliputins. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2021/11/24/7101

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Aunt Sally
noun
a game played in some parts of Britain in which players throw sticks or balls at a wooden dummy.
a dummy used in the game of Aunt Sally.
a person or thing that is subjected to much criticism, especially one set up as an easy target for it:
"today's landowner is everyone's Aunt Sally"
Similar:
victim
butt
scapegoat
dupe
recipient
focus
object
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laughing stock
NOUN
laughing stock (noun)
a person or thing subjected to general mockery or ridicule:
"I'd be the laughingstock of the school";·;"a baseball team that is the laughing stock of the major leagues"
Similar:
figure of fun
dupe
butt
fool
joke
standing joke
stooge
fair game
victim

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Aunt Sally is a traditional English game usually played in pub gardens and fairgrounds, in which players throw sticks or battens at a ball, known as a 'dolly', balanced on top of a stick; traditionally, a model of an old woman's head was sometimes used. Leagues of pub teams still play the game, throughout the spring and summer months, mainly in Oxfordshire and some bordering counties. In France, the game is called jeu de massacre ("game of carnage").

Etymology
It was suggested by James Redding Ware that the term was based on a blackface doll, itself inspired by a low-life character named "Black Sal," which appeared in an 1821 novel entitled Life in London by Pierce Egan, a contemporary of Charles Dickens. The term Aunt Sally is used for an argument or idea that is easily refutable and set up to invite criticism.

Modern rules
The game bears some resemblance to a coconut shy or skittles, but with teams. Each team consists of eight players.
The ball is on a short plinth about 4 to 6 inches (100 to 150 mm) high by 3 inches (75 mm) diameter, known as the "dolly", which is placed on a dog-legged metal spike about 30 to 40 inches (750 mm to 1000 mm) high. Players throw sticks or short battens, about 18 by 2 inches (450 x 50 mm) at the dolly, from ten yards away, trying to knock it off without hitting the spike. Successfully hitting the dolly off is known as a "doll"; however, if the spike is hit first, then the score does not count and is called an "iron".

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Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher,  13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013), was a British stateswoman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold the position. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her secretary of state for education and science in his 1970–1974 government. In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become leader of the opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised greater individual liberty, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment. Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike. In 1986, Thatcher oversaw the deregulation of UK financial markets, leading to an economic boom, in what came to be known as the Big Bang.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge (also known as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership, and was succeeded by John Major, the chancellor of the Exchequer. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87.

A polarising figure in British politics, Thatcher is nonetheless viewed by historians as one of the greatest prime ministers in British history. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in Britain, and the complex legacy attributed to this has been debated into the 21st century.