title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: According to Jacob Ward, the privatisation of British Telecom was a "landmark moment for neoliberalism." It became a model for other countries that sold their state utilities. Planners in the Long Range Planning Department used new computer models to support the transition of telecommunications and, more generally, the dramatic move from social democracy to neoliberalism, from monopoly to market. The telecommunications network was essential to plans for the digitalisation of the economy. Computer simulations were needed to support neoliberalism, both as a managerial tool that could simulate free markets, as well as a technology that enabled the contraction of the government's role in the private sector.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In February 1985, in what was generally viewed as a significant snub from the centre of the British establishment, the University of Oxford voted to refuse Thatcher an honorary degree in protest against her cuts in funding for higher education. This award had previously been given to all prime ministers since the Second World War. Although the Government's counter-claim of increased expenditure was also challenged, the decision of the Oxford dons was widely condemned as "petty" and "vindictive". The chancellor of the university, former prime minister Harold Macmillan (now Lord Stockton), noted that the decision represented a break with tradition, and predicted that the snub would rebound on the university.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In December 1985 Thatcher was criticised from another former Tory bastion when the Church of England report "Faith in the City" blamed decay of the inner cities on the Government's financial stringency and called for a redistribution of wealth. However, the Government had already introduced special employment and training measures, and ministers dismissed the report as "muddle-headed" and uncosted. The breach with the Church and its liberal bishops remained unhealed until William Hague called for renewed co-operation in 1998.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Soon after, Thatcher suffered her government's only defeat in the House of Commons, with the failure of the Shops Bill 1986. The bill, which would have legalised Sunday shopping, was defeated by a Christian right backbench rebellion, with 72 Conservatives voting against the Government Bill. As well as Thatcher's only defeat, it was the last occasion on which a government bill fell at second reading. The defeat was immediately overshadowed by the US intervention in Libya.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the United States was demonstrated in the Westland affair when, despite ostensibly maintaining a neutral stance, she and Trade and Industry secretary Leon Brittan allowed the helicopter manufacturer Westland, a vital defence contractor, to link with the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation of the United States. Defence secretary Michael Heseltine had organised a consortium of European and British firms, including the Italian firm Agusta, to make a rival bid. He claimed that Thatcher had prevented proper discussion by cancelling a promised meeting of the Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee early in December 1985. Cabinet eventually (19 December 1985) forbade any minister from actively campaigning for either option.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher thought Heseltine too powerful and popular a figure to sack. After a period in early January 1986 in which Heseltine and the Thatcher/Brittan camp leaked material damaging to each other's case to the press, Cabinet agreed (9 January) that all statements on the matter, including repetitions of those already made, must be cleared through the Cabinet Office. Heseltine resigned and walked out of the meeting in protest, claiming that Thatcher had broken the conventions of cabinet government. He remained an influential critic and potential leadership challenger and would eventually prove instrumental in Thatcher's fall in 1990. Brittan was then forced to resign for having, earlier that month and with the agreement of Thatcher's press adviser Bernard Ingham, ordered the leak of a confidential legal letter critical of Heseltine. For a time, Thatcher's survival as prime minister seemed in doubt, but her involvement in the leak remained unproven, and she survived after a poor debating performance in the Commons (27 January) by Opposition leader Neil Kinnock.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In April 1986, Thatcher, enacting a policy set out in her party's 1983 manifesto, abolished the Greater London Council (GLC) and six top-tier metropolitan county Councils (MCCs):


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: The GLC was the biggest council in Europe; under the leadership of the Labour socialist Ken Livingstone it had doubled its spending in three years, and Thatcher insisted on its abolition as an efficiency measure, transferring most duties to the boroughs, with veto power over major building, engineering and maintenance projects being given to the environment secretary. The Government also argued that the transfer of power to local councils would increase electoral accountability. Critics contended that the "excesses" of a few "loony left" councils helped Mrs Thatcher to launch a party-political assault', as all the eliminated councils were controlled by the Labour Party, favoured higher local government taxes and public spending, and were vocal centres of opposition to her government. The GLC also warned that the break-up of the county councils would lead to the creation of "endless joint committees and over 60 quangos". Several of the councils including the GLC had however rendered themselves vulnerable by committing scarce public funds to controversial causes such as Babies Against the Bomb, the Antiracist Year, and lesbian mothers seeking custody of their children; the Save the GLC campaign itself was estimated to have cost ratepayers £10 million, climaxing in a final defiant week of festivities that cost ratepayers £500,000.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: During the 1980s there was a great improvement in the United Kingdom's productivity growth relative to other advanced capitalist countries. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson identified inflation as "the judge and jury of a government's record", but while the country also improved its OECD inflation ranking from fifteenth in 1979 to tenth in the Lawson Boom year of 1987, when inflation had fallen to 4.2%, in the decade as a whole the country still had the second highest inflation rate of the G7 countries. Unemployment had peaked at nearly 3,300,000 in 1984, but had fallen below 3,000,000 by June 1987, in early 1989 it fell below 2,000,000 and by December 1989 it stood at just over 1,600,000.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: The United Kingdom's growth rate was more impressive, ranking first in the OECD-16 in 1987, a statistical achievement that Thatcher and her government exploited to the full in the general election campaign of that year. However, the balance of payments record had deteriorated, faring even worse than those of non-oil-exporting countries, and there was a decline in the country's relative standing in terms of unemployment. The resulting welfare payments meant that even though Thatcher and her ministers in 1979 had taken the view that "public expenditure is at the heart of Britain's present economic difficulties", it was not until the boom year of 1987 that the expenditure ratio fell below the 1979 level. For most of the 1980s, the average tax take was higher than in 1979.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: On the early morning of 12 October 1984, the day before her 59th birthday, Thatcher escaped injury in the Brighton hotel bombing during the Conservative Party Conference when the hotel was bombed by the Provisional IRA. Five people died in the attack, including Roberta Wakeham, wife of the Government's Chief Whip John Wakeham, and Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry. A prominent member of the Cabinet, Norman Tebbit, was injured, and his wife Margaret was left paralysed. Thatcher herself escaped assassination by sheer luck. She insisted that the conference open on time the next day and made her speech as planned in defiance of the bombers, a gesture which won widespread approval across the political spectrum.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: On 15 November 1985, Thatcher signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement with Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, the first time a British government gave the Republic of Ireland a say (albeit advisory) in the governance of Northern Ireland. The agreement was greeted with fury by Northern Irish unionists. The Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists made an electoral pact and, on 23 January 1986, staged an ad hoc referendum by resigning their seats and contesting the subsequent by-elections, losing only one, to the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). However, unlike the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974, they found they could not bring the agreement down by a general strike. This was another effect of the changed balance of power in industrial relations.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In the Cold War, Thatcher supported US president Ronald Reagan's policies of rollback against the Soviets, which envisioned the end of Communism in Europe (which happened in 1989–91). This contrasted with the policy of "détente" (or "live and let live") which the West had pursued during the 1970s. In a decision that came under heavy attack from the Labour Party, American forces were permitted by Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. A critical factor was Thatcher's idea that Mikhail Gorbachev was the key to the solution. She convinced Reagan that he was "a man we can do business with. " This was a start of a move by the West to force a dismantling of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, which Gorbachev realised was necessary if he was to reform the weak Soviet economy. Those who share her views on it credit her with a part in the West's victory, by both the deterrence and "détente" postures. According to Thatcher, the West won the Cold War "without firing a shot" because the Kremlin would not risk confrontation with NATO's superior forces.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher played a major role as a broker between Reagan and Gorbachev in 1985–87, with the successful negotiation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF Treaty of December 1987, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev, eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of (short-range) and (intermediate-range). The treaty did not cover sea-launched missiles of the sort Britain possessed. By May 1991, after on-site investigations by both sides, 2700 missiles had been destroyed.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In the aftermath of a series of terrorist attacks on US military personnel in Europe, which were believed to have been executed at Colonel Gaddafi's command, President Reagan decided to carry out a bombing raid on Libya. Both France and Spain refused to allow US aircraft to fly over their territory for the raid. Thatcher herself had earlier expressed opposition to "retaliatory strikes that are against international law" and had not followed the US in an embargo of Libyan oil. However, Thatcher felt that as the US had given support to Britain during the Falklands and that America was a major ally against a possible Soviet attack in Western Europe, she felt obliged to allow US aircraft to use bases situated in Britain.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Later that year in America, President Reagan persuaded Congress to approve of an extradition treaty which closed a legal loophole by which IRA members and Volunteers escaped extradition by claiming their killings were political acts. This had been previously opposed by Irish-Americans for years but was passed after Reagan used Thatcher's support in the Libyan raid as a reason to pass it.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Grenada was a former colony and current independent Commonwealth nation under the Queen. The British government exercised no authority there and did not object when Maurice Bishop took control in a coup in 1979. The small Caribbean island had been ruled by Bishop, a radical Marxist with close ties to Cuba. In October 1983 he was overthrown by dissident Marxists and killed. This alarmed other small countries in the region who had a regional defence organisation, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which formally asked the United States for help in removing the new regime. Reagan promptly agreed and almost overnight ordered a major invasion of Grenada. He notified Thatcher a few hours before the invasion, but he did not ask her consent. She was privately highly annoyed, but in Cabinet and Parliament she announced that Britain supported the Americans, saying "We stand by the United States". When it became clear that the American rollback of the upstart Communist regime had been a striking success, Thatcher "came to feel that she had been wrong to oppose it".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher resisted international pressure to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, where the United Kingdom was the biggest foreign investor and principal trading partner. This meant that the status quo remained, and British companies continued to operate in South Africa, although other European countries continued trading to a lesser degree. According to Geoffrey Howe, one of her closest allies, Thatcher regarded the African National Congress (ANC), which fought to end apartheid, as a "typical terrorist organisation" as late as 1987.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: At the end of March 1984, four South Africans were arrested in Coventry, remanded in custody, and charged with contravening the UN arms embargo, which prohibited exports to South Africa of military equipment. Thatcher took a personal interest in the Coventry Four, and 10 Downing Street requested daily summaries of the case from the prosecuting authority, HM Customs and Excise. Within a month, the Coventry Four had been freed from jail and allowed to travel to South Africa, on condition that they return to England for their trial later that year. However, in August 1984, South African foreign minister Pik Botha decided not to allow the Coventry Four to return to stand trial, forfeiting £200,000 bail money put up by the South African embassy in London.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In April 1984, Thatcher sent senior British diplomat, Sir John Leahy, to negotiate the release of 16 Britons who had been taken hostage by the Angolan rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. At the time, Savimbi's UNITA guerrilla movement was financed and supported militarily by the apartheid regime of South Africa. On 26 April 1984 Leahy succeeded in securing the release of the British hostages at the UNITA base in Jamba, Cuando Cubango, Angola.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In June 1984, Thatcher received a visit from P. W. Botha, the first South African premier to come to Britain since his nation had left the Commonwealth in 1961. Neil Kinnock, Leader of the Labour Party, condemned the visit as a "diplomatic coup" for the South African government, and Labour MEP Barbara Castle rallied European Socialists in an unsuccessful attempt to stop it. In talks at Chequers, Thatcher told Botha the policy of racial separation was "unacceptable". She urged him to free jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela; to halt the harassment of black dissidents; to stop the bombing of ANC guerrilla bases in front-line states; and to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and withdraw from Namibia.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher defended Botha's visit as an encouragement to reform, but he ignored her concern over Mandela's continued detainment, and although a new constitution brought coloured people of mixed race and Indians into a tricameral assembly, 22 million blacks continued to be excluded from the representation. After the outbreak of violence in September 1984, Thatcher granted temporary sanctuary to six African anti-apartheid leaders in the British consulate in Durban.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In July 1985, Thatcher, citing the support of Helen Suzman, a South African anti-apartheid MP, reaffirmed her belief that economic sanctions against Pretoria would be immoral because they would make thousands of black workers unemployed; instead she characterised industry as the instrument that was breaking down apartheid. She also believed sanctions would disproportionately injure Britain and neighbouring African countries, and argued that political and military measures were more effective.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's opposition to economic sanctions was challenged by visiting anti-apartheid activists, including South African bishop Desmond Tutu, whom she met in London, and Oliver Tambo, an exiled leader of the outlawed ANC guerrilla movement, whose links to the Soviet bloc she viewed with suspicion, and whom she declined to see because he espoused violence and refused to condemn guerrilla attacks and mob killings of black policemen, local officials and their families.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: At a Commonwealth summit in Nassau in October 1985, Thatcher agreed to impose limited sanctions and to set up a contact group to promote a dialogue with Pretoria, after she was warned by Third World leaders, including Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, that her opposition threatened to break up the 49-nation Commonwealth. In return, calls for a total embargo were abandoned, and the existing restrictions adopted by member states against South Africa were lifted. ANC president Tambo expressed disappointment at this major compromise.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Hong Kong was ceded to the British Empire following the First Opium War and in 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease on the New Territories. In 1984 Thatcher visited China intending to resolve the difficulties that would inevitably be encountered as the New Territories were due to be returned to the Chinese in 1997. She signed an agreement with Deng Xiaoping to hand back not simply the New Territories, but the whole colony, in exchange for China awarding the colony the special status within China of a "Special Administrative Region". Under the terms of the agreement, China was obliged to leave Hong Kong's economic status unchanged after the handover on 1 July 1997, for at least fifty years.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: At the Dublin European Council in November 1979, Thatcher argued that the United Kingdom paid far more to the European Economic Community (EEC) than it received in spending. She famously declared at the summit: "We are not asking the Community or anyone else for money. We are simply asking to have our own money back". Her arguments were successful, and at the June 1984 Fontainebleau Summit, the EEC agreed on an annual rebate for the United Kingdom, amounting to 66% of the difference between Britain's EU contributions and receipts. Although Labour prime minister Tony Blair later agreed to reduce the rebate size significantly, this would remain in effect. It periodically caused political controversy among the member states of the European Union.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher, like many Britons, had long been fascinated by the idea of a tunnel under the English Channel linking to France. The idea had been tossed around for over a century but was always vetoed, usually, by insularity-minded Englishmen. Opposition to the tunnel over the decades reflected the high value the British placed on their insularity, and their preference for imperial links that they controlled directly. By the 1960s, circumstances had changed radically. The British Empire collapsed, and the Suez crisis made clear that Britain was no longer a superpower and had to depend on its military allies on the continent. The Conservatives could more carefully consider the long-term economic value to business and strategic value, and also the new sense of a European identity. Labour was worried that a tunnel would bring new workers and lower wage rates. Britain's prestige, security and wealth now seemed safest when tied closely to the continent.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher and François Mitterrand agreed on the project and set up study groups. Mitterrand as a socialist said the French government would pay its share. Thatcher insisted on private financing for the British share, and the City assured her that private enterprise was eager to fund it. Final decisions were announced in January 1986.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's third term started well but the economic boom faltered. Her mistakes multiplied and her enemies in her party and the general public multiplied.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher led her party to a landslide victory in the 1987 general election with a 102-seat majority. Her resolute personality played a key role in overcoming the well-organised, media-wise Labour campaign led by Neil Kinnock, who was weakened by his party's commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament at a time Thatcher was helping to end the Cold War. Fleet Street (the national newspapers) mostly supported her and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. Polls showed that Thatcher's leadership style was more important for voters than party identification, economic concerns, and indeed all other issues. She entered the record books, becoming the longest continuously-serving prime minister since Lord Liverpool (1812–1827), and the first to win three successive elections since Lord Palmerston in 1865. On New Year's Day 1988, Thatcher became the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, having bested H.H. Asquith and Winston Churchill's records.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Despite her third straight victory she remained a polarising figure. Performative hatred from the far left motivated scores of songs that "expressed anger, amusement, defiance and ridicule" towards her. A common chant among protestors was "Maggie Out!"


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: With the battle against inflation and strikes long won, an economic boom was in its early stages. Unemployment had fallen below 3,000,000 during the spring of 1987, and the tax cuts by chancellor Nigel Lawson sent the economy into overdrive. By early 1988, unemployment was below 2,500,000. A year later, it fell below 2,000,000. By the end of 1989, it was down to 1,600,000. A residential property price surge saw the average home price in Britain double between 1986 and 1989.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: However, this led to the government doubling interest rates during 1988 and it chose to increase these further during 1989 and 1990 as inflation increased. In 1988, Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson reacted to a market fall with a reflationary budget, stoking inflation and precipitating a slide in the Government's fortunes. By the time of Thatcher's resignation in 1990, inflation had again hit 10%, the same level she had found it in 1979.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: As early as September 1988, economists warned that the economic boom would soon be over and that 1989 could see a recession set in. For the moment, the economy defied these predictions; it continued to grow throughout 1989, and unemployment continued to fall, despite the United States entering recession that year.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Employment was booming by the late 1980s, above all in the financial and retail sectors, particularly on new commercial developments built on old industrial sites. For example, the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands saw 6,000 retail jobs created between 1984 and 1989 on the former Round Oak Steelworks site that had shed just over 1,200 jobs when it closed in 1982. The comparable MetroCentre was built at Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, around the same time.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: On 29 March 1988, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Trade and Industry, Kenneth Clarke, announced the sale to British Aerospace of the Rover Group, the new name of British Leyland, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the government of Harold Wilson.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: The threat of recession finally became a reality in October 1990, when it was confirmed that the economy had declined during the third quarter of the year. Unemployment started to rise again. Inflation, which the first Thatcher government had conquered by 1983, was touching 10% for the first time in eight years.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Overall, the economic record of Thatcher's government is disputed. In relative terms, it could be held there was a modest revival of British fortunes. Real gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 26.8% over 1979–89 in the United Kingdom as against 24.3% for the EC-12 average. Measured by total factor productivity, labour, and capital, British productivity growth between 1979 and 1993 compared favourably with the OECD average.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: However, under Thatcherite management, the macro-economy was unstable, even by the standards of the Keynesian era of stop-go. The amplitude of fluctuations in GDP and real gross private non-residential fixed capital formation was greater in the United Kingdom than for the OECD.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions, but there proved to be no simple trade-off between equality and efficiency. The receipts ratio did not fall below the 1979 level until 1992. The expenditure ratio rose again after Thatcher's resignation in 1990, even climbing for a time above the 1979 figure. The cause was the heavy budget charge of the recessions of 1979–81 and 1990–92 and the extra funding required to meet the higher level of unemployment.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In Thatcher's third term, welfare reforms created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the workfare model from the United States.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Though an early backer of decriminalisation of male homosexuality, at the 1987 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher's speech read: "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Backbench Conservative MPs and peers had already begun a backlash against the "promotion" of homosexuality and, in December 1987, the controversial "Section 28" was added as an amendment to what became the Local Government Act 1988. This legislation was eventually repealed by the Blair government between 2000 and 2003.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher, a trained chemist, became publicly concerned with environmental issues in the late 1980s. In 1988, she made a major speech accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain. In 1990, she opened the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. In her book "" (2003), she described her later regret in supporting the concept of human-induced global warming, outlining the negative effects she perceived it had upon the policy-making process. "Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: At Bruges in 1988, Thatcher made a speech in which she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community for a federal structure and increasing centralisation of decision-making. Although she had supported British membership, Thatcher believed that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that new EC regulations would reverse the changes she was making in the UK, stating that she had "not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain" only to see her reforms undermined by "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She was specifically against Economic and Monetary Union, through which a single currency would replace national currencies, and for which the EC was making preparations. The speech caused an outcry from other European leaders and exposed for the first time the deep split that was emerging over European policy inside her Conservative Party.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In 1987–88, Chancellor Nigel Lawson had been following a policy of "shadowing the Deutschmark", "i.e." cutting interest rates and selling pounds to try to prevent the pound rising above DM 3.00 (as a substitute for joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which Thatcher had vetoed in 1985); in an interview for the "Financial Times", in November 1987, Thatcher claimed not to have been told of this and disapproved. By 1989 the economy was suffering from high interest rates (they peaked at 15% in autumn 1989) imposed to temper a potentially unsustainable boom, which she believed had been exacerbated by Lawson's policies. Thatcher's popularity once again declined.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: At a meeting before the European Community summit in Madrid in June 1989, Lawson and foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe forced Thatcher to agree to the circumstances under which she would join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. At the meeting, they both threatened they would resign if Thatcher did not meet their demands. Thatcher responded by moving Howe to Leader of the House of Commons (despite giving him the title Deputy Prime Minister he was now effectively removed from decision-making over Europe) and by listening more to her adviser Sir Alan Walters on economic matters. Lawson resigned that October, feeling that Thatcher had undermined him.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher continued to be the leading international advocate of a policy of contact with apartheid South Africa, and the most forthright opponent of economic sanctions against the country, which a white minority government ruled. Her stand had divided the Commonwealth 48–1 at three conferences since 1985, but had brought her influence in South Africa's white community. Rejecting the US policy of disinvestment as a mistake, she argued a prosperous society would be more receptive to change.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In October 1988, Thatcher said she would be unlikely to visit South Africa unless black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison. In March 1989 she stressed the need to release him for multi-party talks to take place, urging that the ANC's promise to suspend violence should be enough to permit his release and that the "renunciation of violence" should not be an absolute condition for negotiations for a settlement. At the end of March 1989, Thatcher's six-day, 10,000-mile tour through southern Africa—a follow-up to her "look and learn" exercise in Kenya and Nigeria in 1988—did not include South Africa because Mandela had not yet been released.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher met reformist F. W. de Klerk in London in June 1989 and stressed that Mandela must be freed and reforms put in place before she would visit the country. In July 1989 she called for the release not only of Mandela but also Walter Sisulu and Oscar Mpetha before all-group talks could continue.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher, therefore, welcomed de Klerk's decision in February 1990 to release Mandela and lift the ban on the ANC, and said the change vindicated her positive policy: "We believe in carrots as well as sticks". However Thatcher had also set the freeing of Mandela as a condition of friendship with the white government.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher said the European Community's voluntary ban on new investment should be lifted when Mandela was released. However her call to the world to reward reforms was countered by Mandela himself, who while still in jail argued sanctions must be maintained until the end of white rule, and criticised her decision to lift a ban on new investment unilaterally. Mandela declared: "We regard the attitude of the British Government on the question of sanctions as of primary importance ... My release from prison was the direct result of the people inside and outside South Africa. It was also the result of the immense pressure exerted on the South African Government by the international community, in particular from the people of the UK."


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: However, foreign secretary Douglas Hurd was adamant: "We needed to make a practical response to a man, President F. W. de Klerk, who has taken his political life into his hands". Nevertheless, as a gesture of goodwill Thatcher agreed to begin aid to the ANC, which until its suspension of violence she had criticised as "a typical terrorist organisation", her disapproval reinforced by her anti-socialism.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's opposition to sanctions left her isolated within the Commonwealth and the European Community, and Mandela did not take up an early offer to meet her, opposing her proposed visit to his country as premature. Mandela rejected all concessions to the South African government, which he accused of seeking the easing of sanctions before it had offered "profound and irreversible change".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Mandela delayed meeting Thatcher until he had gathered support for sanctions from other world leaders in the course of a four-week, 14-nation tour of Europe and the United States. Their first meeting failed to resolve differences over her unilateral lifting of sanctions and his refusal to renounce armed struggle until existing conditions for the black majority in South Africa changed. In their economic discussions, Mandela initially favoured nationalisation as a preferred method for redistributing wealth between blacks and whites, but with British investment in South Africa in 1989 accounting for half of the total, and with bilateral trade worth just over $3.2 billion, Thatcher successfully urged him to adopt free-market solutions, arguing they were necessary to maintain the kind of growth that would sustain a liberal democracy.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: The NATO nations were in general agreement on delicately handling the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990–91, and the end of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. There was no gloating or effort to humiliate Gorbachev. While US president George H. W. Bush wanted to make NATO more of a political than a military alliance, Thatcher spoke out for the importance of the military role. Like Mitterrand in France, she was nervous about the reunification of Germany, repeating the quip from Lord Ismay, NATO's first secretary-general: "The purpose of NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." Thatcher and Mitterrand had a more specific worry. Bush said: "Margaret still feared the worst from reunification and, like Mitterrand, worried that the Germans might "go neutral" and refuse to permit stationing nuclear weapons on their soil." That is, Chancellor Kohl might trade neutralisation of united Germany as part of the price the Kremlin wanted to approve unification. In the event, Germany was reunited and there was no neutralisation.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher pushed President Bush to take strong military action in reversing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, to which she sent over 45,000 troops. In the following year, they saw combat under her successor John Major in Operation Granby.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In November 1989, Thatcher was challenged for the Conservative Party's leadership by Sir Anthony Meyer, a 69-year-old back-bencher. As Meyer was a virtually unknown backbench MP, he was viewed as a "stalking horse" candidate for more prominent members of the party. Thatcher easily defeated Meyer's challenge, but there were sixty ballot papers either cast for Meyer or abstaining, a surprisingly large number for a sitting prime minister. However, her supporters in the Party viewed the results as a success, claiming that after ten years as prime minister and with approximately 370 Conservative MPs voting, the opposition was surprisingly small.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher was fiercely committed to a new tax—commonly called the "poll tax"—that would apply in equal amounts to rich and poor alike, despite intense public opposition. Her inability to compromise undermined her leadership in the Conservative Party, which turned decisively against her. Thatcher sought to relieve what she considered the unfair burden of property tax on the property-owning section of the population and outlined a fundamental solution as her flagship policy in the Conservative manifesto for the 1987 election. Local government rates (taxes) were replaced by the community charge, popularly known as the "poll tax", which levied a flat rate on all adult residents. Almost every adult, irrespective of income or wealth, paid the same, which would heavily redistribute the tax burden onto the less well-off.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: She defended the poll tax, firstly, on the principle of marginality, that all voters should bear the burden of extra spending by local councils; secondly, on the benefit principle, that burdens should be proportional to benefits received. Ministers disregarded political research which showed potential massive losses for marginal Conservative-voting households.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: The poll tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and England and Wales in 1990. This highly visible redistribution of the tax burden onto the less well-off proved to be one of the most controversial policies of Thatcher's premiership. Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than earlier predicted. Opponents organised to resist bailiffs and disrupt court hearings of community charge debtors. One Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: An indication of the unpopularity of the policy was given by a Gallup poll in March 1990 that put Labour 18.5 points ahead. As the crisis deepened and the Prime Minister stood her ground, opponents claimed that up to 18 million people were refusing to pay. Enforcement measures became increasingly draconian. Unrest mounted and culminated in a number of riots. The most serious of these happened on 31 March 1990, during a protest at Trafalgar Square, London. More than 100,000 protesters attended and more than 400 people were arrested.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Labour continued to benefit from the situation as their lead in the opinion polls widened, and they made gains from the Tories in local council elections and more than once in by-elections. The new Liberal Democrats, after a weak start, were starting to gain ground in the opinion polls and seized the safe Eastbourne seat in its by-election in October.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Constitutional commentators concluded from the tax fiasco that "the British state [became] dangerously centralised, to an extent that important policy developments can now no longer be properly debated". The unpopularity of the poll tax came to be seen as an important factor in Thatcher's downfall, by convincing many Conservative backbenchers to vote against her when she was later challenged for the leadership by Michael Heseltine.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Following Thatcher's departure, her former chancellor Nigel Lawson labelled the poll tax as "the one great blunder of the Thatcher years". The succeeding Major government announced the abolition of the tax in spring 1991 and, in 1993, replaced it with Council Tax, a banded property tax similar in many respects to the older system of rates. Former trade-and-industry secretary Nicholas Ridley agreed that Thatcher had suffered a massive defeat over the poll tax, but he argued that Major's repeal "vindicated the rioters and those who had refused to pay. Lawlessness seemed to have paid off".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's political "assassination" was, according to witnesses such as Alan Clark, one of the most dramatic episodes in British political history. The idea of a long-serving prime minister, undefeated at the polls, being ousted by an internal party ballot might, at first sight, seem bizarre. However, by 1990, opposition to Thatcher's policies on local government taxation, her Government's perceived mishandling of the economy (in particular the high interest rates of 15% that eroded her support among homeowners and business people), and the divisions opening in the Conservative Party over European integration made her seem increasingly politically vulnerable and her party increasingly divided. A Gallup poll in October 1990 showed that while Thatcher remained personally respected, there was overwhelming opposition towards her final initiatives, while various polls suggested the party was trailing Labour by between 6 and 11 points. Moreover, the Prime Minister's distaste for "consensus politics" and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, including that of her Cabinet, emboldened the backlash against her when it did occur.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: On 1 November 1990, Sir Geoffrey Howe, one of Thatcher's oldest allies and longest-serving Cabinet member, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister in protest at Thatcher's open hostility both to moves towards European federalism and to her own government's policy advocating a "hard ecu", "i.e." a new European currency which competed alongside existing national currencies. In his resignation speech in the House of Commons two weeks later, he likened having to negotiate against what he called the "background noise" of her rhetoric to trying to play cricket despite the team captain having broken her own team's bats. He ended by suggesting that the time had come for "others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties", with which he stated that he had wrestled "for perhaps too long".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher's former cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine then challenged her for the leadership of the party; she led the first round of voting by Conservative MPs (20 November) with just under 55% of the vote but fell four votes short of the 15% margin needed to win outright. Though she initially stated that she intended to contest the second ballot, most of Thatcher's Cabinet colleagues offered her at best lukewarm support, and many warned her that she would very likely lose a second ballot to Heseltine. On 22 November, at just after 9.30 am, she announced to the Cabinet that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot after all. Shortly afterwards, her staff made public what was, in effect, her resignation statement, in which she stated that she had "concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served" if she stood down as prime minister.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock proposed a motion of no confidence in the Government, and Margaret Thatcher seized the opportunity this presented on the day of her resignation to deliver one of her most memorable performances. Among other quips, she famously noted: "a single currency is about the politics of Europe, it is about a federal Europe by the back door. So I shall consider the proposal of the Honourable Member for Bolsover . Now where were we? I am enjoying this".


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: She supported John Major as her successor, and after he had won the leadership contest, she formally resigned as prime minister on 28 November. In the years to come, her approval of Major would fall away. After her resignation, a MORI poll found that 52% agreed with the proposition that "On balance she had been good for the country", while 48% disagreed thinking she had been bad. In 1991, she was given a long and unprecedented standing ovation at the party's annual conference, although she politely rejected calls from delegates for her to make a speech. She "all but shunned" the House of Commons after losing power and gave no clue as to her future plans. She retired from the House at the 1992 general election, at the age of 66 years.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Altogether, the eleven-year duration of her three terms in office make up the third to have outlasted a decade from start to finish, following Robert Walpole in the 1730s and William Pitt in the 1790s. Despite her electoral success in accumulating tens of millions of votes throughout Great Britain, only in Southern England and the Midlands did she ever win a majority of the popular vote. The misery index—the addition of the unemployment rate to the inflation rate—in the UK in November 1990 was "13.92", an 11.8% decrease from the rate of "15.57" in April 1979.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Thatcher had broadened her interest in foreign policy since she became Conservative Party leader and would work with five foreign secretaries.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: As prime minister, she cautiously moved closer to the European Community, tried to limit disinvestment from South Africa and agreed to return Hong Kong to China. Having long denounced Soviet communism, she escalated her attacks when it invaded Afghanistan. However, Thatcher would seek "détente" with the reformist Gorbachev; she later welcomed the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe during 1989. She went to war with Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands and was a leader in the coalition opposing Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Under the thirty-year rule, various government documents relating to Thatcher's premiership have been declassified and released by the National Archives. These include:


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: Papers released in December 2014 show that Thatcher completely disapproved of GCSEs which, in 1986, Sir Keith Joseph was trying to introduce in the face of fierce opposition from teaching unions. At very least she wanted a two-year delay to ensure rigorous syllabuses and adequate teacher training. However, when the unions who had been involved in a pay dispute for two years further criticised reforms at their conference, Joseph persuaded her to go ahead immediately to avoid appearing to take their side. According to Dominic Cummings, special advisor to Michael Gove, it was a catastrophic decision which led to a collapse in the integrity of the exam system.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In July 1989, Thatcher called for research on the use of biological weapons against cocaine producers in Peru, in the context of the feared crack cocaine epidemic among black British people. Carolyn Sinclair, a policy adviser, suggested that Thatcher proceed cautiously in working with black communities because she believed they gave cannabis to babies.


title: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

text: In February 2020, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported that Thatcher was made aware of child abuse allegations against Conservative MP Peter Morrison.


title: Ganon

text: His specific motives vary from game to game, but most often involve capturing Princess Zelda of Hyrule, the games' usual setting, and planning to conquer Hyrule and the world at large. To this end, he seeks the Triforce, an omnipotent artifact that grants any wish its bearer desires, and usually manipulates several other villains to realize his ambitions. In most games, he possesses the Triforce of Power, which gives him godlike strength, boundless mystical power, and invulnerability to all but the most powerful sacred weapons, such as the Master Sword.


title: Ganon

text: As the main villain of the series, Ganon has also appeared in a variety of media and merchandise, including an animated television series, manga and Amiibo. He appears in various spin-off games, such as "Hyrule Warriors" and "Age of Calamity", and also appears in the "Super Smash Bros." series.


title: Ganon

text: The character has been well received by critics, becoming one of the most popular and recognizable villains in gaming. He has been praised by critics for providing some of the most memorable boss battles in gaming and has been named as one of the greatest video game villains of all time.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon was originally known as "Hakkai" during development of the original "The Legend of Zelda", in reference to a humanoid pig character known as Zhu Bajie ("Cho Hakkai" in Japanese) from the 16th century Chinese novel "Journey to the West". The character is given the name "Ganondorf Dragmire" in the English version of the "" instruction manual while his monster form's name was "Mandrag Ganon". The names "Dragmire" and "Mandrag Ganon" have not appeared in any of the games or other manuals, though the name "Ganondorf Dragmire" is used once on the official Zelda website.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon is named inconsistently throughout the series. In the Japanese versions of the first three games, his name is anglicized as "Gannon". This spelling appears in two Western releases: the original "The Legend of Zelda", and the non-canonical "Zelda's Adventure".


title: Ganon

text: Ganon has two basic forms that appear throughout the series: one is a gigantic pig-like form, and the other is his humanoid Gerudo form. In the original "The Legend of Zelda", "", , "", and "", he is depicted as a blue, porcine biped wielding either a large sword or a trident. "" marks the first appearance of his humanoid form named Ganondorf, the physically imposing and armor-clad Lord of the Gerudo people. Like all Gerudo, he possesses olive dark skin, amber eyes, and red hair. Ganondorf is around 230 cm and was first drawn with a "sharp, birdlike nose" that is characteristic of the Gerudo and "strong, supple muscles".


title: Ganon

text: For the development of "Ocarina of Time", Ganon was conceived by character designer Satoru Takizawa. Takizawa had imagined Ganon as a "crooked and complex thief, who was basically an all-around abominable human being". However, script director Toru Osawa claimed that this image was "not the case". He began to speak of how Ganondorf was meant to have "parts where he is rather good", comparing him to the character of Raoh in "Fist of the North Star". With this idea in mind, Takizawa created a tentative model of Ganondorf based on actor Christopher Lambert. The result of Ganondorf was very different from this model, with three forms of the character being created: one of Ganondorf in the beginning; one of Ganondorf seven years later, with longer hair; and one of Ganon in the end. Since Ganon appeared as a boar-like creature, Takizawa decided that Ganondorf should transform into such at the end of the game, despite the opinions of other staff members. He decided on making Ganon a beast "with the feeling of a pig" to reference "A Link to the Past".


title: Ganon

text: In "The Wind Waker", Ganondorf appears as an older character to his first appearance in "Ocarina of Time". The artists depicted him as middle-aged and created drawings of him "with an Eastern flavor". His robe was decorated with patterns that were designed to be a twist on the mark of the Gerudo seen previously. Ganondorf's reappearance in "Twilight Princess" returned him to a similar age to his original appearance in "Ocarina of Time". His design was created to look like a warrior, dressed in armour. He also transforms into Demonic Beast Ganon and this concept art was created with the caption "Pig Ganon".


title: Ganon

text: In , Ganon has three forms. For most of the game he is visible from a distance as a serpentine cloud of Malice—a signature viscous, burning energy that is used to denote his heavy influence—that circles Hyrule Castle. His physical form Calamity Ganon is a grotesque incomplete monster that resembles a spider equipped with various weapons. In the game's final battle he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon, a giant boar-like monster made of Malice. Artist Yuki Hamada commented: "Dark Beast Ganon takes the shape of a boar like the Ganons of prior games but ended up being very large compared to Link since we wanted the game to end in the vast open plain of Hyrule Field. This might be the biggest Ganon in the history of the series". The Phantom Ganons that Link encounters in the Divine Beasts were designed with similar attributes as the manifestations of Ganon, including his red hair, as the artist Takafumi Kiuchi wanted players to feel Ganon's presence at all times.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon has been voiced by several voice actors. In the 1989 "The Legend of Zelda" animated television series and "", he was voiced by Len Carlson. In , he was voiced by Mark Berry. For "BS Zelda no Densetsu" he was voiced by Seizō Katō. In the "Zelda" series and other spin-off games, the character has been voiced by several Japanese voice actors, including Takashi Nagasako in "", "", "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate"; Hironori Miyata in "", "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" and "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U"; and Taiten Kusunoki in "Hyrule Warriors".


title: Ganon

text: Ganon is the main antagonist in "The Legend of Zelda" series and is presented as the embodiment of evil. He usually appears as the final boss at the end of each game. A recurring storyline in the series centres around the protagonist Link fighting to save Princess Zelda after she is captured by Ganon. Over the course of the series, Ganon has been depicted in various physical forms. His original human form known as Ganondorf is the king and the only male member of the Gerudo in "Ocarina of Time" and "Four Swords Adventures". He bears the physical traits of the Gerudo race, having red hair, dark skin and pointy ears. He also often transforms into a monstrous beast resembling a giant boar with glowing eyes. Ganon has been given various titles over the series, including "King of Evil", "King of Thieves", "the Dark Lord", "King of Darkness" and "Prince of Darkness".


title: Ganon

text: As the embodiment of evil, the character's presence spreads darkness and wards off good magic, a characteristic which is affirmed by the fairy Navi in "Ocarina of Time". Ganon is consumed and powered by his malice and hatred. In "Skyward Sword", he is revealed as the manifestation of the antagonist Demon King Demise's hatred following the character's defeat. The game was presented as the start of the fictional "Zelda" timeline in which Ganon is destined to forever return in an endless battle with Link and Zelda. In "Twilight Princess", he is shown to absorb the resentment and anger of other characters and uses it to become more powerful. In the final boss battle in "Breath of the Wild", he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and is described as "Hatred and Malice Incarnate".


title: Ganon

text: The character's motivations typically centre around destroying Hyrule or placing himself in a position of power as ruler. His destructive influence is particularly illustrated in "Ocarina of Time", when Link awakens from a seven-year sleep to discover Hyrule transformed following Ganondorf's rise to power. In place of the former peaceful kingdom, Hyrule becomes a place of fear shrouded in darkness and populated by monsters and ReDead zombies.


title: Ganon

text: In the lore of the series, Ganon is the bearer of the Triforce of Power, a divine symbol and one of three components that form the Triforce. It bestows "true power" onto its wielder, making him physically strong and powerful in the use of magic. The position of the Triforce of Power at the top of the Triforce places him in direct opposition to Link and Zelda as bearers of the Triforce of Courage and Wisdom respectively. A recurring plot element in the series is Ganon's desire to obtain the completed Triforce, which offers limitless power to its bearer. This struggle for control of the Triforce has been a central aspect of several games, such as "Ocarina of Time", and binds the three main characters in an eternal battle across the fictional "Zelda" timeline.


title: Ganon

text: As the final boss in the games, Ganon/Ganondorf is presented as a dangerous foe who is difficult to defeat. He is a formidable warrior and sorcerer, and he is skilled enough a swordsman to combat Link. He is capable of dual-wielding large blades, such as great swords. He also possesses great physical strength, which can be seen in "Ocarina of Time", where he destroys Hyrule Castle with one punch. In "Twilight Princess", the character displays invincibility when he is sentenced to execution for attempting to conquer Hyrule but the Sages are unable to take his life. He is typically only defeated by Link with the use of a legendary weapon like the Master Sword or Light Arrows. Due to his near-immortality and indestructible power, he often needs to be sealed away in another realm by magic to prevent him from causing more destruction. However, the character is always reincarnated in a subsequent game, which emphasises his immortality.


title: Ganon

text: Over the course of the "Zelda" series, Ganon/Ganondorf has demonstrated various magical powers and abilities. These powers originate in his use of dark magic and have varied across the game series. He can use various defensive measures in combat, such as using dark magic to create magical barriers. In the original "The Legend of Zelda" game he is able to turn himself invisible and uses his magic to propel fireballs at Link. In several games, such as "Ocarina of Time", he is able to create shadow clones of himself that possess his skills and abilities but are immune to damage. Ganondorf also has the ability of teleportation, giving him the advantage of sneaking behind his opponent in combat in "Twilight Princess". In "Ocarina of Time" he has the ability to levitate. He has also demonstrated that he can pass between dimensions, such as the Dark World and the Twilight Realm.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon has the power to possess and control other characters. This is particularly evident in "Twilight Princess", where he possesses Princess Zelda and uses her body like a puppet to fight against Link. He can also manipulate other characters for his own benefit, including Zant in "Twilight Princess". In "Breath of the Wild", Calamity Ganon is able to corrupt creatures with the spread of a substance called Malice. This gives him the ability to take control of monsters and the ancient technology that was originally under the control of Hyrule, such as the Guardians.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon made his first appearance in the original 1986 NES video game "The Legend of Zelda," in the form of a blue monstrous pig named "Gannon". The first game in the series established the character's desire for power, which was reiterated in subsequent games. The storyline involves the character invading Hyrule with his army and stealing the Triforce of Power. To prevent him from obtaining the Triforce of Wisdom, Princess Zelda scatters the eight pieces across the kingdom. Link is then sent on a quest to retrieve the eight fragments and finally defeats Gannon using a silver arrow.


title: Ganon

text: In 1987, the second entry in the "Zelda" series was released, titled "", but the game did not feature the physical presence of Ganon. However, his image appears in the final game over screen, signifying the return of Ganon.


title: Ganon

text: The character's next appearance was in the 1991 Super Nintendo Entertainment System game "A Link to the Past". The game expands on Ganon's backstory by revealing that he used to be a man named Ganondorf, the leader of a group of thieves who manage to enter the Sacred Realm and steal the Triforce, which plunges the Sacred Realm into darkness. Ganon is already sealed in this Dark World when Link and Zelda are sent there by the wizard Agahnim. In truth, Agahnim is an avatar used to contain Ganon's spirit outside the Sacred Realm. After Link defeats Agahnim in the Dark World, Ganon rises from his body and turns into a bat. At the Pyramid of Power, Link finally defeats Ganon in his beast form in order to restore Hyrule and the Sacred Realm.


title: Ganon

text: In the 1993 game "Link's Awakening", the fourth Shadow Nightmare that Link must face in the final boss battle is based on Ganon from "A Link to the Past". During the battle, the Shadow of Ganon shoots bats made from fire and throws a spinning trident at Link.


title: Ganon

text: The 1998 game "", which was released for the Nintendo 64, introduced the character in his humanoid form as Ganondorf, the king of the Gerudo thieves. In the chronology of the series, it is his earliest appearance, expanding upon the backstory first introduced in "A Link to the Past". In the story, Ganondorf schemes to take the Triforce in order to conquer Hyrule. After pulling the Master Sword from its pedestal and being put into a seven-year sleep, Link wakes as an adult to discover that Ganondorf is now ruling over Hyrule. Ganondorf successfully stole the Triforce from the Sacred Realm but his evil heart broke it into three pieces, with Ganondorf keeping the Triforce of Power. In the final boss fight, Link and Ganondorf battle at Ganon's Castle, but after Ganondorf's defeat, he transforms into his beast form Ganon. He is finally defeated by Link before being sealed away in the Dark Realm by the Sages.


title: Ganon

text: In 2001, "Oracle of Seasons" and "Oracle of Ages" were released for the Game Boy Color handheld console. The two games feature their own antagonists, but upon completing either game, the player receives a password that provides access to a linked game in the opposite title. The linked game reveals Ganon as the secret final boss, who was resurrected by two witches named Twinrova.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon appears in the 2002 GameCube game "", resuming his plans to obtain the complete Triforce and conquer Hyrule. In the backstory of the game, the goddesses flood Hyrule to prevent Ganon from gaining power. Although he does not at first appear as the main villain, he is revealed to be the master of the Helmaroc King. He kidnaps Zelda, in her guise of Tetra, to complete the Triforce and gain ultimate power over Hyrule. His plans ultimately fail and in the final boss battle, Link defeats Ganondorf by thrusting the Master Sword into his forehead, turning him to stone.


title: Ganon

text: In the 2004 GameCube game "Four Sword's Adventures", the antagonists are initially shown to be Shadow Link and Vaati. However, Ganon is revealed to be the true villain who stole a powerful magical trident and Dark Mirror to create the evil version of Link. Ganon uses Shadow Link to kidnap the shrine maidens of Hyrule and murders the Knights of Hyrule, trapping them in the World of Darkness. Link with his clones frees the shrine maidens and seals Ganon inside the Four Sword to return peace to Hyrule.


title: Ganon

text: In "Twilight Princess", which was released in 2006 for the Wii and GameCube, Ganondorf is the catalyst to the game's events, allying himself with Zant to take over Hyrule. In the game's backstory, the Sages banish Ganon with the Mirror of Twilight after he tried to steal the Triforce. After Link and his companion Midna defeat Zant, they face Ganondorf for the final battle at Hyrule Castle. Ganondorf battles Link by possessing Zelda and using her like a puppet and afterwards transforms into his beast form. After Link slays Ganon, Midna safely transports Link and Zelda to Hyrule field, but Link is forced to again face Ganondorf in his human form. Ganondorf is defeated by Link with the help of Zelda's Light Arrows when Link finally plunges the Master Sword into Ganondorf's chest.


title: Ganon

text: In the 2007 Nintendo DS game "", which is a direct sequel to "The Wind Waker", Ganondorf only appears in a cameo in the opening sequence that summarizes the plot of the latter game.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon does not appear in the 2011 Wii game "" as he was replaced by a new antagonist named Lord Ghirahim. Talking to "Nintendo Power", Eiji Aonuma explained that he wanted a different kind of antagonist and that Ghirahim was created to contrast with Ganon's "very masculine, powerful, evil" image. Despite his absence, the game suggests that Ganon is the manifestation of the game's demonic god named Demise when Link's companion Fi says that Demise is "the source of all monsters". Demise's final curse also establishes that Ganon, Link and Zelda are placed in an eternal cycle of conflict.


title: Ganon

text: In the 2013 Nintendo 3DS game "", Ganon, in his original form, makes a minor appearance, though his past actions and influence greatly affect the course of events throughout the story and serves as the inspiration for Yuga. Yuga summons him back from his seal with the power of the seven sages, previously trapped within paintings by Yuga, and fuses with Ganon to become Yuga Ganon, but is defeated by Link.


title: Ganon

text: The character appears in "", released in 2017 for Nintendo Switch and Wii U, as a malevolent force called Calamity Ganon. In the backstory, he returns from an earlier defeat to take control of an army of Guardian robots, which he uses against the Hyruleans with the aim of destroying Hyrule. Using his Blight Ganon doppelgängers he murders the four Champions to take control of the powerful ancient technology that they piloted known as the four Divine Beasts. Hyrule is consequently reduced to a wasteland inhabited by roaming monsters. Link is severely injured during a subsequent battle with the Guardian robots in an effort to protect Princess Zelda and is placed into a hundred-year-long slumber to heal, before Zelda awakens him to destroy Ganon.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon makes an appearance in the 1992 "Zelda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce" (Barcode Battler II). The game was released by Epoch Co. and involves scanning barcodes to battle enemies on cards with a story based on "A Link to the Past".


title: Ganon

text: Ganon appears in his "demon boar" form in two of the three CD-i "Zelda" titles: . The games centre on Ganon attacking Gamelon and the island of Koridai. In "Zelda's Adventure", Ganon takes over the kingdom of Tolemac and captures Link.


title: Ganon

text: Ganondorf made his first appearance in the "Super Smash Bros." series in his "Ocarina of Time" design as an unlockable character in "Super Smash Bros. Melee". He reappears in all subsequent installments, including "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate". In "Super Smash Bros. Melee", Ganondorf's moveset was a slower, stronger version of Captain Falcon's and his Warlock Punch was based on the Falcon Punch. For "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", Eiji Aonuma said that his design team submitted designs to the developers for Ganondorf based on "Twilight Princess". Ganondorf appears in the single-player "The Subspace Emissary" mode, allied with Bowser and Wario. His final smash is his "Dark Beast Ganon" form from "Twilight Princess", in which he transforms, charges across the screen and then warps himself back onto the stage. Ganondorf was also included as an unlockable character in "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U", which features a similar moveset but introduces the use of a sword in place of his Warlock Punch as a custom move. In "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", Ganondorf's design matches his "Ocarina of Time" appearance again and he uses his sword for Smash Attacks. He has several special moves, including transforming into Demon King Ganon for his final smash.


title: Ganon

text: Ganondorf appears as a playable character in the "Zelda" spin-off title "Hyrule Warriors". He features alongside various other characters from the "Zelda" series, including villains Ghirahim from "Skyward Sword" and Zant from "Twilight Princess". He can also be customised with several outfits, including his Demon King costume set.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon can be summoned into a player's village in "" by scanning a compatible amiibo that was released for the 30th anniversary of "The Legend of Zelda" series. Ganondorf is available as an unlockable "Mystery Mushroom" costume in "Super Mario Maker". He is also playable in the Nintendo Switch version of "", with the Switch version of the game exclusively offering amiibo support and additional content based on "The Legend of Zelda" series. Ganon also makes a cameo appearance alongside Link in "Scribblenauts Unlimited."


title: Ganon

text: Ganon is the final boss in the 2019 Nintendo Switch rhythm game "Cadence of Hyrule". The storyline involves Link, Zelda and Cadence searching for four magic instruments to defeat Ganon.


title: Ganon

text: Calamity Ganon appears in the 2020 hack and slash video game "". In addition to being the main antagonist of the game, he can also be unlocked as a playable character at the end of the game after the player completes all of the challenges.


title: Ganon

text: In 2021, Nintendo released "Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda", a handheld unit that incorporates three games, "The Legend of Zelda", "The Adventure of Link" and "Link's Awakening". The unit celebrates 35 years of "The Legend of Zelda" series and revisits Link's first battle with Ganon in the original game.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon appears as the main villain of the 1989 "The Legend of Zelda" cartoon, which was shown as part of "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" in syndication that year. In the cartoon, Ganon is a brown-skinned anthropomorphic boar and wizard with a squeally voice. He is in possession of the Triforce of Power and spends each episode plotting to steal the Triforce of Wisdom and take over Hyrule. However, his plan is usually thwarted by Link and Zelda by the end of the episode. With powerful magical abilities and a quick temper, Ganon is depicted as a menacing character who will do whatever is necessary, including sacrificing his minions, in order to win his victory. He was voiced by Len Carlson.


title: Ganon

text: In addition to the "Zelda" cartoon, Ganon (along with Link and Zelda) also appeared in "", as a secondary villain in the episode "Quest for the Potion of Power". During the episode, Ganon is revived, double-crosses Mother Brain, and is killed by the reflected magic on Link's shield.


title: Ganon

text: In the "South Park" episode "Imaginationland Episode III", Ganondorf makes an appearance in his "Ocarina of Time" incarnation as one of many evil characters battling the good characters.


title: Ganon

text: "The Legend of Zelda" comic series published in the 1990s by Valiant Comics was based on "The Legend of Zelda" games and featured Ganon as an antagonist in the stories and bonus stories.


title: Ganon

text: Ganon has appeared in "The Legend of Zelda" manga. In "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" manga, which was originally published in two volumes and written by Akira Himekawa, the storyline provides additional details to the game's plot in which Link defeats Ganondorf and restores peace to Hyrule.


title: Ganon

text: Critics have responded positively to the character. In 2008, GameDaily ranked him the second on their lists of "Top Ten Nintendo Characters That Deserve Their Own Games" list and in 2009 as the "Most Persistent Video Game Villains of All Time". "GamesRadar" listed him second on their 2009 list of "The Top Video Game Villains who will Never Stay Dead". "IGN" listed Ganon as one of the "Top 10 Characters In Need of a Spin-Off" and ranked him third on its "Top 100 Videogames Villains" list. "GameSpot" also included him in its "Top Ten Video Game Villains". Jeff Mills for "The Escapist" included Ganon on a 2017 list of "8 of the Strongest Video Game Villains of All Time": "The possessor of the Triforce of Power, he has astonishing magical and physical powers, including what seems to be near-immortality. Ganon tends to be portrayed as the personification of evil, as opposed to Link, who personifies benevolence". In 2021, Melody Macready of "Screen Rant" opined that Dark Lord Ganondorf in "Twilight Princess" is the best incarnation of the character and commented that "he was darker, more menacing than ever, had no problem slaughtering innocents, and Nintendo didn't shy away from his brutality". Matt Kamen for "Wired" responded positively to the presence of Calamity Ganon in "Breath of the Wild": "Ganon is the de facto supervillain of the "Zelda" series, but he's never been so threatening as he is here. He's seen in the distance from almost any high point, a towering dragon of roiling dark energy, coiled ominously around Hyrule Castle".


title: Ganon

text: The boss fights between Link and Ganon have been the subject of critical commentary. In 2004, "GameSpot" counted his appearance in "Ocarina of Time" among the "Top Ten Boss Fights": "Ganon is one of the most classic and memorable bosses ever to rule a video game, and the "Ocarina of Time" fight with him is his most amazing appearance yet". In 2012, Mark Langshaw of Digital Spy also considered the final battle against Ganon/Ganondorf in "Ocarina of Time" to be one of the most memorable boss battles, commenting that "the dual contest against Ganondorf and his monstrous alter ego was a fitting end to an epic adventure". Chris Freiburg for "Den of Geek" also chose Ganon in "Ocarina of Time" as the best boss fight, describing him as "a towering pig beast wielding two massive swords in an arena surrounded by a ring of fire" and opined, "it's hard not to consider it the best boss fight in franchise history". In 2017, Brian Shea writing for "Game Informer" ranked all the appearances of Ganon and chose his battle with Link in "The Wind Waker" as the greatest moment, commenting that the final blow in the scene "is in stark contrast to the cute cel-shaded visual style in the best way possible" and "delivers players one of the most memorable final sequences in gaming". In 2021, Marco Vito Oddo writing for Collider ranked every appearance of Ganon and considered the final boss battle in "The Wind Waker" as the best Ganondorf duel in "The Legend of Zelda" franchise. By contrast, he considered the final boss battle in "Breath of the Wild" to be "utterly disappointing", describing Calamity Ganon as "another giant blob of dark energy that fights just like every other Ganon Blight the player already fought and defeated" and "an unsatisfactory ending to a fantastic game". "Gaming Bolt" named Dark Beast Ganon as one of "13 Badass Looking Bosses That Were Ultimately Pushovers": "The fight against Calamity Ganon is disappointingly easy as it is, but then you take on his second form, Dark Beast Ganon, which turns out to be even more of a cakewalk. Given how menacing the devilish creature looks, you wouldn't expect him to go down this easily".


title: Ganon

text: Critics have also commented on Ganon's appearance in the "Super Smash Bros." series. Jeremy Parish of "Polygon" ranked 73 fighters from "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" "from garbage to glorious", placing Ganon at 33rd, and stated that "Ganon looked cool and scary in "Ocarina of Time", but he's more or less become a swarthier version of Mega Man's Dr. Wily: A villain so overplayed he's become practically comical". Gavin Jasper of "Den of Geek" ranked Ganon as 54th on his list of "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" characters, stating that "Ganondorf is a great villain and all, but his Gerudo form mainly exists for the build-up until it's time for him to hit his Ganon form so that the true battle can begin. He remains his lesser form, only becoming Ganon for his Final Smash or for a specific boss fight".


title: Ganon

text: Ganon is one of the most recognizable and popular villains in gaming and has been met with positive reception over the years. As the main villain of the series, his image has been recreated in various forms of fan art. He is also a popular character with fans for cosplay. The character has also appeared in various "Zelda" merchandise, including collectible figurines and Amiibo.


title: Ganon

text: In 2010, "Nintendo Power" named him the best villain in Nintendo history. In 2013, Ganon was chosen as the fourth greatest videogame villain of all time in a poll for "Guinness World Records 2013 Gamer’s Edition". "GamesRadar" ranked him in 2013 as the best villain in the history of video games. In 2018, "GamesRadar" staff described Ganon as the fourth best villain in video games: "Ganon isn't meant to be a single, defined character. Ganon "is" evil. Like evil in our own world, Ganon can never be completely contained or eliminated. He'll always appear again in a new form suited to subverting the peaceful ways that arise in his temporary absence".


title: Bigg Boss (Hindi season 9)

text: Bigg Boss Double Trouble (stylized as Bigg Boss: Nau) is the ninth season of the Indian reality TV series "Bigg Boss" that premiered on 11 October 2015 on Colors TV. Salman Khan returned to host the ninth season.


title: Bigg Boss (Hindi season 9)

text: The series won by Prince Narula while Rishabh Sinha became runner up of the show. This season like its predecessor Season 8 underperformed. People soon forgot that people like Prince and Gautam had won their respective seasons.


title: Bigg Boss (Hindi season 9)

text: The house theme mainly focuses on aesthetics to adapt to the underlying premiere twist for the ninth season which revolves around the housemates entering the house in pairs rather than as individual housemates. The house sections are replicated to depict places in history and around the globe. The exterior of the house is crafted to recreate the Garden of Eden. It features a fortune teller machine and a wide canopy. The kitchen contains most of its sculptural and art pieces from the architecture of Santorini while the bathroom area follows a glitzy Las Vegas theme. The bathroom walls are lined with mirrors and most of the furniture is crimson. The bedroom contains all double bed and the confession room is situated between the kitchen and the living area as with every series since 2011, featuring a royal themed chair. The housemate wall has been installed for the first time in house with the LED screens to keep track of housemates' status.


title: Bigg Boss (Hindi season 9)

text: This season, like the previous one, also featured a 'Special Panel', where a team of past housemates or their acquaintances would share their and public's views and opinions of the current housemates before the eviction. The panel would rotate every week.


title: Bigg Boss (Hindi season 9)

text: The main events in the house are summarized in the table below. A typical week begins with nominations, followed by the shopping task, and then the eviction of a Housemate during the Saturday episode. Evictions, tasks, and other events for a particular week are noted in order of sequence.


title: Revlon

text: Revlon, Inc. is an American multinational company dealing in cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care. The headquarters of Revlon was established in New York City on March 1, 1932, where it still remains. Revlon was founded by brothers Charles and Joseph Revson, and chemist Charles Lachman. Revlon products are sold in 150 countries and the company has many global locations including Mexico City, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo.


title: Revlon

text: Revlon was founded in New York City on March 1, 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, by Jewish American brothers Charles Revson and Joseph Revson along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name. The three men started with one single product, a new type of nail enamel and pooled their resources to develop a unique manufacturing process. Using pigments instead of dyes, Revlon developed a variety of new shades of nail enamel. In 1937, Revlon started selling the polishes in department stores and pharmacies. In six short years, the company became a multimillion-dollar organization. By 1940, Revlon offered an entire manicure line and added lipstick to the collection. During World War II, Revlon created makeup and related products for the United States Army, which was honored in 1944 with the Army-Navy "E" Award for Excellence.


title: Revlon

text: By the end of World War II, Revlon was the number two cosmetics producer in the United States. Expanding its capabilities, the company bought "Graef & Schmidt", a cutlery manufacturer seized by the government in 1943 because of German business ties. This acquisition made it possible for Revlon to produce its own manicure and pedicure instruments, instead of buying them from outside supply sources.


title: Revlon

text: On February 28, 1996, Revlon was listed on New York Stock Exchange as public limited company. The IPO price was $24 per share.


title: Revlon

text: In the 1960s, Revson segmented Revlon Inc into different divisions, each focusing on a different market. He borrowed this strategy from General Motors. Each division had its own target customer:


title: Revlon

text: In 1957, Revlon acquired "Knomark", a shoe-polish company, and sold its shoe-polish line Esquire Shoe Polish in 1969. Other acquisitions, such as "Ty-D-Bol", the maker of toilet cleansers, and a 27 percent interest in the Schick electric shaver company, were soon discarded. Evan Picone, a women's sportswear manufacturer with a price tag of $12 million in 1962, was sold back to one of the original partners four years later for $1 million. However, the 1967 acquisition of the U.S. Vitamin and Pharmaceutical Corporation made Revlon a leader in diabetes drugs.


title: Revlon

text: The company began to market its products overseas at the end of the 1950s. By 1962, when Revlon debuted in Japan, there were subsidiaries in France, Italy, Argentina, Mexico, and Asia. In Japan Revlon used its basic U.S. advertising and models instead of adapting its advertisements and using Japanese models. Sales for 1962 came to $164 million.


title: Revlon

text: In 1968, Revlon introduced Eterna27, the first cosmetic cream with an estrogen precursor called "Progenitin" (pregnenolone acetate), and fashion designer fragrance Norman Norell. Later Revlon launched "Braggi," "Pub" and "Bill Blass" for men, and a line of wig maintenance products called Wig Wonder.


title: Revlon

text: In 1970, Revlon acquired the Mitchum line of deodorants. In 1971, Flex shampoo and conditioner were introduced.


title: Revlon

text: In 1973, Revlon introduced Charlie perfume, aimed at people under 30, promoted by model Shelley Hack, wearing trousers. After the introduction of Charlie, Revlon's net sales figures were $506 million in 1973 and $606 million the following year. Shelley Hack appeared on "Oprah" in 2007 to talk about the power of Charlie advertisements. "Jontue" perfume also sold well.


title: Revlon

text: In 1973, model Lauren Hutton signed an exclusive modeling contract, agreeing to pose for Revlon's Ultima line for $400,000 for two years, and was portrayed on the cover of Newsweek. Richard Avedon was signed on as the exclusive photographer for the brand.


title: Revlon

text: In 1975, Charles Revson died. Michel Bergerac, whom Revson had hired as President of the company, continued to expand the company holdings. Revlon acquired Coburn Optical Industries, an Oklahoma-based ophthalmic and optical processing equipment and supplies manufacturer. Barnes-Hind, the largest U.S. marketer of hard contact lens solutions, was bought in 1976 and strengthened Revlon's share of the eye-care market. Revlon purchased "Armour Pharmaceutical Company", a division of Armour and Company, from The Greyhound Corporation in 1977. Other acquisitions included the Lewis-Howe Company, makers of "Tums" antacid in 1978. These health-care operations helped sales figures surpass the $1 billion mark in 1977, bringing total sales to $1.7 billion in 1979.


title: Revlon

text: In the mid-1980s, Revlon lost ground to Estée Lauder, and Armour Pharmaceutical's haemophilia product "Factorate" infected many people worldwide with HIV and hepatitis C. Estee Lauder spent millions of dollars on numerous magazine ads featuring Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova, shot by famed Chicago fashion photographer Victor Skrebneski. Revlon's share dropped from 20 percent to 10 percent of department store cosmetics sales. Sales at the drugstore also declined as Revlon lost shares to Noxell's Cover Girl brand. Revlon compensated with more acquisitions; Max Factor, Ellen Betrix, Charles of the Ritz, Germaine Monteil, Almay, Fermodyl, Lancaster, Aziza, and Halston. The 1977 acquisition of "Carlos Colomer", a Spanish professional beauty supply distributor, brought "Fermodyl" and "Roux" and helped introduce Revlon to the world of ethnic care: "Creme of Nature", "Realistic", "Lovely Color" and "Milk and Honey". In 1983 the company attempted an unsuccessful hostile takeover of Gillette. In 1989, Revlon became one of the first companies to replace animal tests with alternative safety testing methods.


title: Revlon

text: On November 5, 1985, at a price of $58 per share, totaling $2.7 billion, Revlon was sold to Pantry Pride (later renamed to Revlon Group, Inc.), a subsidiary of Ronald Perelman's MacAndrews & Forbes. The buyout—engineered with the help of junk bond king Michael P. Milken—saddled Revlon with a huge $2.9 billion debt load, which became an albatross around the company's neck for years to come. Pantry Pride Inc. offered to buy any or all of Revlon's 38.2 million outstanding shares for $47.5 a share when its street price stood at $45 a share. Initially rejected, he repeatedly raised his offer until it reached $53 a share while fighting Revlon's management every step of the way. Forstmann Little & Company swooped in at $56 a share, a brief public bidding war ensued, and Perelman triumphed with an offer of $58 a share. Perelman paid $1.8 billion to Revlon's shareholders, but he also paid $900 million of other costs associated with the purchase. Perelman filed suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery to force Revlon to accept Perelman's offer, and the resulting appellate decision, "Revlon v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings", was a landmark case in determining the obligations of public company directors in hostile takeover situations under Delaware law.


title: Revlon

text: Perelman had Revlon sell four divisions: two for $1 billion, the vision care division for $574 million, and the National Health Laboratories division which became a publicly owned corporation in 1988. Additional make-up lines were purchased for Revlon: Max Factor in 1987 and Betrix in 1989, later sold to Procter & Gamble in 1991. Also in 1991, Revlon sold the Clean & Clear brand to Johnson & Johnson.


title: Revlon

text: In 2011, PETA removed Revlon and other high-profile cosmetic brands from its list of companies who do not test their products on animals after the organization learned they were paying Chinese laboratories to test their cosmetics on rabbits and other animals.


title: Revlon

text: In August 2013, Revlon Consumer Products Corp. bought the Colomer Group from CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, for $660 million.


title: Revlon

text: After suffering business loss in 2011 and 2012, at the end of 2013, Revlon announced that it will exit the Chinese market, which employs 1,100 people. The business in China accounted for just 2 percent portion of net sales of Revlon's international operations.


title: Revlon

text: In March 2014, Revlon announced leaving midtown and relocate headquarters to the top two floors of One New York Plaza.


title: Revlon

text: On September 22, 2014, Revlon's board of directors elected Roberto Simon as executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective as of Sept. 30.


title: Revlon

text: On April 30, 2015, Revlon completed the acquisition of U.K. based fragrance management company CBBeauty including its U.K. distributor SAS & Company.


title: Revlon

text: On June 16, 2016, Revlon announced its intention to purchase its competitor Elizabeth Arden, Inc. for $870 million. The acquisition was completed on September 7, 2016. Revlon also acquired Cutex from Coty Inc. in 2016.


title: Revlon

text: The company announced on January 29, 2017, that CEO Fabian Garcia would leave the company at the end of February. Board member, Paul Meister, would become executive vice chairman of the board and run the day-to-day operations. A quarterly report from the end of 2017 estimated its quarterly loss falling approximately between $60 million and $80 million.


title: Revlon

text: In May 2018, the company announced the appointment of Debra Perelman, the daughter of Ronald Perelman, to the position of chief executive officer. She will be the first ever female CEO of the company after serving as COO starting in January 2018 and serving on the board since 2015.


title: Revlon

text: In January 2019, "Seeking Alpha" published an article regarding trading anomalies on the Revlon stock (REV); it is under investigation.


title: Revlon

text: In August 2020, American bank Citi wrongly wired $900 million to creditors of Revlon. The wire sparked a "protracted legal fight". In October of the same year, the bank was fined $400 million by the US bank regulators as a result of their risk in control systems and was ordered to update their technology.


title: Revlon

text: On September 28, 2021, the UK's Infected Blood Inquiry heard evidence about Armour's use of hemophilia treatment products during the 1970s and 80s, which caused Hepatitis C and HIV infections, including its period under the control of Revlon Healthcare.


title: Revlon

text: On June 16, 2022, Revlon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after struggling with debt, rising competition, supply chain challenges, and falling behind evolving beauty standards. A few hours after the bankruptcy announcement, Revlon's shares lost more than 13% of their value. According to a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Revlon listed assets and liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion. Revlon which had been managed by Perelman's daughter Debra Perelman since mid-2018, had long-term debt of $3.31 billion as of March 31, 2022. The company narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 2020 after restructuring its debt. It was one of the last remaining holdings of Ronald Perelman. "Bloomberg News" reported that the company's bankruptcy process could be "complicated by financial controversies." "MarketWatch" quoted industry analysts and commentators as saying that bankruptcy would allow the firm a chance to refresh and regroup as it attempts to compete with newer brands, like Kylie Cosmetics or Fenty. "CNBC" reported that Revlon's bankruptcy might be the start of broader bankruptcy problems for the retail sector. It was delisted from the NYSE on October 21, 2022.


title: Revlon

text: Until the 1940s Revlon's magazine ads were drawn by hand and mostly in black and white. In 1945, Revlon began launching full-color photographic advertisements in major magazines and stores across the country. Revlon introduced matching nail polish and lipsticks with exotic and unique names. These ads were taken by the top fashion photographers of the day including Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, and John Rawlings. Some of these ads were for "Paint the Town Pink" and 1945's "Fatal Apple" with Dorian Leigh. In 1947 Revlon introduced "Bachelor's Carnation" and in 1948, "Sweet Talk".


title: Revlon

text: In 1950, Revlon introduced a red lipstick and nail enamel called "Where's the Fire?", and later used "Fire and Ice" ads. One of the world's first supermodels, Dorian Leigh, starred in some of Revlon's most memorable advertisements of all time. In 1946, Dorian was covered in purple flowers and wrapped in a pale purple sheet for "Ultra Violet." In 1947, Dorian appeared in "Fashion Plate." In 1953, at the age of 36, she appeared in "Cherries in the Snow." Later that year she appeared in the legendary "Fire and Ice" ad shot by Richard Avedon. Originally, Dorian appeared in a tight, silver-beaded dress with an enormous red wrap. Her black hair had a silver swirl in it and she had her hands, with long red nails, positioned in front of her breasts. Charles Revson rejected Avedon's original ad as "too sexual." They re-shot the ad, this time with her open hand in front of one hip, the other in front of her cheek. The advertisement became Madison Avenue legend because of the full-page quiz next to the sensual ad. Almost 50 years later, in November 2010, Revlon re-created 1953's "Fire and Ice" magazine ad with actress Jessica Biel, and announced that they were issuing a limited-edition Fire and Ice lipstick and nail color, calling this campaign, "lips and tips."


title: Revlon

text: Dorian Leigh's 15-years-younger red-headed sister, Suzy Parker, also shot numerous Revlon magazine ads in the 1950s. Suzy and Charles Revson, who wanted to marry Dorian at some point, despised each other. At one point, he refused to hire Suzy any more because she complained about the "peanut" paycheck she received from Revlon. Richard Avedon, however, after photographing other models for a particular Revlon ad, would call in Suzy at the last minute, sometimes late at night, to do re-takes with him. This happened with "Stormy Pink," an ad Suzy shot very late at night with a wild white horse in the ocean. Avedon would then tell Revson that it was not Suzy in the ad, but a model named "Bubbles" or another made-up name.


title: Revlon

text: In 1970, Revlon became the first American cosmetics company to feature an African American model, icon Naomi Sims, in their advertising. In the late 1970s, Revlon also made history when it created their line of cosmetics, specifically for women of color, called "The Polished Ambers Collection" and selected fashion model icon Iman to be featured in the advertising campaigns. Revlon was also noted for featuring models of a wide age range in the 1980s, including 13-year-old Milla Jovovich and 60-year-old Audrey Hepburn. Despite the successful campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s featuring models, in particular Cindy Crawford, Revlon decided to drop fashion models and focus on movie stars, among them Kate Bosworth, Jaime King, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Griffith, Julianne Moore, Eva Mendes, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Connelly, Beau Garrett, Jessica Biel, Olivia Wilde, Emma Stone and Bond girls. In 2009, Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson became one of a long line of spokesmodels for the company. American actress Jessica Biel modelled for the brand, first shown in advertisements in January 2010.


title: Revlon

text: In 2008, celebrity makeup artist Gucci Westman was hired as Revlon's Global Artistic Director, representing the company at runway shows and brand events and designing collections.


title: Revlon

text: In 2020, Korean-American singer, actress and fashion designer Jessica Jung was announced as the new global ambassador for the company.


title: Revlon

text: Revlon is a corporate sponsor of several charity projects. The largest of these is the Revlon Run Walk, founded in 1994 in partnership with the Entertainment Industry Foundation. It is a run and walk event held in New York and Los Angeles to raise money and awareness for breast and ovarian cancer, which has raised and distributed more than $70 million to women’s cancer research and support programs since its inception. Revlon also supports other cancer charities such as Look Good Feel Better and the National Breast Cancer Coalition and operates a mobile mammography clinic in and around Oxford, North Carolina, where the company's primary manufacturing operations are located. In 1996, Revlon supported the development of a breast center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Renamed Revlon/UCLA Breast Center, the center is a well-known institute for treatment and research of breast cancer and other breast diseases and disorders. A Revlon lip gloss shade whose proceeds support Revlon's cancer charities was also created in 2009.


title: Revlon

text: In September 2010, Revlon, with global artistic director Gucci Westman and spokesmodel Halle Berry hosted an event at Fashion's Night Out in New York City to raise funds for the Jenesse Center, a Los Angeles organization for domestic violence victims. Revlon also hosted luncheons and various other events to benefit the center and partnered with then-online retailer drugstore.com to donate portions of lipstick sales to the organization.


title: Revlon

text: In 2018, the company launched an Employee Volunteer Program (EVP) which was created to provide each full time U.S. employee with eight hours of time to engage in community service.


title: Revlon

text: In September 2015, Revlon donated $1 million through its LOVE IS ON million-dollar challenge dedicated to women's cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.


title: Jorge Ochoa

text: Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez (born 30 September 1950) is a Colombian former drug trafficker who was one of the founding members of the notorious Medellín Cartel in the late 1970s. The cartel's key members were Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha,


title: Jorge Ochoa

text: Jorge Luis Ochoa Vázquez was the son of Fabio Ochoa Restrepo whose family was in the cattle-breeding and Family-restaurant businesses until they began trafficking with narcotics during the mid-1970s. Standing six feet, 225 lb, Jorge looked very much like a plump, prosperous businessman. He reportedly never uses cocaine and drinks only an occasional glass of wine. He raised prized fighting bulls at his ranch, Los Lamos and collected Harley Davidson motorcycles.