Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)

Subject: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:59 AM

Margaret Thatcher the murder of ten Irish hunger strikers is dead.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:03 AM

"Maggies Downfall" By Paul Tachs

Subject: BS: Obit : Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:05 AM

ABC is reporting that she died of a stroke this morning.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: GUEST,Eric the Viking
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:05 AM

I thought it was a bad day so far, but this news changed my mind. Good riddance. It's a shame more Tories don't follow her ASAP. I'd volunteer to help some go.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:09 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Subject: RE: BS: Obit : Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:12 AM

Its all over the BBC just now.
Can't say its a surprise. I'd rather not say any more.

Paws

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: bradfordian
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:19 AM

Not worth TWO threads surely?????

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: GUEST,jimmy
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:20 AM

And she wont have to worry about heating bills or freezing weather where she is now

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:23 AM

Who's up for a flashmob playing 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' somewhere?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: Gutcher
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:24 AM

Was the ban on her criminal son from entering this country ever lifted?.[ie] his liability to be arrested if he returned.   If not will he be given a dispensation to attend his mothers funeral

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thacther Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:25 AM

Party at Pete Coes' house then ?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:33 AM

Oh God, please, please, please say it's true!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:42 AM

One could say it was a STROKE of luck.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Bobert
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:42 AM

I won't say "Glad to see her go" because wishing death upon anyone is bad karma but...

...she and her buddy, Ronald Reagan, set the labor unions back a 100 years... Terrible Prime Minister just as Reagan was a terrible president...

B~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Eric the Viking
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:50 AM

I can't believe the sycophantic, groveling comments on the news as it's being broadcast. She was a mean spirited, nasty woman who thought that greed and personal wealth at all costs was the way forward. Don't forget she took free milk away from five year old children. She, and her ilk, destroyed whole communities. They continue to do so. She oversaw the selling off of everything of value in Britain, putting profit for the shareholders way beyond good service and value for money. She took from the poor and fed the rich no matter which way you look at it. It's a pity she will never be drawn to account for her actions.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 09:03 AM

Sadly her Tory scum-spawn live on. But a good day for smiling all the same. We WILL represent the Lollipop Guild!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 09:03 AM

No tears this end.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: John Routledge
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 09:04 AM

Thatcher's legacy is well and truly with us. Take whatever you can.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 09:20 AM

Because of her this country is in the death grip of the neo-liberal free market, and now the poor and the environment (why have we forgotten about that?) are paying the price.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 09:22 AM

I never had any time for her , her policies , nor her Party , but it seems unneccessary to be any more vitupertative about her now she has passed on

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Dead Horse
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 10:00 AM

I detested the woman, but she was far stronger and more honourable than any that have followed in her place.
Oh, and Harry - allowing murdering terrorist scum to kill themselves by not taking food is not murder - but releasing them back into the community to offend again probably is.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 10:12 AM

Like Dead Horse I detested her and her policies - but at least she had the guts to be open about them, unlike the weasel Blair. She's dead - let her go.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 10:23 AM

Here's the very last scene from the very last episode of Spitting Image .

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: billybob
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 10:50 AM

Quote from Ed Milliband " Show respect"

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Jon Heslop
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 10:51 AM

I, like others, hated and detested her, her party and all that she stood for. As someone who witnessed the effects of her blind dogma on the people of South Wales during the Miners' strike of '84-'85 I can never forgive her or her party for all the suffering caused by her blind passion to destroy trades unionism across Britain. Nor can I ever reconcile myself to subsequent governments of either hue turning their faces away from the pain they caused. It is well to remember that it was the administration of her successor John Major who pushed through most of the privatisation programme that she initiated. Once she was out of power the hawks in the Tory party took advantage of their leader's weak and ineffectual grip on power (he was probaly to busy with Edwina Curry) to sell off the family silver to their friends and /or the highest bidders. Not one penny of that did anything to make our lives better.
They're probably building bonfires in Toypandy Squre even as we speak and I for one would gladly go and warm my hands at them. No tears here either.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:09 AM

billybob "Show respect".

Why? What respect did she ever show to the rest of the human race? Have you forgotten the way she crushed the miners, or the way she ordered the Belgrano sank - in contravention of the rules of engagement which her own government had established?

Perhaps you've forgoten the time when she held up Pinochet's plane, so that she could give a Spanish armada cannon ball as a token of gratitude for the help that "he" gave "us" in crushing the Argentinians? Yes, the same General Pinochet who staged one of the bloodiest coups in history, when he overthrew the constitutionally elected goverment of Chile and murdered around 30,000 of its people?

Could it be also that you've forgotten the millions who were driven onto the dole by her insane policies? Or maybe you've forgotten the poll tax? Or maybe you've just forgotten the plot.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Greg F.
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:17 AM

And not a minute too soon.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Jim McLean
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:29 AM

Why praise Thatcher for being strong enough to stick to her principles although you disagree with them? Stalin or even Hitler comes to mind ...
She was a strong willed nasty person who caused and is still causing dreadful pain and suffering to mankind. Remember her what she was, a vicious, greedy woman whose son profited immensely from an arms deal she did with the Saudies. May she roast in Hell unless, of course, they've run out of coal!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:33 AM

Aye, the last conviction politician is dead. Those we have now bend with the wind. Funny how we admire someone who stands up for their beliefs, only when we share those beliefs.
She won the one war she was involved in. That's more than we can say about Iraq, or will be able to say about Afghanistan.
Not a believer, but I wouldn't lower myself to rejoice at her passing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:36 AM

How does one show proper respect for Margaret Thatcher?

You could paraphrase Francis Urquhart: "You might want to sing 'Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead'; I couldn't possibly comment."

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Lizzie Cornish
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:39 AM

The Radio Ballads:

'Ballad Of The Miner's Strike'


Sadly, Will, she's not 'gone', for her clones remain...and Son Of Thatcher is about to bring the same kind of trauma to The People as the woman he so idolized did....

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:52 AM

Always thought Tony Blair was a Son Of Thatcher, Lizzie ;)
The present incumbent is more like one of her famous "Wets"

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 11:58 AM

Chumbawumba @ Sidmouth

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:03 PM

Just googling around, this headline made me laugh out loud! Perfect.

Guardian - Sunny Hundal

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:08 PM

Why praise Thatcher for being strong enough to stick to her principles although you disagree with them?

No "praise" in my post, I can assure you - merely that, with her, one knew exactly where one's enemy stood and where the battle lines were drawn.

By contrast, I voted for Tony Blair and felt a huge rage - utterly let down - when he started to show himself in his true colours.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: goatfell
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:34 PM

best thing she ever did, good riddance happy days are here again

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Megan L
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:39 PM

May you all go the same way and so mourned I didnt like the woman but the unmittigated hatred around the cat these days is sickening.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:56 PM

She was a good, tough, moderate conservative, and did a good job in a time of global monetary upset.

I disagreed with her defence of the Malvinas; they should have been returned graciously to Argentina.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 12:59 PM

not just round the cat, there are a lot of people in different countries who detested her., if you do not like other peoples opinions on the cat the best thing is to not visit the cat
   I will be happier when social democratic policies are put into effect in England and here in ireland, her policies and the policies being dictated by the imf and the ecb at the present moment are not efficient or humanitarian ways to run the capitalist system, people need money to buy goods, austerity measures[imo] only lengthen recession.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Rog Peek
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 01:12 PM

Yessssssss!

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Rog Peek
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 01:23 PM

"Funeral organised and funded by the private sector!" - What a great idea, any suggestion that me as a tax payer should be a party to funding such an event would really stick in my craw!

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 01:27 PM

At least this thread provides a bit of balance for the unctuous and evasive tributes on the BBC, and undoubtedly in the press

When a person dies at an advanced age someone always says "Don't mourn the death, celebrate the life". With Margaret Thatcher it's the other way round. No point in celebrating her death, every point in mourning the life that preceded it.

She had some impressive qualities. That was what enabled her to do so much harm. She set us on a path that we are still going down today, and "down" is the right word.
She didn't do it on her own, any more than Pinochet or Mussolini did. The real blame lies with the people who cheered her on, and even more with the Blair machine that consolidated her "achievements".

The other thing people say when someone dies is "We shall not look upon their like again". Please God that is true of Margaret Thatcher.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:10 PM

Megan L, conservatives are naturally more reserved, hence few would post to or even see what is below the line at mudcat. As a result the posts are overloaded with left wing diatribe.

Margaret Thatcher served 11 years as prime minister. Her support came from the quiet majority.

She was a strong friend of the U.S. and her like is missed.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: billybob
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:30 PM

I was just posing a quote from Ed Milliband, who also said that all three perty leaders had their lives influenced by her? I find all this hate very depressing , maybe I am old fashioned, I can remember all the above points, but I am always respectfull when someone dies for their family's sake.
As she was not born of wealth or status could some of these opinions be from sour grapes or envy? Or are all the above ex miners??

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:35 PM

Who's up for a flashmob playing 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' somewhere?
That post was offensive to witches.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:35 PM

"The quiet majority" That is a libel on the British people, and one that often gets made. in fact at no time did Thatcher get anywhere near a majority of popular votes.

"She was a strong friend of the U.S. and her like is missed." The same goes for such people as Pinochet, Mubarek - and in his time Saddam Hussein...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:35 PM

I refuse to speak ill of the dead; but today I'll make an exception.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Jim McLean
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:39 PM

This is from the film director Ken Loach.

Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times.

Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed – this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many Trades Unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess today.

Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably Tony Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey.

Remember she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet.

How should we honour her? Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she would have wanted.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:42 PM

Once again, I detect misogyny in some of the above posts.
The best thing that happened to Maggie, was Arthur Scargill, and yet people blame her, and not him.
No she wasn't my cup of tea, but she told it like it was, and she rescued this country from the clutches of the IMF.
The preceding Socialist (sic) Utopia, had left the dead unburied, and the bins unemptied.
Somebody had to clean the Augean stables.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:44 PM

"at no time did Thatcher get anywhere near a majority of popular votes."
.,,.
One of those persistent canards. Not that it is untrue; but no government, under our first-past-the-post constituency system, is ever elected by a numerical majority of the entire electorate. Mrs Thatcher's actual numerical support was higher than most; and she served longer and won more elections than any other in C20.

The usual abusers are obviously enjoying their little games. Some might think such conduct not the most praiseworthy; but who would grudge them their simple pleasures, the little dears!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: akenaton
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:56 PM

Capitalism demands that we remain competitive, you dont like the medicine dished out by Mrs Thatcher?.....then scrutinise the system.
You all support the Capitalist system, you should be praising her!

I have been a Communist all my life, so I fought and demonstrated against her policies, but I have to admit she was the consumate politician. Without her the system would have collapsed long before the recent financial crisis, which effectively means the end of Capitalism in the West.
Selling off the council property was a political masterstroke....overnight the soft left were shown for what they really are....Hypocrits.   They always want to have their cake and eat it too.

For me , the old tired Commie salutes one of the great politicians.... wish to Christ she had been on my side!

Rest in peace old woman......"The Iron Lady" has her place in history.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:58 PM

De mortuis nil nisi bonum...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 02:59 PM

Obviously Megan L and Q were not affected by her policy of destroying our manufacturing base, her paranoid hatred of trade unions, destroying the coal and steel industries and with them whole communities.

Or maybe they just did rather well out of her ' greed is good ' policies.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 03:13 PM

I have always believed in not speaking ill of the dead so that leaves me with nothing to say.............!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 03:18 PM

I suppose as an ex miner my knees aren't what they used to be. So I hope her grave has a sprung dance floor.

For the last 28 years I have always ensured I have two bottles of champagne in the house just in case Scargill died on the same day and the offy was shut.

Privatise her funeral and give it to the lowest bidder. It's what she would have wanted.

She did nothing of good. And I speak as a dirty rotten capitalist as some would call me. I sold up and got out of industry, sold to a firm who offered the best continuity for my staff and havent been near a factory since. Because thanks to her policies there is no UK manufacturing industry. Or at least what is there is despite not because of her awful legacy. Enemy within? speak for yourself bitch.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 03:22 PM

It's true, but it's a 'canard'...

Of course she got a significant amount of votes - but it just is not true to call that 'a majority', and it should never be allowed to stand. As you say, MtheGM, it is unheard of for a single party to get a majority (the nearest party to doing that was Labour in 1951 - and under the British electoral system it lost the election to the Tories, who got less.

To suggest that Margaret Thatcher managed to achieve that is to claim she achieved a much more impressive victory than she actually did, as it would be to claim that most voters backed Tony Blair.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 04:02 PM

Twitter comments today.
80% for, 20% against, according to BBC.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 04:03 PM

I believe the last Labour (sic) government was elected by about 13% of those eligible to vote.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 04:33 PM

Margaret Thatcher, Born 1925, died 2013. Sadly missed in Brighton 1984.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 04:48 PM

Possibly a more apposite quote

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:05 PM

As a grocer's daughter she knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Keef
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:11 PM

Whooo Hooooooo

Good riddance to the vile old trollop, crack the Champagne and PARTY ON!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:24 PM

now looking forward to the announcement of the official date for the national day of dance

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:28 PM

So - the right honourable BITCH for Finchley has finally gone to meet her maker!

I should not, nor do I want to, celebrate anybody's death (with one exception, and we celebrated His death on Good Friday).

There is justice, if not in this world, then in the next.

Wherever you are, Margaret, if you by a very remote chance find any peace there, then may you rest in it! You ought to (by the standards of this world) be in the company of some kindred spirits - Pinochet, Botha, Stalin, Franco, Hitler, ....

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stanron
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:34 PM

I have never previously experienced such an unpleasant outpouring of bile. I hope you all feel better.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead
From: Allan Conn
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:37 PM

"I believe the last Labour (sic) government was elected by about 13% of those eligible to vote."

It was nearer 21.5%. Thatcher's wins ranged from 30% to 33%. Blair's first victory was early 30s too. I think that it is pretty clear that Thatcher never received support from a majority of the British people though which was the point being made. Whether you look at those eligible to vote or those who actually voted that point is true! Likewise she polarised opinion more than had happened before certainly for a while. So she may have been extremely popular with some but she was extremely unpopular with others. Somebody said that Conservatives were quieter too. I don't think that is so! People who are more politicised tend to be more vocal whatever party they support.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 06:38 PM

It's no more than the unpleasant outpouring of bile that we suffered from her and her cronies in the eighties and early nineties

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:02 PM

Yes, SPB-Cooperator, but the many people on here pouring out the hatred and bile are the very same people who condemn *her* for a lack of compassion and humanity. Where's theirs?

I disagreed with most of what she said and did. I'm from a northern industrial area that saw its manufacturing and mining wiped out, but there's no way I'd wish that she'd "died a much more slow and agonising death" or that "her grave has a sprung ceiling" (presumably to facilitate dancing on it). Nice people...and eminently tar-able with the brush they're tarring her with!

Just let her go....

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:03 PM

It must be one of those strange coincidences that happen to members of my family. Today we took two of our grand children to the National Mining Museum. What news to hear on our return to the surface from our tour underground!

When one of the children asked why the coal was not still being mined the guide's reply was "politics".

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:30 PM

My spellchecker is Thatcherite - it does not recognise the word "coalpit".

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:43 PM

She was certainly no Annette Funicello.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stanron
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 07:49 PM

I wonder if any of the right on leftys here are willing to admit that Labour was as responsible for the social upheaval of the late seventies, eighties and early nineties as the Conservatives. Up to the first half of the 20th C Britain had an Empire. The Empire was a good market for British industries. After the war we no longer had an Empire and we no longer had those markets. What we had was out of date industries with no one to sell to and industrial practices whose concerns eventually became suicidal. In the 24 years between the end of the war and our first woman prime minister what had Labour done to modernise our industrial structure and practices? Nothing. The trades unions would not let them. Had the Labour Party had the courage and vision to implement adequate reform, Maggie may never have happened. She at least had the courage and vision to try and put things right. Had Labour made any serious effort in the previous 20 years it may not have been necessary. If you hate Maggie you should also hate the previous 20 years of BOTH parties.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: kendall
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:21 PM

I certainly don't hate her, but anyone who says Ronald Reagan was a great president is simply blowing smoke.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Fossil
Date: 08 Apr 13 - 08:44 PM

Where is she to be buried? I wish to go and dance there...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:05 AM

I think that it is pretty clear that Thatcher never received support from a majority of the British people though which was the point being made."
.,,.
But the point being MISSED, Allan, is that nobody ever does. It is not even expected under our system. But, as you go on to say, she did get more numerical support than anybody had for many years.

Geddit!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 03:31 AM

What was the percentage of the vote that atlee received when he was first elected? 49 per cent, so please stop this crap about thatcher having biggest percent of the vote in modern era..
"She at least had the courage and vision to try and put things right." whoever said this does not understand capitalist economics, reducing peoples wages on a grand scale means they have very little money to spend, result....economic stagnation, closing down indigineous fuel industries and relying on imported fuel, is putting yourself at the mercy of other governments.
All nations should try and be as self sufficent fuel wise as possible,   Thatchers attack upon the num was a politically motivated act of revenge for 1973,and was not for the good of the country on a short or a long term basis, it was divisive and only suited a very small percent of the population, those people who were very wealthy.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Sugarfoot Jack in the ether
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 03:52 AM

Hmmm . . . My post went for a burton, even though someone has quoted it in the thread.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:06 AM

Several street parties are being organized to coincide with her funeral from Yorkshire to Crossmaglen. That sums up the measure of the woman. Monday the 8th of April 2013 will be remembered as the day hell became full.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:07 AM

The woman was an evil bigot who tore the country apart. She deserved to die and she deserved to suffer.

She did one thing right - defend the Falkands from Argentinian invasion.

My military friends tell me that had her policies on Ireland been diligently pursued we would have won there, in stead of being defeated by the terrorists.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:09 AM

Dick ~~ Attlee's victory was at the end of the war when the situation, with all the returning servicemen, was exceptional. This majority was reduced to less than normal sorts of figures in the 1950 election, and overturned entirely in 1951, when he lost!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:24 AM

...and even then, note, it was a minority-elected govt, even if only by 1%!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:40 AM

What needs to be recognised by those who denounce "minority govenments" like Mrs T's is that numerically majority governments in this country are like The Spanish Inquisition ~~

Nobody expects them!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,vectis
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 05:00 AM

Oh Yes! Britain was such a utopia before Thatcher. The 3 day week, planning your meals around when you had power to cook it, doing homework by candle power when the electricity -yet again- was off. Strikes at the drop of a hat so if you started a long distance journey it was a bit of a gamble as to whether or not you would arrive on schedule. Hospitals barely operating due to strikes. Rubbish uncollected, the dead unburied for weeks because of strikes.
Oh Yes! what a wonderful world was led by Heath, Wilson and Callaghan - spineless and forgettable the lot of them.

Thatcher had a mandate and did what she said she would do. Many didn't like the effects, me for one; but many recognised that it was going to be painful but it would be worth it in the end.

What has followed her have been a succession of spineless rich public school boys with no idea of how most people live or what they want from life. It is them that have led this country and almost allowed it to become bankruptthrough piss poor policies.

Yes she made a lot of mistakes and enemies but she was honest, stuck to her principles and had integrity. What you saw was what you got.

I honestly believe that history will treat her more gently than those that preceeded her or followed her. Where has the statesmanship gone? lost along with honesty and good proactive policies.

There is too much hatred here which speaks more about the haters than the hated.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 05:14 AM

Yes and there is a lot of defending her by people who did well out of her ' greed is good, grab what you can and fuck the rest ' policies.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Harry
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 05:23 AM

Richard, Thatcher put all of her energy into dealing with the situation in the North of Ireland after her friend, Hairy Knees went vertical. She failed miserably because she under estimated their resolve. Here she wasn't dealing with the conscripted army in the Malvinas. John Major had a lot more wisdom when it came to dealing with the Irish. On the afternoon of the 9th of February 1996, the day the device detonated on the Southern Quay of Canary Wharf,he received a phone call stating another two similar devices were primed and already in the capital, he made the right call to begin talks, without sounding melodramatic, the country would have faced bankruptcy. Thatcher failed, in Ulster, Unionism is now fragmented, the largest party in government over there are the very people she attempted to break.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 05:25 AM

Yes, Dave, maybe; but not only by such. I doubt there are many of those who are Mudcatters, but she has her rational defenders on this forum too, as well as all the hysterical denouncers with their champagne & their dancing & their Judy Garland songs about dead witches. As I say: the little dears are enjoying their petty triumph [tho what there is to feel so very clever & triumphant about in someone's eventually having snuffed it in her late-80s I can't quite see]; so just let them get on with it, and much good may it do them. Nasty hangovers and sprained muscles are the best one can wish them.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:16 AM

"Monday the 8th of April 2013 will be remembered as the day hell became full."

Apparently Satan is pissed off with her already. She's only been down there a day and already she's closed five pits and eight furnaces.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:28 AM

Yes she made a lot of mistakes and enemies but she was honest, stuck to her principles and had integrity.
   she did not have integrity, she was corrupt,The original dartford tunnel, was funded by the rate payers of kent and essex,in theory it belonged to the rate payers of those two counties, her government awarded the building of the second tunnel to trafalgar houseor one of the companies that her husband was a diretor of.
the rate payers did not receive compensation when the two tunnels were privatised, so do not talk about integrity , she was a corrupt politician

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:32 AM

"Apparently Satan is pissed off with her already. She's only been down there a day and already she's closed five pits and eight furnaces."

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:34 AM

Start again:-
"Apparently Satan is pissed off with her already. She's only been down there a day and already she's closed five pits and eight furnaces."
And she wants to know why he is sitting in her chair.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:36 AM

so all though the toll was inplace right from the start, the rate payers of kent and essex also had to pay exra rates to help fund the tunnel, they were not consulted.
As the oper­a­tion of the Dart­ford Tun­nel was con­trolled by an Act of Par­lia­ment, new leg­is­la­tion was nec­es­sary to allow trans­fer of the cross­ing from Kent and Essex County Coun­cils to Dart­ford River Cross­ing Lim­ited. This process was com­pleted on July 31st 1988 and con­struc­tion of the bridge began just a few days later.

Dartfordcrossing3The prin­ci­pal engi­neer­ing con­trac­tor was the Cemen­ta­tion Cleve­land Dart­ford Con­sor­tium, a joint ven­ture between Kvaerner Con­struc­tion Lim­ited and Kvaerner Cleve­land Bridge Lim­ited. Dr. Ing Hell­mut Homberg and Part­ner designed the cable-stayed bridge super­struc­ture whilst Kvaerner Tech­nol­ogy Lim­ited designed the.
   who was a director of cementation at that time?. check it out Ithink you will find various members of the thatcher family were shareholders and or directors, one denis thatcher? SHE WAS CORRUPT

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 07:39 AM

News
    Politics

How Mark Thatcher exploited his position - and infuriated Whitehall

· Taxpayer forced to fund bodyguards, files show
· Mother pressed for aid to company employing son

Read the documents here, part 1
Read the documents here, part 2 (pdf)

    Share 1
    inShare0
    Email

    David Leigh and Rob Evans        
    The Guardian, Tuesday 20 September 2005        

A hitherto unknown saga of Whitehall exasperation at Sir Mark Thatcher's use of his position as the prime minister's son is revealed today in files the Guardian has obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sir Mark not only made large sums out of commercial firms anxious to exploit his mother. He also, the documents show, got the taxpayer to pay for 24-hour British bodyguards and unprecedented security at his home in the US. At one point, he demanded, unsuccessfully, to be made an honorary consul in Dallas.

No 10 staff, from the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, downwards, spent a considerable amount of time dealing with problems caused by the prime minister's son, including the use of the Downing Street press office to arrange his wedding to Diane Burgdorf, who disclosed their impending divorce at the weekend, following Sir Mark's recent conviction for involvement in an African coup attempt.

The person who comes best out of the story, as will be no surprise to contemporary readers of the Dear Bill column in Private Eye, was Sir Mark's bluff father, the late Denis Thatcher. Consulted by uneasy No 10 staff, he said Sir Mark's demands should be refused.

But Mrs Thatcher contradicted him. She authorised the unprecedented use of British taxpayers' money to fortify Sir Mark's luxurious home in Texas. She also authorised the home secretary to conceal from MPs the £117,000 cost of his special branch bodyguards while in Britain.

The files reveal that she pressed Whitehall to grant special aid to one firm, Cementation, employing Sir Mark, and allowed another, US computer firm EDS, which was seeking government contracts, to approach her through lobbyists and put Sir Mark on its payroll.

The files are peppered with thinly disguised complaints from Whitehall about the young Thatcher's arrogant attitude. "I had a not altogether satisfactory talk with Mark this morning" begins a typical confidential memo from Nigel Wicks, Mrs Thatcher's principal private secretary, to the British ambassador in Washington.

Mark demanded bodyguards soon after his mother came to power in 1979, though his sister Carol never asked for bodyguards throughout her mother's premiership. When MPs began to query the expense, the files show the Home Office submitted to his mother three possible answers to a parliamentary question, marked A, B and C. Answer A said truthfully: "The estimated cost of police protection afforded to Mark Thatcher since 1979 is £113,485". Answer B said, untruthfully: "This information could only be provided at disproportionate cost". She ordered answer C to be given: "I do not intend to depart from the practice of not disclosing ... information".

Sir Mark had been secretly paid commission by construction firm Cementation, for an Oman contract which his mother had lobbied for. The files reveal for the first time that the then ambassador to Oman, Ivor Lucas, cabled a confidential warning to Whitehall after Mrs Thatcher's trip to see the sultan, on May 9 1981. "I believe Mark Thatcher is ... associated with the firm". He said the sultan had promised Mrs Thatcher he would give Cementation the contract: "It is a little surprising that this decision should have been taken at such an early stage ... and that Cementation should have scooped the jackpot ... They were by no means the first in the field." A letter from the firm also claimed Mrs Thatcher had promised preferential government finance terms.

"The plot thickens," a Department of Trade and Industry official recorded on receipt of this letter. He warned there was no money available. But the Treasury was strenuously lobbied to make an exception, using Mrs Thatcher's name. The DTI said: "The PM on her recent visit expressed strong interest in this project and wishes to be informed of its progress". The Foreign Office joined in: "She expects departments here to do all they can." The export credits guarantee department then conceded defeat following "the strong interest expressed by the prime minister".

In 1984, the Oman deal was exposed in the Observer. Mark Thatcher was sent to live in America following the subsequent row. But his mother feared for him after she allowed the US to use British bases to bomb Libya. She hand-wrote to Mr Wicks: "I fear he may be a priority target ... I thought the security people over there would automatically [double underlined] think of giving him special protection, but nothing has happened."

The FBI complained about the burden of providing him with 24-hour protection, and he eventually agreed to move into his own permanent house with proper security. Denis Thatcher told Mr Wicks that Mark should pay for it himself: "Mr Thatcher thinks that the low security assessment and the risk of political outcry here if it became known that taxpayers' money had been used ... argue strongly against using public funds". Mark chose a luxurious Dallas home to occupy with his new bride, Diana, and, as Mr Wicks warned the prime minister, demanded $25,000 "from public funds" for alarms, bullet-proof windows and a "panic room". His mother wrote on the file: "The sums seem enormous - way beyond what I could reimburse." Mark suggested "going on the consular list" to legitimise the payments, but Whitehall vetoed the suggestion. In the end, his mother capitulated. Although the bullet-proof windows were dropped, she ordered the British taxpayer to fund $31,000 worth of work.

She then tearfully attended Mark's wedding in February 1987, organised by the Downing Street press office despite doubts about the propriety of this. Mr Wicks told the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert, that otherwise "there will be an almighty shambles".

Soon afterwards, Sir Robert reported to Mrs Thatcher that "an old friend and former colleague", Michael Casey, a former senior DTI official turned lobbyist, had approached him confidentially. His client, the Dallas computer firm EDS, wanted it known that it was willing to put the prime minister's son on its payroll. The propriety of this move was questionable. EDS was lobbying for government contracts, but was under investigation for not properly seeking UK work permits for its staff.

Sir Robert warned: "Its management is described to me as aggressive and brash. It has been the subject of a persistent and hostile campaign by the Guardian and Mr Tam Dalyell MP has attacked the company in the House of Commons."

Mrs Thatcher nevertheless allowed her son to sign up with the company. When the news leaked, later in that year, it led to further unflattering headlines.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 08:12 AM

CEMENTATION employed mark thatcher, the ratepayers of kent and essex were never consulted or compensated, one of the company that built the new bridge was cementation. SHE DID NOT HAVE INTEGRITY.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 08:34 AM

And when this moron got lost on a rally in the Sahara, she mobilised the British Army to find him.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 08:48 AM

Well what exalted company you are all in. That prick George Galloway agrees with you. You guys sure know how to choose your friends :p

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 09:09 AM

john mackenzie , I have been stating facts, you as usual are throwing insults and trolling.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 09:51 AM

The amount of vitriol in this thread is appalling..but then I looked at the list of posters...and I was not surprised. A sad lot and an ugly thread. And no, I am not one of the greed is good crowd.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 09:52 AM

"This is not a time for celebration. The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing; of why domestic growth is driven by credit, not by real incomes; of why tax-payers are forced to top up wages; of why a spiteful government seeks to penalise the poor for having an extra bedroom; of why Rupert Murdoch became so powerful; of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society.

Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate - organise!"

Billy Bragg

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 09:59 AM

Some words on misapplied death etiquette.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 10:03 AM

" The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don't celebrate - organise!"

I agree about the activism bit and the need to organise. But hell, when did the death of one single ogre generate so much cheer? Yes, I know. April 30th 1945. That was the day when Adolf Hitler shot himself.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 10:26 AM

Also posted 'above the line' (in the shorter thread!)

IRON LADY
Nigel Parsons 9/4/13
Tune: River Lady (as sung by Roger Whittaker)

The day Hell freezes over is the day she'll start to care.
She called herself "The Iron Lady" but her policies weren't fair.
She sacrificed our miners, and our seamen bold and brave.
When they turf over her casket we will dance upon her grave.

South Atlantic water's freezin'
Just two minutes in, life signs are ceasin'
Floatin' away from the ship with my fingers turning blue
Back on the ship the decks are burnin'
Metal to flame & liquid turnin'
All because Thatcher's flexing her muscles and her powers
Sending us out to fight for islands that were never ours.

The pit wheels have stopped turning, from the policies she had
She said that coal made losses, and we really should be glad.
Her place was University, among the caps and gowns
But she chose to go to Parliament, and killed our mining towns.

South Atlantic water's freezin'
Just two minutes in, life signs are ceasin'
etc.



The above comments appear to reflect views displayed on Mudcat, but are not necessarily the views of the author.
NP

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 10:36 AM

In fact, unnamed GUEST, purely from a factual pov, the details of Hitler's death did not become known for some years ~~ there were rumours he had escaped to S America & all sorts going around at the time. So nobody was rejoicing his death at the actual time it happened.

If, in any event, you are going to make implied comparisons of that sort, the least you might have done is identify yourself, you cowardly little nonentity.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 10:41 AM

I'm not so sure about that MtheGM. I think reasonable people were confident that Hitler was dead.

The South American travel stories of the Furher were not as far fetched as the Elvis sightings that happen to this day. Elvis had a well publicized death with a coroner's report and an open casket funeral.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 10:52 AM

Vectis, I too remember the 3 day weeks, I was pregnant and terrified of giving birth by candle light. It was a dreadful time to live through, we were dictated to by the unions, but I would not speak ill of any of them if they died.I am just very sad at the outpourings of hate from people that I have always held in high regard!

Karma!!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:12 AM

No we ['people'] were not, Jack. I don't know your age, but I was 13 at the time, and confidently assert that Hitler's fate was a great mystery. As late as 1953, in my first year at Cambridge, I remember seeing a supporting short film at the Arts Cinema [the old one in Market Passage] which had a surprise ending predicated on the fact that Der Führer might be holed up in a South American hotel room, hopefully plotting a return to power!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:14 AM

The EEC and a slump in demand for steel, with the help of Arthur Scargill, and his ilk, did more to close mines and steelworks than Maggie T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:22 AM

MGM. You of all people have no room to call anyone a cowardly little nonentity. The ommission of my name was a pure oversight on my part. If I was going to anonymise my joy over anything at all, it certainly wouldn't be anything relating to the death of Margaret Thatcher.

Despite what you say, the facts of Hitler's death were known almost immediately. In fact it was announced on BBC radio the following day, following an announcement by German radio.

And yes, I was making comparisons. If Thatcher hadn't had parliament to hold her back, she would have emerged as one of the great monsters of history. Right there alongside Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Churchill and Generals Pinochet and Franco. Bastards, the lot of them!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:23 AM

jhn mackenzie would you like to back your statement up with stats, now here is a fact Joe Gormley leader of the num during the 1973 miners strike was reporting back to MI5 ON NUM UNION MEETINGS, as was ray buckton leader of ASLEF, SO MUCH FOR IT ALL BEING THE FAULT OF THE UNIONS ,TWOLEUNIONS HAD BEEN INFILTRATED BY THE ESTABLISHMENT AND WEREHAVING THEOR DISCUSSIONS RELAYED BACK TO MI5.so much for democracy and freedom of speech

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rog Peek
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:42 AM

Apparently she had said she didn't want to lie in state. To be honest with you, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't have wanted to risk that either!

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:49 AM

Dick, if I didn't know you better, I might think you were paranoid ;)

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:58 AM

Don't be fooled by the stuff about what a nightmare the time was before Margaret Thatcher. The Three Day Week? Production actually went up - and of course that nder the previous Tory government, during a pretty brief strike. Yes there were a dair fe strikes - but the amount of working hours lost as a reult was a fraction of those caused by unemployment as Thatcherism unleashed the forces that destroyed British manufacturing.

They weren't bad times, and far better than what followed in all kinds of ways. Ther were lots of things needed changing, but the changes brought in by Thatcher,and continued by Tony Blair and Cameron, were the wrong changes, that have made things far far worse than they should be. And looking to get worse still for millions of us.

Billy Bragg is right. There's no point in crying "rejoice" or "gotcha" at the death of an old lady. But it's important that people who recognise her true "heritage" for the sodid nightmare which it is should resist those who would twist the good human instinct to feel sympathy for the old lady's death into accepting what she stood for.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 11:59 AM

My recollections of events in 1945 are as I related above to Jack, Fred. I don't know your age; but I was born in 1932, a member of a politically active & aware Jewish family: and I remember much mystery about Hitler's death; and did see that film in 1953 that I described above about Hitler plotting his return to power from an obscure S American hotel room ~~ the film was actually called "The Man In Room [#something]" IIRC ~~ still not a completely absurd situation to imagine even then 8 years after the war. Did you hear the radio announcement you assert took place the next day? If not, then what is your basis for the assertion? Can you furnish a reference for it? I assure you that nobody I knew heard it.

AND I WAS THERE. WERE YOU?

"MGM. You of all people have no room to call anyone a cowardly little nonentity". Temper temper! What brought that on? Not my fault you posted carelessly, was it? If you want to avoid abuse, try being more careful in future & don't throw your 'pure oversight' back at me.
I repeat I think your comparisons absurd, but that is clearly a matter of opinion.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 12:14 PM

Incidentally Labour's election result in 1945 at 47.8% wasn''t its highest percentage - that was in 1951 when it got 48.8%, and was defeated by the Tories who got 48%.

The point I was making was that talking about Thatcher having been voted for by most British voters is claiming a degree of popularity which is vastly too high. It shouldn't be done, and it shouldn't be allowed to stand.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 12:19 PM

No reasonable person would want to celebrate the death of another human being, it just galls people when all the right wingers etc come out to sing her praises, conveniently forgetting the damage to good honest hard working people she did by destroying the coal and steel industries and our manufacturing base, we are suffering the legacy of that still.

Heard on some news programme last nigh, the Yorkshire pit village of Grimethorpe is only just begging to recover from the massive damage caused by the pit closure.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 12:23 PM

"The Premier League and Football League will not be asking clubs to hold a one-minute's silence in memory of Baroness Thatcher at their upcoming fixtures."
Thank God for that as I hate missing the kick-off.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Tiger
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 12:41 PM

It's hard to believe all the disgusting stuff that's been posted on this thread. You people should be ashamed.

Further, if that vitriol was directed at a liberal, you'd all want their tongues ripped out.

I've been here since '96, but this is probably my last visit to Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:06 PM

tiger has gone off to visit eeyore in 100 acre wood,or to live in a fantasy world with pooh bear,spending all day eating jars of honey, and maybe singning some doggerel, this sort of thinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA2lHb8tjk4

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:10 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc7q9BePjzw, tiggersh fanttasy drivelhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc7q9BePjzw. john mackenzie i am not paranoid , but i am realistic

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:30 PM

The hundred acre wood sounds much nicer than here Dick!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:38 PM

From BBC Look North tonight, the inquest on the death of a miner at Kellingley Colliery, miners in the pitch black were digging with their bare hand through tons of rubble and dust to try and save a burried comrade.

These are the people Thatcher called ' the enemy within '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:42 PM

I think that would have been the loudest minute of silence in recorded history of football stadiums.

Sounding off about her in the context of her death is pointless, and even exposes those doing as riduculous - but it needs to be seen in the context of a media here that has gone mad with adulation, most of it written by people who don't believe a word of it.

The hate comes from the fact that we have seen real and lasting damage done to people we love and admire, and to the whole quality of life in the place we live in.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 01:47 PM

Re that "moment if silence", a quote from St Luke's Gospel seems apposite: "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." It would have been a riot. Probably literally so.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 02:02 PM

This article in the Glasgow Herlad by Iain Bell is too long to cut and paste but definitely worth reading.


Thatcher in Scotland

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 02:12 PM

Dave H ~~ a foolish and thoroughly meretricious point. Where did she ever so describe all miners? Even if these were any of the same miners who fought the police and threw ballbearings under their horses' hoofs, your silly statement is on a par with pleading that the tyrant is kind to animals. We are not consistent beings in all situations; it would be perfectly possible for a person to behave bravely during an industrial accident and still at other times indulge in activities prdejudicial to the common weal. I well remember a wartime hero, awarded the Military Medal by the King, getting 12 years six months later for a particularly violent robbery in which a watchman was severely injured. Which was he, then ~~ heroic soldier or enemy within?

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 02:39 PM

I was brought up in a fairly affluent, working class home, with very little talk of any political issues.

The action which woke me up politically, as a 20 something, was the Rt Hon Bitch standing outside 10 Downing St in April 1982, after UK armed forces had landed on South Georgia, telling us to "Rejoice".

How possibly could the callous, vindictive cow find the audacity to tell those people who had lost sons, brothers, fathers, husbands to rejoice?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 03:18 PM

That article by Iain Bell that Jim linked us to says it pretty well. I wish it could get reprinted down in the London media, where the hype is in danger of turning into Princess Diana proportions. Though iif there's a cortege in the streets announced in advance I suspect the other side of things is going to make itself heard.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 03:20 PM

'This hero worship is very much misplaced'- John Carlisle MP, on the BBC screening of the Free Nelson Mandela concert in 1990
'The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land' - Margaret Thatcher, 1987

'How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?' - Terry Dicks MP, mid-1980s

'Nelson Mandela should be shot' - Teddy Taylor MP, mid-1980s

Yes, a lovely lady leading. lovely party.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 03:54 PM

Peter t Squeezer ~~ Those whose husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, serve in the armed services are in constant danger of hearing of their deaths in battle. It is part of the contract their menfolk undertake in opting for that profession. But if the engagement in which they lose their lives is a victory rather than a defeat, then of course it is a matter for rejoicing on the part of the population at large, as well as for pride on the part of the bereaved. At the age of 20+ you should have had sense enough to appreciate that. At the age now of, I estimate, 50+, you should certainly know better than to denounce the leader who called for such rejoicing as a "callous, vindictive cow [with] audacity". You should be ashamed of such a post ~~ but I don't suppose you are.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:16 PM

Robert Mugabe used to be a black hero of the "left"..

Now he is regularly referred to in Thatcherite terms by our soft cuddly brethern.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,ollaimh
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 04:56 PM

hey stanron, if you want to see a greater outpouring of bile just follow the threads on native rights issues. there you get the real quasi Nazis spouting ideas fit for der sturmer.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 05:47 PM

m the g m,IMO you should be ashamed of your post, BUT THATS JUST MY OPINION

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stanron
Date: 09 Apr 13 - 06:56 PM

"hey stanron, if you want to see a greater outpouring of bile just follow the threads on native rights issues. there you get the real quasi Nazis spouting ideas fit for der sturmer."

An interpretation would be appreciated.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 01:26 AM

Why, Dick? I think I made it quite clear where I thought Squeezer was mistaken, and hence why his abusive terms in the context should 'shame' him. But I find nothing in your post to explain what you similarly think 'shamefully' wrong in my post to this effect. You are quite entitled to this 'opinion' of course; but is it not merely a valueless 'opinion' without some supporting justification?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 04:03 AM

Because I do not think that particular war was something to rejoice about, I do not think the war was justified and I think you should be ashamed of an opinion that refuses to question the motives on both sides for that war, I think it was a political diversion for both sides,furthermore the fact that a particular side thought they won is not a reason to rejoice.
a more compassionate reaction from mrs thatcher would have been a low key response and a thankyou to those soldiers who sacrificed their lives.
you should be ashamed of yourself because you appear to think mrs thatchers response was the correct one, it may be a soldiers job to fight, but her response gave the impression she did not care a fig for the lives of those killed in that battle.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 04:17 AM

The Iron Lady, Rust In Peace.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Allan Conn
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 04:18 AM

"'The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land' - Margaret Thatcher, 1987"

According to a blog on politicsweb it is claimed that this is oft mentioned Thatcher quote wasn't all her. The blog claims that only the first part of the quote was her and was in response to threats against British corporations in South Africa! The part about cloud cuckoo land they say was a different quote from Bernard Bingham. Not defending her just putting it in supposed context. Don't know what the truth is as far as the cloud cuckoo land bit. Is there any contemporary evidence that she said that or is it just later claims that she did?

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=368489&sn=Detail&pid=71619

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 04:19 AM

Oh dear, first visit of the day to mudcat and this was at the top of the page!
I'm going to work, please stop by the time I get home ;-(

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 04:55 AM

I offered no opinion on the war's justification or otherwise, Dick. I merely made the point that if you do fight a war, it is natural to 'rejoice' when your side is victorious, & that it is in no way unreasonable for the leader of the victorious nation to call on it to do so (the fact that serving military personnel will of course have been killed in the attainment of that victory is beside this particular point - people do get killed in battle, even victorious ones - especially since their participation, at times when there is no conscription, is voluntary, and they have in no way been coerced into a profession where they are fully aware of the inherent risks)*; and, above all, that Squeezer's modes of expression in stating his IMO mistaken opposition to what Mrs Thatcher said were vulgar, excessive, and disgraceful. He should, I reiterate, be ashamed of having said such things. You have, so far as I can see, adduced no reason for my being so in expressing this opinion.

~M~

*And probably worth adding here that even at times of impressment or conscription, victories are to be rejoiced in. Do you think people were wrong to celebrate after Trafalgar or Waterloo or El Alamein, or to take part in the enormous VE & VJ Day demonstrations which marked the end of WW2, because some people had lost relatives in them? I think Squeezer & you are way way up the creek, frankly.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 05:39 AM

m, always a pleasure to spar with you, even though i disagree with you your responses make me chuckle
i think that the second world war was a different kettle of fish to the falklands, i still think her response to the end of the falkland war was typical of her tactless inconsiderate to those who lost their lives and heartless. it is quite different [morally ]forpeople to rejoice than for aleader of a nation to make such a stupid comment, it was at best ill advised and at worst tactless undiplomatic inconsiderate and lacking in compassion for those wounded and killed, in fact it was typical of a single minded blinkered heartless politician.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 05:46 AM

Shelley's words are stangely appropriate in the light of they way the war the economy and society are today:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Ringer
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 06:09 AM

I am glad to think that Mrs Thatcher's legacy will outlive your spite (and a pretty disgusting read this thread is; have none of you any shame?).

You talk as though she was solely responsible for the death of coal-mining in this country; she wasn't. Coal had been in decline for years beforehand (incidentally, now that coal-fired powerstations are being closed in an effort to lower Britain's carbon footprint, just what do you think would happen to the coal if we were still mining it?).

Before she was elected, jobs were being lost in numbers that dwarfed anything under her tenure. Between 1957 and 1963, 264 pits closed. Between 1963 and 1968, more than a third of a million miners left the industry. In 1967 alone there were almost 13 thousand forced redundancies. Under Harold Wilson one pit closed every week. By 1970, when the Conservatives (under Heath) were elected, there were just 300 pits left – just a third of the number of a quarter of a century earlier.

Margaret Thatcher's government inherited a demoralised coal industry which had seen productivity collapse by 6 percent in five years. Nevertheless, it made attempts at rescue (oh, but you can't give her credit for that, can you? It doesn't fit in with your hateful script): in 1981 a subsidy of £50 million was given to industries which switched from cheap oil to expensive British coal. Note that adjective: British coal was relatively expensive, but British taxpayers had to subsidise industries to use it. Later, a further £200 million was injected into the industry. Companies, such as the Central Electricity Generating Board, were banned from importing cheaper foreign coal and 3 million tonnes of coal piled up at Rotterdam at a cost to the British taxpayer of £30 million per year.

The coal industry was losing £1.2M per day. Three British pits out of four were losing money. In 1984 it cost £44 to mine a tonne of British coal, but America, Australia, and South Africa were selling it on the world market for £32.

That's what killed the British coal industry: inefficiency, not Margaret Thatcher.

I suspect that you direct all this hatred and spleen at Mrs Thatcher because her time in power has shown up your unthinking left-wing ideology for what it is: terminally ineffective as well as terminally dreary.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 06:56 AM

You can go on deluding yourself Ringer, the coal strike was engineered by Mrs T to defeat the unions and no other reason, she then went on to close the steel industry too, using that cunt Ian McGregor as her tool to do both.

A man who went round with a paper bag on his head to draw attention to himself.

When we hear an apology from the Tory's for the lives and livings of good decent people which Mrs T destroyed, we may let her rest in peace.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 07:23 AM

£10 million to stick Thatcher in the ground? Over £3K travel expenses can be claimed by MPs coming back to the ludicrous recalling of parilament? Ye gods.


"I suspect that you direct all this hatred and spleen at Mrs Thatcher because her time in power has shown up your unthinking left-wing ideology for what it is: terminally ineffective as well as terminally dreary"

Then your suspicions are wrong, this appalling vilification of people who care about their fellow citizens over the 48 hours since her death has shown her true legacy: bitterness, division, a deep mistrust of authority and the corruption of our political system. The communities we live in have seen our values eroded, viciously attacked and virtually wiped out in the years since Thatcher took office; all governments have continued on the path to the self-loathing consumerist culture of today. Some of us might not weep for the death of Thatcher, but we weep for our fellow citizens and the fact they are relegated to bit-part players in a deregulated capitalist oligarchy.

Thatcher herself wasn't one for forgiveness or forgetting (as is evidenced by the clip of her talking about Howe's betrayal of her that's been played many times in the last 48 hours) and she was a bitter person in life. She died with only an old advisor to offer comfort; no family, no friends and still separate from the society she so despised and closeted in a luxury hotel paid for by a pair of execrable aging male sycophants. I don't join in with the dancers celebrating her death as I see her a rather sad old lady, isolated and bereft of the vigour of her heyday. I find it hard to take joy in her situation at one of life's defining points.

Thatcher never understood community; the concept was beyond the grasp of her limited intellect. She never understood that compassion and empathy are virtues that ordinary people value greatly. Like the Bullingdon tosspots currently in hysterics over her demise (alongside the likes of Blair), she simply could not comprehend that as well as personal freedom people feel safe with the idea of the state taking some of the burden of the daily grind off their shoulders (hence the continuing massive support for the NHS) and that having an infrastructure that was owned by the people and industries supported by a government that enabled people to gain skills and make things whilst being protected from exploitation is important. All this is tied in with community, with society and the common good, and the destruction of these Thatcher presided over means she is despised by many people for whom the idea of a cohesive, equal and fair society is something worth working for. Thatcher could never, ever, understand that.

Why is her funeral not been run by a private company? Why is the hard-pressed taxpayer forking out for one old woman's funeral? We're paying because the people holding the purse strings are a bunch of detached, nasty, sad hypocrites who don't have the integrity to stick to their own shifting, corrupt values. Add insult to injury and make the plebs pay. Well, we've been paying for over thirty years and we're still paying now.

So next Wednesday I will be having drink. Because we'll be saying goodbye to someone who has turned our society into a vacuous, shallow and uncaring place to live. It won't be Thatcher the person I'll be celebrating the demise of, I don't take pleasure in the loss of human life, but the fact the architect of an ideology that treats misery and suffering as an acceptable cost for turning a profit is no longer here and the tragedy she inflicted upon us as a people hasn't cowed those to whom the idea of compassion over profit is a fundamental value of our society.

Thatcher and her cronies failed, in that they didn't and won't drive the empathy out of all of us. We deserve better than these people.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 07:37 AM

mrs thatcher did not even understand capitalist economics, the economy cannot be run like a shop.
there is nothing wrong with being a good stock keeper and working to a budget, but that is too simplistic an approach to make the capitalist system work competently.
firstly the consumers have to have money to spend,to buy the goods that are produced, austerity measures, restrict consumers abilty to consume,and make economic recession last longer.
mtrs thatcher was a chemist,in my opinion she did not understand economics, she was also corrupt.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 08:43 AM

Dick ~ As you say, always a pleasure to correspond with you even from opposing viewpoints.
Disagreements as to which wars may be justified, and which victories it may be appropriate to rejoice, are matters we can reasonably disagree on. But they were no part of my point. What I was objecting to was Squeezy's having made use, with illogical and idiotic self-justification predicated on the fact that one couldn't be glad of a victory because some people might have lost relatives in it, of the animadversion "callous, vindictive cow [with] audacity". From a 20-year-old it was a piece of unforgivable filthy manners & crass stupidity, with the perpetrator's youth just possibly to be pleaded as some sort of mitigation. For the same man at 50+ to recall it with boastful pride strikes me as more pitiably pathetic than anything else. This Squeezer individual, whoever he may be {one notes that he hides behind a nickname!}, is just clearly a foolish mannerless beyond-the-pale outsider who should be excluded from any sort of adult discourse.
YMMV, but that was where I was coming from. The Falklands & the rejoicing are merely tangential to the primary point as to Squeezy's outright idiocy & horribleness.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 09:34 AM

Dear Ringer.

I was a miner and entered an industry where over 40% of payroll cost was on health and safety responsibility. Still, during my short eight years, two men died at my pit. The World Health Organisation in 1981 reported that our production was possibly the most efficient in the world given our good and improving safety and welfare costs. The cost of resource deployed to tonnage was by far the best in the world. That's why companies providing deep mine equipment were UK based. They knew which side their bread was buttered on.

I left not long after the strike. That was my choice. So did many employed to look after the rest of us. That wasn't their choice.

The cost of Polish and Australian coal increased pro rata our inability to provide our own. Good job her people were clever enough to see that coming? Vindictiveness I can understand. Incompetency I can understand. The combination known as Thatcherism is a lesson for history that it should never be repeated.

The best way to begin that is to ensure revisionists in London don't get away with their crocodile tears. Burn the bitch.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 09:55 AM

Ringer is quite right on one thing. Thatcher's legacy will indeed live on. It poisons our country today, and it will keep on poisoning it into the foreseeable future.

I think it's a mistake to think of her as evil. She was far less morally corrupt than is customary among top politicians. But she had tunnel vision, and that's a form of blindness. The image of Bodacea attached to her is appropriate enough. - riding forwards with scythe blades on her wheels, cutting down people she didn't even see were there.

In he own words, she was indeed for many of us "the enemy within". Or as JK Rowling might put it "She whose name cannot be spoken".

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: bill\sables
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 11:20 AM

What a set of nasty bastards this forum has turned in to. If you can't say anything good about a dead woman just keep your stupid mouth sht and say nothing. I have been a member of mudcat from 1997, way before most of you miserable bastards were here and in those days it was a nice place to be but I won't be back again after this disgusting show of how bitter and nasty the current membership has shown themselves to the world.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: meself
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 11:20 AM

Honest question: what is this recall of parliament all about? On the face of it, it seems - how shall I put this - amateurish? Is it needed to approve spending on the funeral, or what?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 11:39 AM

I agree with Bill Sables....The UKers are a disgrace, vicious, petty, and slaves to their ideology.

Dont you just wish the left had someone with the stature and guts of Mrs Thatcher....I certainly do.
All the left has is ethereal dreams, without the guts or will to put them into practice.
Under this system, nobody wants socialism.....it is always the token gesture by any capitalist govt.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Ringer
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 12:08 PM

"But she had tunnel vision..."

If that isn't the most perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black!

You (and your ilk) seem to me to be blinded by hatred, McGrath.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 12:41 PM

"The UKers are a disgrace, vicious, petty, and slaves to their ideology."

What would have people do though ake? This whole discussion might prove distasteful to some whose sensibilities are easily offended but hard, robust debate is very much part of the character of the people of these islands (even around our dinner tables and in the pub). Thatcher was lauded as an iconoclast, but then went on to erect her own edifice of myth surrounding herself, and how well it serves her still but there's no justice in condemning the iconoclastic nature of much of what has been written here; it's certainly no less insulting or nasty as some of the tributes paid this afternoon by Thatcher's (almost exculsivley male) sycophants in parliament.

The reaction to Thatchers death has had one really positive result, it proves we are a nation that still cares deeply about politics. For all the hagiographies, hack jobs and heated exchanges what the death of Thatcher has not produced is apathy, and that is heartening. Heck, it will hopefully mean that the ongoing tory beatification of the ex-PM will be checked by some attempt to understand the wider effects of her actions, although I think this is a forlorn hope.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 01:00 PM

I suppose that in bill sables rosetinted 1997 Thatcher was still alive so such threads didn't exist. The real me isn't a great deal any less vitriolic towards her than the more shoot from the hip Musket nonsense.

If people are minded to laud praise on her it is only right that a sense of balance allows the other side of her to be examined too.   If anything makes me queasy it isn't people pointing out the damage she was responsible for, it is the revisionists who praise her whilst trivialising her faults.

She supported apartheid South Africa whilst her husband enjoyed business interests there.

In support of the above she called Mandela a terrorist.

Her son's financial services stake in Cementation whilst she pushed through TML would not stand the scrutiny MPs have now. The corruption would be exposed.

She was Prime Minister of all, and forgot that when she called me the enemy within. Not just the Scargill rebel rousers with their own sticky fingers on union funds but the majority, the miners who were victims caught in the cross fire.

She was the mother of Gordon Gekko.

She was the monster made by the Frankenstein figure of Nicholas Ridley. The praise she gets was in reality the naivety that allowed her to push the dreams of the nasty buggers behind her.

Till they couldn't control their monster and dropped her.

Funny old world.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 01:01 PM

The debate in the house has been reasonable, without malice and even the left wingers are talking with compassion and respect. Shame some here havent put the TV on and learnt how to show respect for the dead even if you didnt agree with the politics of the deseased.
The point of recalling parliament is to afford the MP's the chance to remember Lady Thatcher as they wish. Not even the Rt Hon MP for Hampstead, Glenda Jackson,has resorted to hate or malice, but she did go on a bit!

I am concerned about the peace of mind of some of the posters here,all this bile will result in bad health and state of mind.

Karma !!!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 01:16 PM

She dragged Uk into the real world, dumping the obsolete British coal mines and defeating the stranglehood labor unions had o the economy. She was the best peacetime British leader, and will go down in history as such.
We conservatives (but accepting the new globalism) hope that the Labour Party will remain a minor player in UK, regardless of where we are, UK, U.S., Canada, Australia.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: meself
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 01:17 PM

"The point of recalling parliament is to afford the MP's the chance to remember Lady Thatcher as they wish."

Thanks. I would have thought that a simple statement or statements would have made more sense, but - not my affair!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 02:47 PM

"The point of recalling parliament is to afford the MP's the chance to remember Lady Thatcher as they wish."

I think is may have backfired on the Tories as it gave a platform for Angus Robertson, Glenda Jackson and very few others to remind the people how nasty Thatcher's dictatorial attitude to government was. And how sycophantic Milliband was ( and Gerald Kaufman); no backbone. Respect is one thing but crawling on your belly is something else.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 02:51 PM

"If you can't say anything good about a dead woman just keep your stupid mouth sht and say nothing. "

On which principle people should shut up about Jimmy Savile... And no, that doesn't mean I'm   Identifying the two, but pointing out the problem with that principle.

If we weren't being deluged with adulation for Thatcher it would be sensible to ignore her death, but unfortunately we are being so deluged. There's an attempt to get people to see her as basically a Good Thing, someone to be proud off. It's happened before with the monsters of our history - Bluff King Hal, Good Queen Elizabeth, Oliver Cromwell.   And people want to say not in my name - she wasn't a Good Thing, she was perhaps the worst thing that has happened in political life in a very long time.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 02:51 PM

"If you can't say anything good about a dead woman just keep your stupid mouth sht and say nothing. "

On which principle people should shut up about Jimmy Savile... And no, that doesn't mean I'm   Identifying the two, but pointing out the problem with that principle.

If we weren't being deluged with adulation for Thatcher it would be sensible to ignore her death, but unfortunately we are being so deluged. There's an attempt to get people to see her as basically a Good Thing, someone to be proud off. It's happened before with the monsters of our history - Bluff King Hal, Good Queen Elizabeth, Oliver Cromwell.   And people want to say not in my name - she wasn't a Good Thing, she was perhaps the worst thing that has happened in political life in a very long time.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 02:52 PM

A friend sent me this last night
Jim Carroll
When I realised Margaret Thatcher was dead, I did a double fist pump and shouted, "******* brilliant!"
Everyone around me was disgusted, and looking back, I suppose it was out of order.
Especially as I was the first paramedic at the scene.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 03:34 PM

some posters on here seem surprised that her death can be a source of good news to many. in recent decades she and her type have been ripping up so much that is positive in my country. i have opposed her and her policies all my adult life and though we on the left have lost nearly all the battles we have fought against free market ideologies, there is always hope. her death is a rare bit of positive news and who would begrudge anyone a bit of cheer in these difficult days?
mind you, i was partying when the tories lost that election in '97. that good feeling didn't last long. i never thought i could despise any UK politician more than her - though bliar is running her close. naaah, dead or alive she is still the most poisonous.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 06:01 PM

You must be joking!
Have you seen or heard Mr Blair recently.

Blair was much worse than Thatcher, a Labour politician who continued and refined capitalist economic policy, a Labour leader who coaxed the British people into a foreign war which had absolutely nothing to do with our security, with subsequent horrific loss of life, who ignored the plight of our young people, encouraged unemployment, increased privatisation, increased de-regulation of the financial sector.

Mrs Thatcher pursued policies which increased the life expectancy of the Capitalist system, Blair ....a Labour politician, pursued the same policies in his own interests...and against the interests of those who he was supposed to represent.

But will there be dancing from the left on Mr Blair's demise....I don't think so.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 06:42 PM

I would think that that on the whole the sense of jubilation when Blair goes will be pretty universal.

The difference is while the country is divided between people who adore Thatcher and those who detest her, pretty well everyone (apart from a dwindled set of failed careerists on the right of Labour) see Blair as pretty despicable. In a sense he's a genuine one nation man, uniting a divided country in a shared emotion of contempt.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Allan Conn
Date: 10 Apr 13 - 06:52 PM

"If you can't say anything good about a dead woman just keep your stupid mouth sht and say nothing."

I don't think that is a reasonable position too take. Some people (ie the celebration parties etc) have acted in a most inappropriate manner and some comments on the net are not in good taste. However politically she was a divisive figure so you can't expect everyone to suddenly say she is wonderful just because she has died. The dead are not beyond criticism.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 02:39 AM

Allan....At least people should make an attempt to understand why she acted as she did.

If they did that, they would see the problems are more deep rooted.

Marx wrote of "the contradictions".....they can no longer be ignored.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 03:55 AM

Everyone has their reasons for anything they do. That includes the people who do the very worst. That should temper our personal comments but it is never a reason to let up on our rejection of what they have done.

There is a fine line between seeking to understand and justifying, but it's as important to hold that line whether we are talking about Margaret Thatcher, Osama Bin Laden or Jimmy Savile. and no, I'm not saying those are alll the same, just illustrating a principle.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Megan L
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 04:10 AM

Hate is a powerful emotion.
When we hate it is easy to dehumanise the subject of our hatred.
When we dehmanise anyone be it an individual or group it allows us to justify whatever happens.

Of such things are genocide created.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 04:41 AM

Megan
the voice of reason
thank you

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 04:59 AM

"If people like that dislike me for what I do, then I must be doing something right"

Margaret Thatcher

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 05:22 AM

"People like that"

Otherwise known as "not one of us".

And that, I suggest, is something of which we should be proud.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 05:46 AM

Date: 10 Apr 13 - 02:51 PM

"If you can't say anything good about a dead woman just keep your stupid mouth sht and say nothing. "

On which principle people should shut up about Jimmy Savile... And no, that doesn't mean I'm   Identifying the two, but pointing out the problem with that principle.

If we weren't being deluged with adulation for Thatcher it would be sensible to ignore her death, but unfortunately we are being so deluged.
Unfortunately both the threads started on Mudcat seem to have been started by those who are Anti-Maggie. Also the majority of posts seem that way inclined. So (in the case of Mudcat at least) it seems the 'deluge' is already flowing in the opposite direction.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 06:19 AM

Nice to see that, amid all the sycophancy and crocodile tears, there was at least one contributor to yesterday's waste of £30-000 who told their colleagues exactly
what they thought .

Good on yer, Glenda. I always knew the Labour party had at least one member with some backbone.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 06:26 AM

""On which principle people should shut up about Jimmy Savile... And no, that doesn't mean I'm   Identifying the two, ""

I rather think it does McG!

You have undoubtedly linked somebody, with whose politics you disagree, with a filthy paedophile.

I think it's well past time that incitement to political hatred were placed alongside racial and religious as the crime it undoubtedly should be.

It's a bit pathetic to accuse Mrs Thatcher (note the mmannerly use of the Prefix) of being divisive, when half of you are busily engaged in the same actions.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 07:55 AM

"It's a bit pathetic to accuse Mrs Thatcher (note the mmannerly use of the Prefix) of being divisive, when half of you are busily engaged in the same actions."

No disrespect meant, but how do you know everyone's being divisive? Perhaps people's experiences mean they reason to see Thatcher as divisive, I know mine certainly did. Also, many people work towards community cohesion and making the places they live better places to be on a voluntary basis, working hard for the common good. It does happen, and despite the likes of Thatcher and Cameron and his insulting 'Big Society' some people do it for reasons other than economics. They haven't driven compassion out of society yet.

If this reeks of self-rightousness then I would simply ask you to read some of the drivel that has been talked and written by admirers of the now rusting Iron Lady.

I patted her on the back once (true). Streuth.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 08:27 AM

he may have been a paedophile, but then I suppose you are unaware that there are also paedophiles who post on this forum.
They have every right to do so.
Don, you too are showing hatred for Saville.
the same sort of hatred that some posters condemn, it should be borne in mind that he raised 40 million for charity, that does not excuse his sexual perversions, but it is nevertheless a fact.
Mrs Thatcher in my opinion should not be receiving a state funeral. Winston Churchill received a state funeral because he was our leader during the second world war,and led the country against nazi invaders in my opinion mrs thtcher no more deserves a state funeral than any other past national leader., she cannot be compared to Churchill, any more than any other UK NATIONAL leader can.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 08:31 AM

When Mrs T referred to "people like them", i believe she meant people like the Scottish idiots who disgraced our country by celebrating the death of one old lady, who was no longer in the position to harm anyone.
Never voted Tory in my life, but everyone deserves a little respect in death
Hitler, and I dont agree with the analogy, was still a threat to the world when he died, his death probably shortened the war and saved lives so of course we could celebrate his passing, but an old infirm lady, suffering from the effects of old age....I suppose her death was a release, but not a cause for celebration

Tho' I opposed her policies, and got my head bashed for my trouble, she had more spirit and guts than those who did a victory dance on the streets of Glasgow.

Alex Salmond should apologise for the behaviour of some of our citizens.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 08:44 AM

Dick, it's not a " State" funeral.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 09:34 AM

The point I was making, as I explained, was that an absolute and unqualified principle never speak ill of the dead means in the case of all people. If it was a matter of "don't be nasty about this person because they aren't bad enough to merit it", that would be a completely different matter.
............................

No it's not technically a State Funeral, just an enormous ceremonial funeral with a massive procession with a gun carriage, and Central London closed down for the occasion, with full military honours and the Queen drafted in to pay her respects, all paid for by the state. Quite a different thing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MikeL2
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 09:41 AM

Hi

I detested Maggie and all she stood for. But I won't celebrate because I feel that we should respect death regardless of who it is.

She's gone so let her rest in peace.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 10:25 AM

"Dick, it's not a " State" funeral."

In all but name it is, and apart from the lying in state Thatcher is being afforded the same privilege as Diana or the Queen Mother. In fact, apart from Churchill (who is a special case) the monarch has not attended the funeral of any of her prime ministers. On top of this, by giving Thatcher the whole shebang from soldiers, gun carriages and a service in St. Paul's the government is attempting to elevate her to the status afforded the royals. This is wrong by any measure, because as a democracy there should be a separation between the heads of the monarchy and the state and this fiasco blurs that distinction further than it already is (especially in the eyes of foreigners) and the more gullible amongst us. It reeks a degree of the self-righteous, hubristic entitlement that one-nation little Englander tories seem to excel at; a complete lack of humility that damns them as the myopic, unquestioning and shallow materialists they are (as an ex-member of the Young Conservatives back in the early 1980's I know this to be true).

Of course, we're paying for this circus in a time of austerity when people are once again suffering under a callous and uncaring tory government, and this is simply insulting, and I guess it is meant to be so. Fair enough, stick the old girl in the ground in the appropriate manner and with due deference and be done with it and we'll all pay as we would any other ex-prime minister, but to rub the noses of the people in the misery of their own suffering as a political statement (which this funeral undoubtedly is, as the view of the organisers is not the consensus of opinion in the country) is rather boorish to say the least.

To dismiss the suffering, depravation and appalling effects on millions of ordinary people in the present economic climate as well as during Thatcher's tenure by holding a populist, ostentatious display of political mutual masturbation under the premise of a funeral ("Look! We are the chosen ones! God is on our side! The Queen and Clarkson are coming to St. Margaret's funeral! You dissenters are all scum for voicing an opinion!) is typical of the insensitive and unpleasant nature of the conservative party, and the people involved deserved the criticism that is being heaped upon them. It's a real shame they don't have a modicum of taste or decorum but them you get the impression they wouldn't know what they were anyway. Louts with cash.

One thing . . . I think many people are not celebrating the death of one infirm old lady (which is distasteful), but the demise of a character; the embodiment of a certain political and social ideology that was called 'Margaret Thatcher'. This is the character responsible for the issues the consequences of which we are still dealing with in the present day.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rog Peek
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 10:47 AM

Akenaton - You seem to be suggesting that, had Hitler lived on to become old and infirm, that we should have shown him respect in death. I'm sorry, but respect is something to be earned, and for me, neither Hiter or Thatcher did that, along with a few others like Pinochet for example who Thatcher admired immensely.

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 10:49 AM

i will be happy enough to celebrate bliar's passing as well, as long as he has gone a long way towards serving a long sentence following his appearance at the hague. as for her - any excuse for a party. i never felt the need to give her respect while she was alive, to do so now would make me a hypocrite when i'd rather be dancing. and i bet she played jungle music at 3 in the morning

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 11:01 AM

I don't know what Alex SLmond had to do with people dancing in the street, I don't even think he was in Scotland at the time. We shouldn't equate him with all things Scottish ... he is a leader of a party and the First Minister but I'm sure there were a few Scottish Socialist Republicans and Labour dancers. I too think Glenda was brilliant as was Angus Robertson but where was the voice of Scottish Labout?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Allan Conn
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 12:01 PM

"It's a bit pathetic to accuse Mrs Thatcher (note the mmannerly use of the Prefix) of being divisive,"

It is not an accusation as much as a statement of fact! Divisive in this contect meaning tending to divide opinion and she divided opinion sharply. Much more so than most politicians. Especially here in Scotland. She of course had her admirers and supporters but there is no denying that she was undoubtedly the most unpopular politician of certainly the second half of the 20thC here. That's not to say she chose to be divisive. Apparently she couldn't understand why she was so despised in Scotland when she admired Scotland so much. Though of course it wasn't the real Scotland of the 20thC she admired. It was Victorian Scotland.

I do think that people celebrating someone's death is offensive but I don't see how the dead are beyond any criticism. That was all I was saying.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 12:43 PM

I didn't mean to pick on you Allan, I agree with most of your stated views.

But along with all the hatred for Mrs Thatcher in Scotland and the loss of jobs, thousands rushed to take advantage of the "right to buy" scheme which Mrs Thatcher championed.
Some whom I have known for years as Labour through and through were first in the queue

SJ...Mrs Thatcher was not personally responsible for the issues we are dealing with today. She tried to make a Capitalist economy in decline, competitive......and she succeeded for a while, as did Blair, but you cant make water run uphill, the pendulum was swinging and we can see the result today. "Financial products" and "life on credit" were the last throw of the dice, but it couldn't work. Whether Mrs Thatcher had existed or not, the system was bound to fail when our goods and services were too expensive, shoddy, or in the case of the financial boom, simply a huge scam.

Funny thing is, politicians are still telling us that it can be fixed...but you will have noticed that they're very short on detail as to how this is to be accomplished.
Apparently turning us all into paupers, and condemning our kids to a life without purpose is about the best they can come up with....Ake.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 01:00 PM

The Right to Buy meant that the only way to have a realistic ability to move if the circumstances of your life meant you had to move would be to buy, since the possibility of getting an exchamge council tenancy wa effectively vanishing. Refusing to buy on a matter of rinciple - which some people did - would put you at a serious disadvantage.

The problem with the right to buy was that it didn't include a requirement to sell back to the council at the same price, adjusted for inflation, so that the housing stock would not be eroded. It could have been done that way, and if so it would have been a very good thing. As it was, though it provided a windfall for some, it has been a disaster for society.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Greg F.
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 01:03 PM

Thatcher's legacy will indeed live on. It poisons our country today, and it will keep on poisoning it into the foreseeable future.

Spot on, Kevin. The same can be said for her demented buddy Ron Reagan's legacy here in the U.S.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Penny S.
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 01:52 PM

I heard this from Giles Fraser yesterday. The comments beneath show what I am beginning to think is a characteristic of a certain sort of right wing poster (not here), also shown beneath Glenda Jackson's speech, of accusing the left wing of being mad, ugly, ignorant, etc etc. I know in this instance some people have done similar things with regard to Lady Thatcher, but usually the abuse is about what she did, not her appearance or mental capacity (before her sad illness).

Giles Fraser

It looks as if the Conservatives are doing this the way they are to reclaim the Cathedral from the Runcie prayers which she did not like.

I once went to a lecture by Barry Cunliffe, who explained the placing of Bronze Age barrows along the boundary of territories as a boast to their neighbours. They did it "because they could". There are clear examples in the animal world, which I wouldn't want to be explicit about. Among humans, the Catholic Church celebrated Mass in the mosque in Cordoba, to claim it from the Muslims, and Muslims have a similar belief about saying their prayers in churches. It looks to me as if this is doing something of the sort, putting us peons in our place.

Hearing Tory spokespeople going on about showing respect, Lady Thatcher saving the country, being revered by many people, it seems that there is a total lack of recognition of the harm that was done by her programme, or that some people have a perfectly sound reason for their attitude.

I have a sore throat from shouting "NOT IN MY NAME" at the radio. How can we afford this when we have to have people donating to food banks for the poor?

Penny

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 02:28 PM

News
    Datablog

Datablog badge new 620

    Next
    Previous
    Blog home

How much will Margaret Thatcher's funeral cost?

How much is it really going to cost to lay Margaret Thatcher to rest? We've taken a look at the different funeral options available and the potential costs
• Get the data
• More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

    Share 410
    inShare0
    Email

Silent farewell to Churchill
Margaret Thatcher's funeral next week will be of a scale not accorded to a former prime minister since Sir Winston Churchill's state ceremony in 1965. Photograph: Pa

Whether it's £8m or £10m, the estimated costs of Margaret Thatcher's funeral that are being widely reported don't seem to be based on any clear sources. Not here at the Datablog. We take a look at the different types of funeral to bury Britain's 'exceptionally distinguished' commoners and consider the costs that might be incurred.
Big British funerals
Funeral cost graphic Click on image for full-size graphic. Design by Finbarr Sheehy

If the estimates that are being circulated are correct, the funeral of Margaret Thatcher will be the most expensive in British history. The funeral of Sir Winston Churchill required £2,000 to cover the expenses of fire, police and civil defence services (the equivalent of almost £33,000 in 2012). Though policing costs aren't known, the Queen Mother's funeral cost the Ministry of Defence around £301,000 in 2002.
THE EXPENSIVE COST OF BURYING MRS THATCHER IS DISGRACEFUL.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 05:24 PM


I would think that that on the whole the sense of jubilation when Blair goes will be pretty universal.

The difference is while the country is divided between people who adore Thatcher and those who detest her, pretty well everyone (apart from a dwindled set of failed careerists on the right of Labour) see Blair as pretty despicable. In a sense he's a genuine one nation man, uniting a divided country in a shared emotion of contempt.

I challenge that.
Like Thatcher, Blair never lost an election.
Labour has never before or since enjoyed such electoral success.
Their vote collapsed just half a term after he handed over to Brown.
Blair brokered the deal that finally brought peace to Northern Ireland
He saved the Muslim people of Bosnia.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 05:40 PM

I cannot argue with that apart from" Labour has never before or since enjoyed such electoral success".
I suggest Atlee, otherwise factually correct

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 05:50 PM

The roe of parties is to try to shape society in a specific way. Winning elections is important as a way of avhieving that, otherwise the victories are pointless, except as a way of furthering the careers of the politicians involved, which is competely insignificant to everyone else.

Ending the war in Northern Ireland was a great achievement. We can be grateful that Tony Blair didn't prevent other people, notably Mo Mowlam, helping achieve that. Yes there were some positive things. But the overwhelming story of those ten years was a wasted opportunity and a betrayal of the hopes of those who voted him into power.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 06:02 PM

The "right to buy scheme" was a political masterstroke, boosting the housing market.....while at the same time giving millions of people "something to lose"

Nothing concentrates the mind like having a little "something to lose".

Why do you think we are so accepting of what is being done to us?
Before long they will be into our savings....helping themselves.
Think it couldn't happen here?.....Dream on!

Of course in the long term the RTBS was always going to be a social disaster, widely abused, many made fortunes buying the best council property and re-selling at hugely inflated prices.

The residue of council houses were in ghetto's inhabited by the underclass.....it became impossible young folks to get a decent home without saddling themselves with lifelong debt.
To all intents and purposes council housing sceased to exist.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Jck Sprocket
Date: 11 Apr 13 - 06:35 PM

From the notorious "no such thing as society" interview for Woman's Own:

Well, we import far too much timber and really, if Sweden and Norway can grow their own timber—they are rather more to the north of us—then we really ought to be able to grow quite a lot of our own.

No wonder her grasp of geography wowed the Americans. She must have been coached by Denis for that.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 03:01 AM

why is so much money being spent on one prime ministers funeral, how can this be justified., meanwhile the present uk government is enforcing draconian cuts, are we living in cloud cuckoo land

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:09 AM

A moving tribute from Ken Loach
Jim Carroll

LOACH REMEMBERS THE OTHER MAGGIE
If youve been watching the Thatcher Channel (that's to say, any channel) over the last week, you may have found yourself wondering when Ken Loach, unreconstructed socialist, was going to turn up and ruin the indecent wake. The veteran director - whose recent documentary, 'The Spirit of '45' bemoaned Mrs. Thatcher's demolition of the post-war consensus - did eventually issue a characteristically robust statement.
"Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times," he wrote. "Remember, she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet. How should we honour her? Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she'd have wanted."
Very nicely put, sir.
Irish Times (The Ticket) 12.4.13

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:13 AM

Sorry Jim, McL, didn't see yours, but worth repeating
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:35 AM

"Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times," he wrote. "Remember, she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet."
,..,
Let me say that I think this perfectly fair comment, and cogently expressed, even though I would obviously not agree to any great extent with its evaluations. It is a proper and courteous statement of Mr Loach's view. Be it noted that he has expressed it without the use of any of that ill-expressed obloquy and abusive terminology of the sort which has marred and disgraced and degraded so many contributions to the thread.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:59 AM

Sorry if this has already been posted here, but it's worth watching more than the once!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 06:02 AM

I'm sorry. I'll post that again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 06:33 AM

She called ANC a terrorist organisation, but did not call Mandela a terrorist.
She was instrumental in getting him released.
He visited her in London to thank her.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 06:59 AM

Blandiver, I watched Glenda the other day, and found myself clapping several times!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 07:02 AM

""why is so much money being spent on one prime ministers funeral, how can this be justified., meanwhile the present uk government is enforcing draconian cuts, are we living in cloud cuckoo land""

Given that you live, in point of fact, in a totally unaffected "cloud cuckoo land", I can only attribute the passion of your concerns about the cost to pure malice Dick.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 07:16 AM

I have not made any malicious comments about mrs thatcher
Don, I have relatives that are affected by this, two relatives that need either hospital care, or a carer, money spent on this funeral, means imo less money available for those needing hospital care.
the fact that i live in ireland does not mean i am not entitled to an opinion, you can attribute what you like but your post portrays you in a bad light.
I have not made any personal attacks on mrs thatcher, i have stuck to facts and analysing her politcal and economic record, it is a shame that you have to make malicious remaks about my motives , when you know nothing bout my background or my relatives who require either hospital care or a carer to look after them, you are completely out of order.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,spb at work
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 08:29 AM

Part of the justification must be that prominent births, deaths and marraiges are often used to bury bad news. All this is deflecting attention away from the nasty benefit, worker rights, and access to justice reforms now being implemented.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 09:06 AM

We were up in London yesterday on a coach trip, and it was rather strange that the things we went to see were apposite to the Margaret Thatcher issue. Firstly, the coach passed the statue of Winston Churchill. We were told he hadn't wanted a statue for pigeons to poo on. But they made one anyway, and electrified it to stop the birds landing there. We went into St Margaret's Westminster and saw three books of condolence set on a table. No-one was writing in them, and when I looked, there weren't many entries. Like Churchill, Mrs Thatcher hadn't wanted a State Funeral or a fly-past etc, as she thought it a waste of money. There was a lovely statue of Nelson Mandela, and I imagine he hadn't asked for that either, but there it stood nevertheless. So famous people don't always demand adulation; those in authority tend to take the bit between the teeth and go ahead. The Queen had no choice but to attend the funeral if asked to, she generally does what her advisors suggest. BUT, when we tried to get into Westminster Abbey, we found it would cost £36!!! So we turned away in disgust. We then went out of curiosity to look at Harrod's (mainly to get in out of the cold!) and we saw some headphones in a glass case that unbelievably had a price tag of £20,000 (yes, all those noughts!) and other stuff costing vast sums. Rich folk were buying all this bling. Chauffeurs were landing wealthy ladies at the door, swanky lassies (Sloane Rangers?) went by, loaded with Harrod's bags etc etc. But down the Underground our hearts were wrung by beggars and musicians looking frozen and thin. We gave what we could. And going home, we passed the City just as the financial nobs were coming out and heading for the swish bars, wearing very classy suits and looking very prosperous. All this made me think deeply in the coach on the way home about Rich and Poor. The wealth is obviously not shared around. There are definitely terribly poor folk in actual need. And there are still (perhaps even more so) two Britains. Just a few thoughts which I'm sharing with you.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 09:44 AM

The cost isn't really the central issue. it's the whole display of military panoply, treating it as a solemn national occasion with the implication the country is united in paying tribute to something everyone reverences. That's just not appropriate for a party leader who was and still is held in contempt by aat least half the country. It feels like a calculated insult who see her as someone who did enormous harm to us all.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 09:57 AM

I wonder if it's time to make a decided ruling on 'State-type' funerals once and for all. Perhaps just the Sovereign and immediate family, and all others to be private affairs. I reckon all this hype began with Diana's demise, the funeral arrangements for whom seemed to balloon out of all proportion. If an official guiding rule were set in place, these hyped-up shows of panoply would be a thing of the past.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 10:29 AM

But a great number of people like them. Why are you all being so negative? It'll get enormous tv viewing figures, betcha. If you don't want to watch, don't switch that channel on. & don't tell me you ~~ any of you moaning ~~ are going to be inconvenienced by the roads closed in London for the occasion, or are going to have to forego a new pair of shoes for Baby because of the three-halfpence the occasion might just cost you personally.

There's someone on this thread who keeps going on about the greatness of Attlee - Dick, isn't it? - forgetting that Attlee's attempts at running the country were sabotaged by the vile Sir Stafford Cripps, Bart, a hereditary almost-aristocrat who had from somewhere got the idea that deprivation & ascetism = virtue and right-living, & dragged the government & the nation with him, just when people had won a war and wanted to relax a bit. Lost the Labour Party, incl Attlee, power for ever in the sense of ever coming back with anything approaching socialist policies which everyone had had up to here at the end of those dire 6 years; when, as they say, we won the war but lost the peace.

The point being that I much too often feel the spirit of the 'we-know-what-is-best-for-everyone-and-it-isn't-anything-they-might-want' loathsome Cripps living on in threads going the way this one is going.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 10:53 AM

"It'll get enormous tv viewing figures, betcha."

I don't know, viewing figures for the special Thatcher progs shown on her death, seemed to suggest the viewers weren't all that interested. I seem to remember someone posting them on this thread. I also seem to remember at least one special lagging behind repeats of something not very exciting at all.

However if they are going to televise the big glossy funeral show, I hope at least one TV station will have the gumption to provide an 'alternative' much as they do for the Christmas Queen's speech.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 11:05 AM

"Why are you all being so negative?"

1) It's a tory propaganda rally not a funeral. There's an air of supremacy about those crowing over this whole fiasco that makes for unedifying viewing to say the least. Not least is the appalling display of hypocrisy coming from those suits all over the media saying the Radio 1 should not play a song that's charted as it might offend a small part of the population whilst forcing millions who suffered under the Thatcher government to endure endless coverage about the funeral, which they're paying for. Which brings me to . . .

2) It's costing a fair wodge of our money at a time when austerity is causing real hardship. Unbelievably in this day and age, principles still count for some people and whether it's 3p or 3 quid it's wrong. This makes it: a) insensitive b) inappropriate c) a tasteless display of ostentatiousness (the sort beloved by tories but not anyone with an ounce of actual taste). If people do riot at the funeral, then it's hardly surprising under these circumstances.

3) Did I say it's boorish and tasteless to use dead people to enforce political viewpoints? The tories are getting good at this and are shameless in using dead people for their own ends (i.e. Gideon's appalling, soulless conflating of the Philpot case with welfare reform). This funeral and the death of Mrs. Thatch is being used to trumpet the triumph of consumerism, monetarist economics, protection of privilege at any cost, war mongering and the whole ethos of conservatism.

Oh, and Tony Blair is a tosser. Just sayin'

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 11:38 AM

but not anyone with an ounce of actual taste",..,
.,,.
'Actual taste' ==ing what SFJack happens to approve?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!???????????

Just asking

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Jasper Broadbent
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 11:42 AM

Who is this patronising boring old fart MtheGM, an apologist for Thatcher and everything else right wing. He hides behind a pseudonym and sneers.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 11:52 AM

I am Michael Grosvenor Myer, as every regular Mudcatter well knows ~~ it is a familiar abbreviation, not a pseudonym.

I sneer at nothing; I simply have my own opinions which are not those of clearly sneerworthy-if-I-could-be-bothered lefty-boobies like you, Broadbent, whoever you might be.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 11:54 AM

"Not to know me argues yourselves unknown ..."

Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk IV.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:01 PM

I see BTW that you are a GUEST, Broadbent. CHARMING CONDUCT IN A GUEST, to take it on himself to insult one of his hosts!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:09 PM

Morrissey has this morning released an open letter to Baroness Thatcher, who passed away yesterday at the age of 87.

Read here:

"Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a determined refusal to listen to others.

"Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own Cabinet booted her out. She gave the order to blow up The Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone – and was sailing AWAY from the islands! When the young Argentinean boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs up sign for the British press.

"Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes. She hated feminists even though it was largely due to the progression of the women's movement that the British people allowed themselves to accept that a Prime Minister could actually be female. But because of Thatcher, there will never again be another woman in power in British politics, and rather than opening that particular door for other women, she closed it.

"Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

MORRISSEY."

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:14 PM

"'Actual taste' ==ing what SFJack happens to approve?"

No, but if you have to ask you wouldn't understand the answer.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:17 PM

Well said Mozza!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:31 PM

I am quite appalled by the Thatcher defenders lack of insight and total inability to recognise true passion in the views by people who have been sneered at, seen their communities despoiled and in some cases seen meaningless death brought into their lives by Thatch.

Start your own thread Thatcher was a Goodie. I swear, we'll leave you to it. This thread has stated more honest truth than any of the TV channels as far as I can see.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:38 PM

""The wealth is obviously not shared around. There are definitely terribly poor folk in actual need. And there are still (perhaps even more so) two Britains. Just a few thoughts which I'm sharing with you.""

You are correct, but never forget that the gap between rich and poor expanded rapidly and vastly between 1997 and May 2010, and hasn't grown that much wider now than in 2010.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 12:43 PM

Seems to me Morrissey is a complete prick...with absolutely no idea how politics or this system works.

A "Super Liberal" with a head full of bullshit.

Dont these people have any grasp of reality? Doesn't he understand that what made people suffer was Capitalism in decline....and wait a year or so and you will see some real suffering.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: meself
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 01:18 PM

If were me - and we have no reason to suppose it ever would be - I would rather have the poor weeping at my funeral, and the rich mumbling and grumbling into their brandy snifters, than the rich weeping and the poor celebrating in the streets.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 01:28 PM

The 'celebrating in the streets' that we heard so much of in advance has been a bit of a frost, tho, hasn't it Meself? How many have been turning out? ~~ vast throngs of two or three hundred poor lost figures in the immense urban landscapes so far as anyone can see. Just look at the vast hordes of practically nobody in these pics:~

http://twitchy.com/2013/04/08/sickening-twisted-revelers-take-to-streets-for-thatcher-is-dead-parties-pics-video/

Teehee. Pathetic.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 01:32 PM

Two or three hundred is pretty good for an impromptu street party in any city I'd say. It'll be interested to see how many will turn out for somewhat more organised Thatcher funeral parties.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 01:49 PM

Billy Bragg spoke about 'organising' not celebrating, but it seems to me that the two may not be mutually exclusive. I don't know what anyone else is subjectively feeling right now, but from reading this thread and listening to speeches like Glendas and watching the party crowds gather, it strikes me that the death of Thatcher has galvanised many on the left in the last few days. It feels like there is a spark of reawakened energy from that time when the people united against her and the poll tax. There's a decided buzz in the air, who knows where a few Thatcher protest parties could go?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 02:08 PM

What you mean, 'protest parties', CS. What are they 'protesting'? I thought they were supposed to be 'celebrating'. Two or three hundred, with years, to hear them tell it, to look forward to the day! Pretty muted 'celebrations', I'd call them.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 02:38 PM

I think M, that the parties are celebrations like Guy Fawkes, celebrating the destruction of an individual who symbolised something - in this case the greed and selfishness of Capitalism - which has for so many been constellated in the iconic form of Thatcher.

While celebrating the downfall of the icon, such parties are also simultaneously protests against everything that the icon stood for which still yet lives. And it's a very pertinent time for that, as this government is arguably the most aggressively Tory government since Thatchers own. Thus the symbolism is doubly potent.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 02:50 PM

'Actual taste' ==ing what SFJack happens to approve?"
No, but if you have to ask you wouldn't understand the answer.
.,,.

Wow, Sugar, but there's repartee. That's me crushed ~~ utterly CRUSHED, do you hear!?! Oh waly-waly and alas and woe-is-me!!!!!!!!!!!!

All that is left for me is to GO DOWN THE GARDEN AND EAT WORMS! Farewell, Sad Life!!!!!

Ohh ohh ohh alack-the-day........

☹☹☹☹☹~M~☹☹☹☹☹

teeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee..........................

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 03:11 PM

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, number 3 in the hit parade but the good old BBC won't play it all, there's democracy for you.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 03:16 PM

Thatcher was a political thug who tore Britain in half - I've no doubt those half who benefited from her doing so will mourn her passing; there won't be many miners, steel workers or anybody who once worked in the industries she destroyed, rushing to the "on" button.
Nor will they include many of those who lost their homes when she transformed them from homes into commodities.
She befriended a mass murderer (nice touch by Ken Loach when he described her as "having tea with him").
She described putting Pinochet on trial for his crimes as being "a show trial" claimed Britain was "a police state" because the government of the day held him under house arrest until the matter was decided.
"Lady Thatcher accused the government last night of collaborating in "international lynch law" when she mounted an impassioned defence of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet......"
"In a speech denounced as obnoxious by Labour MPs, she said she had not spoken at a Conservative conference since being forced out of power in 1990, but she was breaking her self-denying ordinance because of her "outrage at the callous and unjust treatment of Senator Pinochet". She told a packed audience in the ABC cinema, decked out with Chilean flags, that she felt "shame and anger" that a British government had arrested him. "I do not know when or how this tragedy will end but we will fight on for as long as it takes to see Senator Pinochet returned safely to his own country. He had provided essential intelligence information during the Falklands war, and the Labour government chose to repay it by "collaborating in Senator Pinochet's judicial kidnap"......
"At the meeting, billed as Pinochet: Britain's only political prisoner, she was flanked by two Chilean senators, the former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont and the senator's son, Marco Antonio. Plans for a live broadcast to the fringe by Pinochet from his temporary home in Surrey were scrapped. His supporters feared that it might undermine their portrayal of him as an ailing and frail old man who should be allowed to return home on compassionate grounds."
"Lady Thatcher portrayed Pinochet, whose coup in 1973 led to the deaths of at least 3,000 people, as a human rights victim. He had been arrested "by night on his bed of pain, after a spinal operation, in circumstances which would do credit to a police state. We know that he was held first in a tiny room at a clinic under sedation and then in a house where he wasn't even allowed to set foot in the garden."
"She told the fringe: "I never thought in my lifetime to see the honour of Britain and the reputation of British justice so demeaned as in this affair. All those responsible must be shamed and held publicly to account." She claimed that the left was intent on revenge because Pinochet had defeated communism: "What the left can't forgive is that Pinochet undoubtedly saved Chile and helped save South America."
Her take on democracy was to describe Pinochet's massacre of around 4,000 Chileans, mainly young people, and the torture and rape of many more as "bringing freedom and democracy to Chile"; there, but for the grace of ... whoever, went Britain if ever things got too much out of hand.
I can't recall the death of any politician – or anybody at all for that matter – brining so much pleasure to so many people - mind you, I'm not quite old enough to remember yer man in the Berlin bunker popping his clogs.
She did manage to bring me one little glimmer of pleasure - the sight of her being driven away from Downing Street for the last time in tears, for all the world like a spoilt child having her favourite toy taken away - thanks for that Maggie.
It's just been announced on the radio that the Wizard of Oz song 'Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead' has been sent "racing up the charts"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 03:53 PM

CS....I dont think these idiots are protesting against Capitalism, just somebody to hate, to give their lives a little meaning.

I wish to Christ that people would start to consider alternatives, but I see no sign of it, there are still too many affluent "liberals" around telling folks that after the wicked witch is buried all will be well......"Oh we're off to see the wizard," etc, etc,

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:16 PM

" still too many affluent "liberals""
Or vicious prats telling us that Brievick had something to say worth listening to
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:30 PM

"CS....I dont think these idiots are protesting against Capitalism, just somebody to hate, to give their lives a little meaning."

I do Akenaten. I think it's very much about that.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:33 PM

"there are still too many affluent "liberals" around"

I'd rather have the affluent liberals on my side than against me! And from what I observed the partiers looked very familiar, lots of low income folks to be seen for sure.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Jasper Broadbent
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:39 PM

Now I know MtheGM's real name, his last posting shows he really is a nutter, what is it all about, the funny font sizes etcetera? Get back on your medication. Get back to the real issue about that real evil, greedy person who has just had her mortal coil pulled off her, kicking and screaming. Yes, the witch is dead. Billy Bragg said she made him a socialist, What was he before? History should have made him a socialist without The Witch.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:40 PM

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead is No 1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/11/bbc-ding-dong-thatcher-facebook

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:50 PM

Oho ~~ Capitalism, is it then! Well that would make 100,000 or so other threads. Once we get on to that ...

But I feel must make the point that all you great 'democrats' turn savage and vindictive when it is mildly pointed out to you that the British demos have overwhelmingly & time-and-again rejected any of the alternative systems to Capitalism offered by well-meaning 'progressives' such as your goodselves; and that they also, getting back to this thread, elected the woman you hated, & hate, so much, not once, not twice, but three times, with %s of the vote exceeded only [as Dick never tires of pointing out] by the egregious Attlee who let his govt be railroaded out of existence by the even more egregious Cripps [see above & passim] so that he didn't last 5 minutes once his term of office expired, & none of the alternative systems to the dreaded Cptlsm will ever come within a distant pig-poo sniff of ever winning any party an election again, once people had experienced the misery they led to.

You are all going to scream & hiss & call me a boring old fart hiding behind a pseudonym again [whoever that ignorant fool was seems to have taken his stupid self away, at least - & see below]. But you all know perfectly well that such are the facts of the case. Yet I will lay plenty of 9 to 5 that you will go on virulently & violently denouncing the constantly-expressed will of the people and still go on screaming that you represent democracy.

In a pig's bum, & in your pathetic dreams, you do!

~Michael Grosvenor Myer~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 04:54 PM

Oh,no ~~ crossposted: he's back after all. And he calls me a nutter.

Well ha-bloody-hahaha...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:00 PM

"History should have made him a socialist without The Witch".
.,,.,.
Clearly made you one: & my what an impressive & delightful personality it has made of you to be sure, Jasper my icky-wickle duckling...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:01 PM

"Oho ~~ Capitalism, is it then! Well that would make 100,000 or so other threads. Once we get on to that ..."

M, I'm not speaking on behalf of the "great democrats", whoever they are, just me. And nor do I undergo a tendency to "turn savage" or whatnot, at least I don't think so anyway! Is that a tendency peculiar to socialists do you think, like a raw impulse belonging to some darkly visaged and bone-bedecked 'primitive' perhaps? One wonders..

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:15 PM

No, indeed you don't Sister: you are always moderate & civil and a pleasure to discuss things with; it's just that it was you who intro'd the term. But can you deny that there are those around here, & in the population at large, who fit to a T that paradoxical people's·will-hating-but-self·styled-democrat personality template that I rubricated? Old Jasper Wotzisface seems to be a good example to be going on with.

& I say again that he would do well to remember what is due between a Guest & a member of longstanding before the mods block his posts off as a mannerless pestiferous gadfly; & if he can't cope with the change of typesize then tough·titty to him: should have gone to Specsavers!

Best to you, as ever, CS.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:21 PM

I mean, just consider: he is such a lover of freedom that anyone who fails unquestioningly to accept his infantile Weltenschauung is ipso facto revealed as a boring old fart, a nutter...


Oh, I say again, what a little charmer he is, to be sure!.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:38 PM

""Now I know MtheGM's real name, his last posting shows he really is a nutter, what is it all about, the funny font sizes etcetera? Get back on your medication. Get back to the real issue about that real evil, greedy person who has just had her mortal coil pulled off her, kicking and screaming. Yes, the witch is dead. Billy Bragg said she made him a socialist, What was he before? History should have made him a socialist without The Witch.""

The members of this forum all know both who and what Mike is, and have respect for the clarity of thought and honesty he displays.

We don't know who you are, but what you are is self evident and commands no respect whatever.

Your occasional dipping into this forum to post inane comments and slag of members says much more about you than them.

So take your snide comments and fuckwit opinions and slide 'em gently up where the sun don't shine.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Apr 13 - 05:49 PM

""And nor do I undergo a tendency to "turn savage" or whatnot, at least I don't think so anyway! Is that a tendency peculiar to socialists do you think, like a raw impulse belonging to some darkly visaged and bone-bedecked 'primitive' perhaps? One wonders..""

You are right CS. You are one of the least savage people I have ever met.

A run through some of Richard Bridge's comments would explain what engendered the use of that phrase, and yes, it is mostly from the socialist side that we get that kind of vicious bile.

Some, at least, of our lefties just cannot accept that more people voting Tory than Labour is democracy at work, just as the reverse was in 1997.

Don T.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 02:49 AM

Democracy at work?

Does anyone still think there is such a thing as democracy?

The mass media now controls every aspect of our lives, our young people in general have been "brainwashed" as effectively as those in N Korea.
Our education system for the masses is a joke, simply containment till they can be quiety got rid of... into the benefits sludge.

However, the endgame is at last in sight, the biggest impediment being the "we can fix it liberals"

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 03:40 AM

Well, yes, ake, one does ~~ in the Lincoln sense of the worst possible system one could think of ~~ except for all the others. We still have the vote for all citizens, and the freedom for anyone to put themselves as candidate for it. How else would you define it? The activities of the press in trying to influence people, and the other 'abuses' you go on about, as Don said above, are all part of just that: our democratic system.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 04:05 AM

Problem is Akenaton, those bloody queers get to vote too.

Some people voted for Thatcher. And did alright by her. Funny thing democracy. I didn't vote for her, did rather badly at first as a miner but by the time her own party kicked her out, I was heading up a large multinational and increasing long term decent pay jobs in the industrial heartlands she raped.

Whether I should thank her for my personal success is like asking whether I should blame Scargill for when the bailiffs told me we could keep the pram or pushchair but not both.

On the whole, I have enjoyed the first bottle of champagne and look forward to the second in due course.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 04:23 AM

"☹☹☹☹☹~M~☹☹☹☹☹"

I'm sorry, but whilst this whole thread has become most entertaining, more pressing matters intrude.

MGM - how do you make those little faces?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 06:21 AM

There is a facility called 'Character Viewer' that can be easily accessed on  which contains hundreds of alphabets & such symbols

〠♨☕❀ðɛɱ❤∞☏♚

~~ among them ☺ ☹ ..............

I don't know how such things may be done on other systems but I expect there must be a way.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 07:19 AM

mgm. [whoever that ignorant fool was seems to have taken his stupid self away].
M. I haven't gone anywhere. I am still eulogising over the death of Thatcher. Plus, in view of the fact that you seem to have reverted to type (IE., insulting anyone and everyone who disagrees with you in the most tiresome and offensive language imaginable), I am hoping you will soon join her.

Either that or Grow Up!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 07:51 AM

Wasn't referring to you whatever, Fred; haven't even thought of you since can't remember when; so whatever made you think I meant the Great McC? Why so paranoid?

It was that Jasper Someone-or-other who suddenly jumped in & started attacking me that I was ref'ing ~~ & see Don T's response to him a few posts back.

Now go back to sleep, Fred McDear♥

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

And ♫ o Sir Jasper do not touch me...♫

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 07:55 AM

...and thank you for your most charming death wish. How about trying to grow up your-icky·wicky·bitty-self, my honeybun?!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 07:58 AM

CS. "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead is No 1"

Dunno where they've got that one from. It was reported on the news last night, the day after the Guardian report, that it had got to No 3. I've no idea how that translates into numbers of downloads, but considering that the wicked witch has been dead for less than a week, I'd consider that pretty damned spectactular.

In the normal run of things I lost interest in pop chart successes over fifty years ago. In fact I consider such matters to be about as childish as peppering Mudcat Cafe with the sort of peurile insults which one member of this forum said he'd grown out of. Apparently he hasn't, but never mind.

Anyway, what I was about to say was that on one Monday morning in January 1963, I was walking into work with some of my workmates, when one of them shouted to somebody across the road, "Number 3". He was referring to the fact that the Beatles Please Please Me had reached No 3 in the pop charts.

An insignificant recollection, you might think. But remember that was only their second British single, and look what that led to.

Oh, and take no notice of that man behind the curtain, sorry, sobriquet. The one who keeps operating complicated contraptions and blowing out clouds of steam and talking rubbish to impress his audience. The Wizard of Oz was an MGM production afer all.

One final thought which everybody seems to have overlooked. Ding Dong was written by Yip Harburg, who is nowadays probably better remembered as the writer of Buddy Can You Spare A Dime? Harburg was eventually hauled before the HUAC and blacklisted for saying things which he was perfectly and legally entitled to say. But, like at least one contributor to this thread - yes, I'm talking about the man behind the curtain - the American establishment took exception to and tried to suppress the man's right to free speech.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:00 AM

See what I mean? The man is either in his dotage or his second childhood.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:37 AM

"The Wizard of Oz was an MGM production after all."
.,.
Indeed ~~ produced by my first cousin twice removed Louis B; who, despite the difference in spelling, was my paternal grandfather's first cousin. Perhaps that makes the exquisite J Garland my sort of mistress-in-law twice removed, waddya think? Still in tenuous touch with my Mayer cousins in Calfornia, anyhow.

Perhaps one of these days I shall contrive to comprehend a single syllable uttered by that pathetic McCormick person. But my breath is not held. I daresay he thinks he knows what he is on about, poor paranoid booby. And he has the gall to go on about 'dotages' and 'abuse' ~~

This last did get to me, in fact; it being known that I am one of the very few on this forum who resolutely eschew any sort of obscene or indecent language, & have done so for upwards of three years. Still, there is no pleasing some little minds, is there?!?

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:42 AM

But seriously, tho, because it is bugging me to an exiguous extent ~~ can anyone identify anything I have posted above that can so have rocked McC's boat & made him imagine I had him anywhere in my thoughts whatever? Coz I am dashed if I can. That's what I am, Jeeves. I am positively dashed!.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Jack Sprocket
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:45 AM

Thatcher's death moved me neither to mourning nor celebration. As a person, she hasn't mattered for twenty tears. But her legacy lives on, and it took my pension and the jobs and homes my children should have had. We pretend to have an economy, selling each other pensions and pizzas, while out in the real world our savings of three hundred years are gradually siphoned off to pay for cheap crap. Those with real wealth have protected it abroad, below them a self perpetuating uberklasse award each other fancy salaries while making as sure as they can that what work exists is doled out as a punishment. Sitting atop of a billion tonnes of coal, we import it from as far away as Australia.

But there's an upside, that you can make idiots foam at the mouth just by saying 'ding dong'.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:54 AM

She had the guts to say fuck off to the Argentine bully boys and the hideous scargill and his miner bully boys.

All the pathetic lefty frothing here as usual!!!!!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 08:56 AM

Truly sorry for your misfortunes, Jack; but I think that you [individually and collectively] are, rather flatteringly in a way, over-estimating her influence and her powers in the matter. As someone says in one of David Lodge's fine novels set at the time: "It is no good blaming Thatcher as if she is some sort of witch who has cast an evil spell on the nation. She is just riding the zeitgeist." And so she was. It was surely all going to go belly-up one way or the other, with or without her; and probably on a far less even keel, and with more widespread damage, without.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:09 AM

"eected not once, not twice, but three times, with %s of the vote exceeded only [as Dick never tires of pointing out] by the egregious Attlee" - not strictly accurate. In fact on only two occasions since 1931 had the winning party failed to get more than the highest percentage the Thatcher government received.

I'd agree with you that Attlee was an outstanding Prime Minister...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:20 AM

If Thatcher made this such a Great country, why don't her children live here?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:33 AM

Michael Grosvenor Myer

Shouldn't that be Michael The Grosvenor Myer? As I already know too many Michaels, would it be all right if I called you The?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:38 AM

By all means? In return, shall I call you Hen ~~ or is it Ven?

☺☺☺~M~☺☺☺

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:46 AM

Doesn't he understand that what made people suffer was Capitalism in decline

Would that be the capitalism that the taxpayer bales out to the tune of hundreds of billions when bankers go all irresponsible on us? Would it be the capitalism that taxpayers bale out to the tune of hundreds of billions in benefit payments that go straight into the hands of little Rachmans, or in housing benefits, council tax benefits and working tax credits that are, in every sense, a massive subsidy to giant companies who don't pay their workers enough to live on yet pay themselves massive bonuses and huge dividends to their shareholders? Not to speak of conducting their affairs offshore and diddling the treasury to the tune of hundreds of billions? That sort of capitalism? Well, if you ask me, the sooner that sort of capitalism declines the better.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:48 AM

Hen. Well, at least I suppose if you call me Hen you're not calling me a cock...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 09:48 AM

Hen. Well, at least I suppose if you call me Hen you're not calling me a cock...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 10:52 AM

Er, look, I hate to interrupt again, but where can I find 'Character Viewer' on my mac?

Thanks!

SfJ

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 10:58 AM

Let's remember Thatcher and her ship of fools as we saw of them at the time.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 11:26 AM

Sugarfoot ~~ Click on Edit in the header menu, and you should find "Special Characters" as the last option. Alternatively, click on the flag in the header menu, the one which chooses between Stars & Stripes or Union Jack, & a menu should open with "Character Viewer" or "Character Palette" [depending on model] as an option.

Good luck.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 01:13 PM

imo, Atlee was the best post war prime minister that we have ever had.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 01:16 PM

""But seriously, tho, because it is bugging me to an exiguous extent ~~ can anyone identify anything I have posted above that can so have rocked McC's boat & made him imagine I had him anywhere in my thoughts whatever?""

The only way I can see of that happening is if he and Jasper are in fact one and the same.

A small advantage our anonymous ones have, the ability to operate several personas.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 01:34 PM

I think you are too young to have been around at the time, Dick. Two jokes doing the rounds at the time that I recall:

An empty taxi pulled up outside 10 Downing Street and Mr Attlee got out.

"Ah, the country wouldn't be in this mess if poor old Attlee was alive!"

I don't altogether disagree with your assessment of him; but he failed, coming back in 1950 with barely a majority, after that astonishing nearly 50% he had achieved in 45, and losing the next election, inevitably, only a year later.

He had his virtues: a man of true principle and strong morality. But, as I never tire of saying, he allowed that appalling ascetic bully Sir Stafford Cripps to ride roughshod over him, and over the nation, to the extent that the way for the Labour Party to make sure of losing an election ever since has been to go to the country with a truly socialist programme. People have long memories for the miseries brought to a country just longing for a bit of relaxation after 6 hard years of danger and privation, all cheerfully accepted as 'the war effort'; but idiotically extended into the peace by the loathsome Cripps ~~ because he could ~~ because Attlee let him! That was unforgivable.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 03:05 PM

But there's an upside, that you can make idiots foam at the mouth just by saying 'ding dong'."...
.,,.
Come clean now, Mr Sprocket ~~ have you actually said "Ding dong" to amyone and found them foam at the mouth in response? Or really seen anyone foaming at the mouth under such stimulus. Honest now. I have just asked my wife to say "Ding dong" to me, but my lips remain resolutely dry...

Everyone out there

pay attention please

DING DONG

☝☝☝☝☝-UP if you are foaming at the mouth.

Come on now!

Anyone?

Hmmmmmmm ~ thought not...

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 03:11 PM

♫♫☖☖☖☖♬♬☗☗☗☗☖☖☖☖♩♩♩♩

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 03:19 PM

♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒☺♒

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Apr 13 - 04:09 PM

"Ding Dong" seems to have taken feet of its own.
A huge anti-austerity demonstaration incuded banners which said "Ding dong, the witch ain't dead, she's moved into Leinster House (home of the Irish Parliament.
Aghhhh - she lives on - MacColl always claimed she was one of the undead!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 02:49 AM

Well, Don, now so many hours have passed, it seems you might at that have been right about the true identity of 'J Broadbent' ~~ & Fred's post denying that he had 'gone away' might appear to confirm it. If this really is the case, then how pathetic. Could Fred really have gone to all the trouble of inventing a new fictitious persona, for, it would appear, the sole purpose of attacking me? Can it truly be the case? Certainly nobody has denied it yet, in either persona. If so, I say again, how pathetic! But, from my pov, how really quite flattering!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 06:20 AM

Right. Let's get one thing straight. I am not Jasper Broadbent and I have never used that pseudonym on Mudcat or anywhere else.

I might remind Don, it's not so long ago that he accused me of posting a highly offensive comment on another thread. I don't know what the posting said because it was removed before I had chance to read it. Even so, one of the Mudelves killed Mr Wyzywig's accusation stone dead by pointing out that it was posted by someone other than me.

Perhaps the said Mudelf would be good enough to check the Internet Protocol source of Mr Broadbent's postings and confirm that they are not coming from me.

Perhaps, in the ordinary run of things, I could have expected an apology from Mr Wyziwyg. Perhaps, considering the person I was dealing with, I was right not to hold my breath.

I would be very careful, the pair of you.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 06:33 AM

Perfectly happy to apologise insofar as I might have been responsible for that confusion in that case, Fred; but must add that I still cannot see why, when I was clearly referring to Mr Broadbent and had had no sort of dealing, pro or anti, with you for several years, you had to jump in to inform me that you "hadn't gone away" when nobody had in no way suggested that you had, or even made any reference to you. No wonder Don's suspicions were aroused by this.

I am finding the whole of this 4-way exchange increasingly puzzling and confusing.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 06:43 AM

Thank you Mr MGM. Can we expect a similar apology from Don T Wyziwyg?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 07:10 AM

"Sugarfoot ~~ Click on Edit in the header menu, and you should find "Special Characters" as the last option."


Brilliant! Thanks very much for the help MtheMG 👍

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 07:49 AM

""Perhaps, in the ordinary run of things, I could have expected an apology from Mr Wyziwyg. Perhaps, considering the person I was dealing with, I was right not to hold my breath.""

It's worth pointing out, Fred, that we can only react to what we read on our screens, so it's hardly our fault when somebody abuses another poster's ID.

The answer is in your own hands. Become a member and that problem goes away.

Simples!

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 08:13 AM

Then why accuse me of posting under the name of Jasper Broadbent when you have absolutely nothing to link me with the poster who uses that alias.

The answer is in your own hands. Apologise for accusing me of posting under the name of Jasper Broadbent and the problem goes away.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 09:56 AM

Austerity in the years after the war was, to the best of my knowledge, intended to be applied across society, and very much preferentially against the rich. We really were in hard times following the war. Keeping on with rationing wasn't an arbitrary matter of stopping people enjoying themselves, it was a desperte and largely effective way of ensuring that we were in real terms "all in it together".

In spite of all that the government managed to introduce major improvements to the way society operated. And in the election which brought the end of the Lanour Government, Labour actually had more votes han the victors.

It was the best government we've had in my lifetime.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 10:05 AM

"Then why accuse me of posting under the name of Jasper Broadbent when you have absolutely nothing to link me with the poster who uses that alias."
.,,.
Feel bound to point out, Fred, in support of Don, that he was simply responding to my asking why you had answered "I have not gone away" when I said that someone quite recognisable in the context as Jasper Broadbent had gone away. He was only suggesting a possible reason; and, although you have graciously accepted my apology for the misunderstanding, you still have not explained your answering there a point which had not been raised, and I am still greatly exercised as to why you should have done so. I mean, WHY did you suddenly appear on the thread to post "I have not gone away", when nobody had suggested that you had, or even mentioned you?

It is all becoming more and more incomprehensible, more and more complicated, and more & more mysterious. Think I'll just go back to Stoke City & Man Utd!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 10:51 AM

It never fails to fascinate me how Maggieites invariably shuffle around her unqualified support of Pinochet and her description of those who wanted to put him on trial - "to forgive is divine" I suppose!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 12:17 PM

The bizarre thing is how those waxing indignant (lovely expression that one, it deserves to be revived) at expressions of derison and contempt towards Thatcher at this time fail to appreciate that those of us who see her in that way feel precisely the same about the chorus of expressions of adulation in the media.

Respect toward someone who has died is one thing, but hagiolatry, and in this case Maggiolatry, is something else. It invites an equivalent response.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 12:33 PM

The operative word being hag presumably?

What's particularly bugging me at the moment are the cries of "Show respect for the dead" which seem to be coming from all corners of the establishment. "Yes", they say, "She may have done many harsh and cruel things in her time, but she deserves a respectful burial, the same as everyone else."

Respectful burials? Would that include Fred and Rosemary West, Harold Shipman, Jimmy Savile and all the other people who were shunned by humanity as unworthy of respectful burials?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 12:55 PM

If she was having a respectful burial, the same as everyone else, I doubt if quite such a head of hostility would have built up. But hundreds of escorting troops, a solemn procession through the streets of London, heads of state and high dignatories in St Paul's, the queen in attendance. That's not "respectful". It invites something stronger than dignified silence from those whose stomach turns over at the very thought.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:22 PM

McG. Quite. The current chaotic state of the economy is directly traceable back to her, so are the policies of the present government. Yet, while millions of people see their living standards slashed, this self same government can afford to spend ten million quid giving her what is in essence, if not in name, a state funeral. Rank bloody hypocrisy.

SteveMansfield "Who's up for a flashmob playing 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' somewhere?"

If you're anywhere near Liverpool, there is to be a massive street party on St George's Plateau in Lime Street (opposite Lime Street station) this coming Wednesday from 6pm. We can safely conclude that Ding Dong The Witch is Dead will be played not once, but many times. We can safely conclude also that I will have the mother and father of all hangovers the following morning.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:41 PM

"If you're anywhere near Liverpool, there is to be a massive street party on St George's Plateau"
.,,.
Shall be interested to see how 'massive' it turns out to be. Those held so far [see pix I posted above] have been a fair old let-down massivity-wise, haven't they!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:49 PM

McGrath ~~ we shall just have to differ about the govt of 1945-51, which achieved nothing so far as I can see except enormous resentments and the death of any hope of a socialist government [as distinct from PMs like gabby Kinnock, chummy-daddy Callaghan, face-both-ways Blair] in perpetuity. Austerity, as the 1950 & then 1951 results should clearly demonstrate to anyone claiming to be a democrat, was not what the demos wanted or welcomed or felt entitled to after six years of 'the war effort'.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:50 PM

Mr Mcgrath.....The problem as I see it is, why personalise a problem which is purely systemic.
We live in a capitalist country, and Capitalism requires to be competitive to survive.....sure this means casualties, but the system cares nothing for human detriment....only profit.

Personalising this issue gives the impression that if we remove the leader, it will change the nature of the system.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: billybob
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:51 PM

Quite simple, dont go to London on Wednesday, dont turn your TV on or radio, play some calming music and let your blood pressure stay safely low. Or you could do what I am doing, go to work, have a nice glass of wine in the evening and pretend it isnt happening! Because either way ,if you condemn her supporters or the protesters you will get cross and get indigestion. Come on boys calm down!!

Karma

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 01:52 PM

News
    Politics
    Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher 'gave her approval' to her son Mark's failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea

Unpublished version of memoir by former SAS officer Simon Mann records Baroness Thatcher's endorsement of plan to depose oil-rich country's president

    Share 1721
    inShare1
    Email

    Daniel Boffey        
    The Observer, Sunday 14 April 2013        

Simon Mann (L) the leader of the group o
Simon Mann at the time of his arrest on charges of trying to topple the president of Equatorial Guinea. Photograph: Getty Images

Margaret Thatcher approved of a failed attempt to use an army of mercenaries to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea, according to the unpublished memoirs of the chief protagonist of the bid, former SAS officer Simon Mann.

The former prime minister, whose son, Sir Mark, was convicted in a South African court of involvement in the attempted 2004 coup, allegedly told Mann at a meeting at her Belgravia home: "I'm sure it's going to work".

It is claimed that Thatcher likened the need for radical change in the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea to the way London's Docklands had been redeveloped during the 1980s.

She is also alleged to have encouraged Mann to talk to a group seeking to overthrow the then president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, with the words: "We must always look after our friends, Simon … as I'm sure you know."

In an affair known as the Wonga coup, Mann and 69 mercenaries attempted to replace Equatorial Guinea's dictator Teodoro Obiang with an exiled opposition politician, Severo Moto, in March 2004. The escapade went dramatically wrong and led to Mann being convicted and imprisoned.

Mann, whose father was George Mann, captain of the England cricket team in the 1940s, was pardoned and released from the regime's notorious Black Beach prison in 2009, on humanitarian grounds.

Sir Mark attempted to avoid implication in the illegal coup, but was found guilty by a court in South Africa, where he was living at the time, of having provided finance for helicopters to be used in the overthrow. He was fined $500,000 and given a four-year suspended prison sentence.

On his release from prison, Mann said he could never forgive Sir Mark, who he claimed was a key participant in the military adventure rather than a mere investor, for failing to come to his aid. Details of the meetings between Mann and Baroness Thatcher, held in the lead-up to the attempted coup, were originally due to be published in Mann's memoir, Cry Havoc, which came out in 2011. This section was removed on the advice of the publisher, John Blake. However, an early manuscript of the book has been obtained by the Observer and its full claims can be revealed for the first time.

Thatcher's mental capacity was already on the wane in 2003 – the year her husband, Denis, died – when the conversations are said to have occurred. Their content will prove embarrassing for her son as he prepares for his mother's funeral on Wednesday.

Mann had known Thatcher for a number of years by this time: the two were introduced by Sir Mark, who was a neighbour of his in Cape Town. Recording a meeting that took place in the first-floor sitting room of Thatcher's home in Chester Square, in London's Belgravia, in autumn 2003, Mann says it became clear that the former Tory leader knew and approved of the plans for the Equatorial Guinea coup, describing them as "jolly good".

He writes: "Maggie asks me how 'their' money is being handled. I reassure her that it is going through an air ambulance joint venture, separate to any other investment. Maggie talks about the Docklands redevelopment in London. How everything had to be razed to the ground first."

In a later conversation in South Africa, Thatcher is said to have commented: "I do hope you'll be getting on with this job of yours soon, Simon. We mustn't let anyone down, must we?"

Thatcher is also said to have asked whether Mann had yet met a group, led by a man called Sanchos, who were seeking to remove Chávez from Venezuela. Mann writes: "No – I hadn't: but, Mark says, we are seeing him next day, in Eaton Place, just next door."

He continues with Thatcher's reply: "'Good. Well, I hope that goes well too.' She looked at me with her imperial gaze. 'We must always look after our friends, Simon … as I'm sure you know.'"

Mann declined to comment.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 02:27 PM

Ding Dong! It's reached No 2!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 02:28 PM

No, it doesn't start with personality - but personality is often the the key that can be applied to achieve political ends. Right now the game being played by those in power is to use the reconstructed personality as a key to unlocking certain political attitudes which would make to get people on side for that vile politcal ends.

It's theatre, but theatre can make an enormous difference. The tribute to the NHS at the Olympics opening was pure theatre, and it had a considerable political impact at the time.
...........

Yes, we differ about the 1945 government, M - I grew up looking back at it as a good time. Even sweet rations meant I got more sweets, because my parents gave me theirs. Wrecked my teeth... We were pretty clearly skint as a country, and rationing made sense because it put us all on the same level, in contrast to what is called "austerity" today which most decidedly does not.   

The pity was that an electoral quirk put the Tories in to relax things, rather than a second-half Labour government, but that's how it worked out. And it was Tories on their best behaviour, more or less, for another generation.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 02:31 PM

300. Well it would be if McG hadn't repeated himself. Well, perhaps it needed saying twice.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Apr 13 - 04:25 PM

""Then why accuse me of posting under the name of Jasper Broadbent when you have absolutely nothing to link me with the poster who uses that alias.

The answer is in your own hands. Apologise for accusing me of posting under the name of Jasper Broadbent and the problem goes away.""

No mate, the answer is in the way you responded when Mike had a go at Jasper.

You dived in as though he had personally atacked you, which automatically raises suspicions as to who exactly you are defending.

Your own doing sir!

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 05:55 AM

Ignoring the usual tirade of twists and turns from Mr W (wouldn't it be easier just to admit you were wrong and then we could all move on?), as far as I can make out the news was announced just before 11am on 08.04.13. In other words, the evil woman has been dead for exactly one whole week!

Whoopee!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 06:11 AM

Sorry, Fred, but you are just not getting it. Don was simply querying, as was I, as to why you had suddenly, and with no motivation or stimulus, jumped self-defensively on to a thread on which you had not been attacked, or even mentioned. He hasn't made any mistake or been 'wrong' about anything, just suggested a possible answer to a reasonable question WHICH YOU HAVE SO FAR AVOIDED ANSWERING. You are, so far as that goes, the one who is 'wrong'. So why don't you 'just' answer ~~~ if you can spare the valuable time from your silly old 'whoopees'. What do you think you are ~ a trick cushion? ☺☺☺

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 07:51 AM

You're right M. I don't get it - the apology that is. It's a good thing I'm not in the habit of holding my breath.

Whoopee? You dare to criticise me for using the word whoopee? Considering some of the ludicrous baby-talking terminology you've splashed all over this forum, that is pretty damned rich.

What is an icky-wickle duckling andyway?. Is it anything like an icky·wicky·bitty-self, honeybun?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 08:19 AM

Relax, Fred. Is it really worth all this animus, honestly?

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 10:06 AM

M. Come off it. You're the one who throws a wobbler when any of his sacred cows is attacked.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 11:03 AM

OK, then ~~ so answer the question ---

···why you suddenly, and with no motivation or stimulus, jumped self-defensively on to a thread on which you had not been attacked, or even mentioned, and started laying into me···

Nothing to do with sacred cows, or whoopie cushions, or icky-wickles, or whevs. It is just odd behaviour in anybody's book ~ isn't it? ~ which you really should explain. So why don't you?

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 11:06 AM

... I mean, that is what I would call 'throwing a wobblie'. I don't throw such things myself, tho I might just occasionally indulge in rational and coherent disputation!...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Penny S.
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 11:17 AM

Can I draw people's attention to the Matching Thatcher's Funeral thread, where something useful migh tbe accomplished.

Penny

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 12:12 PM

They're silencing Big Ben for the funeral. This is taking the piss. Are they trying to rub everybody's nose in it? Streuth.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 12:37 PM

I note that the police have stated that protesters are allowed to turn their backs as the coffin passes. SINCE WHEN DID WE NEED PERMISSION FOR THAT? WHAT HAS BECOME OF THIS COUNTRY?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim McLean
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 12:58 PM

Ding dong dell,
Thatcher's gone to Hell.
Who put her there,
Who the F###k cares,
Who'll pull her out,
Nobody's about.
She made the poor, she made the rich
A callous, greedy, Ding Dong Witch.
Now Big Ben's quiet, no more Ding Dong
So let us all unite in song ..
Ding Dong the Witch is dead!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 12:59 PM

I'd be rather cheered if some proper rioting broke out, something for the history books to record to show that all this disgustingly expensive show of pomp and circumstance of was not welcomed or wanted.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Stu
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 02:03 PM

"SINCE WHEN DID WE NEED PERMISSION FOR THAT?"

Since this delightful piece of legislation. Sections 4 and 5 allow coppers to arrest people at will, under conditions that are open to individual interpretation to say the least. It was amended after an outcry and the word 'insulting' was taken out, but the rest remains and it id deliberately ambiguous.

The police force we have now was born under Thatcher during the miner's strike and the assault on travellers and their families at The Battle of the Beanfield (which was more of a 'coppers smack some hippies about' than a battle). The paramilitarisation of the police continued under all subsequent governments until we've arrived at this fiasco. They are now a tool for imposing the will of the oligarchy rather than a service dedicated to protecting the rights of all citizens. More's the pity too.*



* I know there are good coppers, that's not the point.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 02:20 PM

I realise that apologising isn't flavour of the month with certain parties to this thread. Nevertheless, I feel I must tender an apology to anyone who has been bored out of their skull by the cyberspacial intercourse between MtheGM and I.

I can only reach an approximate surmisal as to what might be rattling M's cage, although it's probably the usual one of hands off our establishment figures.

However, those of us who grew up on Merseyside, with no arses to our kecks (thats trousers to you M) and malnourished by a diet of blind scouse and dripping butties, have been partying non-stop since 11am "last Monday morning" (as Leadbelly and Iron Head Baker were wont to sing).

Normal service might be resumed - eventually.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 02:37 PM

Good point Stu. The fact that the person intended to be insulted is dead (using the term "person" loosely) is not a defence, as some of the twats who pretend that she had virtues or deserved respect are bound to think themselves insulted.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 03:12 PM

Stu is absolutely correct, and the introduction of a police state is something else we have to thank Thatcher for.

A couple of interesting examples.

When David Cameron dared to show his face in Liverpool recently, the dozen or so protesters who had gathered to greet him, had the Public Order Act read at them, while they were peacefully assembling, and before Cameron had got anywhere near the place.

I recently helped occupy one of the Liverpool branches of Starbucks. This was at the height of the scandal over the taxes which this ratbag multi-billion pound rganisation weren't paying. Again, the protest was entirely peaceful. In fact, long story, but some of the women protesters had organised a creche, so there were quite a few babies and toddlers present. So that's how violent it was. Nevertheless, I was approached by a police inspector, as the presumed "leader" (I wasn't the leader, presumed or otherwise) and told that if we didn't disperse, we would be arrested for aggravated trespass. On what grounds? Well, according to this inspector, we were intimidating the staff. I remarked that I'd never seen a bunch of workers who looked less like shitting themselves in my entire life. He said "Ah but you haven't seen the girl who's out in the back crying". For a moment I was rather discomforted and asked if I could go and offer her a word of comfort and an apology (that word again), because the last thing any of us wanted was to cause any distress to the underpaid and overworked employees of Starbucks. They weren't our target. Of course I couldn't talk to her. She didn't exist.

On another occasion, I and a small number of others were getting ready to protest at the local government cuts. The area where we assembled was on a public thoroughfare, and it was was far too wide to cause any inconvenience to passers by, or to the objects of our protest (a conference being held in a building across the way). We were told by a police sergeant this time that, unless we stood inside the spot they'd designated for us, they would escort us away from the area. No, we hadn't broken any law, but our presence was intimidating the staff inside the building!!!

The paramilitarisation of the police is just one more reason why the party started immediately the news of Thatcher's death broke, and why it will continue until her name is buried for ever more.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 05:12 PM

"Nevertheless, I feel I must tender an apology to anyone who has been bored out of their skull by the cyberspacial intercourse between MtheGM and I".should be 'me'. ~M~
.,,.
I associate myself with that; pausing only to point out that F's paranoid irruption on to the thread to defend himself against an attack which had never occurred, and also his apparent invitation to shoot Jewish refugees ['useful for target practice'], remain unexplained despite repeated requests from others as well as me.

With cage entirely unrattled ~

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 07:14 PM

I am sure that an awful lot of people feel very insulted and offended at this carnival of a funeral for Thatcher. But somehow I doubt very much if those responsible will have their collars felt.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 07:14 PM

I am sure that an awful lot of people feel very insulted and offended at this carnival of a funeral for Thatcher. But somehow I doubt very much if those responsible will have their collars felt.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Apr 13 - 10:11 PM

Or did I just mix up two different previous discourses? Feel I might have done. Oh, well; take which bits apply & forget the rest.

Back to bed. Heigh-ho!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 12:55 AM

Let us also remember that Thatcher was up to her neck in support for Pol Pot.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 05:28 AM

""Ignoring the usual tirade of twists and turns from Mr W (wouldn't it be easier just to admit you were wrong""

If it will stop your ad hominem I'll admit that I was wrong, even though I have only YOUR word that I was.

You know my name. Kindly use it.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 05:36 AM

""I note that the police have stated that protesters are allowed to turn their backs as the coffin passes. SINCE WHEN DID WE NEED PERMISSION FOR THAT? WHAT HAS BECOME OF THIS COUNTRY?""

I think that their point is that such action is all that will be allowed Richard.

Turning up with a sack full of half bricks will probably be frowned on, so I wouldn't bother if I were you.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 06:02 AM

Thatcher's legacy - a government that is prepared to use the murder of six children to cut unemployment benefits
"Thatcher ain't dead...." as the song would have said if its composer was still alive.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 06:34 AM

Michael Grosvenor Myer has accused me of issuing some kind of "apparent invitation to shoot Jewish refugees ['useful for target practice']". See above.

That is an outrageous lie. I am not, never have been and never will be anti-semitic in any way shape or form. I have never been party to any form of discrimination whatsoever, whether it be on the basis of race, religion, class, sexual orientation, gender or anything else.

Unlike Mr Grosvenor Myer, I spend a considerable part of my life fighting racism and fascism and all forms of bigotry, and have been abused, spat at and physically threatened on many occasions by the so called hard men of the far right. Even so, I have no intention of giving in to them and will continue campaigning until I am dead or until fascism has been buried completely under the rubble of history.

I am not going to waste my time demanding an apology from this creep. I shall just warn him that if we ever come face to face, he will be extremely sorry.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 06:58 AM

mrs thatchers maternal grand mother was a kerrywoman, who emigrated to england to escape poverty.cest plus ca change.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 07:56 AM

Don, have another look at the '86 Act.

In a place that was not a police state I would not be potentially subject to arrest if I turned up with a placard accusing the bitch of complicity with Pol Pot, or shouted "Burn in hell, bitch" as the coffin passed.

Time to face up to what she did.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 08:17 AM

A question I have been asking myself lately and although with trepidation, thought it worth asking as part of this debate. (After all, once you stop smiling at Fred saying how he hates fascism and then threatens MtheGM with violence should they meet, you are minded to move the conversation on a bit.)

What is worse.   A conservative government that is incompetent and has no way of seeing through policies or a socialist government with the drive and determination of Thatcher?

It's just that not liking tory ideology and not being enamoured by Thatcher needs unpicking.   Many right wing people hated her approach but admired her outcomes. Many left wing people hated her outcomes but admired her approach.

I hated her for what she did in my community. My pit is shut my industry gone. Even now, despite the many and varied answers I could give, professionally I say I am an ex miner.

Yet rather than jump on the ding dong wagon, I am far more interested in learning from history. Is it strong leadership we need or be fearful of? Is it her approach, ideals or outcomes we need to reject?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 08:23 AM

Fred ~~ I withdrew that statement, admitting to having confused two discourses 15 apr 1011pm. Mixed you up with Jim, can't remember why. Sorry!!!

I should nevertheless appreciate not being threatened at my age with physical violence, if you wouldn't mind too much. Don't think I should be a match for a young fellow like you at the age of 81.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 08:24 AM

Still no answer from Jim on that one, mind, is there?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 08:35 AM

in answer to musket, what we need to be fearful of are political decisions that are made without considering the best interests of the country, political decisions that are made as acts of vengeance, political decisions that mean the country is at the mercy of another country when it comes to providing a nation with fuel/ energy.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 08:39 AM

"useful for target practice"
This is apparently a reference to an ironic remark I made on the Israeli regime's tendency to massacre refugees (and everyone else who happened to get in their expansionist way) and that regimes having a number of refugees on their territory - "handy for target practice" was my ironic comment.
Can't see what connection it has with this subject - but then again, I do have a life outside this forum!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 09:48 AM

Agreed that it is a bit irrelevant to this thread, Jim. But, having infiltrated ~~ Have you not yet got into your peculiarly, on this occasion, numb skull, that it was Jewish refugees who were at issue at the time. So whom were you accusing of being likely to find them 'useful for target practice'?

Eh? Numskull!

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 09:50 AM

'a reference to an ironic remark ' ...
.,,.
It was that idiocy on your part that was really the irony!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 10:12 AM

"But, having infiltrated"
Is that how you see passing an opinion - spoken like a true Thatcherite
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 10:28 AM

But there again - were all "the enemy within" to the lady in the box, weren't we?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 13 - 10:33 AM

You certainly were, Jim ~~ possibly due to your exquisite talent for evading whatever might be the particular topic under discussion ~~ as here!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rog Peek
Date: 17 Apr 13 - 12:26 PM

I understand Thatcher was to be cremated today.

Mmmmmmmmm.... so that's twice then.

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Rog Peek
Date: 17 Apr 13 - 12:33 PM

After she's had tea with her bosom pal Augusto of course!

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 08:24 AM

Here's some
footage from the celebrations in Liverpool last night. It doesn't include the moment when the crowd immolated Maggy's effigy, but it sure was worth seeing.

In any event, forget what the accompanying article says about 100 people attending the party. There were at least five times that number, as anybody who knows the size of St George's Plateau will testify.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 08:48 AM

"possibly due to your exquisite talent for evading whatever might be the particular topic under discussion"
You seem to be still trying to make something of nothing - assuming you are still referring to my 'target practice" statement which was, as you have pointed out, down to my being a "numbskull" and, wrongly apparently, believing it was Palestinians who were the refugees being referred to, hence, giving the Israeli history of massacring such people, were fair game for Israeli target practice.
"Evasion" comes a bit rich from somebody who refuses to comment of the late and not very lamented lady's friendship, admiration and successful attempt to help a mass murderer and war criminal evade justice.
I evade nothing Mike, nor do I advocate or excuse war crimes - don't you and your moron mate wish you could claim the same?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 09:07 AM

Keep going with your everlasting characteristic name-calling, Jim, which you appear to confuse with rational argument*. Your tendentious fatuities are liable to choke up your intellect entirely before you have done.

~M~

* just as you appear to confuse me with someone who might give a tinker's cuss what you think.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 11:27 AM

'Namecalling"
"Numskull", "fatuities" v "moron" (addressed elsewhere) - you're one up on me Mike.
Wouldn't have thought you'd have thought "Thatcherite" namecalling, though most here certainly would.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 12:50 PM

Mrs Thatcher won!....get used to it.

You want a capitalist system, Maggie was the only one who could make it competitive. She tackled the problem of our obsolete manufacturing sector and working practices... she offered the bait that proved the "lefty liberals" were complete hypocrites(Right to Buy)
She made the Labour Party remove the word "socialism" from their vocabulary(shameful bastards).
Blair ditched the principles of the founders of Labour, in exchange for a few years in power, polishing and de-odourising the Capitalist brand, even taking us into a war that nobody wanted except poodle Blair himself,(criminal)

Save your odium for the guilty on your own side Jim

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:22 AM

"Save your odium for the guilty on your own side Jim"
What side would that be Ake? - I stopped voting altogether when New Labour was revealed as Old Thatcherism with a new label.
Yet to hear a peep of criticism from the pros for her support for the "democratic" mass murderer - silence says it all really
Of course, you've always gone in for that sort of thing, haven't you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:49 AM

You want a capitalist system, Maggie was the only one who could make it competitive. She tackled the problem of our obsolete manufacturing sector and working practices.

Margaret Thatcher's 1979 election campaign's main theme was that Britain wasn't working under Labour, accompanied by a poster depicting a dole queue. After four years in power, she had almost tripled Labour's unemployment rate, and it was still virtually double Labour's rate by the end of her regime. On top of that she put an extra two million people out to grass on permanent "incapacity benefit", mostly in mining, steel or shipbuilding towns. Most of those people were not incapacitated at all, but that was a convenient way of making the unemployment figures, terrible as they already were, not look totally apocalyptic, which is what they were. There was a recession at each end of her rule. She never achieved growth of more than 2.2% at best. At the end of her reign, inflation was still at almost ten percent and mortgage rates were around 14 percent. The gap between rich and poor widened, as did the pay gap between men and women. Margaret Thatcher deregulated the City to such an extent that even some right-wing Tories were gobsmacked, and that deregulation (sadly, never addressed by Blair/Brown) led directly to the irreponsible behaviour that got us into the present mess and which cost the taxpayer hundreds of billions in order to bale out your precious capitalism. Still, ake, never mind. You don't want facts to be getting in the way of your prejudice, do you?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 09:32 AM

Mrs Thatcher won!....get used to it.

So did Mr Hitler in 1933!....get used to it!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 10:44 AM

And so has Mr Godwin, eh?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 11:29 AM

Now The, I was simply making the point (as you do have to do with ake...simply...) that to win is not automatically to be the good guy. Incidentally, Mr Godwin refuted his "law" many years ago.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 12:17 PM

The fact that he might have contradicted himself doesn't mean his law was 'refuted'. It remains true, as you have just demonstrated. Not but what your point is a perfectly fair & valid one. But then so was Ake's. As I never tire of saying, all you lot over there call yourselves believers in democracy, but then throw a fit of the vapours when anyone not on your 'approved' list gets in. That is, of course, the paradox of democracy, which is precisely as Mr Lincoln described it. The other great paradox is that the Lefties claim themselves motivated by love of humanity, but are consumed with obsessive hatred of practically all actual humans.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 12:19 PM

... or maybe it was Churchill...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 03:04 PM

Over whwere?

If you think I was in any way comparing Thatcher with Hitler, you misread my post. Just the winning thing, that's all. Winning doesn't turn you into a goodie.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 03:04 PM

where!

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 03:43 PM

No, I didn't for a second think you were, Steve. Just saying that your comment did exemplify Godwin's Law; and then that, even if he has changed his mind about its validity where & why btw?, it remains valid just the same ~~ as your post exemplified... A bit like OPs here trying to bring the threads they have started to an end, and nobody taking a blind bit of notice but going on with the topic just the same.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 04:24 PM

Godwin's Law (redundant, but you seem to want to cling...) was never intended to make people scared of mentioning Hitler or the Nazis. Godwin himself acknowledged that it was fine to mention Hitler or the Nazis so long as the context was appropriate. In my case, I was trying to point out to that simpleton ake that, just because you win elections, you are not necessarily bestowed with wisdom and a great sense of fair play and justice. If anyone thinks I was trying to compare Thatcher with Hitler, they were misreading what I said. Simple as that. Thatcher was a terrible person, but she was no Hitler. OK now, The?

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 05:07 PM

"Simpleton"?......Who said anything about Mrs Thatcher or Mr Blair being "bestowed with wisdom, or a sense of fair play and justice"?

Not I.    You are the "simpleton", if you are unable to read or comprehend.

Almost all politicians are "terrible people"

Jim....I never voted for Mrs Thatcher, but as I have been a member of the Communist Party for most of my life, neither am I a supporter of the Capitalist System.

Most of you "liberals" like to talk about Socialism and "equality", but when the chips are down you stick with the status quo.
I was truly shocked at the numbers of Labour voters who took Mrs Thatchers thirty pieces of silver.

Socialism is extinct.....and people like you made it so.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:22 PM

Almost all politicians are "terrible people"

Well, I've heard many a complaint of that sort. But, unfortunately, someone has to run the bloody country. So, if you have a better idea...

Jim....I never voted for Mrs Thatcher, but as I have been a member of the Communist Party for most of my life, neither am I a supporter of the Capitalist System.

Well, a minute ago you were singing her praises as the saviour of capitalism and I had to put you right with a hard fact or two. And do your comrades in the CP know about your rabid homophobia? I wouldn't have thought that that was an integral part of the Communist Party manifesto, somehow...

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:42 PM

akneaton, you clearly do not understand the definition of socialism or the definition of communism.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 02:02 AM

Steve ~~ Godwin's Law, to my understanding anyhow, always contained implication of the qualification "even where not germane to the topic" [which, btw, I will admit your most recent ref to Hitler was, so my invocation of it there was probably misplaced & a bit facetious. Apologies]. In that sense, I don't think it mistaken or superseded, and I think he should himself have made this qualification rather than admit it flawed and appear to disown or withdraw it. Still valid for me ~ with that overtone assumed.

~M~

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 03:12 AM

Steve....unlike you, my views on social issuse are not determined by what any political grouping thinks.
I do not consider myself to be "homophobic"...whatever meaning you wish to invest in the word.

GSS.....My definition of "socialism" would almost certainly be very different from either yours or Steve's......however, Communism is a leap of faith...often misplaced..

I do not believe that Capitalism, the cyclical "prosperity" and materialism that it engenders are good for humanity.
At the end of the cycle it produces idiots, vultures and human refuse.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 08:44 AM

You have been a member of the communist party most of your life...

Now, I don't spend time studying discredited dogma but I was always led to believe it was based on the Marx principle of equality.

Is everybody equal in your mind Akenaton? And where is the missing h?

Oh hang on, this is about Thatcher. . Cremated her the bastards. They promised me a sprung dance floor on her grave due to miners' knees.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 08:54 AM

"Socialism is extinct.....and people like you made it so."
If Socialism ever meant the virulent homophobia you constantly spout, the suggestion that the smass murderer of young people, Brievik had something to say worth listening to, as you have suggested, and the outpouring of race hatred aimed at immigrants to which you are prone - good ******* riddance to it as far as I'm concerned. I've never met a 'socialist' who vomits such garbage - that't B.N.P. territory as I see it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 04:58 PM

Michael, I agree that fatuous and usually frustrated attempts to compare people with Hitler is seriously counter-productive and is to be avoided at all costs. Godwin, however, never intended that all mention of Hitler and the Nazis should be studiously avoided. You'd think so though, when you see Godwin invoked so often at the merest mention of old Adolf. Annoying, that.

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:48 PM

Agreed, Steve. Sorry & ashamed to have been annoying. ☹

Subject: RE: Obit: Margaret Thatcher Dead (1925-2013)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 08:39 PM

Not annoying. It's good to iron stuff out.