Maggie Thatcher has died

[View From The Top]

Is organising "Death Parties" the most constructive model for voicing a viewpoint?

 

Perhaps not but like every other citizen she has the right to, whether we agree with it or not, & her profession has nothing to do with it.

Edited 13 April, 2013 by View From The Top

[View From The Top]

A death party for someone last in power twenty three years and a mere FIVE general elections ago is not a "political viewpoint".

 

Just vile behaviour by utter scum.

 

Excellent as I'm going to one later.

 

The fact you think us scum reassures me that we are, in fact, perfectly sane and sensible.

[CB Saint]

I'm not sure that vile accurately describes "death parties" - they seem a little childish if I'm honest.

[trousers]

The more parties the better IMO. Will be a good boost to the economy.

[View From The Top]

I'm not sure that vile accurately describes "death parties" - they seem a little childish if I'm honest.

 

I'm going to one at a miners club on the site of a former colliery shut down despite being profitable until their market was taken away from them overnight.

 

Doubt they'll be any celebrating more reminiscing but there certainly won't be any tears shed at her death.

[trousers]

I'm going to one at a miners club on the site of a former colliery shut down despite being profitable until their market was taken away from them overnight.

.

 

Which mine is that?

[Barry Sanchez]

I would of thought that as she was so enthused by the free market she would would not have any issue with a purchase of a song?

[CB Saint]

I'm going to one at a miners club on the site of a former colliery shut down despite being profitable until their market was taken away from them overnight.

 

Doubt they'll be any celebrating more reminiscing but there certainly won't be any tears shed at her death.

 

Well perhaps through her death if she brings a community together that she damaged whilst alive - there is something poetic about that.

[Barry Sanchez]

The more parties the better IMO. Will be a good boost to the economy.

 

Again that cant be denied, people when happy spend more as well research shows..........

[Barry Sanchez]

Apple, presumably. Slightly over egging the "world's largest" tag, though.

 

I would say saying apple are the worlds largest company is slightly over egging the pudding yes indeed.

[trousers]

I would say saying apple are the worlds largest company is slightly over egging the pudding yes indeed.

 

Agreed

[CB Fry]

Excellent as I'm going to one later.

 

The fact you think us scum reassures me that we are, in fact, perfectly sane and sensible.

 

I'm going to one at a miners club on the site of a former colliery shut down despite being profitable until their market was taken away from them overnight.

 

Doubt they'll be any celebrating more reminiscing but there certainly won't be any tears shed at her death.

 

What you've described sounds absolutely nothing like what I was talking about. But well done on getting chippy anyway. Have a pleasant evening.

[Wes Tender]

Excellent as I'm going to one later.

 

The fact you think us scum reassures me that we are, in fact, perfectly sane and sensible.

 

You have a rather bizarre mentality if you can believe that such infantile behaviour can be justified solely on the basis that somebody else you dislike dares to challenge you on it.

 

And if you think for one minute that holding parties to celebrate the death of a leader of a democratically elected party makes you sane and sensible, then it is obvious that your actions make you neither. Rather you are behaving like a petty, small-minded, immature individual.

[miserableoldgit]

Perhaps not but like every other citizen she has the right to, whether we agree with it or not, & her profession has nothing to do with it.

So you don`t think that someone in a position to teach children should set a good example for her pupils on the right way to behave?

[Sergei Gotsmanov]

Teachers aren't allowed to voice their political viewpoint outside of the classroom?

 

It seems not

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321407/Sacked-teacher-Katharine-Birbalsingh-Im-glad-I-spoke-failing-schools.html

[Sour Mash]

Anyone see the hundreds turn out at Trafalgar Sq today? Wasn't that impressive? No end to the change they will bring in through their turn out today.

[CB Fry]

Anyone see the hundreds turn out at Trafalgar Sq today? Wasn't that impressive? No end to the change they will bring in through their turn out today.

 

Up there with Tianamen Square in terms of epoch defining significance. Well done them.

[pap]

Anyone see the hundreds turn out at Trafalgar Sq today? Wasn't that impressive? No end to the change they will bring in through their turn out today.

 

Up there with Tianamen Square in terms of epoch defining significance. Well done them.

 

I look forward to hearing tales of your revolutionary exploits, gentlemen.

[CB Fry]

I look forward to hearing tales of your revolutionary exploits, gentlemen.

 

 

 

Arf. Won't match up to the revolution that started yesterday, obviously.

[Sour Mash]

I look forward to hearing tales of your revolutionary exploits, gentlemen.

What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I just hope they all had a good time and didn't get too wet.

[CHAPEL END CHARLIE]

It seems not

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321407/Sacked-teacher-Katharine-Birbalsingh-Im-glad-I-spoke-failing-schools.html

 

If accurately reported, this story should make depressing reading for us all.

 

Despite some worthwhile improvements, one serious problem that continues to hold back this nation is that neither Maggie Thatcher, or any of her Tory/Labour successors, finished the task of reforming a state education system that has been quietly failing generations of working class children.

 

It's not really about a lack of investment, and I'd be the first to agree that social problems (such as a shortage of good parental role-models) are important too, but a culture of low expectation and schools being organised primarily to suit the vested interest of the teaching unions, rather than for children, is still too widespread in my view.

 

Whatever your political standpoint, in this day and age seeing politically militant elements within the NUT still calling for Luddite nonsense (such as the abolition of Ofsted for example) is enough to make a grown man weep.

[JackFrost]

They were discussing Thatcher on The Big Questions on BBC1.

 

They speaking to people that were involved in the celebrations of Thatcher's death and the rewriting of history was just breathtaking.

 

One bloke even said she was a warmongerer and claimed she started the Falklands War

[Viking Warrior]

Jack Frost yes I watched that . I thought the debate was not really balanced . Campbell kept going to the anti thatcher folk in the audience for their views or those that were just making to much noise . And as for the drone debate where do they can some of these people . Certainly not local folk

[trousers]

Frances O'Grady (TUC general secretary) was just interviewed on 'Sunday Politics'.

 

Andrew Neil kept asking if various Thatcher initiatives to curb union powers were wrong (banning secret ballots, removal of closed shops, etc) and she declined to answer instead saying that "looking back to how the unions operated in the 1970s doesn't help the debate today"....and then spent the rest of the interview harking back to the Thatcher era to explain why the country is "in such a state" now.

 

Cake for Mrs O'Grady please.... She'd very much like to eat it...

 

Permission to 'carry on' please Barry...

Edited 14 April, 2013 by trousers

[solentstars]

she was a divisive person and horrible nasty person with her some exterme views if you read about some of her fellow tory people who knew the real thatcher but you have alot of people who hero worship and did well out her unless you were bottom rungs of society has put her on a pedestal has some sort of god,i don,t understand all the propaganda rubbish reminds me of north korea. why they could not have had a private family burial baffles me ,but i will be glad when the funeral is over and the country can move on from another relic from history who will be forgotten by most people except the die hards.

[Sergei Gotsmanov]

she was a divisive person and horrible nasty person with her some exterme views if you read about some of her fellow tory people who knew the real thatcher but you have alot of people who hero worship and did well out her unless you were bottom rungs of society has put her on a pedestal has some sort of god,i don,t understand all the propaganda rubbish reminds me of north korea. why they could not have had a private family burial baffles me ,but i will be glad when the funeral is over and the country can move on from another relic from history who will be forgotten by most people except the die hards.

 

I would suggest that it is her enemies that are far more obsessed with her.

 

She sorted out the unions who held back the rest of the country. They made our manufacturing base uncompetitive and ultimately unviable. Who was going to invest in British manufacturing in the late 70's when the Unions ran the show? For that reason you can put much of the blame for the demise of our manufacturing on the Unions.

 

She is having a high profile funeral because the British people voted her in three times.

[CB Fry]

she was a divisive person and horrible nasty person with her some exterme views if you read about some of her fellow tory people who knew the real thatcher but you have alot of people who hero worship and did well out her unless you were bottom rungs of society has put her on a pedestal has some sort of god,i don,t understand all the propaganda rubbish reminds me of north korea. why they could not have had a private family burial baffles me ,but i will be glad when the funeral is over and the country can move on from another relic from history who will be forgotten by most people except the die hards.

 

Clearly what has happened in the last week could not be less like North Korea. Good effort.

[solentstars]

I would suggest that it is her enemies that are far more obsessed with her.

 

She sorted out the unions who held back the rest of the country. They made our manufacturing base uncompetitive and ultimately unviable. Who was going to invest in British manufacturing in the late 70's when the Unions ran the show? For that reason you can put much of the blame for the demise of our manufacturing on the Unions.

 

She is having a high profile funeral because the British people voted her in three times.

 

So we are going to have the same nonsense when Blair dies unbelievable.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[Sergei Gotsmanov]

So we are going to have the same nonsense when Blair dies unbelievable.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

That's an interesting one because the left cannot stand him and the right have no allegiance to him. Who will be demanding it?

[solentstars]

That's an interesting one because the left cannot stand him and the right have no allegiance to him. Who will be demanding it?

 

Which goes to show what nonsense it all is and a private funeral would have better for all concerned.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[trousers]

@georgegalloway: Celtic fans rise to the occasion: as usual

 

Not as classy as this one though George...

 

Edited 14 April, 2013 by trousers

[trousers]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9993817/Thatcherism-is-no-museum-piece-its-alive-and-kicking.html

 

Britain could benefit hugely from the astral guidance of its heroic former prime minister

 

Ding dong, the Soviet Union is dead! Ding dong, communism is dead! And so is the British disease. They are all dead as doornails – the myth of this country’s inevitable decline, the habit of capitulating to the unions, the belief in state control of everything from motor manufacturers to removals firms, taxation rates at 98 per cent: all the Lefty nostrums of the post-war epoch.

 

Ding dong! Old Labour’s dead! The Labour Party has given up its ridiculous belief in the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange – the slogan that used to be printed on the back of every party membership card. Ding dong, Clause Four is dead as a dodo.

 

But I tell you what, my little Left-wing friends, and all you who think it amusing to break out the champagne at the death of an 87-year-old woman. There is one thing that is alive and well – and that is Thatcherism. Thatcherism lives; and will live as long as there are people in this country, and on this planet, who see how economic freedom can be the servant not just of the rich, but of our whole society.

 

There is something astonishing about our collective reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death. It was sad, but hardly unexpected. Why has the controversy been so frenzied? Why can the papers seemingly think and talk of nothing else? Because we have been suddenly reminded of the clarity and urgency of what she had to say – and we have a guilty feeling that her lessons are being forgotten.

 

I love museums, and am of course thrilled to read in The Sunday Telegraph that we are going to have a Thatcher foundation and museum in London, world capital of culture. I expect that it will embrace the spirit of this country’s greatest post-war prime minister, and have touches that are both traditional and up-to-date. There will be plenty of old-fashioned glass-case displays of memorabilia. You know: Scargill’s sweat-stained baseball cap; a Soviet tank of the kind she helped to send scuttling from Eastern Europe; the very milk bottles she snatched from the kiddies. I expect there will be the handbags and the gladrags and the deep cerulean-blue ballgowns, all of them tastefully displayed.

 

But this must be a technologically brilliant place as well, a museum for the PlayStation generation. So I hope that consultants will be brought in to devise the most sophisticated interactive computer games – in which you not only get to gawp at her clothes, but put yourself in her shoes. What we need is YouThatch, the game that tests whether you have the reflexes and the sheer cojones of the Dama de hierro.

 

It is no use just asking people to take the decisions that she took, though they were difficult enough. Do you take the hellish risk of fighting Galtieri and the repulsive Argentine junta? Do you continue to subsidise uneconomic coalmines? Do you side with Ronald Reagan and face down the Russkies? In all these dilemmas, her choice has been vindicated by history, and young people will (or so we must hope) know the right answer.

 

No, what we need is a computer program so cunning that it can work out – from her principles – what Maggie would do in situations she never faced. What, in other words, would Maggie do now? I can already see our budding Sir Politic

 

Would-bes queuing to get their hands on the console, and then mouthing silently as they try to channel her breathy contralto, like Luke Skywalker receiving the astral guidance of the late Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 

How could we devise a piece of software that would correctly identify the Thatcherian course? It’s easy – you just have to recognise that Thatcherism wasn’t about exalting the rich and grinding the faces of the poor. It was the exact opposite. It was about unleashing talent, and bursting open cosy cartels, and helping people to make the most of their talents and their opportunities. So anyone wanting to work out what Maggie would do today should do whatever it is that helps people make their way in the world – and whatever helps Britain to make its way in the world, too.

 

As it happens, I think her record on education was far from perfect: she was so heavily engaged in hand-to-hand economic warfare that she did not focus as closely as she did on other dossiers – and if she closed fewer mines than Harold Wilson, it is also true that she closed more grammar schools than Shirley Williams.

 

But what would she do today? It is obvious. She would do anything to smash down the barriers that prevent talented young people from rising on sheer academic merit; and if the teaching unions had said that they were against narrative history – as they are – I think she would have made sure they became history themselves.

 

What would she do with the economy? She would do anything to help the small businesses that are the backbone of the nation, and to make it easier for them to take on new workers.

 

She would swing that iron handbag at ’elf and safety and the deranged compensation culture. She would cut business rates, and she would tell the banks that they should either lend to British business or get broken up.

 

She would naturally keep good and strong relations with America, but she would build links way beyond Europe and the Atlantic – with the Brics, with the African countries that are now showing such amazing growth (many of them Commonwealth members) and with the Middle East. She would be more friendly with Germany these days, but in renegotiating the EU treaty she would make the basic point that sovereignty lies with Parliament, not with Berlin or Brussels.

 

And yes, as the builder of the last truly transformative piece of transport infrastructure – the Chunnel – I think she would use her fantastic will to cut the cackle and get this country the aviation capacity it needs. We wouldn’t even need to name the airport after her, because 23 years after she stepped down, and after her death, her ideas are still being exported to democracies around the world. Thatcherism lives! Ding dong!

Edited 15 April, 2013 by trousers

[trousers]

Richard Holloway ‏@rrwholloway22m

Thatcher fact of the day: They won't admit it today, but @DailyMirror and @guardian opposed the miners strike in 1984 http://buff.ly/YggxRJ

[Viking Warrior]

Interesting how hypocritical scargill and co were

have they forgotten what scargill and the NUM did back then,

 

In August, two miners from Manton, who protested that the strike was not 'official' without a ballot, took the NUM to court. In September the High Court ruled that the NUM had breached its own constitution by calling a strike without first holding a ballot. Scargill was fined £1,000 (which was paid for him by an anonymous donor), and the NUM was fined £200,000. When the union refused to pay its fine, an order was made to sequestrate the union's assets, but they had already been transferred abroad. By the end of January 1985, around £5 million of NUM assets had been recovered..

[Viking Warrior]

scargill

 

Why Arthur Scargill is reluctant to leave his £1.5m Barbican flat

 

The National Union of Mineworkers is fed up of forking out for their former president, but he clearly likes his home among the thrilling multi-levelled walkways

The former National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill has lost his fight to have the union continue to meet the costs of his London flat for his lifetime.

 

The NUM had asked Mr Justice Underhill at London's high court to declare that it has no such continuing obligation to 74-year-old Scargill, who was its president for 20 years until July 2002.

 

Scargill has occupied the Barbican apartment, rented from the Corporation of London, since June 1982.

 

The union also successfully disputed Scargill's fuel allowance at his Barnsley home and payment for the preparation of his annual tax return, but not the cost of the security system at his Yorkshire home.

 

Explaining his decision, the judge said Scargill's predecessors had enjoyed the "very generous benefit" of having houses in or near London bought for them by the union, adding that they were also allowed to occupy the properties after retiring at a very low rent, or to buy them at a "very reduced price".

 

But Scargill, he noted, had not taken up the benefit when it appeared in his first contract in 1982 – although the union's national executive committee had agreed to pay the rent and other expenses on his Barbican flat, which was near the NUM's London headquarters.

 

He rejected Scargill's claims that the union's payment of the rent on the flat was intended to replace the benefit his predecessors had enjoyed and was therefore a lifetime benefit.

 

 

This is not a daily mail report but the guardian. So someone who was a left of left in the political spectrum was also a greedy bastard . What a hypocrite

[trousers]

Written by a Pompey supporting Tory (double whammy!) but a good read... IMO of course...

 

http://lordpalmerston.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/the-miners-thatcher-vs-wilson/

 

Extract:

Lord Robens was Chairman of the NCB, and was part of that generation of Labour politicians like Wilson, Callaghan, and Brown who seemed destined for great things. But he lacked stomach for the fight, and took the NCB job, where before long he was known as “Old King Coal” in a chauffered Daimler with NCB1 for a licence plate. In the 10 years this Labour grandee and former darling of the union barons held the post, between 1961 and 1971, about 300,000 miners lost their jobs and around 400 pits closed. Many of those that remained did so, as the extracts above suggest, in an equivocal relationship with economic reality.

As a consequence of the1967 Fuel White Paper, Robens expected that coal mining would have ended in Scotland, Wales and Durham by 1980. The number of jobs in the industry would contract from 387,000 in 1967 to 65,000 by 1980. At the start of the 1984 strike, there were still almost 200,000 miners. Some of that is because there was a brief rally for coal after the 1973 oil crisis, but it was mostly because of union power and the political weakness of Wilson and Heath. The industry still required subsidy, despite the challenges to other fuel sources posed by the oil crisis. Figures below are for the 10 years after 1973, in £m, from a written answer in Hansard in 1984:

1973–74 239.8

1974–75 46.1

1975–76 —

1976–77 11.1

1977–78 24.0

1978–79 117.7

1979–80 189.2

1980–81 175.0

1981–82 455.1

1982–83 386.0

By the time Thatcher came to power, she was faced by trade unions drunk with hubris, who had tested the mettle of Parliamentary democracy in the preceding years; and a National Coal Board that had for too long been protected from the realities of modern economics. In the 60s, the impact of pit closures had been muffled by an economy and employment transitioning into new areas. But the fundamental weakness of Labour policy at the same time, of failing to devalue sterling, of succumbing to the unions, of pursuing statist models of economic direction, all these damned the economy to the stagnation of the 1970s.

 

Labour damned the people displaced from the coal industry when eventually final rationalisation took place to a far greater hardship than need have been the case. I can understand why feelings run high about Thatcher in former coalmining areas, but the fury blinds those who express it to the failures of Labour in power over many years. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see coal mining return to areas it has left, if it can be done economically and without burdening the state. The proud traditions of those communities, stretching back generations, are exactly the sorts of things the Tory Party should be seeking to preserve where possible.

Edited 15 April, 2013 by trousers

[trousers]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9994375/Margaret-Thatcher-our-kindly-boss-by-Britains-top-civil-servants.html

[Special K]

Teachers aren't allowed to voice their political viewpoint outside of the classroom?

 

Should leave it to the grown ups, especially if your comments are indicative of the profession. Hopefully you have the sense to keep moronic self opinion (glad she's dead, etc, etc) out of the classroom.

[Saint Benali]

What I don't get is how can a funeral cost millions of pounds? Some are saying it will cost the taxpayer £5m?

Surely all her supporters like CB Fry and Sour etc can chip in and pay for it as we are told there are so many?

I would rather my money went to better projects then putting someone in the ground....

[St Marco]

Guardian think it is around £10m

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/apr/10/how-much-margaret-thatcher-funeral-cost

 

A bit too much I agree. Especially when they are cutting disabled people's help today.

[anothersaintinsouthsea]

I can't be bothered with the hysteria and hyperbole (from both sides), it lacks balance and perspective and does little to seperate myth from fact. But I do find it ironic that someone like Thatcher who made such a big deal about scaling back public spending and the role of the state in people's lives should end up having a huge funeral bank rolled by the tax payer. Massive irony there. She helped design her own funeral but maybe she should have put her free market values to the test and let it be funded by the private sector?!

[trousers]

What I don't get is how can a funeral cost millions of pounds? Some are saying it will cost the taxpayer £5m?

Surely all her supporters like CB Fry and Sour etc can chip in and pay for it as we are told there are so many?

I would rather my money went to better projects then putting someone in the ground....

 

That's the beauty of democracy. Some of the tax we pay goes to pay for things we're happy about paying for and some of it doesn't. If the criteria for spending people's taxes was that 100% had to be happy with what it was being spent on then none of it would be spent on anything.

 

I'm happy for a few pounds of the tax I have contributed over the years to go towards her funeral.

[Saint Benali]

That's the beauty of democracy. Some of the tax we pay goes to pay for things we're happy about paying for and some of it doesn't. If the criteria for spending people's taxes was that 100% had to be happy with what it was being spent on then none of it would be spent on anything.

 

I'm happy for a few pounds of the tax I have contributed over the years to go towards her funeral.

 

Can't she pay for it herself from the wealth she has left behind like everyone else?

[buctootim]

The more money her funeral costs the better imo, will be a very good piece of Keynesian economic stimulus, with all the money spent within the UK and bringing in lots of high spending foreign dignitaries and tourist generating media coverage of London. We should draw up a list of those with similar profile who whilst not quite dead, could be prevailed upon to do their bit for Britain.

[trousers]

Can't she pay for it herself from the wealth she has left behind like everyone else?

 

Yes, she could have done, but you then set a precedent for the funerals of former prime ministers. If people want to change the law on what public funds are allocated to the funerals of prime ministers, royalty, etc then they should lobby their MP to represent their viewpoint in parliament - that's how our democracy works.

 

People knew this day was coming yet jump on the furore band wagon rather than lobby for it well in advance. Maybe the latter approach requires too much thought and diplomacy...?

 

I'm not sure what's more ironic and/or hypocritical....,pro-Thatcherites backing a state paid funeral or anti-Thatcherites campaigning for privatisation...

Edited 15 April, 2013 by trousers

[dubai_phil]

So today's big rant seems to be the fact that 10million quid is being taken out of Public Funds to pay for the funeral. At a time when Hospitals are closing and and and...

 

How strange that 10 million is a figure worthy of a rant. No doubt many of the ranters have also congratulated PDT for taking over the Football Club that "stole" close to 80 million of Public Funds...

 

Unfortunately they are not Dead so I guess it wasn't worth their effort

[Sour Mash]

What I don't get is how can a funeral cost millions of pounds? Some are saying it will cost the taxpayer £5m?

Surely all her supporters like CB Fry and Sour etc can chip in and pay for it as we are told there are so many?

I would rather my money went to better projects then putting someone in the ground....

Majority of that cost will be for security won't it?

[trousers]

Majority of that cost will be for security won't it?

 

And therein lies another irony... The threat of people protesting at the funeral is actually making it more expensive in the first place...

[Whitey Grandad]

Majority of that cost will be for security won't it?

Some irony in there. If the protesters didn't protest it might cost less?

 

Edit: Snap!

[Viking Warrior]

I dont think it will cost anywhere near £10 million, I think it is a figure plucked from thin air. And by wednesday some journo will say £20

 

The cost for the servicemen will be free, It is part of their duties. There may be some police OT although Like servicemen they wil be on duty . but i guess . the majority of the cost will because of the police presence.

 

Unless the govt have built in a cost for demonstartions and damage that may be caused by the anarchists and rent a mob who turn up .