The Late Margaret Thatcher

[Diego_Sideburns]

I've had a piece written on Thatcher for a long time, awaiting her death, and it was just my luck that I was out of the country when the news broke on Monday. It's very long, and if you don't want to read it, fair enough. If you do read it I hope you find it interesting and informative. Either way, I'm glad to get it all off my chest, so to speak.

 

Edited for my typing errors in the above paragraph!

 

 

The ‘Iron Lady’ was not for turning – will she turn in her grave?

 

It's important to note that Margaret Thatcher was never that popular with the masses. The Conservative Party never got the majority of the vote. The reason for her election victories has much to do with the fact that the Labour party failed as an effective opposition, with it being split by in-fighting amongst its factions. The result was that opposition was split, so the Conservatives could win easily.

 

The radiance of Thatcher’s personality bedazzled many of her followers so much that they were unable to see how she governed. Some people believe she changed Britain for the better, arguing that she dragged the country from the strife of the 1970s, transformed the economy and lowered income tax rates. However, in my opinion, the price paid by society, and in particular the poorest in society, was too great, as was the social division she created.

 

Trades Unions

 

The ‘Winter of Discontent’ had seen power failures, refuse piling up in the streets, the dead going unburied - the horrific list was endless. The power of the Trades Unions had exceeded anyone's wild imaginings.

 

On the steps of 10 Downing Street, she quoted from St Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith, and where there is despair, may we bring hope".

 

Whilst there is little doubt that the unions needed to be tackled and some of their power removed, the manner in which she achieved her target was uncaring and heartless.

 

In the 1970s there were strong connections between leaders of the construction industry and the Conservative party. The 1972 Building Workers’ Strike was regarded by the Conservative Government as a crucial challenge to its authority. It lasted for twelve weeks and helped to secure a significant pay rise for building workers. In 1973, 24 union members who had served on the picket lines were convicted of offences ranging from conspiracy to unlawful assembly and affray. Six of them were jailed, including Des Warren and Ricky Tomlinson, known as ‘the Shrewsbury Two’. In 2012 they sought to have their convictions overturned on the grounds that the then Conservative Government interfered with the judicial process.

 

The pickets argued that they were the victims of a Government plot to make an example of trade union activists who took part in successful picketing. Their particular picket had been peaceful, and in fact, when they got on the coach to go home the police had complimented them on their behaviour.

 

The Miners’ Strike in 1984 was called in an attempt to stop the Government's programme of pit closures. During the Strike the State acted like an occupying army in working-class areas. Official figures admitted up to 8,000 police reinforcements deployed to picket lines on any one day. Added to the available local county force of 5,000, even the Conservative Government figures referred to some 13,000 repressive bodies in the field. These were supported by the accompanying hardware: the vans, horses, cars, helicopters, checkpoints, surveillance checks, phone taps, dogs and computers.

 

The Metropolitan Police reinforcements became infamous for their anti-Northern hostility, the abuse being directed at the miners' Northern accents. At Coal House in Doncaster they poured off the buses shouting 'we've come 200 miles to get you bastards, who's first?' Also a little touch of their own, after wrecking pickets cars at Cotgrave, they left their calling-card: a little sticker which read: 'You Have Just Met The Met'. Black miners were especially singled out by the Met for a torrent of racial abuse, ape-like gestures and monkey-like cries. This open racial hostility for the first time brought home the meaning of what racial abuse meant to many of the miners standing with their black mates, many of them having been guilty of similar remarks in the past albeit in a 'friendly' way. Seeing the class enemy display a shocking example of it led many miners to realize it really wasn't a joke.

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Sid Richmond, a retired 70 year-old miner, was stopped by the police as he was driving along in his car. Because he refused to turn back (he was on his way to see his daughter) they ordered him out of the car, knocked him around and handcuffed him.

 

I was with my 11 year-old son driving back from Nottingham one night during the Strike, and as we went through Ticknall, a tiny South Derbyshire village, my car was stopped by Police looking for pickets organised into flying squads.

 

At the British Steel coke plant in Orgreave, near Rotherham, 4000 police corralled picketing miners in a field. The police, many in full riot gear, then rained down batons. Police said their officers had only been defending themselves against mobs of miners, and they prosecuted 95 people for riot and unlawful assembly. All were acquitted after defence lawyers argued that police evidence was false and fabricated. Miners were eventually paid more than £500,000 in compensation. The campaign by ‘Women Against Pit Closures’ proved fruitless as its members became targets for Police brutality.

http://politicsworld...9/orgreave.jpeg

 

The Miners’ Strike lasted a full year before the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The NUM claimed to have settled the strike on five separate occasions in 1984. The first four were sabotaged or withdrawn following the intervention of Thatcher. On the fifth settlement, Thatcher had agreed 'to settle the strike on the union's terms' - until the pit deputies' union Nacods 'inexplicably' failed to join the walkout as promised, paving the way for Thatcher to withdraw from settling and leading to the closure of 164 pits.

 

In October 2012, South Yorkshire Police faced new questions over its role in prosecutions arising out of the 1984 Miners’ Strike. A BBC documentary featured allegations that some police, involved in prosecutions following the infamous violence at Orgreave, colluded when they wrote their statements. The BBC obtained copies of around 100 police witness statements which showed the extent to which officers used identical phrases to describe what they had seen. A barrister, Mark George QC, told the BBC: “It’s very obvious in the Orgreave case that there was widespread collusion.”

 

That 1984 culture of malpractice was still in place in 1989, when South Yorkshire Police were responsible for the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough (more below).

 

The Economy & Associated Problems

 

Even on the economy, Thatcher’s record was far from flawless, with VAT doubling and inflation rising sharply before coming down. The slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’, in a famous poster by Saachi & Saachi, helped the Conservative Party to gain power in 1979, when there were 1,400,000 unemployed.

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Under Thatcher unemployment rose to 3,500,000 by 1982 - one in eight working-age adults out of work, with the situation much worse in non-Tory areas. Poverty went up according to figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 1979, 5,000,000 people (13.4% of the population) lived below 60% of median incomes before housing costs. By 1990, it had gone up to 22.2%, or 12,200,000 people, with huge rises in the mid-1980s. By 1992 this number had risen to 14,000,000. Crime rates for vehicle-related theft, domestic burglary and violent crime overall, all increased. The level of violent crime doubled between 1981 and 1997. The number of registered drug addicts rose from less than 3,000 in 1980 to 43,000 by 1996. The number of single parents doubled between 1971 and 1991, with numbers highest in poorer areas, and they were demonised as part of the divide and rule strategy. She even stopped free milk in schools earning herself the moniker 'Maggie Thatcher the milk snatcher'.

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She also created the climate that led to the downturn in the British economy: easy credit for consumers; personal debt; deregulation of markets; financial speculation. Many of her admirers were left in a negative equity situation.

 

Her financial growth model has been described as "casino capitalism", with speculation and financial trading having become more important to the economy than industry.

 

Thatcherism destroyed the values of working-class culture and replaced them with a culture of dog-eat-dog individualism and materialism - “me, me, me”, “have it now”, “greed is good, screw all the rest so long as I’m alright Jack” and “there’s no such thing as society”.

 

Selling-off Nationalized Industries

 

After the election of 1983 Thatcher began to sell-off the nationalized industries for a quick profit, beginning with the public utilities. The Conservative Prime Minister of the 1950s, Harold Macmillan, speaking in the House of Lords, where he sat as Baron Stockton, criticised Thatcher for "selling off the family silver".

 

The Conservative Government proceeded to close all but 15 of the country's pits, with the remaining 15 being sold off and privatised in 1994. Private companies have since acquired licences to open new pits and open-cast sites, with the majority of the original mines destroyed and the land redeveloped.

 

Conservative Party Funding

 

Lord Alistair McAlpine was deputy chairman of the Conservative Party from 1979 to 1983 and was appointed by Thatcher as Treasurer of the Party. He raised large sums to support the Conservative party election campaigns and channelled funds through offshore accounts. He received funds from US and Hong Kong nationals. One of the most controversial funders was Asil Nadir of Cyprus, who would later be convicted of stealing money from the Polly Peck Company. It is alleged that almost £20m of Conservative Party funds are still in an offshore account controlled by him and former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She stood up for McAlpine when information was passed to her by the security services in relation to McAlpine, and it was only after a large amount of pressure was put on her that she removed him from his post before information leaked out.

 

Dictatorial

 

Thatcher was the closest this country has been to a dictator since Cromwell. She was a close ally and confidant of General Pinochet, Chile’s fascist dictator, who tortured trade unionists. With her decimation of the mining industry, it was ironical that the world's celebration of the Chilean miners' rescue coincided with her 85th birthday.

http://www.anorak.co...er_pinochet.jpg

 

In Ireland many people will have rejoiced on hearing the news of the death of someone who is considered to be their cruellest of imperialist foes.

 

In 1989 Pat Finucane, who came to prominence due to successfully challenging the British Government over several important human rights cases in the 1980s, was shot dead by loyalists in front of his wife and children at his north Belfast home. He was said to be the victim of one of the most appalling examples of British Government policy ever to be implemented in Ireland: the policy of State collusion, at a time when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.

 

After twenty three years of campaigning, with the publication of the de Silva Review on 12 December 2012, David Cameron apologised to the Finucane family and said they had suffered "the most grievous wrongs". He respected their view that the de Silva review was not the right response and cited the cost of the Bloody Sunday tribunal as one reason for opposing a public inquiry.

 

Sir Menzies Campbell, former Liberal Democrat leader, said he had never heard a statement in the Commons that filled him with more "revulsion" than the Prime Minister's address. Labour leader Ed Miliband and human rights campaigners, including Amnesty International, slammed the Report, and called for an independent inquiry, which David Cameron rejected.

 

The Anti-Apartheid Movement lambasted Thatcher for choosing to “align Britain more closely with the Apartheid regime”, and for describing the African National Congress as “terrorists”.

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Thatcher impeded economic and political sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa, despite the condemnation of both the international community and domestic critics. Tory Party conferences proposed motions calling for Mandela to be executed while members wore suits with collars, ties and lapel badges emblazoned with the words ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’. One of Thatcher’s closest political allies, Sir Teddy Taylor, stated that Mandela ’should be shot’, a view Thatcher never disassociated herself from.

 

During the height of her dictatorial reign, she infamously sent the SAS to Africa to rescue her playboy and coup d'etat-sponsoring son Mark Thatcher. Due to a renowned lack of common sense and unburdened by even basic driving skills, combined with an inability to read a compass, he had managed to get himself lost during the well organised Paris-to-Dakar rally.

 

Warmonger

 

She was blessed with: the bank-roll of North Sea oil, without which her policies would have sunk the UK even further into the mire; a weak and imploding opposition; an Eastern bloc that gave us an enemy to fear; and a war in the South Atlantic that was allowed to happen to save her skin.

Internationally, she was roundly condemned for her leading role in the cold-blooded mass murder of hundreds of Argentinian sailors aboard the General Belgrano, an unarmed troop ship that she gave the order to sink during the Falklands War, while it was well clear of any combat zone. Her calculating pursuit of war in the Falklands in 1982 unleashed a predicted blast of jingoism that improved her 'personal approval rating' from only 30% (pre-Falklands) to 59% according to Mori.

 

Britain suffered military losses totalling 255 and surviving British troops wore tee-shirts carrying the slogan ‘I Fought for Coalite’. Dennis Thatcher, the then Prime Minister’s husband, was a major shareholder of that company, which held major commercial interests in the Falklands’ natural resources.

 

Arms Dealings

 

In 1989 South Africa agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

Thatcher was deeply involved with the conflict in Iraq and requested the purchase of three battlefield-ready nuclear bombs to be used against Saddam Husain, in the event that he did not toe the line. In spite of the UN sanctions against South Africa, she sent Kenneth Warren (now Sir Kenneth) and David Cameron (now Prime Minister), then a rather young Conservative researcher, to Pelindaba, to start the purchase process of three nuclear bombs. The idea involved using taxpayers’ money, not via the normal weapons purchase channels of the MoD, but via the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It was also dealt with as a private business project involving very senior Conservative MPs, who invested in the project, with Thatcher’s son Mark at the helm. He was once described by the Financial Times as "a sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous Mum", but is now ‘Sir’ Mark, with the title passing to him on his father’s death. His devoted mother is reported to have said "Mark could sell snow to the Eskimos and sand to the Arabs".

The go-between for this illegal arms transfer was the notorious arms dealer John Bredenkamp who, having sold them, then arranged for the shipment to Oman in standard 20ft sea containers. They were shipped without any security and were then stored in his friend’s compound, again without security. The person responsible for receiving and checking this shipment was none other than Dr David Kelly, who would check the health of the nuclear weapons (via special concealed observation panels) and make sure that the core temperature was within safe limits. Having verified that all three were OK, the money was then released for the outright purchase. This extremely fraudulent deal not only misused British taxpayers’ money, but also managed to siphon-off another £17.8 million that went straight into the Tory Party Election Fund.

 

What was to happen next was beyond comprehension, when the arms dealer, John Bredenkamp, stole back the three weapons, knowing the British Government would not be able to do anything about it, as the entire deal had been totally illegal and implicated so many senior political figures. The three nuclear bombs, each one stored inside a specially modified sea container, were switched with three other containers that only contained a concrete block to the same value in weight.

 

It was believed that, at some stage, these weapons turned up in Iraq and that is why Tony Blair went to war, as he had been made aware of the “Nuke Deal” upon taking office. What the British public did not know was that these three very mobile weapons were rather small and were transferred by road into Syria aboard three separate ambulances and then relocated to unknown destinations. It is also believed that one of these weapons was successfully test fired in North Korea.

 

If only those searching for 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq had asked Mark Thatcher, he could have re-directed them to Syria, where no action would have been taken, thereby saving the lives of at least 28,800 members of the allied forces and over 100,000 civilians, at a cost to the UK of £4.5million and to the US of around $1.9 trillion.

 

By now you are probably saying to yourself how could the British public be so deceived about the illegal arms dealings, and how come no one has been arrested or charged with offences relating to this mammoth gross act of negligence? One must also add to the list of political wrong-doings the fact that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown knew of this situation as did MPs Margaret Beckett and Chris Williamson, not forgetting Lord Doug Hoyle, who was one of the members who raised the fraudulent £17.8 million in Parliament (see Hansard June 22nd 1993 from Column 197).

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-06-22/Debate-4.html

http://eyreinternational.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/cameron-and-thatcher.jpg?w=700

 

It beggars belief that, despite this fraud/irregularity being recorded in Parliament, no one has ever pursued it and sought justice, but truth is stranger than fiction where politicians are concerned.

 

It must also be viewed in the context of the doctors who continued to fight for an inquest into the suspicious death of Dr David Kelly, whose body was found near his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after he was identified as the source of a BBC report about the Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The doctors point out the obvious anxiety, even desperation, of four successive Governments to block a formal request for an inquest, and the disingenuous reasons given for not holding one. Many fear that there has been a cover-up of epic proportions, and many others have wondered what it is that is so important to hide that precludes an inquest taking place in accordance with the due process of the law.

 

Football Fans & Hooliganism

 

To Thatcher's Government, football fans were seen as much of a menace as striking trade unionists in the 1980s. Years of greed and incompetence had brought English football to an all-time low. Fewer people were attending games than ever before, while lurid press reports of fan violence would have led anyone who didn't attend matches to think that all football stadia were life-threatening environments, teeming with drunken, dart-throwing maniacs. As the Government then was fond of saying, football had become a "law and order issue".

 

Football stadia were monuments to the complacency of the game's authorities – spectators were expected to tolerate uncomplainingly the sub-standard facilities. The post-Heysel resolve to "do something" about football hooliganism, led to a woefully misconceived plan to require spectators to produce ID cards to gain admission.

 

Conservative MP and Luton Town chairman David Evans, who described himself as a "very right-wing disciplinarian", introduced a prototype scheme that barred all away supporters from his club’s games. The outcry over Luton's actions did not deter the Government, whose Football Spectators Act of 1989 made ID cards compulsory, a plan that was only abandoned after the deaths of 96 spectators at Hillsborough later in the same year.

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Peter Wright, South Yorkshire Police's chief constable, in his erroneous explanation of the Hillsborough tragedy, was not the only one from Yorkshire who conned Thatcher - Jimmy Savile spent 11 Christmases as her guest at her official Chequers residence, a short drive from Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, where Savile befriended Peter Sutcliffe, the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. In 1988 the Thatcher government appointed a task force to take over the running of Broadmoor – headed up by Jimmy Savile, who had no kind of qualification to hold the post.

 

Murdoch

 

The bitter dispute at Fortress Wapping in 1986 started with Rupert Murdoch dismissing 6,000 employees, who had gone on strike, and it resulted in street battles and demonstrations. It was suspected that Thatcher's Government colluded with Murdoch, as a way of damaging the trade union movement, by providing large numbers of police to use violence and provocation to attack and arrest pickets.

 

Documents released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust revealed that, in 1981 there was a secret meeting between Thatcher and Murdoch at Chequers, weeks before the mogul skirted Britain’s anti-monopoly laws to purchase the Times and Sunday Times. The meeting had been denied previously by both Thatcher and Murdoch.

 

Poll Tax

 

The introduction of the controversial Poll Tax, proved to be one of Thatcher’s most unpopular political measures. It affected young and old, employed and unemployed, the sick and disabled, council tenants and house owners. All except the rich and upper middle class were to be hit. The Thatcher family in Dulwich saved £2,300 per year, while an average family in Suffolk had to pay an extra £640. The slogan of “Can’t pay, won’t pay” was adopted by the many anti-Poll Tax demonstrations, including the worst riots seen in the city of London for a century. The courts gaoled scores of old-aged pensioners, principled objectors and the poor, for their inability to pay this hated Tax.

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Thatcher and her draconian policies made her, without doubt, the most unpopular British politician in modern times.

 

Destruction of Communities

 

She decimated whole communities in the industrial North of England and tore the heart from working-class people. The consequential sense of hopelessness led to the social problems experienced since those days. A 2011Study Report, undertaken for the Independent on Sunday, looking at class in Britain, concluded that most working-class people feel under siege, "brought down by the workshy underclass and undercut by immigrants". They feel a residual pride in being working-class, but this is often seen as something in the past. "Working-class used to be a choice – work with your hands, do an honest day's work, be unpretentious, play football. Now working-class tends to just mean poor". The Report concluded that working-class solidarity no longer applies, with working-class respondents being more likely to feel lonely, unhappy and pessimistic.

 

Industry is one of the things that made Britain great, with working-class people getting their hands dirty every day and happy to earn a wage. Some of those people committed suicide when Thatcher destroyed not only their jobs, but robbed them of self-respect when having to beg for help as their homes where repossessed, because no help was available until it started to affect those in the south-east. There was a saying that nothing existed north of Watford, and she seemed to believe that to be the case.

 

It should not be forgotten that premature babies were being left to die in hospital corridors because there were no incubators, and elderly people waited years for treatment because of massive under-funding to the NHS. Motivated by financial concerns, Thatcher was responsible for closing down psychiatric hospitals and selling them to property developers. This resulted in thousands of patients being ejected into the hands of 'care in the community' or into prisons where they were punished rather than treated.

 

There will be many people celebrating the news of her death: ex-factory workers; ex-miners; ex-print workers; and many others who lost their jobs and had their lives destroyed during her Government. Some have been planning for years to hold street parties in celebration.

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Society & Social Division

 

Thatcherism completely changed how class was seen. The wealthy were adulated. People were encouraged to scramble up the social ladder, and be defined by how much they owned. Those who were poor or unemployed had no one to blame but themselves. To be working-class was no longer something to be proud of. The new Britons created by Thatcherism were property-owning, middle class individuals who looked after themselves, their family and no one else. Aspiration meant yearning for a bigger car or a bigger house.

 

The introduction in the 1980s of the ‘Right-to-Buy’ for council tenants to buy their home has had the effect of damaging social housing, with the reduction in the number of genuinely affordable homes for families on modest incomes. The replacement of sold council dwellings with 'affordable rent' properties means landlords can charge rents of up to 80% of market rates, which is typically higher than council rents. Ownership is not necessarily the most financially suitable form of tenure for a lot of social housing tenants, as many are on very low incomes and find themselves unable to afford the mortgage repayments. Statistically, Right-to-Buy mortgage holders are far more likely than other purchasers to have their homes repossessed. In 1991, 75,500 properties were repossessed and 186,649 cases reached the courts. This had the added effect of pushing up the housing benefit bill. Welfare spending soared to unprecedented levels under Thatcher.

 

Without powerful unions to protect them, the wages of ordinary workers were held in check while the cost of housing began to spiral upwards. As it became increasingly difficult for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder, the newly-deregulated banking sector began offering ever more "attractive" loans, and we all know where that led.

 

Thatcher encouraged rampant consumerism and living beyond one’s means on credit, so that the ‘have-nots’ could join the ‘haves’ in a consumerism-obsessed society. While this was hoped to keep the lower class content, it has only succeeded in highlighting the split in the country, not between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, but the greed of the ‘haves’ wanting even more.

 

Poverty went up under Thatcher, according to figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 1979, 13.4% of the population lived below 60% of median incomes before housing costs. By 1990, it had gone up to 22.2%, or 12.2m people, with huge rises in the mid-1980s.

 

Legacy

 

Some politicians are remembered for their achievement: in Aneurin Bevan's case the founding of the NHS; others like Tony Blair will be remembered as warmongers and traitors to the ideals of the Labour movement; John Major will be remembered for his ineffectual personality, his blandness and his self-confessed affair as a Thatcher whip with backbencher Edwina Currie. But I doubt whether any politician has been hated by working people with such intensity as Margaret Thatcher.

 

Those words spoken on the steps of 10 Downing Street - Harmony? Truth? Faith? Hope? I can imagine St Francis of Assisi taking her to task for the miss-appropriation of his words, and drawing her attention to the example already set by the new Pope Francis.

 

As an elderly woman, Lady Thatcher has suffered a series of strokes, and struggled with the horror of senile dementia, her short-term memory having gone, and I know at first-hand how this affected my Mum. Just because someone now has a different life, because of a serious medical condition, does not change what they did or achieved. Her daughter Carol has recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when she muddled the Falklands conflict with the Yugoslav wars. It is not known whether, due to her deteriorating mental health, Thatcher was able to remember, for example, her role in the vicious repression of the Miners’ Strike. It is doubtful if the untold misery she caused to working-class people ever troubled her conscience when she was compos mentis, so it is unlikely that it ever troubled her befuddled mind in her later years.

 

Between 2006 and 2011 Thatcher was rarely seen in public and suffering on-going health problems, but she claimed a total of £535,000 in state hand-outs from the Public Duties Cost Allowance, available to ex-PMs to assist with additional office costs, which they are liable to incur because of their special position in public life. Some may look upon this as another form of benefit fraud.

 

Tony Blair’s ex-PM allowance, to support ‘public duties’, was £115,000 in 2011, but Gordon Brown rejected his allowance entitlement because it was too generous.

 

It's ironic that Thatcher died on the day the new Personal Independence Payment scheme is being launced only in Northern England, where many former miners and steel workers will have their Disability Living Allowance reduced, adding insult to their injuries.

 

Now Thatcher is dead, don’t be surprised if the Coalition Government supports euthanasia on the NHS for the elderly. It would solve many of the NHS budget problems, make a vital contribution to the pension crisis and provide an easy way out for some over-70s who do not wish to belong to the kind of society politicians are trying to create.

 

A State Funeral has been suggested.

 

Dai Hudd, the Deputy General Secretary of Prospect, the professionals' union, said that calling on people to dance on Thatcher's grave was "nonsense" and "infantile" but there was anger over her Government's legacy. "That era made us a nastier nation," he said, adding: "She might get her own back and be buried at sea".

 

http://t1.gstatic.co...gmRChUvSh_Goz5B

Edited April 11, 2013 by Diego_Sideburns

[beag_teeets]

Good post.

 

I've got a much shorter one, only four letters.

[boboafc]

ha ha ha ha rod stewart has been asked to play at margret thatchers funeral

the song "wake up maggie " would not be appreciated

[leeslover]

I got so far as reading that the Belgrano was an unarmed troop ship and decided that I had read enough crap for one day. It was a heavy battle cruiser.

[Matt]

I got so far as reading that the Belgrano was an unarmed troop ship and decided that I had read enough crap for one day. It was a heavy battle cruiser.

 

It was, it even had UK SeaCat SAM's too.

[Yard Dog]

Take it you're not a fan, Diego?

[24hoursfromtulsehill]

The "late" Margaret Thatcher? By all accounts she was pathologically punctual.

 

When you're counting virtues, it's best to start with the basics - which is about as far as you'll get with the evil one.

[Diego_Sideburns]

Thatcher's funeral is taking place today.

 

Strangely the coffin was carried by four men on their shoulders without using their hands as it entered St. Clement Danes, where it remained for a short time for prayers to be said. However, when it was carried to and from the gun carriage, it appeared much heavier as it took eight service personnel to carry on their shoulders while using their hands to support it.

 

It was reported that a man was taken away by police on the Strand after he shouted ":censored: off" and "destroyed us" at the passing gun carriage. In Ludgate Circus, several hundred people turned their backs on the procession, some chanting: "What a waste of money" and "Tory scum". The police watched but did not intervene.

 

The Bishop of London said after the storm of a life lived in controversy, there is calm. Thatcher became a symbolic figure, "even an -ism". There is a legitimate place for a debate about her legacy. Parliament held one last week. But this is not the time and place for that. This, at her request, is a funeral service. She did not want a memorial service with eulogies.

[Diego_Sideburns]

Protests in Barnsley:

http://www.itv.com/n...tcher-the-scab/

 

ITV:

http://www.itv.com/n...orkshire_190564

http://www.itv.com/n...e-for-thatcher/

[tangerinedreams]

.

Edited April 22, 2013 by tangerinedreams