No not that, I agree with you there. The one about why my question came across as trollish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
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No not that, I agree with you there. The one about why my question came across as trollish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Just read the Faulkland Islands' history on Wikipedia. It's a mess - always has been. The Brits don't really want them, the Argies really really want them, but are going about getting them in completely the wrong way.
Had the military Junta understood the British psyche and asked nicely, they would have got them by now.
The problem was that the Junta wanted to ensure its hold on the country and the Falklands invasion was a means of gaining public support.Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
Just because it seemed such a bizarre suggestion, for us to pay for her funeral, being such a lover of the private market etc. Not I that I thought you was a troll, as I know that's not the case, just that it was a trollish sort of suggestion, almost perverse. Though maybe you were just being devil's advocate?Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
I can see it now - the British team of negotiators present that to the Argentine team who then throw up their arms exclaiming of course - case closed. End of story. They'll all end up ROFLTAO and everyone will go home happy.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Simple.
The only option left the Argentineans have is to have a fascist temper tantrum of the kind they have always had and keep killing each other in liberated neighborhoods over issues of soccer. President Mujica of Uruguay understands their stupidity, mainly that of Cristina Fernandez.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
What happened in the Falklands might one of these days happen in Gibraltar. A referendum over there will choose the British by over 90%.
You're right about the Gibraltarians. I went there in the late 80s and they were very anti-Spanish.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Sort of. As I think I mentioned I really don't know much about Thatcher and what she did, so I was wondering whether or not the funeral could be justified in any way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
A funeral is justified because one is to be buried or otherwise. What is not required is such a huge demonstration of army and base and half the city cut off from everyday business for a funeral procession. The concept of it all is done without the prior consent of the population of London and beyond and that is undemocratic. It is an imposition on people whether they liked it or not and that is wrong. extremely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
The cost is about the same as the "Unavoidable cuts" to the Arts Council's budget. So I shall be regarding it as one of those anarchic street art events, only with soldiers instead of students
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...ral-10-million
Interesting little datablog for the 'modest fee' of Thatcher's last two fingers up.
Yes, well, isn't she supposed to get one as an ex-PM, no matter what she did or did not do?
I do understand all the celebratory fuss about her death, but I don't find it appropriate. As if she did much in her later years. She was only of note from the time she became a leading Tory and that wasn't even from when she was elected (in the sixties? It was still black-and-white television anyway). Then she must still have been a back-bencher. So, she just did all the painful stuff that had to happen and which Germany was also doing at the time (and a few unnecessary bits to boot) in a few years and now we're going to rejoice over her death. Nobody is really worth that, although it is understandable that there are those who think it is appropriate.
Unless you are at a Germanic style wake, you should drink to someone's death. That's not nice.
I love it that the British police have said that anyone who wishes to protest at the funeral can do so, provided they just turn around in silent protest when her coffin passes. I don't think that civil British thing of standing behind the painted line because it's there is going to work tomorrow somehow. :D I'm definitely going to watch it on the Beeb. A historic moment like that can't be missed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Now I know I've referenced Pro Bono Publico several times since the death of Mrs Thatcher, simply because she was the inevitable result of those who governed the UK under a system of mutual backscratching that suited its perpetraters to the detriment of the country at large. Even so, Mrs Thatcher gets only this mention in the book:
'The most important event at this time, however, was the defeat of the Conservative leader in a ballot of members to decide on the leadership, and his replacement with the first woman ever to lead a political party in Britain. Nemesis was finally at hand for those in her party who had compromised with socialism and acquiesced in consensus.'
So the two fingers up didn't only apply to the unions but also to those whom she called 'the wets' in her own party.
I must admit, I'm always slightly suspicious of things like this - you know, the why-are-we-wasting-money-on-this-when-we-could-buy-three-billion-dialysis-machines style of argument. The extension to Tate Modern, for example, is set to cost £215 million, about £60 million of which will be coming out of tax-payers' money. Whilst I'm no great fan of modern art, I see the point/necessity of the project - but you can bet there will be plenty of people out there who think that's a titanic waste of cash that could be better spent on kitten sanctuaries/duck pond houses/windmills/schools for lobsters. The spending of public money usually generates some kind of controversy; Baroness Thatcher's funeral moreso than most.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
I'm neither one way nor the other with Mrs T - I disagree with a lot of the things that she did, but there are also aspects of her government and character that are admirable. In the grand scheme of things, £10 million is not a titanic amount - about 16p per head of population, and thus a damn sight less than the 79p a great many people have spent to download a copy of 'Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!' to get it up in the best-seller charts.
Ultimately, she was the longest serving Prime Minister of modern times, the first female Prime Minster, and a major participant in the ending of the Cold War - like her or loathe her, these are factors that require some measure of recognition.
Yes...I share your distaste. I'm no fan of Thatcherism (and I don't know how anyone interested in the arts can be), but I am no fan of ugly, crude, graceless behaviour either. I despise the grinning morons who held street parties just as much as I despise Thatcherites.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna
This has been an interesting thread. I suppose it will decline rapidly after she's interred, unless we have civil disobediance that re-ignites it again.
Anyone going out tomorrow?
Yes I am also distrustful of the why-are-we-wasting-money-on-this sort of argument/article, (usually found in some publications such as the Mail) but to me 10 million is still 10 million and for someone who raped the state and didn't believe in society it is one final insult that the state has to pay up. I just think it is in utter distaste. A quiet private funeral, in both senses of the word, is what should have happened, not the flag waving parading that we will see tomorrow when at least half of the people in the country detested her and her government.
To protest?Quote:
Anyone going out tomorrow?
Edit:
Oh and the 16p per person argument doesn’t hold any ground with me. I detest and abhor the fact that a single penny is being taken from my tax contributions to bury any politician never mind her. You might as well ask the Jews to contribute a small ‘modest sum’ to erect a plague of Hitler (after all like him or loathe him he was a powerful leader) the actual sum is completely immaterial. The fact that there is any sum to the public purse is in my opinion a total disgrace.
Fair enough. I was simply questioning the validity of that particular kind of argument, not the strength of feeling behind your sentiments!Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
Yes - but I jest. I wouldn't protest at anyone's funeral.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
The tedium has begun. My daily dose of porrige and BBC news has been interrupted by those interminable special programmes reporting on someone's arrival and departure - the Pope, The Queen and today Mrs T's burial. So we have shots or reporters standing outside on the route telling you things like - the flags are at half mast, people are having their breakfast blah blah blah. Rubbish.
Definitely. All day. As far away from a television as I can get. I think a private funeral followed at a later date by a Memorial Service would have been quite sufficient. It's enough for most politicians. I can't help feeling someone, somewhere, is making political hay out of what should be a private, family event.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
Yup! It's going to be a shouting at the telly day for me I think.
Yep. What Kasie said.Quote:
Originally Posted by kasie
I'm keeping away from the TV as well, though every now and then I flick on to the BBC's website - everything seems quiet.
I did like this bloke though: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22180329. I wish more people would make protests in such a dignified, thoughtful and eloquent way - I think that speaks far more powerfully against Thatcher/Thatcherism than grotesque effigies, drunken street parties, and up-beat Judy Garland numbers.
Oh well, thanks to Youtube I'm still getting some political entertainment - currently listening to a series of old Paxman vs. Galloway interviews while I work. They should just give the two of them a selection of melee weaponry, and let them get on with it - most entertaining.
...me too. The best of the working class socialists I remember as a child were real men who'd have considered it beneath them to celebrate the death of an old woman.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna
Never thought I'd be glad to see Bargain Hunt!
I have just watched the whole ceremony and it was quite brilliantly stage managed although I don't usually bother with that sort of thing. The interesting part was trying to put a name to the old political dinosaurs, of whom there were many, but I searched in vain for Arthur Scargill and Denis Skinner. A much more pleasant interlude was watching Mrs Thatcher's grand daughter Amanda give a reading at the service as she is a little lollipop. I've long had a liking for Mrs. Cameron ( don't tell Dave) who looked particularly charming and elegant. It's not only Electra that mourning becomes.
Doubled the post. But I'll take the opportunity to say that Sir Bernard Ingham looked like the creature from the black lagoon.
That's the thing kiki, aside from Churchill no other former PM has been given a ceremonial funeral. Not even Clement Attlee, who was doubtless the greatest post war PM and a campaigner for consensus and freedom and a promoter values such as caring for others, especially the poor, and whose government rebuilt Britain post-war.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
Kasie makes a great point here:
because there is a sense of political capital about this whole affair, and it's not even clear if it's really what Thatcher wanted. In terms of the protests, I think most people would agree that it is inappropriate to protest at a funeral however this is not just a funeral it's a ceremonial and public event. Being so, I think it is absolutely right in a democracy that people have the right and facility, and can exercise those rights, to express their opinions whatever they are and that includes, in this case, the right to protest against Thatcher's policies and the way they continue to echo through the society she didn’t even believe in to this day.Quote:
Originally Posted by kasie
I can understand why people have felt very angry about this whole event. I think the way it has been done, with the pomp and the eulogising, that it has scraped up a whole load of bad feeling that people probably thought they'd worked past and which they feel compelled to express just to counter the impression that would otherwise be left, that she was a great leader and did great things for this country. That is one view, but it isn't the whole story. I don't think it is right to ask people to pretend that they're sad or to ignore the harm that was done, the anger, the violence, the mistakes or the pain any more than it would be right to stop people from expressing their sorrow or their admiration of her. People have said that she was a divisive politician and I think that was true. Her policies worked well for some areas of the country and some areas of the economy. For others they were devastating. People lost their jobs, their communities and their hope for the future. Some sections of the population were directly discriminated against, as in the case of Section 28 which caused a great deal of harm to the homosexual communities. The case of miners has already been mentioned. I don't think it is inappropriate to question her choice in friends (Jimmy Saville anyone?), her undying and vocal support for Pinochet in spite of his terrible and brutal crimes against his own people. General Suharto she referred to as "one of our very best and most valuable friends". Her support of Saddam Hussein's regime. Her misplaced statements about Mandela and her stance against imposing sanctions on Apartheid South Africa. There are still questions to be answered about how much influence she had in the 'softening' of the criticism of the police following the Hillsborough disaster, which has resulted in years of blame being laid in the hands of the victims, though I think one of the mothers of a Hillsborough victim got it right when she said "it is terrible to speak ill of the dead. I know, because that's exactly what happened to my son."
I also think that the celebrations, as distasteful as they might be, are merely an expression of the powerlessness that people felt and, perhaps, continue to feel in the face of policies over which they had little influence and could do little to change. It is a little trite, I think, to say things like 'well if people didn't like it they should have voted against it' as this ignores the fact that many people did vote against the government of the time and many people would have been impacted by these policies who did not have even have the right to vote. The young in particular were affected by the lack of jobs and many people would have grown up seeing their parents on picket lines, losing their jobs and their self-respect, or in poverty. Then there are the people who did protest, and whose protests were brutally quashed by the police at the time. What I remember, as I was quite young during the Thatcher era, is seeing riot after riot after riot on TV. People did protest, but it's ineffectual if no one is listening.
Perhaps the sight of mass groups of people celebrating the death of a politician who caused them or those that they loved harm is one of the safety mechanisms that makes other politicians stop and think before implementing policies which will inflict damage on swathes of the population. Very little is done in this country to canvass public opinion for changes in policy, once the polls are closed. Of course it wouldn’t prevent the brutal dictator and it probably wouldn’t have stopped Thatcher who patently didn’t care about the damage being done, but perhaps in the current media age it might inspire a pause for thought and maybe that in itself is enough.
And I think there is a certain hypocrisy about it. No one seems to have a problem with people celebrating on the streets where Gaddafi’s body was being dragged out of the storm drain and photographed and filmed and shared around the world on YouTube. No one is saying, “you know that Stalin was just a sad old man in the end wasn’t he?” or the same about Pol Pot or Chairman Mao though perhaps they too had families and people who loved them, perhaps they were sometimes kind to strangers and also just doing what they thought was best. Conviction politicians. The rhetoric works in kind of in the same way.
And my main worry about all of this is that it detracts from the current problems. By talking about and focusing on Thatcher it makes us all focus on the past and diverts our attention from what needs to be done now. Thatcher’s policies were destructive to many, but many successive governments have done little about it. People are, and feel, just as powerless now as they did back then, and little has been done to engage a public consensus, a different style of politics, in spite of the meteoric technological advancements, particularly in the area of communications, which would make it possible now. If people really want to reject what she stood for, the stagnation of British politics which still seems to be caught in the wake of what she did, then turning their backs at her funeral isn’t the best way to do it. But it does leave you asking, what is there that you can do that would matter? And that is, perhaps, the question we should be asking of our politicians now rather than debating the finer points of her legacy.
Of course whatever you thought of Thatcher, for the positive or negative, she did inspire some amazing TV. Quite astonished that the thread has gone so far and no one has yet posted a clip from Spitting Image.
Here's one.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFifthElement
http://imageshack.us/a/img11/5595/haroldwilson.jpg
Meanwhile in Leeds...
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...ps98e5646d.jpg
and that really is the best way to protest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Oi! He's my homie. (If that's the correct term for a hometown boy.)
Here he is as of today.Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
http://imageshack.us/a/img839/8917/x500x.jpg